Helios Airways Flight 522
| Helios Airways Flight 522 | |
|---|---|
 The 2005 accident machine at Prague Airport |
|
| Accident summary | |
| Accident type | Loss of control due to hypoxia of the pilots |
| place |
Grammatiko Greece
|
| date | August 14, 2005 |
| Fatalities | 121 |
| Survivors | 0 |
| Injured | 0 |
| Aircraft | |
| Aircraft type | Boeing 737-300 |
| operator | Helios Airways |
| Mark | 5B-DBY |
| Surname | Olympia |
| Departure airport | Larnaca Airport |
| Stopover | Athens-Eleftherios Venizelos Airport |
| Destination airport | Prague airport |
| Passengers | 115 |
| crew | 6th |
| Lists of aviation accidents | |
Helios Airways flight 522 (HCY 522) was a scheduled flight of the Cypriot Helios Airways from Larnaka via Athens to Prague . On August 14, 2005 , the Boeing 737-300 used crashed on a hill near the village of Grammatiko , Marathon municipality in Greece , about 33 kilometers from Athens Airport. All 121 inmates were killed.
procedure
The plane took off from Larnaka at 09:07 local time and was on its way to Prague via Athens . Upon reaching an altitude of 16,000 ft (4,877 m), the captain reported to the Helios operations center that he had received a take-off configuration warning and a problem with the cooling of the on - board electronics . At an altitude of 18,200 ft (5,547 m), the oxygen masks were triggered in the passenger cabin, while the captain was still in contact with the operations center. When it reached an altitude of 28,900 ft (8,809 m), the radio link broke off.
At 10:21 a.m. local time, the aircraft reached the rotary radio beacon at Athens Airport, and from 10:38 a.m. it began to fly in holding patterns. Two F-16s of the Greek Air Force from Nea Anchialos intercepted the aircraft after six holding patterns at 11:24 a.m. One of the pilots reported that the captain's seat was unoccupied; there was a person in the copilot's seat who was lying over the control units. The oxygen masks were also hanging from the ceiling in the aircraft cabin.
At 1149 a person without an oxygen mask entered the cockpit and took the place of the master. The F-16 pilot failed to get the person's attention. At 11:50 a.m. the left engine failed due to lack of fuel and the aircraft began to descend. At 11:54 am, the flight recorder recorded two Mayday radio messages. When reaching an altitude of 7,100 ft (2,164 m) at 12:00 local time, the right engine also failed. The machine was now sinking faster and crashed at 12:03 in hilly terrain about 33 km northwest of Athens airport.
Aircraft data
The aircraft involved in the accident completed its maiden flight on December 29, 1997 and was delivered to the Deutsche BA (later renamed dba) on January 15, 1998 with the aircraft registration D-ADBQ . In April 2004, Helios Airways acquired the aircraft from dba and officially presented it on April 11, 2004 in new colors with the name Olympia and the registration number 5B-DBY. From April 16, the aircraft was used at Helios.
Victim
There were 115 passengers and six crew members on board. There were no survivors.
The captain was a German from Berlin , originally from Thuringia , a former Interflug pilot, and the co-pilot was from Cyprus . According to the Cypriot government, the passengers came from Cyprus and Greece.
examination
The investigation report from the Greek Ministry of Transport concluded that the reasons for the crash were that
- It was not recognized during the preparation of the flight or when working through the checklists before and after take-off that a rotary switch for the cabin pressure control was set to "manual",
- Warning notices were not recognized and
- the fuel supplies were exhausted after the failure of the crew and control by the autopilot.
In addition, the following contributed to the crash:
- Deficits in the organization and in the quality assurance of the operator
- Inadequate exercise of the duty of supervision by the Cypriot aviation security authority
- Inadequate implementation of crew resource management
- Ineffective measures taken by Boeing after previous incidents
Possible factors that could have influenced what happened are also:
- The selector switch was not set back to "auto" (- automatically) after maintenance work.
- There was a lack of instructions for the crew.
- International authorities have not been sufficiently vigorous in addressing known deficits.
The aircraft was built in 1997 and was previously in service with the Deutsche BA. There was already a pressure drop in the cabin in December 2004 and a problem with an exhaust valve was suspected. In addition, there were problems with the copilot's oxygen mask and the announcement for the passengers was only in German. Between June 9 and August 14, 2005, there were a total of seven air conditioning problems.
The flight recorder analysis showed that an acute oxygen deficiency on Flight 522 apparently occurred shortly after take-off. The oxygen masks fell out of the casings above the passenger seats and constant acoustic warning signals in the cockpit indicated the cabin pressure was too low. It is unclear why the pilots could not use their oxygen cylinders. The copilot passed out and the German flight captain was not in his seat.
According to recent press reports, a Greek steward (Andreas Prodromou), who had a pilot's license for small aircraft, broke into the cockpit and tried to get the aircraft under control. The steward's DNA was found in traces of blood found in the cockpit .
The autopsy of 118 fatalities disproved the assumption that the occupants had already suffocated in the air or frozen to death from a sudden drop in pressure. The occupants only died when the aircraft hit the ground.
The captain's body could not be identified at first because he was not in the cockpit at the time of the crash and most of the victims were burned beyond recognition.
A coroner charged with the investigation said: "Tissue examinations on seven corpses, including those of the copilot, showed no carbon monoxide poisoning." That seemed to contradict the assumption that the pilots had inhaled carbon monoxide .
The investigations into flight 522 carried out up to October 2005 have shown that the machine had undergone maintenance with a cabin pressure test the night before the flight of the accident, as a pilot had reported problems with the rear right door during the flight before the flight of the accident. The pressure test simulated the pressure conditions that exist during a flight. But it remained without any findings. For this test, the outlet valve of the pressure equalization system was switched to "manual" by the technicians.
The investigators found that the settings of the pressure control system were not set correctly (the switch in the overhead panel in the cockpit was probably set to "manual", although it should have been set to "Auto" during the flight), and consequently the pressure control system could not work .
The investigators also suspect confusion among the pilots due to a warning signal that reports the incorrectly set take-off configuration of the aircraft on the ground. The same warning signal is intended to warn in the air that the cabin pressure is too low. The pilots probably did not immediately assign the warning signal sounding in the air to the lack of cabin pressure. There was also a visual warning about insufficient cooling of the computers on board.
The pilots then tried to restore the cooling circuit, ignoring or no longer perceiving due to the lack of oxygen that had now occurred that the aircraft was climbing further and reaching dangerous altitudes for humans. You probably lost consciousness before a correct assessment of the problems you had encountered was possible.
Web links
- Final report of the investigating authority (English; PDF file; 8.42 MB)
Coordinates: 38 ° 13 '53.6 " N , 23 ° 58' 12.8" E