His name was Hans-Juergen Merten, 58, of Berlin, according to German authorities and his neighbors near the German capital's Schoenefeld airport. Searchers at the crash site were still looking for three bodies, firefighting officials said Monday - including the pilot. But a Helios representative said the plane had ''no problems and was serviced just last week.'' Greek state television had quoted the Cyprus transport minister as saying the plane had decompression problems in the past. Sunday near Grammatiko, a scenic village 25 miles north of the Greek capital, apparently after running out of fuel. It crashed while on autopilot at 12:05 p.m. The Boeing 737 had been scheduled to continue to Prague, Czech Republic, after Athens. Voutas, a resident of the northern port city of Thessaloniki who had identified himself to Greek media as Sotiris Voutas, faced charges of disseminating false information and causing a public disturbance, police said. The report that the plane was cold was taken as a sign of decompression, but police in Thessaloniki said they had determined he was lying and the name Petridis was not on the Cypriot government's official list of victims. The man, who was identified as 32-year-old Nektarios-Sotirios Voutas, called Greek television stations shortly after the Helios Airways flight crashed, saying his cousin Nikos Petridis sent him a message that read: ''Farewell, cousin, here we're frozen.'' Police in northern Greece also arrested a man who claimed to have received a telephone text message from his cousin who was on the plane before it crashed. Passengers and crew included at least 12 Greeks, one German - the pilot - and a four-member family of Armenian origin. No explanation was given for the discrepancy.Īccording the Cypriot government, at least 10 families with children were among the dead. Initially, Greek and Cypriot officials had said 48 children were on the plane. There had been 21 children aboard Helios Airways flight ZU522 from Larnaca, Cyprus, to Athens, ''all aged 4 and above,'' Greek deputy Health Minister Giorgos Constantopoulos said Monday. Victims' relatives gathered at a central Athens morgue to identify the remains. ''We will seek to determine when they died and how they died,'' chief Koutsaftis said earlier.
team - were trying to determine why he was not in his seat while the Boeing 737 was in peril.Ĭoroners also will examine blood and tissue samples from victims' lungs to determine whether anything they breathed in could have caused their deaths.
The captain's body has yet to be recovered, and Greek investigators - joined by a U.S. Yet many questions remained, including why the co-pilot was unconscious in the cockpit 40 minutes before the crash and why he was alone, with the captain nowhere in sight.
The cause of Sunday's crash, Greece's deadliest airline disaster, appeared to be technical failure resulting in high-altitude decompression and loss of oxygen. Our conclusion is they had circulation and were breathing at the time of death,'' Koutsaftis said, but he added they could have been unconscious.įrench experts will examine the plane's black-box recorders, officials said. ''We have performed autopsies on six people. No arrests were made and she did not say whether police had confiscated any material from the office.Ĭhief Athens coroner Fillipos Koutsaftis, meanwhile, said that tests conducted on the remains showed at least six of the 121 victims were alive when the aircraft went down. Police spokeswoman Christalla Dimitriou said officers ''carried out a search'' after asking the city's court for a search warrant. ATHENS, Greece (AP) - Police in Cyprus raided the offices of Helios Airways in the coastal city of Larnaca on Monday, a day after one of the company's passenger jets slammed into a mountainside near Athens, killing all 121 people on board.
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