He had 7,549 total flying hours including 3,991 hours on type and had joined Helios in April 2000. The 51 year-old First Officer was a Cyprus national who had completed his pilot training in the UK in the late 1980's. He had 16,900 total flying hours which included 5,500 hours in command on type and had been with Helios for just three months. It was found that the 59 year-old Captain was a German national who had begun his flying career as a First Officer with Interflug, the former East German airline, in 1970 before gaining his command there in 1978. 2 Pressure Controller - that from the No 1. Useful data was obtained from the NVM of the No. Data from the FDR and from the 30 minute CVR were recovered but the latter "was insufficient to provide key information that would have clarified the chain of events during the climb phase of the flight". InvestigationĪn Investigation was carried out by the Greek Air Accident Investigation and Aviation Safety Board AAIASB. The aircraft subsequently departed controlled flight and impacted terrain almost three hours after take-off and was destroyed and all 121 occupants were killed. Okay, flight 522 didn't rapidly depressurise, it was never pressurised in the first place.On 14 August 2005, a Boeing 737-300 (5B-DBY) being operated by Helios Airways on an international passenger flight from Larnaca to Athens as HCY522 lost contact with ATC en-route and was subsequently intercepted when level at F元40 by two military aircraft, one of whose pilots observed in day VMC that the two 737 pilots were respectively incapacitated and absent from the flight deck. The passenger oxygen masks deployed automatically. The cabin altitude warning horn sounded and the cabin altitude went up rapidly. On 16 December 2004, Helios Airways flight HCY 535 was en route from Warsaw, Poland, to Larnaca, Cyprus, cruising at F元50 at position EVENO, just prior to the top of descent to Larnaca, when the aircraft experienced a rapid decompression. I also read the following in the accident report, page 102 (obviously this is referring to another earlier incident that took place on the accident plane): Why is Alan, a competent ground engineer who by all accounts seems to be very well-trusted, well-like and without incident throughout his career, saying that he thinks Helios Flight 522 crashed because 'the system that controlled the outflow valve failed'? On a 737-31S, does the flight data recorder have a datapoint for the position of the pressurization mode selector? Cam we say with certainty that this plane DID NOT take off with the pressurisation mode selector in AUTO? So, according to the accident report, there is proof from the NVM recording that the switch was in manual BEFORE the flight crashed. The NVM recording showed that on the accident flight, the cabin pressure control system was being operated in the manual mode. So Alan is saying "hey, I left that switch in AUTO, and it was knocked to manual on the impact of the crash."īut, in page 66 of the Helios Flight 522 accident investigation report, it states that: But, of course, there was no proof either way." "Irwin’s explanation for the crash is that the system that controlled the outflow valve failed. "Except that it was not left in manual, says Irwin, who argues that investigators had not accounted for the distorting effects of impact." Alan Irwin, the ground engineer who was performed the pressurisation leak check before Flight 522 took off says that he in fact DID leave the switch in AUTO. This resulted in rapid onset hypoxia, which incapacitated the pilots leading to the crash. The pilots missed the pressurisation mode selector being set to manual in pre-flight and take off checks, and then did not recognise and/or react appropriately the horn that went off in the cockpit. I'm many hours in at this point and most of it so far has made sense. Full disclosure, this is a journalistic piece, and I'm not an aviation expert. I'm currently doing a write up on the Helios Flight 522 disaster.
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