![]() ![]() Each pilot has a separate oxygen feed and the Boeing 737-300, built in 1998, was likely equipped with the special quick-donning masks designed so that pilots can put them on with one hand in less than five seconds. Investigators will want to determine if the oxygen bottles that feed the vital flow to the flight crew - a system separate from the shorter-lived, lower-pressure system designed to provide oxygen to passengers - was functioning properly. Even a few seconds of hesitation or confusion can leave pilots unconscious. "The immediate donning of oxygen masks by the flight crew is the essential first step after an airplane loses cabin pressure at high altitude," Stanley Mohler, a medical doctor and expert in aviation hypoxia, concluded after studying a series of accidents involving depressurization. No word had been heard from the pilots since shortly after reaching cruising attitude about 30 minutes after takeoff. The aircraft, with 115 passengers and a crew of six on board, circled repeatedly around that point before apparently running out of fuel and crashing more than 90 minutes after its scheduled landing time. The Boeing 737 crashed about 40 km from Athens, killing all on board when it plunged into a hillside north of the city's airport and close to a waypoint - or navigational location - that flight crews can program into the autopilot. Helios Airlines, a subsidiary of a British travel firm that runs cheap charters from the United Kingdom and Eastern Europe to vacation destinations, subsequently grounded all its flights. Medical studies show pilots have about 20 seconds to put on oxygen masks after a sudden decompression at 35,000 feet - about the altitude the Helios jetliner was flying.Ĭypriot police raided the company's offices yesterday and crews and passengers in Bulgaria balked at boarding one of the company's other aircraft.
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