Crew confusion found in Athens plane crash.

Paris -- The crew members of a Cypriot Helios Airways airliner that crashed Aug. 14 near Athens became confused by a series of alarms as the plane climbed, failing to recognize that the cabin was not pressurizing until they grew mentally disoriented because of lack of oxygen and passed out, according to several people connected with the investigation.  
Complicating the cockpit confusion, neither the German pilot nor the young, inexperienced Cypriot co-pilot could speak the same language fluently, and each had difficulty understanding how the other spoke English, the worldwide language of air traffic control.  

A total of 121 people were killed in the crash after the plane climbed and flew on autopilot, circling near Athens as it was programmed to do until one engine stopped running because of a lack of fuel. The sudden imbalance of power, with only one engine operating, caused the autopilot to disengage and the plane to begin its final descent.  

The Greek authorities have made cryptic statements hinting at oxygen problems but have so far not announced the full findings of investigators.  

The people interviewed for this article agreed to do so on condition that they not be identified because none are official spokesmen for the investigation and because of political sensitivities arising from a Cypriot plane crashing in Greece.  

Investigators pieced together the story of the crash from numerous sources. In the wreckage, they found the first solid clues - the pressurization valve and an air outflow valve set incorrectly. Air traffic control tapes provided information on the confusion in the cockpit.  


The plane had a sophisticated new flight data recorder that provided a wealth of information. There were maintenance records from the night before, and investigators interviewed the mechanics who worked on the plane.  

Among other things, the investigators determined that the pilot was not in his seat because he was up trying to solve a problem that turned out to be not the greatest threat facing him.  

The plane that crashed, a Boeing 737-300, underwent maintenance the night before. The maintenance crew apparently left a pressurization controller rotary knob out of place, according to the officials connected to the investigation, and the crew did not catch the mistake during preflight checks the next day. This meant that the plane could not pressurize.  

At 10,000 feet, or 3,000 meters, as designed, an alarm went off to warn the crew that the plane would not pressurize. However, the crew members mistakenly thought that the alarm horn was a warning to tell them that their controls were not set properly for takeoff, the officials said.  

The same horn is used for both conditions, although it will sound for takeoff configuration only while the plane is still on the ground.  

The crew continued the climb on autopilot. At 14,000 feet, oxygen masks deployed as designed and a master caution light illuminated in the cockpit. Another alarm sounded at about the same time on an unrelated matter, warning that there was insufficient cooling air in the compartment housing avionics equipment.  

The radio tapes showed that this created tremendous confusion in the cockpit. Normally an aircraft cabin is held at 8,000 feet pressure, so the crew at over 14,000 feet would already be experiencing some disorientation because of a lack of oxygen.  

During this time, the German captain and the Cypriot co-pilot discovered they had no common language and that their English, while good enough for normal air traffic control purposes, was not good enough for complicated technical conversation in fixing the problem.  

The crew members called the maintenance base in Cyprus and were told that the circuit breaker to turn off the loud new alarm was in a cabinet behind the captain. The captain got up from his seat to look for the circuit breaker, apparently ignoring the confused co-pilot.  


As the plane continued to climb on autopilot, the air grew so thin that the crew became seriously impaired. The captain passed out first on the floor of the cockpit, followed by the co-pilot, who remained in his seat, according to the officials.  

The autopilot did as it was programmed to do, flying the plane at 34,000 feet to Athens and entering a holding pattern. It remained in a long circling pattern, shadowed by Greek military jets, until fuel ran low and one engine quit.  

Boeing, the maker of the plane, sent a notice shortly after the crash to airlines that it would revise flight crew training manuals to stress to crews that they must understand how the various warning systems work and what to do about them.  

The notice stresses that the takeoff configuration warning horn will not sound under any circumstances after the plane has left the ground.  

The same horn will then be used only for a cabin altitude warning. The company notice said there had been other instances of confusion over the horn by pilots.  

"Confusion between the cabin altitude warning horn and the takeoff configuration warning horn can be re-solved if the crew remembers that the takeoff configuration warning horn is only armed when the airplane is on the ground," the notice said. "If this horn is activated in flight, it indicates that the cabin altitude has reached 10,000 feet."

I knew it was too weird to have not involved any pilot error-such tragic circumstances, had they even spoken the same language fluently this may have been averted.

I don't know the validity of the report, but here is the link....

http://www.airdisaster.com/news/0905/08/news.shtml

Dave

The whole crash is a mystery to me. The captain formerly flew for the Interflug, and that airline had the best trained pilots of maybe the whole world.

I remember that Kris!
Altitude and speed could not be determined and basically the plane stalled all because the paint had been repainted and maintenance forgot to remove the tape that was on the tips of the devices for recording these readings.

Sad to say that a few pieces of small duct tape took down a huge airliner...... 

Offcourse every-one knows I meant pitot-tubes when i wrote pilot-tubes... 

Somebody please explane to me how 2 experienced pilots can just ignore an alarm?  ???
Something still needs to be cleared up...

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They didn't ignore it, they misunderstood it.  Read the article a little more carefully

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The Air Brazil (think thats the airline) 707 that crashed on Long Island had a crew that all spoke Spanish, but only the F/O spoke English well enough to communicate with ATC effectively.  This created problems, like when the captain said he wanted to declare a fuel emergency and the copilot continually told ATC that their situation "urgent", instead of declaring an emrgency.

In a nut shell, this is not the first time language barriers have brought down a plane.

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In that case this is not new information & confirms what I said. It's pure speculation & cannot be based on fact. Therefore it's not worth the paper it's printed on or worthy of discussion. The article Dave quoted is dated 08 September 2005. http://www.airdisaster.com/news/0905/08/news.shtml

PS. The incident happened on August 14th, 2005, just over 2 months ago.

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Thanks Pigeon. I'm back on a temporary basis & don't know how long for until it's properly fixed. It's painfully slow & I keep getting disconnected without warning. It's very frustrating & now I know what some people have to put up with all the time.

PS. By trying to get this posted before I'm cut off I'm now making more typos than ever.

Sad thruth is...if the pilots would've brought down an aircraft that didnt appear to malfunction....they'd be out of a job afterwards. For sure.

That's how it works in the aviation business, especially for those smaller charter companies that operates without large margins.   

And it scares me that the crew didnt know about the Horn...heck even I knew that for christs sake