Plane chrashed in Greece, unclear circumstances

[BeBMan]

Article
Plane with 121 crashes in Greece

From there:

ATHENS, Greece (CNN) -- A Cypriot plane carrying 121 people crashed north of Athens on Sunday, Greek officials said.

Helios Airlines Flight 522 with 115 passengers and six crew crashed en route from Larnaca, Cyprus to Athens, officials said.

Lefterios Ikonomou, a senior public order ministry official, told CNN the site of the crash was in Varnava, near the historic town of Marathon, about 50 km north of Athens.

Authorities sent two Greek F-16 jets to escort the plane after the control tower at Athens international airport lost contact with the pilots, state media reported.

One of the F-16 pilots reported he could not see the captain in the cockpit and that the co-pilot appeared to be slumped in his seat, a Greek Defense Ministry official told Reuters.

(...)

That seems strange.

[Proteus_MST]

Seems like there was a Problen in the Oxygen supply, and that probably the Air within the interior of the plane wasn´t replaced regularly, allowing the CO2-Levels to rise.

This way the Pilots and Passengers would get more and more sleepy until they wouldn´t be able to stay awake anymore.

[Proteus_MST]

Jep, sounds to me like symptomes of a CO2-Poisoning, which probably hit the Pilots first, because the Cockpit is smaller than the passenger cabin, allowing the CO2-Levels to rise faster there:

Greek TV station Alpha reported that the pilot had sent a message to air traffic controllers saying the plane had a problem with its air conditioning, after which all communication was cut, Reuters said.

Greek television also reported that one of the passengers had sent a mobile text message to his cousin before the crash saying the pilots were slumped and that it was freezing in the plane.

"The pilot has turned blue (in the face)," the passenger said in the SMS message to his cousin, Reuters quoted the television report as saying. "Cousin farewell we're freezing."

[DRoseDARs]

Yeesh, what a way to go.

[Spiffor]

Damn.

[BeBMan]

Yeah, still strange - there are reports about the co-pilot having an O2 mask, still he was unconscious....I thought normally planes have those masks for passengers too coming out in case of an emergency.....

[Ted Striker]

Good point...

[SlowwHand]

Yeah this was a bad one.

I don't think masks for the passengers would have helped much.

[BlackCat]

Local radio says that the plane twice before have had problems with the airsystem - one time with an emergency landing and several hispitalized with breathing problems.

The airline of course denies this.

There should be some greek news sources with further details, but my greek is pretty bad, so I can't find it.

[Jonny]

Terrible.


Not a good month for flying, there's already been several crashes already...

[Dr Strangelove]

I thought that airplanes had an automatic system which would drop the O2 masks when needed. Perhaps the system is linked only to internal air pressure instead of O2 or CO2 pressure.

[Chemical Ollie]

I remember something similar happened to a business jet in USA a few year ago. The plane was on auto pilot when there was a sudden drop of cabin pressure and all on board died from altitude sickness or whatever. A fighter went up to check it out and saw the pilots dead through the windows. But they couldn't do anything about it, and the auto pilot kept the ghost plane flying for several hours before it eventually ran out of fuel.

[ixnay]

Originally posted by Chemical Ollie
I remember something similar happened to a business jet in USA a few year ago. The plane was on auto pilot when there was a sudden drop of cabin pressure and all on board died from altitude sickness or whatever. A fighter went up to check it out and saw the pilots dead through the windows. But they couldn't do anything about it, and the auto pilot kept the ghost plane flying for several hours before it eventually ran out of fuel.

Yeah, that was the one that killed golfer Payne Stewart

[Mercator]

Awful way to die. ... Though perhaps being unconscious is better than staying alive during a crash and dying on impact. Not that either option sounds particularly attractive.

Originally posted by BeBro
I thought normally planes have those masks for passengers too coming out in case of an emergency.....

You didn't read the article you posted?

[q=CNN.com]One witness told Reuters: "I saw many bodies scattered around, all of them wearing (oxygen) masks. (...)[/q]

[q=CNN.com][The F-16 pilots] also reported they could see through the plane's windows that the oxygen masks had dropped down.[/q]

[asleepathewheel]

I would prefer becoming sleepy and losing conciousness then dieing to a physically painful death. but that's just me.