George: orphan of ghost flight 522
Shattered family of an Australian-Cypriot … Sophia, 10, and Uanna, 9, died with their parents, Demos and Margarita Xiourouppa, but George, 2, stayed behind in Cyprus.
Photo: David Mariuz Peace be with you Little ones
By Penelope Debelle, Jordan Baker and agencies in Grammatiko, GreeceAugust 16, 2005
Australian-Cypriot Demos Xiourouppa died with his wife and two young daughters on flight 522, among 121 people killed in the crash that has been blamed on a catastrophic loss of cabin pressure.
But the couple's youngest child, two-year-old George, survived because he stayed behind with Mr Xiourouppa's parents, who were visiting Cyprus from Adelaide.
Most of the bodies recovered from the Cypriot aircraft had been "frozen solid", a Greek Defence source said. The passengers and crew are believed to have been dead or unconscious - with the pilots slumped in their seats - when the Boeing 737 plunged to earth on Sunday.
Mr Xiourouppa, 39, his wife, Margarita, 34, and their Cyprus-born daughters, Sophia, 10, and Uanna, 9, were travelling to Athens. Mr Xiourouppa's cousin, Terry Karittevli, said the girls had wanted a holiday in Greece and the family had left on a week's holiday, leaving George with Mr and Mrs Xiourouppa, his grandparents. "It's the hottest time in Cyprus at the moment and everything shuts down for a couple of weeks for holidays and everyone goes all over Europe," Mr Karittevli said.
A passenger on the doomed flight had time to send a mobile phone text message to his cousin, reporting "the pilot has turned blue". The message ended with "cousin farewell we're freezing". The cabin pressure fault triggered the deployment of the aircraft's emergency oxygen masks, but the crew was unable to stop the cabin temperature plummeting.
Rescuers have recovered the body of a pilot. They also said they had recovered the two flight recorders, including the one that records pilot conversations, crucial to determining the cause of Greece's worst air disaster.
Relatives of some victims, many of whom were enraged by delays in Helios Airways releasing details of passengers on board, were on their way from Cyprus to the crash site near Athens to begin identifying bodies.
Other passengers and crew refused to board a Helios aircraft yesterday. About 100 passengers scheduled to fly from Larnaca, in Cyprus, to Sofia, in Bulgaria, demanded to travel on other airlines. First the crew refused to board, then the passengers, Cyprus News Agency reported.
Later, Nicosia-Helios Airways, the owner of the crashed Cyprus airliner, grounded all aircraft.
The apparent failure of cabin pressure or oxygen supply at 35,000 feet - nearly 10 kilometres up, has astounded aviation experts. The plane appeared to fly for nearly an hour with the pilot and co-pilot unconscious or dead. Possible explanations include that the plane was on autopilot as it approached Athens airport.
There was also a mystery over the last minutes of the flight, which was declared "renegade" when it entered Greek air space and failed to make radio contact, causing two F-16 air force jets to scramble to investigate. All 115 passengers and six crew died, most burnt beyond recognition, when the plane crashed into mountains about 40 kilometres north of Athens.
The plane was flying from Larnaca to Prague via Athens. An airline spokeswoman and Greek authorities ruled out hijacking or terrorism links to the crash.
Cyprus went into three days of mourning, with flags at half-mast on the long weekend that is the busiest of the summer for Greeks and Cypriots.
Mr Xiourouppa, who ran an electrical business in Cyprus, moved to Adelaide aged 10 and attended Enfield High School and Flinders University before returning in the early 1990s to Cyprus, where he met Margarita. The Department of Foreign Affairs said both their children held Australian citizenship.
"It was devastating, it's tragic," said Mr Karittevli. "You hear about it happening to other people but you just never expect it to happen to you." Mr Xiourouppa's two brothers will leave Adelaide today for Cyprus with Mr Karittevli's father and an aunt.
"He was a hard worker, a family man," said Zac Partou, a cousin through marriage and a close friend from Adelaide. "He had three nice children and he helped his dad a lot."
A member of Sydney's Cypriot community, Ellie Stassi, said the family had been living in the village of Aradippou. "It is a big shock to all of us. He was only 39 years old," said Mrs Stassi, of Mortdale. "His father was very proud because one of his sons at least went back to the village and continued [the family tradition]."
She said Mr Xiourouppa's parents flew from Adelaide to Cyprus a month ago for a visit.
■ Lorna Edwards reports: A Civil Aviation Safety Authority spokesman, Peter Gibson, said while it had been speculated that decompression caused the crash, it was too early to say whether similar aircraft in Australia to the Boeing 737-300 needed modification.
"Even if it was decompression, we have absolutely no idea at this stage what caused it so you can't even contemplate a response to this accident yet because it such early days," he said.
Qantas said it had 11 such aircraft, while Virgin Blue has none
Link Here
Photo: David Mariuz Peace be with you Little ones
By Penelope Debelle, Jordan Baker and agencies in Grammatiko, GreeceAugust 16, 2005
Australian-Cypriot Demos Xiourouppa died with his wife and two young daughters on flight 522, among 121 people killed in the crash that has been blamed on a catastrophic loss of cabin pressure.
But the couple's youngest child, two-year-old George, survived because he stayed behind with Mr Xiourouppa's parents, who were visiting Cyprus from Adelaide.
Most of the bodies recovered from the Cypriot aircraft had been "frozen solid", a Greek Defence source said. The passengers and crew are believed to have been dead or unconscious - with the pilots slumped in their seats - when the Boeing 737 plunged to earth on Sunday.
Mr Xiourouppa, 39, his wife, Margarita, 34, and their Cyprus-born daughters, Sophia, 10, and Uanna, 9, were travelling to Athens. Mr Xiourouppa's cousin, Terry Karittevli, said the girls had wanted a holiday in Greece and the family had left on a week's holiday, leaving George with Mr and Mrs Xiourouppa, his grandparents. "It's the hottest time in Cyprus at the moment and everything shuts down for a couple of weeks for holidays and everyone goes all over Europe," Mr Karittevli said.
A passenger on the doomed flight had time to send a mobile phone text message to his cousin, reporting "the pilot has turned blue". The message ended with "cousin farewell we're freezing". The cabin pressure fault triggered the deployment of the aircraft's emergency oxygen masks, but the crew was unable to stop the cabin temperature plummeting.
Rescuers have recovered the body of a pilot. They also said they had recovered the two flight recorders, including the one that records pilot conversations, crucial to determining the cause of Greece's worst air disaster.
Relatives of some victims, many of whom were enraged by delays in Helios Airways releasing details of passengers on board, were on their way from Cyprus to the crash site near Athens to begin identifying bodies.
Other passengers and crew refused to board a Helios aircraft yesterday. About 100 passengers scheduled to fly from Larnaca, in Cyprus, to Sofia, in Bulgaria, demanded to travel on other airlines. First the crew refused to board, then the passengers, Cyprus News Agency reported.
Later, Nicosia-Helios Airways, the owner of the crashed Cyprus airliner, grounded all aircraft.
The apparent failure of cabin pressure or oxygen supply at 35,000 feet - nearly 10 kilometres up, has astounded aviation experts. The plane appeared to fly for nearly an hour with the pilot and co-pilot unconscious or dead. Possible explanations include that the plane was on autopilot as it approached Athens airport.
There was also a mystery over the last minutes of the flight, which was declared "renegade" when it entered Greek air space and failed to make radio contact, causing two F-16 air force jets to scramble to investigate. All 115 passengers and six crew died, most burnt beyond recognition, when the plane crashed into mountains about 40 kilometres north of Athens.
The plane was flying from Larnaca to Prague via Athens. An airline spokeswoman and Greek authorities ruled out hijacking or terrorism links to the crash.
Cyprus went into three days of mourning, with flags at half-mast on the long weekend that is the busiest of the summer for Greeks and Cypriots.
Mr Xiourouppa, who ran an electrical business in Cyprus, moved to Adelaide aged 10 and attended Enfield High School and Flinders University before returning in the early 1990s to Cyprus, where he met Margarita. The Department of Foreign Affairs said both their children held Australian citizenship.
"It was devastating, it's tragic," said Mr Karittevli. "You hear about it happening to other people but you just never expect it to happen to you." Mr Xiourouppa's two brothers will leave Adelaide today for Cyprus with Mr Karittevli's father and an aunt.
"He was a hard worker, a family man," said Zac Partou, a cousin through marriage and a close friend from Adelaide. "He had three nice children and he helped his dad a lot."
A member of Sydney's Cypriot community, Ellie Stassi, said the family had been living in the village of Aradippou. "It is a big shock to all of us. He was only 39 years old," said Mrs Stassi, of Mortdale. "His father was very proud because one of his sons at least went back to the village and continued [the family tradition]."
She said Mr Xiourouppa's parents flew from Adelaide to Cyprus a month ago for a visit.
■ Lorna Edwards reports: A Civil Aviation Safety Authority spokesman, Peter Gibson, said while it had been speculated that decompression caused the crash, it was too early to say whether similar aircraft in Australia to the Boeing 737-300 needed modification.
"Even if it was decompression, we have absolutely no idea at this stage what caused it so you can't even contemplate a response to this accident yet because it such early days," he said.
Qantas said it had 11 such aircraft, while Virgin Blue has none
Link Here
posted by Kangaroo Brisbane Australia at 5:00 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home