Crash police raid airline offices


GRAMMATIKO, Greece (CNN) -- Police in Cyprus have raided the offices of
Helios Airways, officials said, a day after one of the company's jets
crashed in Greece, killing all 121 people on board. 

As investigators tried to establish the cause of the crash, a Greek Cypriot
government spokeswoman told CNN Monday that prosecutors felt insufficient
information had been surrendered by the airline and ordered police to take
further documents.

Among the things police were searching for were maintenance records about
the plane involved in the crash.

Some news reports have said the plane was serviced for air conditioning
trouble in the past.

Yiannis Papageorgiou, a spokesman for the Greek Air Force, said authorities
were investigating whether that could have been related to the crash.

The two Helios pilots had reported an air conditioning problem shortly after
leaving Larnaca, according to the Czech Press Agency.

Investigators at the crash site in Grammatiko pieced through the charred
wreckage Monday, but reported no clues as to what had gone wrong.

"The plane observed all the necessary maintenance and checks in line with
international requirements, those of the construction firm, and Cypriot
civil aviation requirements," said Andreas Drakos, president of the Cypriot
airline Helios Airways, in a news conference before the airline's offices
were raided.

"Before the plane left, it had completely undergone all checks according to
the regulations."

Helios had no immediate response to the raid.

A team of Americans from Boeing -- the company that made the 737 aircraft --
headed to the region as well to take part in the investigation.

Though the flight data and voice recorders could provide some clues,
investigators said the voice recorder was badly damaged. It remained unclear
how much sound would be audible. Both so-called "black boxes" -- in this
case, actually orange boxes -- were taken away by investigators.

A central question is whether the passengers and crew were alive, or perhaps
unconscious, before the plane slammed into a mountain.

When Helios Flight 522 from Larnaca, Cyprus, to Prague, Czech Republic, with
a scheduled stop in Athens, first crossed into Greek airspace and failed to
respond to communications attempts, two Greek fighter jets were sent to
intercept it.

The plane was on autopilot at 35,000 feet. The pilots of the F-16s reported
seeing one of the pilots slumped over its controls, but did not see the
other pilot. They saw two people who they thought were crew members trying
to prevent the plane from crashing, a government spokesman said.

The body of a female flight attendant was found in the wreckage of the
cockpit, the spokesman said.

The fighter pilots also said they could see through the cabin windows that
the oxygen masks had dropped from the ceiling of the plane, and witnesses at
the crash site reported that some passengers' faces still had oxygen masks
attached.

The plane was about 25 miles east of Athens when it crashed shortly after 12
p.m. (5 a.m. ET) Sunday on the island of Euboea, sparking forest fires that
hindered initial recovery efforts.

Investigators are looking into whether the plane had experienced a
catastrophic loss of air pressure.

The Greek interior ministry said autopsies have been ordered to see if the
passengers were dead prior to the crash or were oxygen-starved.

"The first indications in Cyprus and in Greece are that this was not caused
by a terrorist act," said Marios Karoyian, a presidential spokesman in
Cyprus.

Of the 121 people aboard, 42 children and 79 were adults, including six crew
members. A Cyprus government spokesman said all the passengers were
Cypriots.

Reports from Cyprus said many of the children were members of a soccer team.

Deputy Interior Minster Marko Yannakis said Monday 119 bodies were
recovered, and searchers were looking for remains of two others.

Flights arrived in Greece Monday carrying family members from Cyprus. They
were asked to help identify bodies at a makeshift morgue.

"I want those responsible to be punished," said Anastasios Doulas, who lost
her daughter-in-law and three grandchildren. Speaking angrily through tears,
she said, "Those responsible have created a flying death-trap. Didn't they
see the problem? I want them to be severely punished."

Cyprus declared three days of mourning for the victims. In Athens, Prime
Minister Kostas Karamanlis took part in a ceremony honoring the dead.

The crash took place during Greek Orthodox holiday of the Assumption of the
Virgin, a peak travel time. Helios is a subsidiary of Libra Holidays Group,
which specializes in travel packages to Greece and Cyprus.

Meanwhile Monday, police in northern Greece said they had arrested a man who
said he had received a telephone text message from a passenger on board the
doomed plane, according to AP.

Police said the man was Nektarios-Sotirios Voutas, 32, who had told Greek TV
stations Sunday his cousin texted him minutes before the crash saying:
"Farewell, cousin, here we're frozen."

Authorities said they believed the man was lying, and his cousin's name was
not on the Cypriot government's official list of victims.

CNN's Chris Burns and Tomas Etzler and journalists Paul Anastasi and Anthee
Carassavas contributed to this report.

Copyright 2005 CNN. All rights reserved.This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Associated Press
<http://www.cnn.com/interactive_legal.html#AP>  contributed to this report.


 





 


 

 


 


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