![]() ![]() However, autopsies carried out on Monday suggest many people were alive, although not necessarily conscious, when the plane hit the ground. Shortly after the crash, Greek government officials said many of the plane’s passengers were frozen solid when it crashed. The cockpit voice recorder was not immediately recovered but, as this only records 30 minutes of sound prior to impact, it is unclear whether this will prove useful to the investigation. Investigators picking through debris at the scene of the crash have recovered the flight data recorder, which should reveal precisely what happened to air pressure aboard the plane. ![]() He adds that the pilot may have been away from his seat when the loss of pressure occurred, and the co-pilot may not have put on his oxygen mask quickly enough. “Minor problems have a tendency to develop into catastrophic problems, and I think that’s what happened,” says Chris Yates, an aviation analyst at Jane’s Transport Group. The pilot is reported to have then radioed again to say the problem had been fixed before taking the plane to its cruising altitude.Īs the air conditioning system is linked to the one that maintains cabin pressure, this problem could have been linked to the loss of pressure. Unconfirmed reports suggest the pilot of the 737 highlighted a problem with the plane’s air conditioning system in a radio message sent just a few minutes before contact was lost. “If you do not react instantly, it can be too late.” ![]() “The point is, especially at that altitude, loss of consciousness happens very quickly – perhaps in 20 seconds,” he told New Scientist. Kieran Daly, at Air Transport Intelligence magazine says the pilots would have had just seconds to react to a rapid loss of pressure at such high altitude. Instead of following this course, the Helios 737, en route from Cyprus to Prague via Athens, cruised on autopilot for more than an hour, before crashing into the ground near the town of Grammatikos, on the southern coast of Greece. The pilots should then issue a distress signal and make an emergency landing at the nearest airstrip. At that altitude, the air is breathable and much warmer. The pilots are trained to don an oxygen mask on as quickly as possible and quickly bring the plane down to an altitude of around 3000 m (10,000 feet). ![]() No distress callīut a simple alarm system that monitors air pressure and automatically deploys oxygen masks inside the passenger cabin and the cockpit should immediately have alerted the pilots to the situation. At this altitude, a total loss of cabin pressure would cause the temperature inside the plane to drop dramatically, to between -40☌ and -60☌, and the air would rapidly become unbreathable as oxygen levels suddenly dropped. The 737 was cruising at 9800 m (32,000 feet) when radio contact was lost. A sudden loss of pressure may be caused by a mechanical failure to this system or a breach to the hull itself. Pressure inside a 737 is maintained at the equivalent of 3000 metres (10,000 feet) altitude by a mechanical system of valves. Their observations suggest the plane experienced a dramatic loss of cabin pressure. During another close fly-by, the fighter pilots saw a passenger or steward wrestling with the plane’s controls. They saw oxygen masks dangling from the roof of the passenger cabin and observed the co-pilot, alone in the cockpit, slumped over the controls. The pilots of two Greek fighter jets scrambled to intercept the 737 escorted it for 42 minutes. Radio contact with the plane was lost at around 1030, as it flew high above the Aegean Sea. The Helios Airways Boeing 737 crashed about 25 miles north of Athens International Airport at 1203 local time killing all 121 people on board. Crash investigators are continuing their probe into the Greek passenger jet disaster just north of Athens on Sunday, with the early evidence pointing towards a sudden and catastrophic loss of cabin pressure at high altitude. ![]()
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