'Mayday' Calls Before Greece Crash

A man trying to save the doomed Cypriot airliner cried "Mayday, Mayday," two seconds before the plane crashed near Athens, a Greek official said Monday.

"(It) was a couple of seconds before the crash," chief investigator Akrivos Tsolakis told The Associated Press. "It was a very weak tone of voice."

Tsolakis spoke after presenting a preliminary report to the Transport Ministry on the Aug. 14 Helios Airways crash which killed all 121 people on board. The report said the plane lost cabin pressure and ran out of fuel before slamming into a mountain near Athens.

The report also said there were indications the Boeing 737-300's pilot and co-pilot were incapacitated and that a third man — believed to be a flight attendant — had attempted to steer the plane.

The man in the cockpit had twice tried to issue a distress call – calling out "Mayday, Mayday, Mayday" within the last 10 minutes of flight, and again "Mayday, Mayday" just seconds before impact — but that his communications had apparently been set to the wrong frequency.

"There are indications of technical problems in the pressurization system. ... There is proof that the engines of the plane stopped working because the fuel supply was exhausted, and that this was the final cause of the crash," the report said.

The plane crashed after circling for more than an hour in a holding pattern above the island of Kea, southeast of Athens airport.

The report, a copy of which was sent to The Associated Press, follows the analysis of flight recorders and autopsies on all 118 bodies recovered from the site. Three bodies have not been found.

Helios Flight 522 — from Larnaca, Cyprus, to Athens — crashed on Aug. 14 near the village of Grammatiko, 25 miles north of Athens, in Greece's worst air disaster.

The man who tried to steer the plane is believed to be flight attendant Andreas Prodromou, whose blood was reportedly found in the remains of the cockpit and had received flight training in the past.

"There are indications that, in the pilot's seat ... a man was sitting in the seat, wearing an oxygen mask," it said. "The tone of his voice suggested the person was a man who was suffering or was exhausted."

The preliminary findings were announced after a former chief mechanic at Helios said the plane lost cabin pressure during a December flight after a door apparently was not sealed properly.

On the day of the crash, two Greek air force F-16 fighter planes were scrambled to intercept the flight shortly before the accident.

On Sunday, Public Order Minister Giorgos Voulgarakis repeated government assurances that the plane had not been shot down. On the day of the crash, two Greek air force F-16 fighter planes were scrambled to intercept the flight shortly before the accident.

"The fact that the plane crashed and was not shot down is proven by data from flight recorders and the ammunition checks made on the F-16s ... An explosion in the air would have spread the wreckage over a much wider area," Voulgarakis was quoted as saying by the Chora newspaper.

Voulgarakis said security procedures were modeled on measures drawn up for the Athens Olympics last year.

"If this incident had taken place during the Olympics, the chances of it being shot down would have been extremely high," Voulgarakis said.