A Helios Airways jet with 121 people on board crashed yesterday in a mountainous region north of Athens, defense and fire officials said. Greek fire chief Christos Smetis said there were no survivors.
It was not immediately clear why the plane crashed, but reports said the pilots may have been unconscious when the plane went down.
Firefighters searching for survivors amid the burning wreckage of a Cyprus Helios Airways jet that crashed near Athens Sunday have found "the first dead but still no survivors," a fire department spokesman told reporters.
PHOTO: AP
Officials said the plane crashed at about 12:20pm near the coastal town of Grammatikos north of Athens after losing contact with air traffic control.
Eyewitnesses told an Athens radio station the plane was being followed by air force fighter jets when it went down in a gorge about 40km north of Athens.
"There is wreckage everywhere," Grammatikos Mayor George Papageorgiou said from the scene, saying that only the tail section was recognizable. "The fuselage has been destroyed. It fell into a chasm and there are pieces. All the residents are here trying to help."
The flight, with 115 passengers and six crew members on board, was headed from the Cypriot city of Larnaca to Athens International Airport. According to one report, 80 of the passengers were Greek children returning from a trip to Cyprus. After losing touch with the Athens control tower, the Greek air force scrambled two F-16 fighter jets, reports said.
"The plane crashed around 400m from homes in the area," said Miltiadis Merkouris, a Grammatikos city official.
The air force pilots reported no movement in the cockpit of the plane, and it was unclear if the two pilots were unconscious or not in the seats, reports said. The plane did not respond to radio calls, according to reports.
A passenger on the airliner said in a mobile text message to his cousin before the crash that the pilots were slumped and that it was freezing in the plane.
"The pilot has turned blue [in the face]," the passenger said in the SMS message to his cousin, Greek television reported. "Cousin farewell we're freezing," it said.
EUROPEAN TARGETS: The planned Munich center would support TSMC’s European customers to design high-performance, energy-efficient chips, an executive said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday said that it plans to launch a new research-and-development (R&D) center in Munich, Germany, next quarter to assist customers with chip design. TSMC Europe president Paul de Bot made the announcement during a technology symposium in Amsterdam on Tuesday, the chipmaker said. The new Munich center would be the firm’s first chip designing center in Europe, it said. The chipmaker has set up a major R&D center at its base of operations in Hsinchu and plans to create a new one in the US to provide services for major US customers,
‘ABUSE OF POWER’: Lee Chun-yi allegedly used a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a pet grooming salon and take his wife to restaurants, media reports said Control Yuan Secretary-General Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) resigned on Sunday night, admitting that he had misused a government vehicle, as reported by the media. Control Yuan Vice President Lee Hung-chun (李鴻鈞) yesterday apologized to the public over the issue. The watchdog body would follow up on similar accusations made by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and would investigate the alleged misuse of government vehicles by three other Control Yuan members: Su Li-chiung (蘇麗瓊), Lin Yu-jung (林郁容) and Wang Jung-chang (王榮璋), Lee Hung-chun said. Lee Chun-yi in a statement apologized for using a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a
BEIJING’S ‘PAWN’: ‘We, as Chinese, should never forget our roots, history, culture,’ Want Want Holdings general manager Tsai Wang-ting said at a summit in China The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday condemned Want Want China Times Media Group (旺旺中時媒體集團) for making comments at the Cross-Strait Chinese Culture Summit that it said have damaged Taiwan’s sovereignty, adding that it would investigate if the group had colluded with China in the matter and contravened cross-strait regulations. The council issued a statement after Want Want Holdings (旺旺集團有限公司) general manager Tsai Wang-ting (蔡旺庭), the third son of the group’s founder, Tsai Eng-meng (蔡衍明), said at the summit last week that the group originated in “Chinese Taiwan,” and has developed and prospered in “the motherland.” “We, as Chinese, should never
‘A SURVIVAL QUESTION’: US officials have been urging the opposition KMT and TPP not to block defense spending, especially the special defense budget, an official said The US plans to ramp up weapons sales to Taiwan to a level exceeding US President Donald Trump’s first term as part of an effort to deter China as it intensifies military pressure on the nation, two US officials said on condition of anonymity. If US arms sales do accelerate, it could ease worries about the extent of Trump’s commitment to Taiwan. It would also add new friction to the tense US-China relationship. The officials said they expect US approvals for weapons sales to Taiwan over the next four years to surpass those in Trump’s first term, with one of them saying
RSS