12 p.m: F-16s escort Flight 522 until it crashes.You are loved. F-16 pilot reports the co-pilot appears unconscious in cockpit.ħ. 11:30 a.m: Two Greek F-16 fighters scrambled to intercept Flight 522 flying on autopilot at 35,000 feet. Aircraft loses contact with Greek air-traffic control 23 minutes after takeing off from Cyprus.Ħ. Turkish air-traffic control observes aircraft transmitting 7700 international emergency code from its transponder.ĥ. Crew reports problem with automatic pressure control system to Larnaca air-traffic control.Ĥ. Plane reaches cruising altitude of 35,000 feet.ģ. Helios Airways Flight ZU522 leaves Larnaca, Cyprus bound for Prague via Athens.Ģ. The combat pilots found no sign of life aboard the jet and could only see the frosted windows as it cruised at 39,000 feet. and Canadian warplanes to shadow a Learjet carrying golfer Payne Stewart and five others as it flew for more than four hours from Florida until it finally ran out of fuel and plunged to earth near Aberdeen, S.D. Eventually, both the captain and the flight attendant were revived as the co-pilot kept control of the plane and it landed safely. A flight attendant called forward to help also passed out after setting aside her mask briefly. Although both the captain and the co-pilot were veteran fliers and - unlike many commercial pilots - had high-altitude military training in depressurization, the captain slumped to the cockpit floor unconscious after failing to put on his mask as he fumbled with his glasses. Only "the first officer, who has only 10 hours of flight time in the airplane, had donned his oxygen mask when the warning horn first sounded, maintained consciousness and was able to initiate an emergency descent," the NTSB said.Īs the co-pilot of a Boeing 737 flying from Dubrovnik, Croatia, to London's Gatwick airport prepared to descend from 35,000 feet, a bang was heard as the aircraft lost pressure. National Transportation Safety Board found "the captain, the flight engineer and the lead flight attendant all subsequently became unconscious due to hypoxia" within seconds. In its probe into a narrowly averted disaster on a Boeing 727 carrying 112 people from Chicago to St. Into thin air: Lost cabin pressure and unconscious crew Others, such as ones saying that passengers were spotted by pilots of Greek F-16 jetfighters sent to investigate the silent plane, were discounted by aviation experts.Īt 10,400 metres, the altitude at which the Helios flight was cruising, the outside temperature would normally be about -53 C, far too cold for lightly dressed passengers to survive, especially if they were unconscious from lack of oxygen. Some early reports, including suggestions that passengers aboard the plane sent farewell text messages saying the pilot had turned blue, were discounted yesterday. Each pilot has a separate oxygen feed and the Boeing 737-300, built in 1998, was likely equipped with the special quick-donning masks designed so that pilots can put them on with one hand in less than five seconds. Investigators will want to determine if the oxygen bottles that feed the vital flow to the flight crew - a system separate from the shorter-lived, lower-pressure system designed to provide oxygen to passengers - was functioning properly. Even a few seconds of hesitation or confusion can leave pilots unconscious. "The immediate donning of oxygen masks by the flight crew is the essential first step after an airplane loses cabin pressure at high altitude," Stanley Mohler, a medical doctor and expert in aviation hypoxia, concluded after studying a series of accidents involving depressurization. No word had been heard from the pilots since shortly after reaching cruising attitude about 30 minutes after takeoff. The aircraft, with 115 passengers and a crew of six on board, circled repeatedly around that point before apparently running out of fuel and crashing more than 90 minutes after its scheduled landing time. The Boeing 737 crashed about 40 km from Athens, killing all on board when it plunged into a hillside north of the city's airport and close to a waypoint - or navigational location - that flight crews can program into the autopilot. Helios Airlines, a subsidiary of a British travel firm that runs cheap charters from the United Kingdom and Eastern Europe to vacation destinations, subsequently grounded all its flights. Medical studies show pilots have about 20 seconds to put on oxygen masks after a sudden decompression at 35,000 feet - about the altitude the Helios jetliner was flying.Ĭypriot police raided the company's offices yesterday and crews and passengers in Bulgaria balked at boarding one of the company's other aircraft.
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