plane puzzle

by **Dreams End** » Tue Aug 16, 2005 9:33 am

Planes are dropping out of the sky these days, but nothing else is clear. A Cypriot plane goes down. f-16's had been scrambled and had seen a captain slumped over in the cockpit...other pilot wasn't there. The oxygen masks were down. No radio contact. A text message had been received from a passenger that said: "Farewell cousin. Here we're frozen." In fact the bodies were reported as actually being FROZEN before the plane hit. <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/15/AR2005081500319_pf.html">www.washingtonpost.com/wp...19_pf.html</a> Possibly, say authorities, there was a catastrophic loss of cabin pressure which would explain all of the above. EXCEPT!!!!! The text message was a hoax and all the bodies autopsied so far, including that of the captain were alive when the plane crashed. (this would presumably rule out their being "frozen solid".) <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe/08/16/greece.crash/index.html">www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/eu...index.html</a> A complete 180 degree turnaround. No explanation as to what the pilot had seen or why Reuters (via Washington Post in first link) claimed the bodies were "frozen solid." I've seen no passenger lists, so I don't know if there's anyone on that plane that could have been targeted so I have no idea what the motivation might be, but there's something extremely suspicious about this crash. And now, breaking news is that a plane has crashed in Venezuela. The only real info so far is that the pilot had reported engine trouble before the crash. <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/americas/08/16/venezuela.crash.ap/index.html">www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/am...index.html</a> I'm editing this to include the text of the Washington Post article because I have a feeling it's going to go away. ad_icon <blockquote>Quote:<hr>washingtonpost.com Cyprus Plane Crash Victims 'Frozen Solid' Reuters Monday, August 15, 2005; 8:57 AM ATHENS, Aug 15 -- Most of the bodies recovered from a Cypriot plane that crashed near Athens with 121 people on board were frozen solid, a Greek official said, suggesting the airliner was a flying tomb before it plunged to earth. As accident investigators combed the crash site for clues, aviation experts were baffled at what appeared to have been a catastrophic failure of cabin pressure or oxygen supply in freezing temperatures at 35,000 feet -- nearly 10 km (6 miles) up, higher than Mount Everest. One expert said reports of extreme cold suggested there was no air circulating in the cabin. "Autopsy on passengers so far shows the bodies were frozen solid, including some whose skin was charred by flames from the crash," the Defence Ministry source, with access to the investigation, told Reuters on Monday. Early indications suggest the 115 passengers and six crew were dead or unconscious when the Helios Airways Boeing 737 crashed 40 km (25 miles) north of Athens on Sunday. There were no survivors. Rescue workers recovered the pilot's body, a German identified as Martin Hans Gurgen, and said they had found the plane's black box flight recorders, including the one that records pilot conversations, and are being sent to France for analysis. The recovery of the black boxes is crucial to determining the cause of the worst air disaster in Greece and the worst involving a Cypriot airline. Greek TV reported on Sunday that the pilot had told air traffic controllers the plane was experiencing problems with its air conditioning system shortly before contact was lost. A passenger list released by Cyprus' Transport Ministry showed a family of four Armenians living in Cyprus, 12 Greeks and 104 Cypriots were killed in the crash. There were 17 children under the age of 16 on board, the youngest aged 4. Relatives of some victims were on their way from Cyprus to the crash site to start the grim task of trying to identify loved ones. At Larnaca airport in Cyprus, from where the doomed plane took off, crew and passengers on Monday refused to board an aircraft belonging to Helios Airways, the state-run Cyprus News Agency reported. About 100 passengers due to fly from Larnaca to Sofia demanded to travel on planes of other airlines. "First the crew refused to board, then the passengers," it said. Helios Airways later announced it had grounded its fleet, a Cyprus Transport Ministry spokesman said. The Mediterranean island of Cyprus started three days of mourning with flags at half mast in a long weekend holiday that is the busiest of the summer for Greeks and Cypriots. TERRORISM RULED OUT The plane was on a flight from Larnaca to Prague with a stop in Athens. Greek authorities ruled out any hijacking or terrorism links to the crash. The flight was declared "renegade" when it entered Greek air space and failed to make radio contact. Two F-16 air force jets were scrambled to investigate and reported that the co-pilot was slumped in the cockpit and the pilot was not visible. Defence Ministry officials said 90 minutes elapsed between the alert being raised and the plane crashing at 12:03 p.m. Greek government spokesman Theodore Roussopoulos said the F-16 pilots reported that with the pilots out of action there may have been a last-gasp effort by others on the plane to bring it back under control. "The F-16s saw two individuals in the cockpit seemingly trying to regain control of the airplane," Roussoupoulos said. It was not known if they were passengers or other crew. "The F-16s also saw oxygen masks down when they got close to the aircraft. The aircraft was making continuous right-hand turns to show it had lost radio contact." "A passenger on the doomed plane said in an SMS text to his cousin in Athens: "The pilot has turned blue. Cousin farewell, we're freezing." Kieran Daly, editor of Air Transport Intelligence, told Reuters: "When he talks about being extremely cold, that really suggests that there was possibly no air circulating in the cabin at all." Other questions included how the plane appeared to fly for so long with the pilots unconscious or dead. Media speculated it was on auto pilot and crashed when it ran out of fuel after being in the air for twice the scheduled flight time. The Defence Ministry said it suspected the plane's oxygen supply or pressurisation system may have malfunctioned, which could have led to death within seconds for all on board. Loss of cabin pressure was identified as the probable cause of other similar but smaller-scale air crashes in recent years. Golfer Payne Stewart and five others were killed when their Learjet aircraft crashed in the United States in 1999 after flying for more than four hours without radio contact. (Additional reporting by George Georgiopoulos in Athens and Jean Christou in Nicosia) © 2005 The Washington Post Company Advertising Links What's this?<hr></blockquote> Edited by: <A HREF=http://p097.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=dreamsend@rigorousintuition>Dreams End</A> at: 8/16/05 7:42 am

by **toscaveritas** » Tue Aug 16, 2005 2:06 pm

<blockquote>Quote:<hr> CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) - Venezuelan authorities said on Tuesday they had started searching for a passenger plane traveling from Panama that lost contact with air traffic control.<hr></blockquote> <blockquote>Quote:<hr>Col. Antonio Rivero told local television that the authorities had lost contact with the aircraft around 4 a.m. local time and that there had been reports of an explosion in the remote area near the Colombian border. It was not clear how many people were on the aircraft or which airline it belonged to.<hr></blockquote> <a href="http://olympics.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2005-08-16T114339Z_01_DIT642233_RTRIDST_0_NEWS-CRASH-VENEZUELA-DC.XML">olympics.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2005-08-16T114339Z_01_DIT642233_RTRIDST_0_NEWS-CRASH-VENEZUELA-DC.XML</a> Around 160 killed in Venezuela plane crash <a href="http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/NewsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2005-08-16T162838Z_01_MCC641980_RTRUKOC_0_UK-CRASH-VENEZUELA.xml">today.reuters.co.uk/news/NewsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2005-08-16T162838Z_01_MCC641980_RTRUKOC_0_UK-CRASH-VENEZUELA.xml</a> <hr /><blockquote>Quote:<hr>CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) - A Colombian jet travelling from Panama crashed in Venezuela on Tuesday after its engines failed, killing all passengers and crew in one of the country's worst air disasters, officials said.<hr></blockquote> no more mention of 'explosions' hmm

by **Qutb** » Tue Aug 16, 2005 2:31 pm

I would be interested in seeing the passenger list on that Colombian plane that crashed in Venezuela...

by **antiaristo** » Tue Aug 16, 2005 2:50 pm

Black box missing recording device, investigator says <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2005-08-16-greek-probe_x.htm">www.usatoday.com/news/wor...robe_x.htm</a>

by **Avalon** » Tue Aug 16, 2005 3:00 pm

Aside from what may have happened, it sounds like typical Mercury Retrograde occurences.

by **antiaristo** » Tue Aug 16, 2005 3:31 pm

Qutb, This is most worrying. I've just seen on the TV that the passengers were FRENCH.

by **Dreams End** » Tue Aug 16, 2005 3:46 pm

The passengers were french citizens from Martinique, not from the French mainland. The explosion could have happened after impact, so we'll have to wait and see if any more info comes out. As for the cypriot plane...that remains unexplained....how did those bodies "unfreeze" in 24 hours of reporting?

by **ZeroHaven** » Tue Aug 16, 2005 3:58 pm

DreamsEnd.. the two newspaper stories do not contradict each other. The coroners in the CNN story are simply saying some people were alive and breathing when the plane crashed.. this does not discount that these people could have been mostly unconscious and partially frozen before the crash. The plane crashed in/on a mountain. Freezing temperatures on the mountain may have frozen bodies the rest of the way before workers got to them. The Post article also contains several bits of first-impression speculation based on what was visible. "baffled at what appeared to have been a catastrophic failure..." <img src="http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a239/ZeroHaven/tinhat.gif"/>

by **Dreams End** » Tue Aug 16, 2005 4:20 pm

<blockquote>Quote:<hr>"All the autopsies on victims carried out so far, including on the co-pilot, showed they died of their injuries meaning they were alive when the plane crashed," Reuters reported Philippos Koutsaftis as saying. Examinations of 20 bodies, including that of a flight attendant, have already indicated they were alive when the plane crashed, an Athens coroner said. <hr></blockquote> Think he just picked the wrong bodies? 20 out of 20? As for the frozen bodies...you might want to have a look at pictures of the crash site. I don't think they froze after hitting the ground. Here's one: Looks rather balmy to me. <img src="http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/40688000/jpg/_40688410_apcrashscene203.jpg" style="border:0;"/>

by **ZeroHaven** » Tue Aug 16, 2005 4:50 pm

Yes, based on that additional report, they did indeed freeze in the air after all. the BBC report you got the picture from : "It seems that the deceased, in most cases, although not all, expired before the crash," said Interior Minister Prokopis Pavlopoulos. Not that he has any right to give a medical opinion.. but he said it because it sure looked that way with them being frozen and all. <a href="http://dailytelegraph.news.com.au/story.jsp?sectionid=1258&storyid=3623448" target="top">direct coroner quote</a> "I have done an autopsy on six bodies and first evidence is that when they were killed they had circulation in their heart and lungs," Greek Chief Coroner Philippos Koutsaftis said. "That does not mean that they were conscious but they had breath and circulation. They had circulation and heartbeat, so they were alive." He said a final judgment on the victims' fate would have to await examination of more bodies and toxicology reports. So yes the bodies were frozen, but they still had evidence of life. My only point is that the stories don't contradict. If you want to focus on something REALLY freaky.. where the hell is the PILOT? <img src="http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a239/ZeroHaven/tinhat.gif"/>

by **Dreams End** » Tue Aug 16, 2005 7:09 pm

Yeah, where is the pilot? Also, witnesses said the bodies had oxygen masks, so it wasn't so sudden that they couldn't get masks on...but then they lost consciousness...with the masks on? Seems like they couldn't have frozen so fast that the pilot couldn't have reduced altitude...or copilot. And then one report says they were on autopilot and another said they were in a constant right turn to indicate lack of radio. But who was able to put it into a right turn but couldn't take it down to safer altitude. I'm not saying it was necessarily a hit of some kind...it's in the "weird" category for me right now.

by **Asta** » Tue Aug 16, 2005 7:48 pm

My first impression after seeing the photos of the crash was that there were very identifiable parts of the plane remaining at the crash site. I see a tail section, don't you? And, I am sorry this is off topic, but WHY? I ask, wasn't there identifiable plane wreckage at the Pentagon and Pennsylvania's Flight 93 crash sites on 9/11? Those planes didn't drop from 35,000 feet. I'm sorry but the Greek aircrash photos made me even more suspicious of 9/11.

by **smiths** » Tue Aug 16, 2005 10:35 pm

spot on asta, it doesnt take a nobel prize for science to work out that when planes hit immovable objects big bits of planes and people get strewn around crash site, but then its the same as the windsor fire in madrid, we didnt really need another real event to confirm earlier events were fakes

by **Dreams End** » Wed Aug 17, 2005 10:11 am

I've seen a video of some sort of military test of a plane hitting a concrete barrier and the plane did seem to vaporize. Of course, it also didn't put a hole in the barrier, so it does nothing to clear up the Pentagon mystery.

by **Dreams End** » Wed Aug 17, 2005 7:03 pm

This story may simply be about really bad reporting. I don't know. Check out this story:<blockquote>Quote:<hr> Cabin Staff Struggled To Control Crash Plane By Tabitha Morgan in Nicosia The Telegraph - UK 8-16-5 The cabin crew of the Helios Airlines plane that crashed in Greece on Sunday tried to bring it under control but could do nothing to save the aircraft, it was disclosed yesterday. Video footage retrieved from the nose cones of the F16 fighter planes scrambled to accompany the stricken Cypriot aircraft showed a man and a woman enter the cockpit, said Greek media reports. They were thought to be a newly-trained pilot standing in as cabin crew and his stewardess girlfriend. The stewardess was seen in the captain's seat, while the first officer remained unconscious in the right-hand seat. The couple wrestled in vain with the controls of the Boeing 737, Greek military sources said. All 121 passengers and crew died when the plane plunged into a hillside north of Athens during a flight from Larnaca. Autopsies on 26 bodies, including the co-pilot, showed they were alive but not necessarily conscious when the plane went down. Earlier reports suggested that all on board may have frozen to death before the crash. Cypriot television said many of the bodies retrieved were still wearing oxygen masks. Once the masks had been released, prompted by a drop in pressure, the cabin crew would have expected the plane to descend immediately from 34,00 ft to a breathable altitude below 15,000 ft. Aviation experts believe that when this failed to happen cabin staff entered the cockpit, aware that the flight crew's emergency oxygen supply was limited. But with the pilots incapacitated the attendants lacked the skill to fly the airliner or even to make a mayday call. Experts said that by this stage the jet would have been beyond the range of the Cyprus control centre in Nicosia - the last frequency tuned on the radio. Even if the cabin crew had been familiar with the radio they were unlikely to have known how to tune either to Athens control or international emergency. Back in the cabin, the passengers' oxygen supply was dwindling. Helios Airways admitted yesterday that the crashed aircraft had experienced a decompression problem in the past. A statement on the airline's website said the incident occurred on a flight from Warsaw to Larnaca last December and the plane "landed in accordance with normal procedures". Helios went on to say that the incident was cleared at the time by the Cypriot air accident investigators and Britain's Civil Aviation Authority, which did not question the aircraft's maintenance. The authorities at Birmingham International Airport, meanwhile, said that a day before the crash in Greece another Helios Airways Boeing 737 had reported difficulties with its wing flaps. Emergency services were deployed but the plane landed safely. A Greek man was yesterday charged with disseminating false information after police said he falsely claimed to have received a text message from a passenger before Sunday's crash. Nektarios Voutas, 32, said he had received a mobile phone call and changed the wording of the supposed text in different media interviews. His arraignment was delayed after he tripped outside the public prosecutor's office and had to be treated for face injuries in hospital. Greek aviation officials yesterday expressed doubts over whether the crash aircraft's black box voice recorder would be recovered. Capt Akrivos Tsolakis, the head of the Air Accident Investigation and Aviation Safety Board, said that only the cover of the recorder had been retrieved. This was badly damaged, so it was unlikely that the contents, if found, could reveal much about the flight's last moments. In Cyprus, demands for explanations for the accident from grieving relatives were becoming louder. * A Colombian jet travelling from Panama to the French Caribbean island of Martinique crashed in Venezuela yesterday, killing all 152 passengers and eight crew. The pilot of the West Caribbean Airways MD-82 reported engine trouble before contact was lost and the plane came down in farmland. © Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2005. <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=1AHZZ1T4QDN">www.telegraph.co.uk/news/...AHZZ1T4QDN</a> 3XQFIQMGCM5WAVCBQUJVC?xml=/news/2005/08/17/whelios17.xm l&sSheet=/news/2005/08/17/ixnewstop.html <hr></blockquote> Within this ONE story, we find that one of the flight attendants was a "newly trained pilot." But later it says: <blockquote>Quote:<hr> But with the pilots incapacitated the attendants lacked the skill to fly the airliner or even to make a mayday call.<hr></blockquote> I realize a new pilot would have a limited skillset, but I would think radio control and reducing altitude would be among those. Sheesh. I mean, 3 guys can train on Cessnas and do precise maneuvers in huge jets, and this "newly trained pilot" can't lower the altitude? Also remember that somebody had the presence of mind to put them into a constant right turn, signalling no radio. Who did that? Now the official word on the autopsied bodies...they were alive at crash but not necessarily conscious. I can't think what this means. I suppose the only way to explain that normally is that the cabin ran out of oxygen but then the plane crashed before the victims actually died. Here's what had to have happened if we don't reach beyond the accident theory. Plane depressurizes. For some reason, oxygen masks in the cockpit don't drop automatically and the pilot doesn't notice the depressurization. I guess the little red light that flashes wasn't working. So the pilots are out quickly, but the attendants, one of whom is a pilot, get into the cockpit, see the unconscious pilots and try to control the airplane. Unfortunately, the newly trained pilot was trained via a correspondence course and couldn't reduce altitude or use the radio. Fortunately, he did know how to put the plane in a constant right hand turn to signal no radio. (This is important, because the only reason I can think he wouldn't know how to lower altitude is that he didn't know how to disengage the autopilot.) It couldn't have been the pilot who put the plane into the rightward turn, as the first thing he would have done would be to lower altitude. And no bodies were frozen, it was just Reuters having a little fun.

plane puzzle

plane puzzle

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Re: plane puzzle

Hmmmmmm

Merc

Venezuelan crash

Re: Venezuelan crash

Re: Just to keep clear on details

Re: Just to keep clear on details

Re: Just to keep clear on details

Re: Just to keep clear on details

As an aside...

wreckage

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