THE TWO men flying the Olympia shoulder a great deal of the blame for last August’s crash that killed 121 people, a pilot told the Helios committee of inquiry yesterday.
Captain Robert Lascelles, still employed with ajet – the successor airline to Helios – said the pilots of flight ZU522 wasted valuable time in troubleshooting and contacting ground engineers while their plane rapidly lost pressure.
“The first action they should have taken was put on their oxygen masks. It’s also important that you try to control the depressurisation. You need to shut the airflow valve, then switch the decompression system to manual. That way a pilot can control the airflow. Also, you must lower the plane and drop the oxygen masks in the passenger cabin.”
According to Lascelles, the time of useful consciousness (TUC) at 35,000 feet is 12 to 15 seconds. Pilots therefore need to act quickly and bring the aircraft down to 10,000 feet as soon as possible.
TUC is the amount of time an individual is able to perform flying duties efficiently in an environment of inadequate oxygen supply.
In Lascelles’ opinion, instead of contacting the ground, captain Hans-Jurgen Mertin should have automatically gone through the above procedures.
“It’s unusual that they did what they did. Perhaps it was because they were at a high altitide and were feeling the effects of hypoxia,” he said.
“All pilots are trained for a disastrous event at high altitude. If they had done what I just mentioned, the outcome would have been different.”
Lascelles said that in the aviation industry all Boeing 737s are widely known or rumoured to have decompression problems. At the same time though, pilots are specially trained to cope with such hitches.
He cited a personal experience, during an inbound flight fromWarsaw. Lascelles faced a depressurisation problem, but went through the standard steps and landed safely.
Asked by committee chairman Panayiotis Kallis whether he had called engineers for assistance, the aviator replied in the negative.
“The first thing that happens during decompression at a high altitude is that you have intense pain in the ears, frost and moisture on the plane. Simultaneously, the ‘horn’ will sound.”
Lascelles dismissed speculation that an engineer had left the decompression switch on manual before takeoff.
If that were the case, he said, the passengers would have felt unbearable pain in the ears as soon as the engines throttled.
This scenario was therefore an impossibility.
Lascelles informed the committee that there are three types of decompression: explosive, fast and slow. Explosive decompression is the most dangerous, and pilots must react to it “in a split second”.
He was next quizzed about the late captain Mertin, of whom much has been reported in the media.
Lascelles said he had known Mertin while working together with another airline. Mertin was fired at some point for not complying with company protocol.
Apparently the German did not mend his wayward ways after joining Helios.
“They called him in to talk about certain problems and compliance with procedures, but they gave him a last chance. I believe he tried. They told him, ‘one more mistake and you’re out’,” said Lascelles.
He never flew with Mertin at Helios, since both were captains. However, other co-pilots – including Pambos Charalambous – were concerned with doubling up with him.
The next witness of the day was Alexia Gerolemou, formerly a senior flight attendant with Helios Airways.
Gerolemou insisted that recurrent problems in technical checks, staff training and organization were not addressed.
She said that the airline would often leave it to the last minute to fix technical glitches on planes.
The committee also heard yesterday from Christos Neocleous, a lawyer for Libra Holidays Group, owners of the airline.
Neocleous, who played an integral part in the company’s controversial name-change to ajet, rebutted suggestions the airline was cutting costs that affected safety.
