CYPRUS: An unidentified man struggled at the controls of a Cypriot airliner for 23 minutes in a desperate attempt to prevent the aircraft from crashing, Greek defence ministry officials said yesterday.
Two F-16 air force officers, who were ordered to intercept a Helios Airways jetliner that failed to respond to Athens air traffic control on Sunday, told how they saw a man trying to take command of the controls in the cockpit as they flew past the Boeing-737 at 11.42am.
At 12.05, after circling the Greek skies, the aircraft slammed into a mountain outside Athens, killing all 121 people, mostly Greek Cypriots, on board.
"We know that one of the stewards was a trained pilot," the Cypriot ambassador to Greece, Giorgos Georgiou, said.
The release of the two fighter pilots' testimonies came as the mystery over the crash, Greece's worse air disaster, deepened. Adding to growing questions over the crew's behaviour - and why it should lose control of the airliner so suddenly - Athens' chief coroner also announced yesterday that autopsy results proved that the Greek Cypriot co-pilot, like the passengers, was alive when the accident occurred.
The captain has still not been identified. Rescue workers scouring the hills of Grammatikos said his body could be among three believed to be trapped under the remains of the fuselage. Officials say the corpse could provide vital clues to the crash.
Hopes that the aircraft's two black box recorders will shed light on the disaster appeared to suffer a setback when investigators said they had only found the exterior container of the cockpit voice recorder.
A military aircraft prepared to fly 45 bodies back to Cyprus yesterday - because of burns the rest can only be identified by DNA tests - and memorial services were held across the island and in Greece. "There are a lot of us here who think that aircraft was shot down by the F-16 fighters," said Vasilli Tourkantonis, who runs the betting shop in Grammatikos. "When we rushed to the site, it was very easy to put out the flames around the wreckage without bodies burning. Instead, they were allowed to get out of control, as if the state wanted to hide something."
In Cyprus, Kyriacos Pougrouris, a cousin of co-pilot Pambos Charalambous, said his relative had been called in at two hours' notice to help fly the aircraft when the scheduled co-pilot was unavailable. Mr Pougrouris said his cousin had complained before the flight of "problems" with the aircraft.
"Pambos told his mother twice in the last week that there was a problem with the plane, not the same kind of problem as you have with a car that you can pinpoint easily," Mr Pougrouris said in an interview with Cyprus state radio yesterday.
In London, Helios Airways said in a statement the aircraft had suffered a loss of cabin pressure once before. Police in Cyprus ended a search of Helios' offices for evidence, needed in case of a criminal investigation into the disaster.
The pilot had reported a fault with the air conditioning early in the flight. But some analysts believe the aircraft may have suffered a slow decompression, lowering oxygen levels in the cabin and cockpit and causing people to lose consciousness.
The Ethnos newspaper had reported earlier yesterday that the pilots of two F-16 jets sent to investigate the Helios flight had captured video footage of a female flight attendant trying to take control of the aircraft, while the co-pilot was slumped in his seat and the pilot out of sight.
The doomed flight was declared "renegade" when it entered Greek airspace and failed to make radio contact. The two F-16s reported seeing oxygen masks dangling before the plane crashed 40kms north of Athens.
The two black boxes have been recovered, but a Greek official said the cockpit voice recorder was badly damaged. - (Guardian service) Additional reporting, Reuters