Service held for Helios air crash victims

A memorial service for 16 victims of the Helios air crash in 2005 was held in Paralimni on Sunday.

The plane crashed killing all 121 on board on August 14, 2005 in the mountainous Grammatikos area of Greece.

The service was held by Bishop Vassilis of Famagusta and was addressed by deputy minister of tourism Costas Koumis.

Retired Air Force Brigadier General Andronikos Xydos recited a poem in memory of those who lost their lives.

“We are here to pay tribute to the victims of a very tragic event that happened 18 years ago. As is known, 121 of our compatriots lost their lives,” Koumis said.Let us hope, he continued, “that we will never again have such incidents in our country, and also worldwide.”

On August 14, 2005 at approximately 10.40am the Helios Airways flight 522, scheduled to travel from Cyprus to Prague via Athens, was stuck on a loop at 35,000 feet within the Athens FIR and without having made communication with the ground for more than an hour.

In a state of confusion, the Greek air force had dispatched two F-16 fighter jets to investigate. The fighter jet pilots, glancing into the passenger plane realised that the aircraft’s co-pilot was unconscious, the captain was not in position and passengers were sat motionless with the masked oxygen supply system having been activated.

A while later, an individual was seen slowly dragging themselves into the cockpit and trying to assume control, it was flight attendant Andreas Prodromou who held a UK commercial pilot licence and had managed to remain conscious using a portable oxygen supply.

Soon thereafter however, the left engine blew out due to fuel exhaustion and the plane started to descend. Ten minutes after, the right engine also blew out. At 12.05pm the aircraft crashed into the hills just 40km from Athens.

Investigators concluded that Prodromou’s experience was insufficient in gaining control of the aircraft under those circumstances but had succeeded in banking the plane away from Athens and towards a rural area in the final moments of the flight.

Of the 115 passengers, 103 were Cypriot citizens and 12 citizens of Greece.