Helios Airways Flight 522

Helios Airways Flight 522 was a scheduled passenger flight from Larnaca, Cyprus, to Prague, Czech Republic, with a stopover in Athens, Greece, operated by a Boeing 737-300. Shortly after takeoff on 14 August 2005, Nicosia air traffic control (ATC) lost contact with the pilots operating the flight, named ''Olympia''; it eventually crashed near Grammatiko, Greece, killing all 121 passengers and crew on board. It is the deadliest aviation accident in Greek history.

An investigation into the accident by Greece's Air Accident Investigation and Aviation Safety Board (AAIASB) concluded that the crew had failed to notice that the cabin pressurization system was set to "manual" during takeoff checks. A ground engineer had (allegedly) set it to "manual" to conduct testing before the flight, but had forgotten to restore it to "auto" afterward. This configuration was subsequently missed by the crew during their pre-flight checks. This caused the plane to gradually depressurize as it climbed, and resulted in everyone on board suffering from critical hypoxia, resulting in a "ghost flight". The negligent nature of the accident led to lawsuits being filed against Helios Airways and Boeing, with the former also being shut down by the Government of Cyprus the following year.

Background

The aircraft involved, manufactured by Boeing Commercial Airplanes in 1998, was a Boeing 737-300 registered as 5B-DBY with serial number 29099. The aircraft was powered by two CFM International CFM56-3C1 engines.

The aircraft had arrived at Larnaca International Airport from London Heathrow Airport at 01:25 local time on the day of the accident. It was scheduled to leave Larnaca at 09:00 and fly to Prague Ruzyně International Airport, with a stop off at Athens International Airport, where it was due to arrive at 10:45.

In command was Captain Hans-Jürgen Merten, a 59-year-old German contract pilot hired by Helios for holiday flights, who had been flying for 35 years (previously for East German airline Interflug from 1970 to 1991) and had accrued a total of 16,900 flight hours (including 5,500 hours on the Boeing 737). The first officer was Pampos Charalambous (Greek: Πάμπος Χαραλάμπους), a 51-year-old Cypriot pilot who had flown exclusively for Helios for the previous five years, accruing 7,549 flight hours throughout his career (3,991 of them on the Boeing 737). Louisa Vouteri (Greek: Λουΐζα Βουτέρη), a 32-year-old Greek national living in Cyprus, had replaced a sick colleague as the chief flight attendant.

Accident

When the aircraft arrived at Larnaca from London earlier that morning, the previous flight crew had reported a frozen door seal and abnormal noises coming from the right aft service door. They requested a full inspection of the door. The inspection was carried out by a ground engineer, who then performed a pressurization leak check. To carry out this check without requiring the aircraft's engines, the pressurization system was set to "manual", but the engineer failed to reset it to "auto" upon completion of the test.

After the aircraft was returned into service, the new flight crew overlooked the pressurization system state on three occasions: during the preflight procedure, the after-start check, and the after-takeoff check. During these checks, no one on the flight deck noticed the incorrect setting. The aircraft took off at 09:07 with the pressurization system still set to "manual", and the aft outflow valve partially open.

As the aircraft climbed, the pressure inside the cabin gradually decreased. As it passed through an altitude of , the cabin altitude warning horn sounded. The warning should have prompted the crew to stop climbing, but it was misidentified by the crew as a takeoff configuration warning, which signals that the aircraft is not ready for takeoff and can sound only on the ground. The alert sound is identical for both warnings.

In the next few minutes, several warning lights on the overhead panel in the cockpit illuminated. One or both of the equipment cooling warning lights came on to indicate low airflow through the cooling fans (a result of the decreased air density), accompanied by the master caution light. The passenger oxygen light illuminated when, at an altitude around , the oxygen masks in the passenger cabin automatically deployed.

Shortly after the cabin altitude warning sounded, Captain Merten radioed the Helios operations centre and reported "the takeoff configuration warning on" and "cooling equipment normal and alternate off line." He then spoke to the ground engineer and repeatedly stated that the "cooling ventilation fan lights were off." The engineer (the one who had conducted the pressurization leak check) asked: "Can you confirm that the pressurization panel is set to AUTO?" However, Merten, already experiencing the onset of hypoxia's initial symptoms, disregarded the question, and instead asked in reply, "Where are my equipment cooling circuit breakers?" This was the last communication with the aircraft before the captain and first officer fell unconscious.

The aircraft continued to climb until it leveled off at FL340, about . Between 09:30 and 09:40, Nicosia air traffic control (ATC) repeatedly attempted to contact the aircraft, without success. At 09:37, the aircraft passed from Cyprus flight information region (FIR) into Athens FIR, without making contact with Athens ATC. The 19 attempts to contact the aircraft between 10:12 and 10:50 also met with no response, and at 10:40, the aircraft entered the holding pattern for Athens Airport, at the KEA VOR, still at FL340. It remained in the holding pattern, under control of the autopilot, for the next 70 minutes.

As the aircraft flew in an aimless loop over Athens, the Greek military decided to intervene. Sources differ on if they were contacted by Athens ATC or if they chose to intervene themselves, believing this may have been a possible terrorism incident. At 11:05, two F-16 fighter aircraft from the Hellenic Air Force (HAF) 111th Combat Wing were scrambled from Nea Anchialos Air Base to establish visual contact. They intercepted the passenger jet at 11:24 while it was undergoing the sixth loop of the holding pattern and observed that the first officer was slumped motionless at the controls, and the captain's seat was empty. They also reported that oxygen masks were dangling in the passenger cabin.

At 11:49, flight attendant Andreas Prodromou (Greek: Ανδρέας Προδρόμου) entered the cockpit and sat down in the captain's seat, having remained conscious by using a portable oxygen supply. Early media reports erroneously claimed his girlfriend and fellow flight attendant, Haris Charalambous (Greek: Χάρις Χαραλάμπους), was also seen in the cockpit helping Prodromou try to control the aircraft. According to a July 2006 television documentary, blood samples that were found in the radar controls were matched to Prodromou’s DNA and also those of Haris, which led the documentary's investigators to the conclusion that the two flight attendants were trying to save the plane. However, the official investigation report published in October 2006 said the F-16 crew only saw one male in the cockpit and did not mention DNA evidence. Prodromou held a UK Commercial Pilot Licence, but was not qualified to fly the Boeing 737.

Prodromou waved at the F-16s very briefly, but almost as soon as he entered the cockpit, the left engine flamed out due to fuel exhaustion, and the plane left the holding pattern and started to descend. Crash investigators concluded that Prodromou's experience was insufficient for him to gain control of the aircraft under the circumstances. He did succeed, though, in banking the plane away from Athens and toward a rural area as the engines flamed out, with his actions meaning that no ground casualties occurred..Some evidence indicates he tried to wake up the pilots and his girlfriend, who were all in a deep coma by that time. Ten minutes after the loss of power from the left engine, the right engine also flamed out. The 737 could not be saved anymore. With his oxygen running out and in high stress, Andreas lost consciousness, too, and just before 12:04, the aircraft crashed into hills in the vicinity of the village of Grammatiko, from Athens in East Attica, killing everyone on board.

Passengers

Flight 522 was carrying 115 passengers and a crew of six. The passengers included 67 due to disembark at Athens, with the remainder continuing to Prague. The bodies of 118 people were recovered. The passenger list included 93 adults and 22 children. The passengers comprised 103 Cypriot nationals and 12 Greek nationals, with five of the flight crew also from those countries. Captain Merten was the only person on board not from either country.

Investigation

Overview

The aircraft's flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder (CVR) were sent to the Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety in Paris. The CVR recording enabled investigators to identify Prodromou as the flight attendant who entered the cockpit to try to save the plane. While Prodromou was a trained pilot, he was never trained on a Boeing 737. Prodromou's mayday hails were only weakly heard, as the 737's radio was still tuned to Larnaca ATC and he was unable to find the correct frequency for Athens ATC. As a result, none of his hails was received. Prodromou's voice was recognized by colleagues who listened to the CVR recording.

Many of the bodies recovered were burned beyond recognition by the post-impact fire. Autopsies on the crash victims showed that all were alive at the time of impact, but whether they were conscious could not be determined.

The emergency oxygen supply in the passenger cabin of this model of Boeing 737 is provided by chemical generators that provide enough oxygen, through breathing masks, to sustain consciousness for about 12 minutes, normally sufficient for an emergency descent to 10,000 feet (3,000 m), where atmospheric pressure is sufficient for humans to sustain consciousness without supplemental oxygen. Cabin crew have access to portable oxygen sets with considerably longer duration.

Greece's Air Accident Investigation and Aviation Safety Board (AAIASB) listed the direct causal chain of events that led to the accident as:
* non-recognition by the pilots that the pressurization system was set to "manual"
* non-identification by the crew of the true nature of the problem
* incapacitation of the crew except Prodromou due to hypoxia
* eventual fuel starvation
* impact with the ground

Previous pressurization problems

On 16 December 2004, during an earlier flight from Warsaw, the accident aircraft had experienced a rapid loss of cabin pressure and the flight crew made an emergency descent. The crew reported to the captain that a bang had been heard from the aft service door, and that a hand-sized hole was in the door's seal. Cyprus' Air Accident and Incident Investigation Board could not conclusively determine the causes of this incident but indicated two possibilities, an electrical malfunction causing the opening of the outflow valve, or the inadvertent opening of the aft service door.

The mother of First Officer Charalambous claimed that her son had repeatedly complained to Captain Merten about the aircraft getting cold. Passengers also reported problems with air conditioning on Helios flights. During the 10 weeks before the accident, the accident aircraft's environmental control system had been repaired or inspected seven times.

A previous 2003 flight of a Boeing 737 between Marseille Airport and Gatwick Airport showed that a cabin-wide pressurization fault could be recognized by the flight crew. The problem was first noticed when the crew began to feel some discomfort in their ears. This was shortly followed by the cabin altitude warning horn, which indicated that the cabin altitude had exceeded , and this was seen to continue to climb on the cockpit gauge. At the same time, the primary "auto" mode of the pressure control failed, followed shortly by the secondary STBY mode. The crew selected the first manual pressure control mode, but were unable to control the cabin altitude. They performed an emergency descent and subsequently diverted to Lyon. The failure of the pressurization control system was traced to burnt electrical wiring in the area aft of the aft cargo hold. The wiring loom had been damaged by abrasion with either a p-clip or "zip" strap that, over time, exposed the conductors, leading to short circuits and subsequent burning of the wires. No other damage was found. The wiring for all the modes of operation of the rear outflow valve (among other services) runs through this loom.

Subsequent developments

On 29 August 2005, Helios Airways announced successful safety checks on their Boeing fleet and put them back into service. The airline later changed its name to αjet. However, when Cypriot authorities detained the company's aircraft and froze the company's bank accounts about a year later, the airline announced that it would stop operating on 31October 2006.

In the aftermath of the accident, a number of fake photographs purported to depict the aircraft involved in Helios Flight 522 circulated, and were claimed to be the final photographs of the aircraft before it crashed, taken during its intercept by the HAF. These images, depicting a Boeing 737 with Helios Airways livery accompanied by F-16s, were found to be fabricated; the aircraft depicted in the image was 5B-DBH, nicknamed ''Zela'', a Boeing 737-800 that was in service with Helios Airways at the time of the accident identified by its overwing exits, longer fuselage, and trailing edge wingtips.

In March 2011, the Federal Aviation Administration in the United States released an Airworthiness Directive requiring all Boeing 737 aircraft from −100 to −500 models to be fitted with two additional cockpit warning lights. These would indicate problems with takeoff configuration or pressurization. Aircraft on the U.S. civil register were required to have the additional lights by 14 March 2014.

Lawsuits and criminal proceedings

Families of the victims filed a lawsuit against Boeing on 24 July 2007. Their lawyer, Constantinos Droungas, said, "Boeing put the same alarm in place for two different types of dysfunction. One was a minor fault, but the other—the loss of oxygen in the cockpit—is extremely important." He also said that similar problems had been encountered before on Boeings in Ireland and Norway. The families sued for 76 million euros in compensation from Boeing. The case against Boeing was settled out of court.

In early 2008, an Athens prosecutor charged six former Helios Airways employees with manslaughter over the accident. Reports at the time said the suspects were three Cypriots, two Britons, and one Bulgarian. On 23 December 2008, Helios Airways itself and four of its officials were charged in Cyprus with 119 counts of manslaughter, and of causing death by recklessness and negligence. The four officials were former chief pilot Ianko Stoimenov, chairman of the board Andreas Drakos, chief executive officer Demetris Pantazis, and operations manager Giorgos Kikidis. The trial began in November 2009; the state prosecutors finished presenting their case in June 2011.

On 21 December 2011, the case was dismissed and the defendants were acquitted. The panel of judges hearing the case ruled that no "causal association between the defendants, and the negligence they were charged with for the fatal accident" was shown. An appeal was filed by the Cypriot attorney general, and in December 2012 the Cypriot Supreme Court set aside the acquittal and ordered a new trial. Two months later, the retrial was dropped under double jeopardy rules, as the charges had already been heard in Athens.

In December 2011, shortly after the end of the case in Cyprus, a new trial began in a Greek magistrate's court in which Pantazis, Kikkides, Stoimenov, and Helios Airways chief engineer Alan Irwin were charged with manslaughter. All except Irwin had been previously charged and acquitted by the Cypriot authorities. In April 2012, all were found guilty and sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment, and remained free on bail pending an appeal.

By 2013, Irwin succeeded in his appeal. All the other defendants lost their appeals. Their sentence of 10 years was ordered to stand, but the defendants were given the option to buy out their sentence for around €79,000 each. Stoimenov was spared time in jail after the intervention of the Bulgarian government, who felt that he was innocent of the charges.

Greek investigators blamed the crash of Flight 522 on human error, after the aircraft failed to pressurize after taking off from Larnaca. Prosecutors in both Greece and Cyprus blamed airline officials for cutting corners on safety operations, while also arguing that they failed to act on advice that the pilots did not meet the necessary aviation standards.

Relatives of the dead filed a class action suit against the Cypriot government—specifically the Department of Civil Aviation (DCA)—for negligence that led to the air disaster. They claimed that the DCA had ignored airlines' loose enforcement of regulations, and that in general the department cut corners in flight safety.

In popular culture

The Discovery Channel Canada/National Geographic TV series ''Mayday'' featured the accident in a season-four episode titled "Ghost Plane".

The TV series ''Ghost Whisperer'' featured a two-part special called “Free Fall” and “The One”, where a passenger plane is flying around in the air due to everyone on board having died from a lack of oxygen. These episodes were released on 28 April and 5 May in 2006, one year after the accident.

The 2020 novel ''Lost Love Song'' by Minnie Darke adapted the accident as a plot device. In the novel, a fictional Australian airliner crashes in the ocean, but almost all other circumstances are the same.

See also

* List of accidents and incidents involving the Boeing 737
* 1999 South Dakota Learjet crash, another plane crash caused by pressurization failure

References

Cited text:
* Air Accident Investigation and Aviation Safety Board (AAIASB)
*
Final report

Aircraft Accident Report: Helios Airways Flight HCY522 at Grammatiko, Greece on 14 August 2005Archive
, published November 2006
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Alternate location of final reportArchive

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Greek version of the final report

Archive

Further reading

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External links

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Airliner accidents and incidents caused by pilot incapacitation
Airliner accidents and incidents involving in-flight depressurization
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Aviation accidents and incidents in 2005
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