Plane chrashed in Greece, unclear circumstances

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by SlowwHand


Dis, congratulations.
I'm pleased to announce that you've won the ACS Master of Understatement Award.

Yup. There are a few ways I really don't want to go, and burning alive is at the top of the list.

[KrazyHorse]

The masks provide oxygen. Lack of pressure is not the usual way people can't get enough oxygen. more often it is due to poor ventilation. Lack of ventilation on an aircraft is just as asphyxiating as it is on solid ground. The crew had reported that they had trouble with their air conditioning. That is quite different from a loss of pressure.

Granted it could come out that they lost cabin pressure but it doesn't seem to be a given at this point.

IIRC both carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide poisoning result in pink or red flushing of the skin, whereas pure hypoxia results in blueness of the skin.

Inadequate ventilation/a problem with the oxygen supply would lead to death by carbon dioxide poisoning before it led to death by hypoxia, thus the pilot would not have turned blue, rather he would have been flushed.

The most common reasons I can think of for death by hypoxia are drowning and low pressure.

All else being equal I would therefore guess that this was a case of loss of cabin pressure (though it's of course far from a certainty)

The fact that it got extremely cold in the aircraft (cold enough to claim that they were freezing) also leads me to believe that there was some sort of leak in the system.

[Dis]

I admit I was skeptical of that text message, but perhaps it is true.

The F-16 pilots seemed to indicate that some passengers were trying to fly the plane.

Here's some ideas I'm thinking of.

The pilot knew something was wrong and went back to the aft part of the plane to check some mechanical equipment. He left the cockpit door open. During this time the copilot passes out, and eventually the captain and passengers pass out.

But for some reason, a couple of passengers did not pass out. This is the strange part. Perhaps they are just in better physical shape and could go longer before passing out. So someone test messages, and someone goes into the cockpit in order to try to gain control of the plane. Unfortunately for them it is in autopilot, and it just isn't as easy as reducing engine power or pushing the stick forward.

[Dis]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse


Yup. There are a few ways I really don't want to go, and burning alive is at the top of the list.

I hear it's one of the most painful ways to go. Though who really knows for sure?

Actually, for burn victims. Living is worse. They have to sit in tanks of liquid (I can't remember what it is) which is excruciating pain.

[Chemical Ollie]

They might have frozen to death. You don't bring clothes for arctic climate if you fly from Cyprus to Athens in the summer. And if there's a system leak, the outside air is -50 C. According to BBC, some bodies were frozen solid.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4151398.stm

[axi]

Axi, reporting from his summer house, not very far from the crash site (about 15 km in a straight line I believe).

It's right in the middle of summer holidays so it's reasonable that nobody from here would log on to Apolyton.

Everybody here is dazzled by the mystery and gruesomness of the affair. Our info isn't much better than yours and the journalists yesterday had a fest of creating info right out of their asses. Personally I can't understand how everybody went unconscious, then a couple of people came about and tried to fly the plane but noone used the radio or put out an emergency signal. I remember the media saying yesterday that the plane did at some point try to make right triangle manuevres which mean "we're in danger but we cannot communicate" but I didn't hear about this again. How possible is it for cabin pressure and communications to be down at the same time?

Something else that I can't understand is why the plane crashed where it crashed. The autopilot supposedly flew the plane to the northern approach area of the airport and supposedly, if left alone (without the order to begin descent) the plane would have flown at the same altitude until fuel exhaustion. Instead, it plunged down and crashed into a hill. Miraculously, in one of the most densely populated areas of the country, the plane chose a totally empty area only 2,5 km off the closest village. Did someone crash it there on purpose? What is certain, the F-16s had nothing to do with this, although they flew in formation with the plane almost to the last moment. Some people on the beach of Schinias near Marathon actually saw the crash.

I wonder what would have happened if the plane had shot past the mountain of Parnitha and turned south towards Athens. The devastation would be unimaginable.

In my opinion, some people will eventually do hard time in jail for this. The plane had serious cabin pressure problems in October and in December 2004 but they put it back into service after they had it "fixed". Some engineers are said to have submitted their resignations over this earlier this year and they have doubled their salaries to convince them to stay with the company. Plus the company was witholding the passenger list for more than 24 hours. They didn't even know the exact age of their crew members, not to speak of the passengers, for crying out loud!

[Proteus_MST]

Originally posted by axi

Everybody here is dazzled by the mystery and gruesomness of the affair. Our info isn't much better than yours and the journalists yesterday had a fest of creating info right out of their asses. Personally I can't understand how everybody went unconscious, then a couple of people came about and tried to fly the plane but noone used the radio or put out an emergency signal. I remember the media saying yesterday that the plane did at some point try to make right triangle manuevres which mean "we're in danger but we cannot communicate" but I didn't hear about this again. How possible is it for cabin pressure and communications to be down at the same time?

Could it be that these passengers didn´t know how to fly a plane (and everybody of the crew was unconscious and so couldn´t give any instructions) and, not knowing what to do, switched off the Autopilot without manning the Control Sticks of the plane?
Or that they manned the controls, switched off the Autopilot, but afterwards fell unconscious themselves?

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by Chemical Ollie
They might have frozen to death. You don't bring clothes for arctic climate if you fly from Cyprus to Athens in the summer. And if there's a system leak, the outside air is -50 C. According to BBC, some bodies were frozen solid.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4151398.stm

Not a chance. Freezing to death takes too long. The pilots would have had all the time in the world to descend. The freezing happened post mortem.

[KrazyHorse]

Plus hypoxia would kill you a hell of a lot faster than would hypothermia if the cold was due to the cabin being open to the outside atmosphere...

[Chemical Ollie]

According to Svenska Dagbladet, the reported SMS from a passenger was a hoax and the guilty person will be prosecuted tomorrow. I haven't found this news in English.

[Chemical Ollie]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse
Plus hypoxia would kill you a hell of a lot faster than would hypothermia if the cold was due to the cabin being open to the outside atmosphere...

What you say might be true, I don't know, but you don't last many minutes wearing shorts and T-shirt in -50 C either. And the passengers were reported to wear oxygen masks, preventing hypoxia. According to what I read, oxygen mask systems are very reliable and rarely malfunction.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse
Yup. There are a few ways I really don't want to go, and burning alive is at the top of the list.

Actually, from what I understand, burning alive is actually mostly painless. The nerve endings are destroyed by the fire fairly quickly, and you don't feel anything after that.

[Dis]

I should trust my first instincts. It turns out the text message was a hoax and greek authorities have arrested the man who claimed he recieved a text message.

I need to remember I'm smarter than I think I am.

[Dis]

Originally posted by axi
Axi, reporting from his summer house, not very far from the crash site (about 15 km in a straight line I believe).

It's right in the middle of summer holidays so it's reasonable that nobody from here would log on to Apolyton.

Everybody here is dazzled by the mystery and gruesomness of the affair. Our info isn't much better than yours and the journalists yesterday had a fest of creating info right out of their asses. Personally I can't understand how everybody went unconscious, then a couple of people came about and tried to fly the plane but noone used the radio or put out an emergency signal. I remember the media saying yesterday that the plane did at some point try to make right triangle manuevres which mean "we're in danger but we cannot communicate" but I didn't hear about this again. How possible is it for cabin pressure and communications to be down at the same time?

Something else that I can't understand is why the plane crashed where it crashed. The autopilot supposedly flew the plane to the northern approach area of the airport and supposedly, if left alone (without the order to begin descent) the plane would have flown at the same altitude until fuel exhaustion. Instead, it plunged down and crashed into a hill. Miraculously, in one of the most densely populated areas of the country, the plane chose a totally empty area only 2,5 km off the closest village. Did someone crash it there on purpose? What is certain, the F-16s had nothing to do with this, although they flew in formation with the plane almost to the last moment. Some people on the beach of Schinias near Marathon actually saw the crash.

I wonder what would have happened if the plane had shot past the mountain of Parnitha and turned south towards Athens. The devastation would be unimaginable.

In my opinion, some people will eventually do hard time in jail for this. The plane had serious cabin pressure problems in October and in December 2004 but they put it back into service after they had it "fixed". Some engineers are said to have submitted their resignations over this earlier this year and they have doubled their salaries to convince them to stay with the company. Plus the company was witholding the passenger list for more than 24 hours. They didn't even know the exact age of their crew members, not to speak of the passengers, for crying out loud!

I agree with you about the media. Your media sucks . JK, our is just as bad. With 24 hour news, no one knows how to fill the time. So they just talk out of their asses. They have no clue how planes are constructed or flown. They make wild assumptions.

They are giving all kinds of weird conflicting information. some articles say the F-16 pilots saw someone attempting to fly the plane, others do not. They really bit on the text message hoax- stupid reporters. And some reports have said the bodies on the ground were wearing their masks. But the last article I read said the bodies weren't wearing their masks.

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse

The masks provide oxygen. Lack of pressure is not the usual way people can't get enough oxygen. more often it is due to poor ventilation. Lack of ventilation on an aircraft is just as asphyxiating as it is on solid ground. The crew had reported that they had trouble with their air conditioning. That is quite different from a loss of pressure.

Granted it could come out that they lost cabin pressure but it doesn't seem to be a given at this point.

IIRC both carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide poisoning result in pink or red flushing of the skin, whereas pure hypoxia results in blueness of the skin.

Inadequate ventilation/a problem with the oxygen supply would lead to death by carbon dioxide poisoning before it led to death by hypoxia, thus the pilot would not have turned blue, rather he would have been flushed.

The most common reasons I can think of for death by hypoxia are drowning and low pressure.

All else being equal I would therefore guess that this was a case of loss of cabin pressure (though it's of course far from a certainty)

The fact that it got extremely cold in the aircraft (cold enough to claim that they were freezing) also leads me to believe that there was some sort of leak in the system.

carbon monoxide gives a characteristic cherry-red blush to the skin. Carbon dioxide does nothing of the sort.