On August 14, 2005, as a passenger plane hovered over Athens and did not descend, the Greek government sent two fighter jets to find out.
At a height of 10,000 meters, when the pilot of the fighter flew to the sides of the passenger plane, he was surprised to find that the passengers in the entire plane were all unconscious and motionless, and even the co-captain in the cockpit also fainted on the dashboard, and the captain's position was empty.
The whole plane is like a ghost flight, over Athens, just like the sun god travels through, all passengers will go to the Gate of Heaven. Just over an hour later, all 121 people were about to die in the plane crash. And that's just because the buttons for a booster system aren't turned back from manual back to automatic.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="58" > unmanned ghost flight</h1>
On the day of the incident, a plane from Prague, which was less than ten years old, took off from Cyprus, a Boeing 737 that was less than a decade old.
It was a sunny day, as if escorted by the sun god, and all the passengers were in a good mood, most of them were going to travel or return home, and perhaps now they were looking forward to the food after arrival. But everyone's destination will become a distant place that cannot be reached.
At 9:07 a.m. local time, the plane took off from Larnaca International Airport in Cyprus as usual. At 9:12, the climbing plane sounded an alarm, and both captains thought there was a problem with the plane's equipment.
Just a few minutes after the plane took off, passengers in the cabin saw falling oxygen masks. But as we all know, it is common for planes to encounter turbulence in the airflow, and they quickly calm down, wear a mask as usual, and wait for the small situation to be solved.
But at this time, the 115 passengers on the plane did not know that this was the spirit flag sent by God, and once it was taken over, there was no return.
The two captains, confused by the alarm, contacted the engineer on the ground in Cyprus to ask for a solution. The captain explained to the ground crew that the lights cooling the ventilation fan were out, at which point the ground engineer confirmed to them that the buttons on the pressurized panel were in automatic mode.
But the captain did not respond to the problem, and he still thought it was a problem with the air conditioning in the face of the alarm that occurred from the cooling equipment.
In a panic and confusion, at 9:23, the call was interrupted. And this is also the last voice left by the two captains.
Such a conversation was very strange for both captains, both of whom had extensive flight experience, and the captain was a German pilot who had just been hired on a special assignment and who had thirty-five years of driving experience. The fifty-three-year-old co-captain is a native Cypriot who has been with Helios for five years.
But now, unable to direct them to make further corrections, both pilots have fainted in the cockpit. The entire aircraft has become unmanned, becoming a ghost airline.
When the aircraft reaches an altitude of 10,000 meters, the automatic cruise mode starts. The ghost airline flew along the navigation route to Athens.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="70" is > a terrorist hijacking? </h1>
When it reached the sky over Greece, the Greek air traffic control could not contact the Helios 522, but the passenger plane continued to fly to the Athens airport, and when it reached the airport, the aircraft was helplessly hovering over Athens because it was unmanned, losing the command direction, like a lost child, waiting for the savior to lead the way.
The planes did not wait for the savior, but two F16 fighters with the mission of destroying them if they were in danger.
Just over an hour after the ground tower was missing from the plane, at 10:55, the Greek government sent two F16 fighter jets to find out. At this time, athens air traffic control has called the helios flight nineteen times but has not yet received a response, to know that at this time only four years after the 911 incident, in an instant, the speculation of terrorist attacks is raging.
Half an hour later, two fighter jets caught up with the circling Helios Flight 522. To keep the Greek capital and its three million people safe, the pilots were vigilant and ready to destroy the airliner. When the pilot flew to the side of the passenger plane, he saw a scene that made him feel deeply strange.
The pilots did not see the chaos, the terrorists carrying weapons, casualties or damage, the entire plane was not only passengers but even the co-pilot was motionless in his seat, and the captain's position was even empty, and he did not know where the people had gone.
Just then he saw a man enter the cockpit and sit in the cockpit. Shortly after the man put on his headphones, the fuselage of the plane tilted to the left and swooped down toward the ground. At 12:04, Helios Aviation 522 crashed northeast of Athens. It is as if the fallen leaves return to the roots, just as Apollo from Athens came, and all the passengers returned here.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="77" > major flight accidents</h1>
A total of 121 people died in the crash, including the crew and passengers. As soon as this news came out, it caused a sensation around the world. In the face of the emergence of the ghost flight phenomenon, everyone makes various guesses. And when the relevant technical personnel analyzed the black box, the mystery was gradually solved.
During a routine inspection of the Cyprus airport before the departure of Helios 522, the engineers switched the booster system to manual mode in order to enter the overhaul, but when he finished the overhaul, he forgot to turn the button back to automatic. It was this small mistake that caused the largest aviation accident in Greek history, and the lives of 121 people came to an abrupt end.
It should be known that the aircraft has to sail at an altitude of thousands to tens of thousands of meters, and the farther away from the ground, the thinner the oxygen. At this time, it is necessary to compress the air in the pressurized system and increase the oxygen content in the unit space, otherwise, people will be comatose or even die due to lack of oxygen. The booster system automatically adjusts to the aircraft's altitude in automatic mode.
But it was such a small mistake that it was not checked for corrections before take-off at the airport, nor was it possible to negotiate with ground personnel after the alarm sounded, and what is even more unacceptable is that the main cause of death of all the people on board was due to impact, not lack of oxygen.
That is to say, while circling over Athens, the people on the plane were not dead, but only fell into a coma. And why, in this process, no one can grasp the opportunity to react in time.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="83" > the flight attendant who stepped forward</h1>
In fact, there was, and the man Andreas, who was seen by the fighter F16 pilot at the time, tried. He wasn't an ordinary passenger or a hijacker, Andreas was a flight attendant on the Helios 522.
When passengers put on oxygen masks, the crew also put on masks as usual and waited for the problem to be solved. But the oxygen in the mask lasts only ten minutes, which is only the time for the plane to drop to the air oxygen level after the decompression.
But at that time, the two captains did not realize the problem, and just as the captain got up to check the equipment, he fainted in the cockpit due to lack of oxygen. The entire plane turned into a drone ghost flight.
Waiting in his seat, Andreas realized that something was wrong, and he saw that almost everyone was in a coma, while Andreas, who had been a special soldier and was good at diving, was still awake with excellent physical fitness.
He got up and found spare oxygen cylinders, something that every plane would come with, enough oxygen here to last an hour, and the same oxygen cylinders on Helios Air 522 had four on board.
It was because of this oxygen that more than two hours after the plane was missing, the crew of the F16 could still see Andreas walking freely.
At the time, there was also Andreas' girlfriend on the plane, and as a lover, a crew member, and Andrews who wanted to be a pilot, a strong sense of mission made him decide to try to change the status quo.
Because after the 911 hijacking, almost all aircraft were equipped with safety devices on the doors leading to the cockpit. It was only at 11:48:05 that Andreas was able to enter the cockpit by entering the code. By this time the plane had been unmanned for two and a half hours, and as soon as he got into the pilot's seat, he tried to call for help by contacting the local tower.
In the records in the black box, a "mayday" called out to his anxiety and uneasiness, but the frequency of the radio on the plane was still the frequency in Cyprus at the time of take-off, so his cry for help only disappeared into the unknown place with the spread of the radio waves.
Just when Andreas was helpless and almost desperate, an even greater catastrophe had befallen. The long circle caused the plane to run out of fuel. At 11:59:20, when the right wing had also run out of fuel, the plane headed straight for the ground northeast of Athens.
In this life-and-death moment, Andreas tried to maneuver the plane in order to make a safe landing. In order to become a pilot dream, Andreas holds a British commercial pilot license and has more than two hundred hours of training in the aircraft.
But he had not been trained to fly a large aircraft like the Boeing 737, and he was lost to the ground, and he was powerless in critical situations. According to DNA testing, Andreas also tried to wake up the captain, but he was unable to save everyone's lives, including himself, who also crashed with the plane to the marathon northeast of Athens.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="96" > the cause of the event</h1>
A small mistake by ground engineering personnel could have been avoided, and the deaths of 121 people could not have occurred. But when the plane's takeoff alarm sounded, the captain failed to pay attention to the settings of the booster system in the face of the prompts of the ground engineering staff. At that time, the captain was still thinking about the failure of the air conditioning equipment, which was because the air conditioner of Helios Airlines 522 had had problems many times.
But why the captain did not listen to the ground engineering staff instructions, some people said that this is because the captain is a German caused the language barrier, but the co-captain is a Cypriot, all, most likely because as early as the two captains asked for help on the ground, the cockpit was already starved of oxygen.
Unlike the cockpit, the oxygen mask does not fall off on its own to indicate a lack of oxygen in the cockpit, so the two captains were already confused due to lack of oxygen when communicating with the ground.
The plane disappeared shortly after takeoff, but did not send a warplane to investigate until it had been hovering over athens airport for a long time, and for more than an hour in between, the ghost flight quietly got up and died without responding in time.
Then, the encrypted door lock apparently prevented Andreas from entering the cockpit, missing the best time to save himself. According to the inspection of the spare oxygen cylinders on the plane, all four oxygen cylinders have been almost exhausted, and it is possible to know how much time it took to enter the cockpit and Deryas. Originally the last door left by the terrorists, it became the gate of hell that cut off life.
The people on the plane are no longer alive, and it is obviously impossible to interrogate the specifics. But therefore, all the blame cannot be placed on the engineer who overhauled it, and why the airline did not send others to review it is also a problem in the setting of safety mechanisms. Although the overhaul engineers instigated the initial breeze, the omission of the entire Helios aviation safety management was the real hurricane.
This hurricane of public opinion has also turned Helios Aviation into a building that will fall. In 2006, Helios Airlines went out of business due to the company's suspension.
In 2018, Sichuan Airlines 3U8633 also suffered an accident, and the sudden windshield cracking put the plane in danger. However, captain Liu Chuanjian, with a calm mentality and rich experience, worked together with the whole crew and the ground tower to finally avoid the tragedy.
Liu Chuanjian is also the prototype of the movie "Captain China", and it is precisely because of his operation that the aircraft successfully forced a landing, and all the crew survived.
Andreas is a hero, but not all heroes have a protagonist aura, and none of the other 120 on Helios Air 522 have been so lucky. But such a major flight accident is not a stroke of luck, nor is it the fault of one or two people, it exposes the negligence of Helios Airlines management technology.
After the birth of the aircraft, there have been air crashes, aviation safety has been improved in the disaster, and the problems exposed by Helios Air 522 have led other airlines to take this as a warning to rectify.
The of a thousand miles collapsed on the ants, and the prevention of micro-du gradually had to start from small things. Details determine success or failure, I hope there will be no more such tragedies, and I hope that everyone who travels can go home safely.