  
| 
| ||||||||||||
'Freeze' message from jet was hoaxCoroner: 20 passengers alive when plane went down
ATHENS, Greece -- A text message reportedly sent to a relative by a "freezing" passenger onboard the Cypriot airliner that crashed in Greece, killing all 121 people onboard, was a hoax and the sender has been arrested, the airline says. Autopsies on the bodies of 20 people on board, including one flight attendant, show they were alive when the plane went down, an Athens coroner said Tuesday. Nikos Kalogrias, one of a team of seven coroners, said the 20 victims' hearts and lungs were functioning when the plane crashed. "The attendant was alive and died of injuries" sustained in the crash, he said. The Helios Airways Boeing 737 had been heading from Larnaca to Athens, and had been due to fly on to Prague. It crashed into a mountain Sunday about 25 miles east of Athens. It had been widely reported that one of the passengers sent his cousin a text message minutes before the crash, saying the pilots were unconscious and adding: "Farewell, cousin. Here, we're frozen." The Cypriot carrier said on Monday night the message had been a hoax and the man who claimed to have received the text message had been arrested and was being questioned by police. Officials on Tuesday said they had found only the exterior container of the cockpit voice recorder from the plane, hampering investigative efforts into the accident's cause. The device's internal components were ejected from the container when the plane crashed into a mountainous region north of Athens on Sunday, Akrivos Tsolakis, head of the Greek airline safety committee, told The Associated Press. "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 told AP that American experts, including a representative of the plane's manufacturer, were providing assistance. On Monday Cypriot police offers carried out a search of the offices of Helios Airways in the coastal city of Larnaca, near Cyprus international airport, after obtaining a search warrant from the city's court. There were no arrests and it was not immediately clear whether police had confiscated any material. A spokesman for the airline told the UK Press Association: "We can confirm that we are co-operating with police in Cyprus in accordance with usual practice following this tragic event. "Police officers did visit the offices of Helios today in order to photocopy documents, which is part of their normal procedure. "In addition, we have provided all relevant documentation to the Civil Aviation Authorities in Cyprus immediately following the accident. "There has been no question of our failing to co-operate with the authorities at any time." A passenger list showed the German chief pilot, a family of four Armenians living in Cyprus, 12 Greeks and 104 Cypriots were killed in the crash. There were 17 children under the age of 16 on board, the youngest aged four. Some news reports have said the plane was serviced for air conditioning trouble in the past, and the Czech Press Agency reported that the two Helios pilots had reported an air conditioning problem shortly after leaving Larnaca. Yiannis Papageorgiou, a spokesman for the Greek Air Force, said authorities were investigating whether that could have been related to the crash. Pilots of two Greek fighter jets who saw the plane before it went down reported seeing oxygen masks down in the cabin and one of the pilots slumped over the controls. Investigators were looking into whether there had been a catastrophic loss of air pressure -- and whether those onboard were alive up to the time of the crash. Chief Athens coroner Fillipos Koutsaftis said Monday that tests on the remains of six people showed the six were alive up to the time of the crash, though it was unclear whether they were conscious. "Our conclusion is they had circulation and were breathing," he said. On Monday, Helios' president Andreas Drakos said the airline had followed the proper protocols in preparing for the flight. "The plane observed all the necessary maintenance and checks in line with international requirements, those of the construction firm, and Cypriot civil aviation requirements," he told reporters at a news conference. Investigators at the crash site in Grammatiko pieced through the charred wreckage Monday, but reported no clues as to what had gone wrong. Cypriot officials are working together with Greek investigators. The United States sent a four-member team from the National Transportation Safety Board. And Boeing, the U.S. manufacturer that made the aircraft, sent a team to the region as well. When Helios Flight 522 first crossed into Greek airspace and failed to respond to communications attempts, two Greek fighter jets were sent to intercept it. The plane was on autopilot at 35,000 feet. The pilots of the F-16s reported seeing one of the pilots slumped over its controls, but did not see the other pilot. They saw two people who they thought were crew members trying to prevent the plane from crashing, a government spokesman said. The body of a female flight attendant was found in the wreckage of the cockpit, the spokesman said. The fighter pilots also said they could see through the cabin windows that the oxygen masks had dropped from the ceiling of the plane, and witnesses at the crash site reported that some passengers' faces still had oxygen masks attached. Copyright 2005 CNN. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Associated Press contributed to this report. 
| |||||||||||||
| © 2007 Cable News Network. A Time Warner Company. All Rights Reserved. Terms under which this service is provided to you. Read our privacy guidelines. Contact us. Site Map. |
 |
|
External sites open in new window; not endorsed by CNN.com
Pay service with live and archived video. 
