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Body of crashed Cyprus plane's pilot found

Posted on: Monday, 15 August 2005, 04:00 CDT

By Brian Williams and Philip Pangalos

GRAMMATIKO, Greece (Reuters) - Rescue workers on Monday recovered the body of the pilot of a Cypriot plane that crashed in Greece with all 121 passengers and crew believed dead or unconscious when the Boeing 737 plunged to earth.

Most bodies recovered from the plane were "frozen solid," a Greek Defense Ministry source said.

Rescuers said they had also recovered the plane's two black box flight recorders, including the one that records pilot conversations, crucial to determining the cause of the worst air disaster in Greece and the worst involving a Cypriot airline.

Relatives of some victims, many already enraged by delays in Helios Airways releasing details of passengers on board, were on their way from Cyprus to the crash site near Athens to start the grim task of trying to identify loved ones.

The Mediterranean island of Cyprus started three days of mourning with flags at half mast in a long weekend holiday that is the busiest of the summer for Greeks and Cypriots.

Sunday's crash perplexed aviation experts astounded by what appeared to have been a catastrophic failure of cabin pressure or oxygen supply at 35,000 feet -- nearly 10 kilometers (six miles) up, higher than Mount Everest.

Many questions remained, including how the plane appeared to fly for nearly an hour with the pilot and co-pilot already unconscious or dead. Media speculated the plane may have been on auto pilot before its approach to Athens airport.

There was also mystery over the last minutes of the Helios Airways Boeing 737 flight which was declared "renegade" when it entered Greek air space and failed to make radio contact, causing two F-16 air force jets to scramble to investigate.

TERRORISM RULED OUT

All 115 passengers and six crew died, most burned beyond recognition, when the plane crashed into a mountainous area about 40 km north of Athens.

Cypriot Transport Minister Haris Thrassou strongly denied some media reports that there were 48 children among the dead.

"There were between 15 and 20 young people below the age of 20 on board the crashed plane," he told Reuters, adding they were all traveling with their families.

The plane was on a flight from Larnaca in Cyprus to Prague with a stop in Athens. An airline spokeswoman and Greek authorities ruled out hijacking or terrorism links to the crash.

Greek Defense Ministry officials said 90 minutes elapsed between the alert being raised at 10:30 a.m. and the plane crashing at 12:03 p.m.

Greek government spokesman Theodore Roussopoulos said F-16 pilots sent to investigate reported that with the pilots out of action there may have been a last-gasp effort by others on the plane to bring it back under control.

"The situation was characterized renegade, meaning the aircraft was not under the control of the pilots," Roussopoulos told reporters.

"At a later stage, the F-16s saw two individuals in the cockpit seemingly trying to regain control of the airplane," Roussoupoulos said. It was not known if they were passengers or other crew.

"The F-16s also saw oxygen masks down when they got close to the aircraft. The aircraft was making continuous right-hand turns to show it had lost radio contact."

"A passenger on the doomed plane said in an SMS text to his cousin in Athens: "The pilot has turned blue. Cousin farewell, we're freezing."

Greece's Defense Ministry said it suspected the plane's oxygen supply or pressurization system may have malfunctioned, which could have led to death within seconds for all on board.

Loss of cabin pressure was identified as the probable cause of two similar but smaller-scale air crashes in recent years.

Golfer Payne Stewart and five others were killed when their Learjet aircraft crashed in the United States in 1999 after flying for more than four hours without radio contact.

In 2000 a plane crashed in Australia after flying for more than an hour from 25,000 feet up with no sign of life on board.

Greek media speculated toxic gas from possible faulty air-conditioning could have incapacitated the two pilots.

Source: REUTERS

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