Cypriot airliner black boxes being sent to France

Two black-box recorders from the Cypriot airliner that crashed outside Athens will be sent to France for expert examination, officials said today, to determine why the plane went down – possibly with all 121 on board already dead.

Authorities said the cause of yesterday’s crash appeared to be technical failure – resulting in high-altitude decompression. A transport official said the 115 passengers and six crew may have been dead when the plane went down.

Relatives of the dead, meanwhile, began to gather in Athens at a central morgue to identify their remains. Greek deputy Health Minister Giorgos Constantopoulos said there had been 21 children on board Helios Airways flight ZU522 from Cyprus to Athens, “all aged four and above”.

Greek and Cypriot officials had originally said there were 48 children on the plane. No explanation for the discrepancy was given.

In Cyprus, the pilots and crew of Helios Airways today refused to fly after reports passengers had complained that the Helios Boeing 737 that crashed near Athens had experienced past technical problems. The company would not say why its crews were refusing to fly.

Greek state television had quoted the Cyprus transport minister as saying the plane had decompression problems in the past. But a Helios representative said the plane had “no problems and was serviced just last week”.

The Boeing 737 had been headed from Larnaca, Cyprus, to Athens International Airport when it crashed at 12.05pm (10.05 Irish time) yesterday near Grammatiko, a village 25 miles north of the Greek capital.

The head of the Greek airline safety committee, Akrivos Tsolakis, said the two black boxes – a data and cockpit voice recorder – recovered from the crash site would be sent to the French air safety investigators in Paris for further examination.

The voice recorder, Tsolakis said, was badly damaged by the crash and ensuing fire.

“It’s in a bad state and, possibly, it won’t give us the information we need,” he said. “Both boxes will be sent to Paris where a French committee will help us and the foreign experts to decode”

Greek investigators were to be joined by US experts following a request made by the American government because the aircraft was manufactured in the US.

The pilots of the airliner had reported air-conditioning system problems to Cyprus air traffic control about a half-hour after takeoff. Within minutes, after entering Greek air space over the Aegean, the Boeing 737 lost all radio contact. Two Greek F-16 fighter jets were dispatched soon afterward.

When the F-16s intercepted the plane at 34,000 feet, jet pilots could see the co-pilot slumped over his seat. The captain was not in the cockpit, and oxygen masks dangled inside the cabin, said government spokesman Theodoros Roussopoulos said.

He said the jet pilots also saw two people possibly trying to take control of the plane; it was unclear if they were crew members or passengers. The plane apparently was on automatic pilot when it crashed, a Helios spokesman said.

“When a pilot has no communication with the control tower, the procedure dictates that other planes must accompany and help the plane land. Unfortunately, it appeared that the pilot was already dead as was, possibly, everyone else on the plane,” said Cyprus Transport Minister Haris Thrasou.

At 34,000 feet – the altitude where the F-16 jets met the airliner – the effects of depressurisation are swift, said David Kaminski Morrow, of the British-based Air Transport Intelligence magazine.

“If the aircraft is at 30,000 feet, you don’t stay conscious for long, maybe 15 to 30 seconds,” he said. “But if you are down at 10,000 feet, you can breathe for a lot longer.”

The flight was to have continued to Prague, Czech Republic, after stopping in Athens.

Liz Verdier, a spokeswoman for Boeing, said the 737s, like all Boeing planes, were equipped with warning systems that alerted pilots when decompression was occurring. She could not provide details of how the warning system worked.

More relatives were expected from Cyprus on at least one special flight from the eastern Mediterranean island. Others arrived in Athens from other parts of Greece to identify victims.

Deputy Health Minister Thanassis Yiannopoulos said 18 bodies had been transferred to the morgue. The other recognisable remains were being taken to the morgue while about 30 would be identified by DNA.

Relatives at the morgue could be seen weeping, many uncontrollably.

The Cyprus government declared a three-day period of national mourning, while in Athens flags were ordered to fly at half mast tomorrow.