In 2005, an out-of-control Boeing 737 airliner spun around Greek airspace for more than an hour. Two F-16 fighter jets carry missiles to intercept. It turned out that the captain was missing, and the co-pilot and more than 100 passengers were sleeping! A mysterious man took the opportunity to enter the cab and take over the "ghost airliner"
At 11:00 a.m. on August 14, 2005, two F-16 fighters of the Hellenic Air Force took off from the base of Elasox and headed straight for Athens airspace, where they were about to intercept a Boeing 737 airliner.
The aircraft, number ZU-522, was part of Helios Airlines in Cyprus and carried a total of 121 people. After entering Greece, flight ZU-522 suddenly lost contact, and the air traffic controller called 19 times in a row, without getting any response.
Suspecting that the airliner had been hijacked, the air traffic control center sent two F-16 fighter jets to check in close, and if the airliner showed signs of crashing into the athens city, it immediately fired the Sidewinder missile and shot the other side down in advance.
Guided by the tower, the F-16 found the airliner in just 10 minutes. Only to see it flying steadily at an altitude of 10,000 meters, it did not look abnormal. But for the sake of safety, a fighter plane is monitored from 2 kilometers away, ready to attack at any time. The other cut into the airliner's route and slowly approached the target.
As the distance was closer to 20 meters, the F-16 began to sail side by side with the airliner, and the pilot turned his head to look into the cab, but the sight in front of him stunned him! I saw the co-pilot sleeping on the operating table, but the captain was missing.
The pilot called by radio and tried to wake up the co-pilot, but the other party was motionless, looking unconscious. This made him feel bad and quickly looked at the cabin behind. As a result, the situation inside shocked him even more.
Because all the passengers had their eyes closed and sat quietly in their seats, as if asleep, the oxygen masks on their heads had fallen off, but none of them were wearing them. Even more bizarre is that the flight attendants who were supposed to maintain order also disappeared, allowing more than 100 passengers to fall asleep.
The pilot hurried to report the situation, but before he could finish speaking, he saw a man enter the cab with an oxygen mask, and at the same time draw a comparison with him, and then sat down in the captain's position and unceremoniously fiddled with the joystick.
Who is this person? What do you want to do? While the pilot was still confused, the airliner suddenly began to turn to the right. It appears that the man has turned off the autopilot and entered manual maneuver mode.
At this moment, however, a puff of white smoke came out of the left wing of the airliner' engine, and then it stopped turning. A few minutes later, the other engine also completely turned off, which caused the airliner to lose its lift in an instant and fall towards the ground like an iron knot.
The pilot tried unsuccessfully to establish a call with the man, and could only watch as the passenger plane fell from a height of 10,000 meters to the Marathon Mountain, and finally exploded on a dirt slope, killing all 121 people on board.
In order to find out the cause of the air crash, 6 aviation experts rushed to the Marathon Mountain Area overnight. They retrieved the tower's call records and scrutinized thousands of pieces of debris, and eight days later, the truth finally came out.
It turned out that the main and co-pilots of the day were 52-year-old Hansbrook and 49-year-old Schneiderlin, both of whom had been flying for more than 7,000 hours and were extremely experienced. This short flight of 1500 km is simply pediatric for them.
But only 9 minutes after the plane took off, the fault alarm light flashed, indicating that the plane could not take off. The two were a little confused, because according to the design, this alarm light would only be lit on the ground, and the plane was 4200 meters high at the moment. Such a strange phenomenon has never occurred in their careers.
The captain reported the fault to the tower, but his German English was stumbling, and the air traffic controller was confused, thinking that the air conditioning system had failed, and asked him to take a look. So the captain left his seat, and the plane, under the control of the autopilot, quickly climbed to an altitude of 5,000 meters.
At this moment, more than 100 oxygen masks in the cabin suddenly fell automatically, prompting the cabin that there was not enough oxygen, and the passengers were startled and began to talk. After contacting the cab, the purser reassured everyone that the air conditioning system had failed, and the captain was doing his best to eliminate it and would be able to return to normal immediately.
In fact, what they don't know is that there is no problem with the air conditioning system, and the real failure is the pressurized oxygenation system. It turned out that before the flight took off, the maintenance staff did a test, he moved the pressurization switch to manual mode, and after doing it, he forgot to move it back to automatic mode.
The two captains did not check carefully and took off directly, which caused the pressurization system to not work, so the alarm light would be lit. With the continuous rise of the altitude, the oxygen in the cabin is getting less and less, and people unconsciously enter a state of hypoxia.
The human body needs 50 ml of oxygen per minute, if it is more than 180 seconds in an oxygen-deficient environment, the central nervous system will be damaged, and then it will be confused, paralyzed, and gradually dying! So when the flight altitude reached 10,000 meters, the oxygen was completely exhausted, the captain collapsed next to the air conditioner, the co-pilot was unconscious on the operating table, and the flight attendants were paralyzed in the aisle.
Flight 552 suddenly became an uncontrolled "ghost flight" and has been wandering aimlessly in circles in the sky. The mysterious man who walked into the cockpit was actually the safety officer Eltriya, who had a light aircraft pilot's license, was a diving enthusiast, and had undergone hypoxia training.
While everyone was in a coma, Eltriya, with her astonishing lung capacity, temporarily remained awake and managed to get a spare oxygen cylinder and prepare to save the plane. But he wouldn't disarm the autopilot and kept trying to wake up the captain, which wasted a lot of time.
Although the automatic driving was finally lifted after many attempts, the aircraft's fuel was also exhausted, and it immediately fell from a height of 10,000 meters.
In this way, a small inadvertent mistake finally led to the death of 121 people, and the closure of Helios Airlines was also the cause, such a tragedy reminds people that safety is no small matter, and the responsibility is heavier than the mountain.
