Two fighter planes were sent to check what was going on with Helios Flight 522 .
“Helios 522, is anyone there?”
Desperate questions were repeated over and over on the cockpit radar, in the sky over Greece on August 14, 2005. This was an air disaster unlike any other. The Boeing 737 was full of passengers, circling the sky in self-driving mode for more than an hour. The plane was unmanned, the captain disappeared, the co-pilot collapsed and all the passengers were asleep.
What happened on Helios flight 522?
Greek airline Helios Flight 522 was carrying 115 passengers from Cyprus to Prague Airport in the Czech Republic. The plane departed smoothly at 9:07 a.m., only a few minutes behind schedule.
The captain and co-pilot are both experienced pilots. The flight crew consisted of 4 members, including male flight attendant Andreas Prodromou and hostess Haris Charalambous who were engaged.
Andreas has just completed his pilot course in the UK, he plans to change his career in line with his dreams, then marry his girlfriend Haris. Unfortunately, both of these dreams did not come true in time.
The pair of pilots on flight Helios 522. (Photo: Simpleflying).
A few minutes after the plane took off, the warning sirens began to sound. This was a signal for the crew to descend, but the captain ignored it because misunderstanding it was an error warning. Minutes later, the captain’s interactions with air traffic controllers became increasingly sparse.
At 9:20 a.m., when the plane was nearing an altitude of 30,000 meters, there was no longer any communication from flight 522. The Boeing flew around the Athenian coast in self-driving mode. Air traffic controllers tried to contact the plane for 70 minutes, but no one answered. One theory is that Flight 522 is being controlled by terrorists.
The Athens Rescue Coordination Center sent two fighter jets to check the Boeing circling in the sky. (Photo courtesy: Wikimedia Common).
At 11 o’clock, the Athens rescue coordination center decided to make a daring intervention. Two Hellenic Air Force fighters took off and flew up to check the condition of the Boeing. From the window, the fighter pilots saw a very strange sight.
All the passengers of Flight 522 were asleep, the captain disappeared and the co-pilot was lying motionless on the dashboard. But there was a sober man still walking in the passenger compartment, who went straight up to the cockpit and sat in the captain’s seat. He was the flight attendant Andreas Prodromou , the only one awake on the flight.
Subsequent investigations revealed that by the time the plane lost connection with the air traffic station, all passengers and pilots were unconscious due to the lack of oxygen in the cockpit . The reason Andreas Prodromou is still awake is because he regularly practices diving, so his lung capacity is larger than normal people, he also understands how to use the oxygen supplies on the plane.
Andreas Prodromou entered the cockpit with the emergency access code, he tried to wake the pilots but could not. Andreas has a license to fly small planes, but flying a Boeing 737 is too much for this guy. It is said that he tried his best to fly the plane to avoid cities so as not to cause too many casualties.
The Boeing crashed into a hill near Athens, Andreas Prodromou tried to steer the plane away from a residential area. (Photo: FAA).
In the final minutes, the plane was about to run out of fuel, and the left engine stopped working. The male flight attendant reported Mayday’s emergency signal continuously on the radar, but unfortunately, he chose the wrong frequency.
Andreas looked out the cockpit window, where the two fighter planes were. He gestured downwards. The plane’s right engine was on fire, the plane had run out of fuel. The Boeing 737 crashed into a hill near Athens. 115 passengers and 6 crew members all died. The passengers are believed to be alive, only unconscious at the time of the crash.
The cause of the accident was determined to be because during the maintenance of the aircraft, the ground engineer adjusted the knob to manual pressurization and forgot to re-select the automatic pressurization mode as usual.
The ground engineer chose manual pressurization (MANUAL) instead of automatic pressurization (AUTO). (Artwork: FAA)
When boarding the plane, the pilot did not realize this. He negligently ignored the error siren so that the plane was not pressurized during the flight. Pressurization is an important system , the plane is not pressurized, the air inside will be very thin, there is not enough oxygen, so everyone falls into a coma . Passengers do not seem to have been informed to use oxygen masks in time.
The disaster from “ghost flight” 522 was determined to be caused by errors from a series of steps from maintenance , pilots to air traffic control when the air traffic manager was absent, only staff on duty that day. Helios Airways faced numerous lawsuits and declared bankruptcy in 2006, just a year after the crash.
This is a great lesson for airlines in ensuring compliance with the principle of flight safety responsibility so as not to lead to a disaster like the story of Helios Airways.