'Several communications between the captain and the Operations Centre took place in the next eight minutes concerning the above problems and ended as the aircraft climbed through 28,900 feet (8,810 meters).' The captain contacted Helios's operations centre after take-off.Īs the aircraft climbed though 16,000 feet (4,879 meters), he reported warnings going off in the cabin, said the report. That failure led to the 'incapacitation of the flight crew due to hypoxia', or lack of oxygen, and resulted in the plane being flown on autopilot for two hours until it ran out of fuel and crashed. Specifically, the crew failed to recognise that the plane's pressurization switch was in the 'manual position' before takeoff and not set to automatic - which would have allowed the cabin to pressurise by itself.Īfter take-off, the plane failed to pressurise and the two pilots did not recognise 'the warnings and the reasons for the activation of the warnings,' including one showing that the oxygen masks dropped. The report concluded that the two pilots failed to competently operate controls regulating cabin pressure and misinterpreted a subsequent warning signs which led to the crash. It crashed at Grammatiko, north of the Greek capital.Īll 115 passengers - all Greek Cypriots and Greeks - and six crew were killed on the flight from Cyprus to Prague which is the deadliest air disaster in the history of Cyprus and Greece. His heroics were witnessed by pilots of two fighter jets sent up when Flight ZU 522 lost radio contact. His girlfriend a stewardess, was also on board. The remains of Mr Prodromou, who had trained as a pilot but been unable to secure a job, were found in the cockpit. This caused everyone aboard, except for the steward Andreas Prodromou, 25, to fall unconscious. The official report says technicians in Cyprus who were checking the decompression system - following problems on an earlier flight - forgot to switch on its automatic activation.īut once airborne, this omission was compounded when pilots forgot to check whether the system was switched on automatic or manual.Īs a result, the higher the plane flew the less oxygen was in the cabin. This turned the plane into a 'flying tomb' at 34,000 feet as passengers were frozen to their seats by temperatures of minus 50c.Ī steward fought desperately to save the stricken plane after he found the pilot and co-pilot unconscious.īut after he too was overcome, the Cyprus-based Helios Airways plane ploughed on for nearly two hours on auto-pilot before running out of fuel and crashing into a mountain 25 miles north of Athens on August 14 last year. It blames the pilots for failing to spot the warning signs that led to the tragedy in which the Boeing 737-300 airline was hit by a catastrophic loss of cabin pressure and oxygen supply. Human error by two pilots led directly to a packed passenger plane turning into a frozen 'flying tomb' before it crashed - killing all 121 on board, the official report has concluded.

Helios flight 522