PAX Aboard Penultimate Helios Flight Say Cabin Was Unusually
Cold
On its second-to-last flight before crashing near Athens,
Greece, passengers aboard a Helios Airways 737-300 complained of
bitter cold and the fact that flight attendants ran out of
blankets. It's the latest information to surface that belies
statements from Helios, saying there were no problems with the
aircraft prior to its crash last Sunday.
As ANN reported earlier this week, there are a
number of questions surrounding Sunday's mishap, which killed all
121 people on board. But perhaps most troubling is word that there
may indeed have been major problems with the environmental controls
on board the aircraft just hours before it
crashed.
“It is horrifying to think
that it could have been us who were killed,” Louise Gates,
48, told the London Times. The resident of England was aboard the
Helios 737-300 on a flight that left Heathrow at 2230 local
Saturday night. It landed at Larnaca, Cyprus, at 0415 the following
morning, then departed for Athens at 0900. The 737 crashed three
hours later.
“It was absolutely freezing on that plane. Everyone was
asking for blankets but the steward told me they had run out,"
Gates said. "I used to fly a lot when I worked for Air France and I
have never experienced such cold conditions on a flight. Something
was definitely wrong.”
But that's not the story Helios executives told -- at least, not
at first. “We have spoken to members of staff and there was
nothing to bat an eyelid at,” a Helios spokeswoman told the
Cyprus Mail.
But the airline later admitted the same 737-300 underwent sudden
decompression in December after a door failed to seal properly. The
aircraft made an emergency landing at Larnaca. Three people were
taken to the hospital with injuries resulting from the
incident.
Helios's former chief mechanic, Kyriakos Pilavakis, told the
Mail, “The indications were that air had escaped from one of
the doors – the right door on the rear."
Pilavakis wasn't the only employee to complain. The family of
copilot Pambos Charalambous, who was killed in Sunday's mishap,
said he often complained about technical problems on the aircraft
that were often left unaddressed.
“He told me the plane had a problem and I urged him not to
fly," his mother, Artemi Charalambous, told the Mail. "He told the
company about it getting cold on the plane and they told him it
would be fixed.”