the accident in greece

[Celia]

hello.
you have probably heard of the terrible accident in greece. a plane crashed into a mountain, after have suffered from some kind of cabin pressure problems. how is this possible? does it happen often? and are you conscious in a situation like that? i heard that the co pilot was unconscious. i have never heard of anything like this..

[kallieb]

HI Celia,

I don't believe I have quite said welcome yet...so let me first say greetings and I'm glad you came here to find help. I have been very afraid of flying for over 25 years, and grounded for the past 5-6 years. I will be flying again in September, and while a bit nervous, I know I can do it. I share this info with you just to let you know what a great site this is, and how helpful it can be.

With all that out of the way on to your request....

Interestingly your questions just falls on the heels of me putting myself into a real worry because I was doing way too much with my imagination after I watched a plane crash documentary.

So, before you gather/look/read/speculate about this incident remember that most of what you hear on the news is likely not to be true or it's a guesstimate (A mixture of maybe the truth and a whole lot of guessing).

The news reports are already suggesting that depressurization problems might be a reason for the loss of crew-ability to fly the plane. Maybe it is, Maybe it isn't. But if you really need to read up about pressurization issues I direct you to Ray's forum. The very first post is his "sticky" with "ray's interesting articles" (or something to this effect). I believe it is article #14. It discusses pressurization issues, and the back-up plans and procedures in place to address this.

But, if it is at all possible, hold off on worrying about this until more info comes in. Try to put it out of your mind so to speak. For example, if it creeps into your thoughts tell yourself - Nope! Won't think about you today, I'll think about this tomorrow...and so on. Do so until you get a reply back from the pilots on this forum. Otherwise, you'll work yourself into a snit for no good reason.

Your plan was excellent though, to come here to find some answers rather than rely solely upon a rather misguided media!

Welcome again Celia.

[Frank_in_TO]

Kallie,

Thanks for re-directing me here. And you made some very good points. I am going to try to couch my thoughts on this for now and get back to packing. Saturday will be here before I know it.

Cheers!

[kallieb]

Hello Frank,

Greetings to a fellow Canuck! Of course, who else could have won the "Ice Hockey" arcade championship so quickly. Too bad the Leafs couldn't be as good!

Take care, you will feel better. Right now your anticipatory anxiety is just hungry for ANYTHING to fuel it's fire. Remember, scary thoughts feed anxiety. The more you give into your thoughts the worse it WILL get. That's why "thought-stopping" is really the best strategy.

Hang in there. You'll see, this will pass and you will feel better.

Tally-ho!

[Falcon]

This is the heart of the problem. After this kind of incident people want answers quickly but they will not come. There are at present conflicting statements and an expert has advised us that the text messages might be a hoax only time and cool investigation of the facts will tell.
I can sympathies for people who are fearfull flyers who would like to be comforted but until we all have more concrete facts that can't come. Hard as it is patience is needed as it will take a long time to get to the bottom of this.
My thoughts are with the relatives left behind.

[spleisher]

My thoughts on this...

http://www.takingflight.us/forums/showthread.php?t=2886

[CaptainStark]

...unbelievable.

The latest report indicates the two pilots barely spoke a common language. They conversed well enough to run the checklist and fly but when the cabin altitude horn went off, and they mistakenly thought it was the takeoff warning horn (same audio alarm) they couldn't communicate well enough to work together. The Captain is believed to have been out of his seat looking for the alarm circuit breaker (to stop the alarm, believing it was a nuisance TAKEOFF horn) and only when the masks dropped in the back at 13,785 cabin altitude did they realize there was something else wrong. By then, it appears the Captain may have passed out.

The initial findings are not good. If true, this crew violated every known common sense rule on survival and good airmanship. Mistaking this alarm was dumb. Not IMMEDIATELY putting their oxygen masks on and beginning an emergency descent was inexplicably dumb. Perhaps the First Officer did put his mask on but the maintenance crews had erroneously left the valve off after servicing. This meant the crew failed to check their oxygen system prior to flight. Again, no one really knows for sure what happened. Details are now emerging and the bulk of the details have yet to be verified. But, given the amount of "insider info" leaked to the European press thus far, the scenario unfolding that day was horribly goofed up.

Pressurization issues should not be remotely life threatening. Something breaks in the pressurization system or a seal on the plane and the crew puts on their masks and quickly descend to an altitude where oxygen is not required. End of story. Clearly this did not happen. As soon as real facts emerge in the form of an official accident report, Royd will pass those on to you.

:ray: Ray

[Falcon]

This will make for interesting reading as little of what is being reported seems to fit.

[CaptainStark]

(Royd will vouch for me that IF this is an accurate portrayal -and we don't know this for sure yet, this was a dumb series of events... Sad indeed. -Ray)

The crew members of a Cypriot 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, 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, is-sued 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."