Cypriot jet may have had earlier problems

updated 8:04 p.m. ET Aug. 16, 2005

ATHENS, Greece - Investigators trying to determine why a Cypriot airliner carrying 121 people crashed in the Greek mountains focused on reports of past technical problems, with a former mechanic for the airline saying Tuesday the jet lost cabin pressure during a flight last year.

A former chief mechanic for Helios, Kyriakos Pilavakis, said the plane lost cabin pressure during a December flight after a door apparently was not sealed properly.

“It was a flight from Warsaw.... The indications were that air had escaped from one of the doors — the right door on the rear,” Pilavakis told Greece’s state-run NET television.

Pilavakis, who said he resigned from the airline in January, gave six hours of testimony to Cyprus investigators, who have seized maintenance records and other documents from Helios.

But Helios managing director Dimitris Pantazis insisted the plane was airworthy.

“I understand the pain and grief felt across Cyprus,” he said. “Safety was always our first priority. This was never compromised for the sake of profit.... We must stop speculation and let the experts do their work.”

Co-pilot was alive
The autopsy on the body of the co-pilot shows he was alive when the plane went down north of Athens, Athens' chief coroner said Tuesday.

Fillipos Koutsaftis told The Associated Press that co-pilot Pambos Haralambous was alive when the Helios Airways plane crashed Sunday. There were no survivors.

Pilots of two Greek F-16 fighter jets that intercepted the plane after it lost contact with Greek air traffic controllers had reported seeing the co-pilot slumped over the controls in the cockpit, apparently unconscious, shortly before the plane crashed. They said the plane's German pilot was not in the cockpit.

Recording device lost
Earlier Tuesday, officials said they had found only the exterior container of the cockpit voice recorder from the crashed plane, hampering investigative efforts into the accident’s cause.

The device’s internal components were ejected from the container when the plane crashed on Sunday, said Akrivos Tsolakis, the head of the Greek airline safety committee.

Louisa Gouliamaki / AFP - Getty Images Firefighters carry a body covered in a sheet from Sunday’s crash scene.

“The only fortunate event in the investigation is that we have the flight data recorder,” Tsolakis said, adding that the box would be flown to Paris on Wednesday for decoding.

He said a group of investigators would search for the rest of the voice recorder. He said American experts, including a representative of the plane’s manufacturer, were providing assistance.

The voice recorder picks up any conversation inside the cockpit but records only the last 30 minutes of sound. Because the airplane appeared to have been flying disabled for several hours, it wasn’t clear how useful any recovered conversations would be for investigators.

Many passengers alive at time of crash
Autopsy results indicated that dozens of people, including the co-pilot and a flight attendant, were alive when Helios Airways Flight ZU522 crashed Sunday.

Autopsies have been performed on the 26 bodies identified by relatives, including those of co-pilot Haralambous and chief flight attendant Louiza Vouteri, which were found close together near the cockpit wreckage, Koutsaftis said.

The autopsy results showed all 26 were alive — but not necessarily conscious — when the plane crashed The Helios Airways Boeing 737-300, with six crew and 115 passengers, plunged 34,000 feet into a mountainous area near the village of Grammatiko, 25 miles north of Athens.

Koutsaftis and his team of coroners had carried out about 13 autopsies by Tuesday morning. They had only released the results of the first six autopsies and were preparing to examine the body of co-pilot Pambos Haralambous.

In Cyprus, police raided the offices of Helios Airways in the coastal city of Larnaca, near the international airport.

A search warrant was issued “to secure ... documents and other evidence which could be useful for the investigation into possible criminal acts,” Cyprus’ deputy presidential spokesman Marios Karoyian said.

Investigators also were trying to determine why the pilot was not in his seat shortly before the crash.

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