PASSENGERS and crew on board Helios flight ZU522 were still alive when the plane crashed in Greece on Sunday, killing all 121 aboard, the chief coroner of the investigation said yesterday.
The revelation came amid growing speculation in Greece that the phantom plane was shot down by the Greek air force amid fears it might come down in a built-up area. The Greek government yesterday denied the reports.
Giving results of autopsies on 25 victims of the mystery crash, Philippos Koutsaftis told reporters: “All the individuals, including the co-pilot and two stewardesses, died from multiple injuries to the body. They were alive when they died (in the crash).”
The Helios Airways Boeing 737 crashed into mountains near Athens on Sunday, killing all 115 passengers and six crew on a flight from Larnaca to Prague via Athens.
The remains of 25 of the victims identified so far were last night flown back to Cyprus on board a Greek C-130 aircraft.
The macabre and laborious task of identification began on Monday, and is expected to last 10 to 12 days more, according to Health Minister Andreas Gavrielides, who is at the scene in Greece.
Greek medical authorities were working round the clock to identify the victims in co-operation with bereaved relatives.
Autopsy results issued on Monday on six of the 25 victims so far examined also said they were alive, but the latest results were the first finding that crew members were also alive, if possibly unconscious, when the plane plunged to earth.
“The immediate cause of death of these (earlier six) people was through injuries, from their wounds. They were alive as the plane was falling,” another coroner, Nicos Karagoukis, one of a six-strong team carrying out the autopsies, had told reporters earlier.
“The likelihood that they lost oxygen and fainted or became unconscious is something that could happen. If one loses oxygen from decompression, this could mean death in a few minutes.”
“What we can determine is whether they fainted or went into a coma from the inhalation of a toxic substance,” he added.
In Cyprus, Kyriacos Pougrouris, a cousin of co-pilot Pambos Charalambous, said his relative had been called in at two hours’ notice to help fly the plane when the scheduled co-pilot was unavailable. Pougrouris said his cousin had complained before the flight of “problems” with the aircraft.
“Pambos told his mother twice in the last week that there was a problem with the plane, not the same kind of problem as you have with a car that you can pinpoint easily,” Pougrouris told CyBC radio yesterday.
“He didn’t go into it, but he also told me personally.”
Initial investigations had suggested that when the plane crashed all on board were dead or unconscious because of a loss of oxygen and cabin pressure in freezing temperatures at 35,000 feet – nearly 10km up.
Greece’s Eleftherotypia newspaper, quoting senior government sources, reported that if the plane had continued flying for just five more minutes Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis would have had to give an order to shoot it down.
Greek Government Spokesman Theodoros Roussopoulos said yesterday the plane had not been shot down. He added the government had “no such thought”, while a Defence Ministry source said “the question never arose”,
Roussopoulos’ office declined to reveal details of the aircraft’s trajectory just before it struck a mountainside, saying an investigation was underway.
Eleftherotypia quoted Karamanlis as saying “he had the worst hours of his life” on being informed the plane was heading towards Athens.
An unnamed senior government official told the paper that “five more minutes and we would have eliminated it.”
Instructions to down unidentified aircraft are part of NATO counter-terrorism measures codenamed “Renegade”. Greek media reports said yesterday that one of the F-16s had its missiles locked on to flight 522, but the order to fire was never issued. A Greek journalist said on Alpha TV that, had procedures been followed to the letter, the fighters should have fired at a much earlier stage, shortly after the plane entered the Athens FIR.
The doomed flight was declared “renegade” when it entered Greek airspace and failed to make radio contact. Two F-16 fighter jets were scrambled to investigate before the plane crashed 40km north of Athens.
The F-16s reported the co-pilot was slumped in the cockpit, the pilot was not visible and oxygen masks were seen dangling.
Rescue officials said yesterday they were no longer sure that one of the bodies recovered earlier was that of the German pilot and that he could be among three bodies still missing.
Ethnos newspaper reported yesterday that the F-16 pilots had captured video footage of a female flight attendant, one of six crew, trying to take control of the plane.
The body of one of the stewardesses was found a metre and a half from the debris of the cockpit at the crash site.
Greek officials said only 45 of the victims could be identified by visual means. The rest would have to be identified by DNA testing, which could take up to 10 days.
Health Minister Gavrielides said that DNA analysis was last night completed on two more bodies (bringing the figure up to 27), but that relatives’ recognition of them “did not afford a high degree of certainty”.
“Despite their anguish, the deceased’s families have been outstanding in helping,” Gavrielides told CyBC television last night.
Gavrielides said he was in constant communication with both President Papadopoulos and his colleague Communications Minister Haris Thrasou back in Cyprus.
Papadopoulos is set to arrive in Athens today.
The exact cause of the crash and why the pilots were unable to carry out well-rehearsed safety procedures was unclear.
The two black boxes have been recovered, but a Greek official said the cockpit voice recorder was badly damaged.
