According to the AP:
But two fighter jet pilots who scrambled to intercept the plane saw the co-pilot slumped over, oxygen masks in the plane dangling, and two unidentified people trying to take control of the plane. The pilot was not in his seat when the plane crashed, about 2 1/2 hours after the crew first radioed in air conditioning problems.
“It’s odd,” said Terry McVenes, executive air safety chairman for the Air Line Pilots Association, International. “It’s a very rare event to even have a pressurization problem and in general crews are very well trained to deal with it.”
Odd, indeed.
Other bloggers: Pajama Hadin, Political Musings, The Moderate Voice…
Sources:
- 121 Killed in Plane Crash in Greece, 48 of Them Children
- Cyprus plane crash victims “frozen solid”
- Grieving relatives struggle to identify victims of Greece’s worst plane crash
Update (8/16): Another one goes down.
Update II: Pundit Guy says, “Two individuals who were seen by F-16 fighter jet pilots were ID’d as crew members of the doomed flight.” NOT terrorists.
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Oh my.
It has to be difficult to speculate on plane crashes. I have heard that a passenger sent a text message to friend or relative commenting about the freezing cold.
It was a lie:
http://tinyurl.com/amuum
Ooops, sorry, just read that.
Based upon news reports so far, it doesn’t seem particularly odd to me. “Unidentified” seems perfectly reasonable…could you really expect a pilot in one of those F16s to look into the cockpit and see two people he actually knew? “Hey! That’s my neighbors, Greco and Aneke!” I don’t think so.
What they were doing, according to news reports following retrieval of the black box, was attempting to get the plane off of autopilot.
Anyway, I read the term “odd” to be a synonym for “suspicious”. Am I right? Is that what you wanted to convey? If so, what is suspicious about it? Enquiring minds want to know! Or did you mean odd in the sense that it’s odd for a child to attend school with a shampoo mohawk, or something?
I kind of thought that it could have been terrorists, but I also thought, “Why Greece”? I also thought about Payne Stewart the golfer’s plane that had the same thing happen a few years ago. Additionally, I figured that if terrorists wanted a plane to crash that there would have been someone of importance on board, or it would have crashed into something of importance/relevance. But, in this day and age…who knows?
What a horrible tragedy. Dkelsmith, it’s actually mroe advantageous to terrorists to strike at completely innocent, uninfluential people because that renders the popluace thinking “They could hit anybody at anytime” instead of leaving anyone feeling safe because they aren’t “anybody important.”
Also, they could be sore at Greece for holding the 2004 Olympics (and frustrated that they were unable to sabotage that event)
Mark La Roi, perhaps you are right. I hadn’t even thought of that.
It is a horrible tragedy, but…well, I’m glad (if that’s the right word) to see that I’m not the only one wondering if there is something beneath the surface here. Of course, it looks like it really was just an air pressure problem, so I doubt we’ll ever know. How devastating for those whose family died, though. So, so sad.
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