The pain caused by the 2005 Helios air disaster has not been forgotten, Transport Minister Evie Tsolaki said on Sunday, as she attended a memorial service to mark the tragedy’s 21st anniversary.

“August 14, 2005 was one of the darkest days in the modern history of Cyprus, when a journey which began as an ordinary flight turned into an unspeakable tragedy,” she said, before stressing that the pain of those who lost loved ones in the tragedy “is not private and not forgotten, but is part of the collective memory of Cyprus”.

She added that “the memory of the tragedy must be linked to the state’s responsibility for safety in air transport”, and stressed that “in the transport sector, and especially in aviation, safety is not a technical detail, but the first and non-negotiable obligation”.

“Every rule, every procedure, every control mechanism, and every oversight mechanism exists for one purpose and one purpose only: the protection of human life. Human life cannot be discounted, omitted, or left to complacency,” she said.

The Helios air disaster occurred on August 14, 2005, when the cabin of Helios Airways Flight 522 from Larnaca to Prague via Athens began to depressurise, causing those aboard, including captain and crew, to suffer from generalised hypoxia. This rendered the flight a “ghost flight”.

With autopilot still engaged, the aircraft circled over Athens for multiple hours until the engines gave out due to fuel exhaustion and the aeroplane crashed near the village of Grammatiko. A total of 121 people died.