To all Aviation professionals out there - We need your help.
As a family member of one of the accused. I am posting the below letter that one of the accused pilots wife wrote and was published by the Cyprus Mail. It's time to release the truth as to what these pilots / Engineer are going through. There is quite a lot that I would like to say but I believe that the below letter gives a good outline of what is going on. At the moment the defendants are being tried simultaneously in Cyprus and Greece. (2 EU countries) for the same incident?! Human Rights violations are beyond belief with translators failing to translate the simplest sections of such a technical case. Recently the Initial accident investigation report being used in the trial has been retracted by the 2 investigators who wrote it due to New physical evidence which counteracts their report. They requested that the case be reopened however this was rejected. Direct breach of ICAO Annex 13.
Please read it and pass this information on. Pilots and Engineers should not be tried in civil courts and treated like criminals especially when the physical evidence proves they are innocent!
Why is new evidence in the Helios crash being ignored? - Cyprus Mail
''I am shocked that the Cypriot press is mute about the new evidence regarding the causes of the Helios air crash as well as the proceedings in the criminal action in Greece.
As the wife of an innocent man - a professional pilot and extremely responsible person who was at the time the chief pilot of the company; an individual who has been wrongfully prosecuted, I believe I must speak up and make the public aware of the brutal violations of all professional ethics and fundamental human rights during the court proceedings in Greece.
For years the media, and the higher levels of power, speculated about the causes of the crash top appease the discontent of the public. At the end, through manipulation of public opinion they succeeded in creating the ‘villains’ destined to be used as scapegoats for the rage of all who suffered the unbearable losses in the crash.
In its final report, the Greek Board of Investigation (AAIASB) threw the whole blame on the two pilots wjp were portrayed as incompetent suicidal idiots. The sequence of their alleged actions, as detailed in the official report of Mr Tsolakis, which was not supported with any evidence, is a hypothesis that will not stand the test of the new findings of independent experts.
According to the official report’s hypothesis, the pressurisation system mode switch was ‘forgotten’ in the ‘manual’ position after the pre-flight check and inspection of the aircraft, and was left in that same position throughout the flight. Under the said scenario, everybody on the plane but one steward suffered hypoxia due to the slow depressurisation of the aircraft.
It is unacceptable, but a fact, that the switch at issue mysteriously disappeared. Other important components of the plane were manipulated or destroyed as was proven in the court in Cyprus. Until this day, there is no explanation why only one-third of the 256 parameters recording the condition of all major aircraft systems and flight data of the recovered “black box”, were decoded and analysed.
It is also inexplicable why the professional investigators failed to notice that a great number of the analysed parameters did not match or make sense at all. According to the data provided in the report, the passenger aircraft must have flown at supersonic speed while keeping its fuel consumption at the levels of a luxury limousine.
These astounding irregularities were discovered five years after the crash and were submitted during the proceedings in Cyprus. As a result of the discovered omissions Ajet, the company-successor of Helios assigned AIR - a team of independent Canadian experts, the task of analysing elements of the pressurisation system. The experts’ scientifically based conclusion is that the mode switch of the pressurisation system was in position ‘auto’ and not ‘manual’, as the Greek Board alleged. The logical question then is: what happened at the beginning of the flight that led to its fatal end? Why were the masks of the pilots never found but at the same time the communication switch was in the ‘mask’ position?
The standard practice in similar cases is to re-open the case/investigation and find the real causes. Contrary to the recommendations of numerous aviation organizations and investigation boards, the Greek board (AAIASB) refused to re-open the investigation referring to a consultation with Boeing, who are a party to the case. At a hearing of the Court of Appeal in Athens, Mr Tsolakis as witness and seeking to defend his report mentioned that in the course of the investigation he relied on the assistance of two prominent NTSB experts whose competence he had no doubt about. Later, it emerged that those same experts, Mr Caj Frostell and Mr Ron Schleede, sent an official letter in which they confirmed the substance of AIR’s evidence and recommended the re-opening of the investigation for the purposes of aviation safety.
The “hypothesis” report of the Greek board (AAIASB) became grounds for two parallel criminal lawsuits, which although not barred in the EU, is profound in its deliberate cruelty.
The lawsuit in Cyprus was based on an independent police investigation. The judges had time and opportunity to get acquainted with the complicated technical documentation of the case and to ultimately hold, despite political pressure, that the evidence submitted was such that no fair and reasonable court could convict a person. All prosecution witnesses, who could competently evaluate pilots and their performance, unequivocally stated that the pilots of the fateful flight were competent and there was no basis for them to be grounded before the flight.
In contrast to Cyprus, the magistrate's court in Greece accepted the AAIASB report as gospel, and with no second thought hastily sentenced four innocent people to 123 years jail. The news flashed around the world, bringing joy and satisfaction to some, pain and anguish from the obvious injustice to others.
1. Greece refused the defendants presentation of certain important exhibits related to the pressurisation system of the plane that were available in the Cyprus court proceedings.
2. The prosecution relied heavily for its case on the official accident report of the Greek investigators (AAIASB), notwithstanding the prohibition on this in the Chicago Convention of 1944 and European Regulation 996/2010 . They used it as a road map for the prosecution despite the new evidence provided by independent accident investigation experts from Canada, UK and USA, that challenged the conclusions in the final report.
3. Important exhibits that would have demonstrated the errors in the official report have been lost while in the keeping of the Greek Accident Investigation Board (AAIASB).
4. The Court failed in its obligation to provide adequate translation. The interpreter was not sufficiently competent to deal with the complex technical issues raised, but the request for proper interpreter, made evident from two of the defendants, who were foreigners, was rejected.
5. During the course of the hearings in Greece, the Bar council called on lawyers to strike. The court was requested to adjourn the hearing, but in flagrant breach of custom and practice, denied the defendants their basic right to representation and the trial continued in the absence of defence counsel. During these days a series of important witnesses testified, but the defence was not able to examine them.
6. The court also refused the defendants a request to allow a simple reconstruction of the workings of the pressurizsation system of a similar aircraft which would have demonstrated the impossibility of certain key findings in the official report.
7. The court exerted pressure on proceedings, and the defendants were not given time or opportunity to call a substantial number of their witnesses, most of which are experts who do not live in Greece and are engaged in professional duties in different parts of the world.
After many international institutions were notified about the numerous procedural and other violations during the investigation and trial, we believed that the Court of Appeal in Athens would proceed in a way consistent with the principles of European legislation, which allows for a fair trial. On October 26, 2012, the appellate trial began. The judges, entrusted with this technically complex case and supposed to start from the very beginning according to the Greek law, heard a total of three witnesses, whose competency to evaluate pilots’ performance is doubtful, and surprisingly concluded after the testimonies that the prosecution could rest. While the defence was provided a single day to summon all its witnesses, the Court announced that it would be ready with its opinion within three days. Aviation experts from all over the world readily flew in from thousands of miles to defend the truth. All of them unanimously stated that the pilots of the ill-fated Helios flight had been competent.
The experts proved that the conclusions of the official report were faulty and that the investigation must be re-opened in order to find the real causes of the crash.
It is more detrimental to society to convict innocent people than not to have a conviction. If today, despite the pain, accumulated wrath and thirst for redemption, we allow this judicial farce to victimise innocent people and to add to the number of the victims of the tragic crash, it will rest upon our own conscience''