THERE is increasing interest in the background and fate of Captain Hans-Juergen Merten, the pilot of the Helios Airways ZU 522 flight which crashed into mountain in Greece last Sunday, killing all 121 passengers and crew members on board.
The German Embassy in Athens only yesterday officially requested information about Merten’s body, which has not yet been found.
German reporters are flooding into Greece anxious to gather as much information as they can on the man, who is at the center of the mystery surrounding the Cypriot airliner.
F-16 pilots scrambled to accompany the plane after it lost contact with ground control reported the pilot was not at his seat, while the co-pilot was slumped over the controls, fuelling speculation over whether he left his position in a bid to fix whatever emergency had struck the aircraft.
Little is known about the background of the Captain, an experienced East German pilot who used to fly for East German airline Interflug before retraining on Western planes and flying for budget carriers easyJet and Jet2.
Captain Hans-Juergen Merten, 58, was employed by Dublin based Direct Personnel International, an international agency that supplies pilots to various airlines around the world. The Managing Director of the company, Shane Pollard, told the Cyprus Mail that he did not want to comment on Merten’s background of Merten or even whether he knew him or not.
“At this moment in time, we are working with the family of the pilot, but that is all that I can say.
“I can see everybody’s interest in wanting to know more about the pilot but we have an obligation towards his family and do not want to comment more on the matter.”
According to the Helios website, Merten had operated more than 17,500 flying hours, including 12,500 hours as pilot-in-command on jet aircraft, of which more than 8,000 hours were on Boeing 737 variants.
“He also held an Air Transport Pilots’ Licence (ATPL) issued by the German Civil Aviation Authority (LBA), which was valid until April 14, 2006.”
But there is also an element of mystery about the German pilot, seen as something of a loner. None of his relatives have spoken out since the incident, and former colleagues are refusing to comment. Nobody from his native Germany had flown to Athens to help find and identify the body, though some family members have requested permission from police on the island to obtain some of his personal belongings from his residence in Cyprus.
Deputy Police Chief Charalambos Koulentis stated on Thursday that the relatives “did not want to be informed on the ongoing investigations involving the accident. Perhaps it is because they have already been briefed by the police investigators in Greece.
CID officials on the island have already received the background and curriculum vitae of Merten from police in Germany.
Meanwhile, Koulentis added that locating and finding the bodies of the missing victims could prove to be harder task than initially thought. The body of Merten is still missing.
“It is a very tragic and macabre situation because investigators have discovered many pieces of human flesh and remains, something which paints a picture about the scene of the collision. Perhaps the German captain and the two other missing people have literally been dismembered.”
He added that investigations into the crash were continuing and that relatives of the victims would be interviewed, as would the relatives of the pilot.
