A Cypriot Boeing 737 operated by a private jetliner Helios Airways crashed Sunday north of Athens, with 115 passengers including 48 children and six crew members on board, Greek news media reported.
Greek Defense Ministry and fire department said that the plane crashed to a mountain at about 12:20 PM (09:20 GMT) near the coastal town of Grammatikos, about 40 kilometers north of Athens, just a few minutes before its scheduled landing time on a flight from Larnaca International Airport of Cyprus to Prague via Athens.
Police and firefighters at the crash site reportedly said there were no immediate signs of survivors. Among the passengers on the flight were 48 children, said a spokesman for Helios Airways quoted by Athens News Agency.
Greek Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis cut short a long holiday weekend and called an emergency mini-cabinet meeting. He called Cypriot President Tassos Papadopoulos by telephone and expressed his condolences.
Reports said that crew notified Cypriot authorities of a fault in the aircraft's air conditioning unit on approaching Greek airspace, but made no contact with Greek air traffic controllers on entry.
Greek civil aviation authorities alerted the air force in line with anti-terrorism measures. Two F-16 fighter jets sent from a military base in Crete located the aircraft a few minutes later in the southern Aegean, but calls for identification went unheeded and the plane appeared to be out of control, reports said.
Flying at close quarters, air force officers reported that the aircraft's co-pilot appeared to have collapsed over his controls but no captain was visible through the cockpit window. Overhead oxygen masks in the cabin section had dropped into place.
After reporting the aircraft as "renegade", or unidentified, the pilots tracked the airliner at about 38,000 feet until it began to lose height and crashed sparking a blaze.
Firefighters and rescue workers sped to the wreckage as military helicopters patrolled overhead.
Through scenes aired by Greek television stations, plane wreckage was scattered widely about the mountain.
"The most likely thing is that a technical fault was involved, but we are looking into all possible causes and details. It would not be responsible to say anything yet about the cause of the descent," said Greek Government Spokesman Theodoros Roussopoulos.
Reports also disclosed that passengers aboard the flight had sent text messages to relatives complaining of an "Artic chill" in the cabin with people starting to turn blue from the cold.
However, Greek media and Cypriot President's spokesman Marios Karogian said that terrorism had been ruled out in the incident on the basis of collected information.
(Xinhua News Agency August 15, 2005)
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