Newspaper claims pilot was told to keep flying

A NEWSPAPER report has claimed that the pilot of the ill-fated Helios Airways plane, which crashed into the mountains in Greece killing all 121 passengers and crew on board, had been instructed by Helios Airways to continue its scheduled flight to Athens despite problems he had reported to them minutes earlier.

The story also mentions how an Olympic Airways technician stated in a written report dated August 16, 2005 and sent to the Managing Director of Technical Services at Olympic Airways, that he had been in contact with an Helios official after the plane had lost contact and was over the Aegean Sea.

“At around 10.30am of the morning of 14/08/2005, Helios Airways representative Mr Varvaresos contacted me by telephone and informed me that the B737-300, which was conducting a scheduled flight for Athens, had been experiencing communication and navigation problems and that no contact could be established with the aircraft. He ended the conversation by saying that two fighter planes had been scrambled from Eleftherios Venizelos Airport to fly out to the plane and that the plane had around 15 minutes of fuel remaining.

“I informed him that I would activate all the necessary technical services. He then thanked Olympic Airways for their immediate response. Upon ending my conversation with the Helios representative, I immediately alerted the duty officer who told me that the services would be activated for any needs that the aeroplane would need.”

Simerini claims that twenty minutes into the flight and while the aircraft was at 17,000 feet, the pilot reported a problem to the headquarters of Helios but was then instructed to carry on with his course.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.