Helios crash investigator: Human factor to blame
The chief investigator into the August 14 Helios Airways plane crash outside Athens today said human error was chiefly to blame for the accident that all killed 121 people on the Boeing 737-300.
Asked if the “human factor” was responsible for the crash, Akrivos Tsolakis told state-run NET television: “Yes, in broad terms, yes, but I cannot elaborate.”
Eight days after the crash, Tsolakis wrote in a preliminary report that the plane lost cabin pressure and ran out of fuel before slamming into a mountain at Grammatiko, near Athens.
A full report is expected in February, while a re-enactment of the doomed Helios Flight 522, from Larnaca, Cyprus, to Athens, will be held before the end of the year, he said.
“It is a very complex investigation,” Tsolakis said today. “But we were fortunate to find the flight recorders quickly and they yielded a very large amount of useful data.”
