People on Cypriot jet were alive at time of crash
Autopsies on a total of 20 bodies from the Cypriot airliner that crashed in Greece have shown they were alive when the plane went down, an Athens coroner said today.
Nikos Kalogrias, one of a team of seven coroners, said the autopsies showed the 20 victims’ hearts and lungs were working when the Helios Airways plane crashed with 121 people aboard on Sunday. There were no survivors.
“The attendant was alive and died of injuries sustained in the crash,” he said.
Kalogrias said the attendant’s body “appears to have been found near or inside the cockpit".
Coroners conducted the first six autopsies yesterday, and Kalogrias said they had almost completed examinations of all 24 bodies identified by relatives - including that of co-pilot Pambos Haralambous.
Pilots of two Greek F-16 fighter jets that intercepted the plane after it lost contact with Greek air traffic controllers had reported seeing the co-pilot slumped over the controls in the cockpit, apparently unconscious, shortly before the plane crashed. There was no sign in the cockpit of the plane’s German pilot, and his body has still not been found.
