The Greek government has initially ruled out a terrorist attack. How could they possibly? Have they investigated the airline's ground crew? Bruce
Mystery surrounds cause of Cypriot plane crash in Greece Sun Aug 14, 5:46 PM ET Accident investigators are probing why a Cypriot airliner slammed into a wooded hillside near Athens with the loss of more than 120 lives amid harrowing accounts of an apparent crisis in the plane's cockpit. Two Greek air force F16 fighters scrambled to investigate after communications were suddenly lost with the Helios Airways twin-engine aircraft, Greek and Cypriot officials said. The fighter pilots "saw two people in the cockpit, we don't know if they were crew members or passengers, appearing to want to take over the controls," said Greek government spokesman Theodore Roussopoulos. They saw "the co-pilot slumped over and perhaps unconscious and the pilot not in his seat," he said, adding that the oxygen masks were "activated" in the cockpit. The Greek government has initially ruled out a terrorist attack. The plane was about to land at Athens airport for a stopover on its journey from Lanarca in Cyprus to the Czech capital Prague when it crashed at Varnava, a largely uninhabited area 40 kilometers (25 miles) northeast of Athens, at 12:20 pm (0920 GMT). According to the Greek private TV station Alpha, a passenger sent a text message to a cousin saying: "We're cold, the pilot is blue. We're going to die. Farewell." But it was not clear whether the pilot had left the cockpit to enter the passenger cabin or whether the sender of the text message had been in the cockpit. A senior official at the public order ministry, however, speculated that a sudden drop in cabin pressure could have caused the disaster. The official said the pilot had mentioned a problem with the Boeing 737's air-conditioning system before losing contact. But in Paris, accident investigator Francois Grangier told AFP that a sudden loss of pressurization would not have caused the plane to crash, nor would it have made the pilots immediately lose consciousness. The plane would have been at fairly low altitude as it approached Athens airport, and Grangier said loss of pressurization would not have had any effect on the aircraft's structure. He also said the pilots would have had their own oxygen supply. Another expert said that in the case of sudden depressurization because of structural damage, for example the blowing out of a window, the internal temperature would plummet and the plane would crash. US investigators were on their way to Athens to help with the inquiry, as US law requires them to aid any probe into the loss of a US-made aircraft. At the crash site, Greek police said "there were no trace of survivors" among the 115 passengers and six crew whose bodies were burned almost beyond recognition. Helios representative George Dimitriou said most of the passengers were of Cypriot nationality and included "48 youths on their way to Prague," as well as some Greeks and a few other foreigners. One of the pilots was German, he said. Another source put the total number on board at 124. The flight and cockpit voice recorders have been found, a Greek defence ministry official told AFP on condition of anonymity. Greek aviation officials said it was the country's worst air disaster since a 1974 terrorist bomb aboard a TWA Boeing 707 caused it to crash in the Ionian sea with the loss of 88 lives. Helios Airways said it was "unclear" what caused the crash. "All planes have problems from time to time without exception," said Helios managing director Demetrios Pantazis. "We can't say at this time what exactly happened," he said. Helios also rejected any suggetion that the aircraft was less than airworthy, saying it has undergone a complete technical check before departure. Helios Airways, established in 1999, is the first private airline in Cyprus. It had a fleet of four Boeing 737 jets and flies to London, Athens, Sofia, Dublin and Strasbourg in France, among other destinations. The airline was bought last year by Libra Holidays, a Cyprus-based tour operator. Greece has declared a day of mourning for Tuesday, when flags will fly at half-mast and a three-minute silence will be observed in public buildings. Cyprus will observe three days of mourning. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> <font face=arial size=-1><a href="http://us.ard.yahoo.com/SIG=12h8ko13c/M=362329.6886306.7839369.3040540/D=groups/S=1705323667:TM/Y=YAHOO/EXP=1124111670/A=2894321/R=0/SIG=11dvsfulr/*http://youthnoise.com/page.php?page_id=1992 ">Fair play? Video games influencing politics. 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