FINDINGS that raised security concerns for the downed Helios jet were not addressed until after it was too late, the committee of inquiry into the air disaster heard yesterday.
Most of these findings were established by Jim Taylor, a British flight operations advisor for local Civil Aviation.
And although these deficiencies aboard the plane were first noted in July 2004, it took Civil Aviation eight months to carry out an inspection and take corrective measures.
However, these deficiencies should have been dealt with forthwith.
Worse, a subsequent handwritten note by Taylor is the only documentation proving that an inspection of the aircraft took place in March 2005.
The flight operations inspection in March came up with even more problems, which under normal aviation procedures should have been addressed from one to three weeks later.
But the pattern was repeated, with a follow-up inspection scheduled for September 2005 – after the crash.
Committee chairman Panayiotis Kallis asked witness Fotis Michael, an inspector with Civil Aviation, whether Taylor’s findings were directly relevant to flight safety.
Michael said some were indeed pertinent, others would be under certain circumstances, while the rest were not relevant at all.
A day earlier, the committee learned that other British aviation experts had repeatedly warned of impending doom unless Civil Aviation took steps to improve its safety standards and overall operation.
And Andreas Paspallides, head of Civil Aviation’s Flight Safety Unity, testified that though he was strict in his periodic evaluations of the department, he did not log his observations.
Served almost on a daily basis, examples such as these have reinforced the public perception of a shambolic Civil Aviation department cutting corners wherever it could.
Meanwhile Phileleftheros reported yesterday that a report prepared by SH&E was never forwarded to the appropriate persons so that action might be taken.
SH&E is a private air transport consultancy firm hired by the government late last year to conduct a “diagnostic report” on the state of Civil Aviation and suggest corrective measures.
Whereas the American company did establish serious weaknesses, the findings were deemed “classified” and shown only to the director of Civil Aviation and top-level officials there. The report never trickled down to the executive level, ostensibly for fear of leaks to the press.
SH&E was invited to carry out the report by President Papadopoulos personally while on a trip to the United States. That alone raised a few eyebrows, but Phileleftheros asked yesterday why hundreds of thousands of pounds were spent so that a report could then be filed away in a cabinet.
