by YFred » Tue Jan 13, 2009 2:30 am
This one also makes interesting reading.
Former civil aviation official claims gross negligence
By Elias Hazou
(archive article - Wednesday, August 30, 2006)
A FORMER official with Civil Aviation yesterday fingered the department for apathy and lack of professional ethos, saying these played a big part in last year’s crash of a Cypriot airliner.
Charalambos Hadjigeorgiou, ex-director of the Civil Aviation’s licensing department-turned whistleblower, was testifying to a committee of inquiry in Nicosia tasked with finding liability for the disaster that cost the lives of 121 people.
In its second day of proceedings, the committee, headed by former Supreme Court judge Panayiotis Kallis, heard claims that negligence was the order of the day in the corridors of Civil Aviation, the department whose job it is to ensure air safety.
Not one to pull any punches, Hadjigeorgiou named persons in key positions who carried out their duties negligently and in a slipshod manner.
The department was characterised by an absence of discipline, he claimed.
And even though the many problems – such as insufficient manpower – were known to the people in charge and often brought up at meetings, nothing was done to remedy the situation.
For example, a proposal to hire more staff fell by the wayside.
But more alarmingly, Hadjigeorgiou accused, no in-flight checks were ever carried out aboard the ill-fated Boeing 737, despite repeated incidents of falling temperatures inside the cabin.
On Monday, a stewardess told the committee that the aircraft had experienced some problems during a flight to London just one day before the crash. She said ice had accumulated on the cabin door, adding that passengers had been complaining that they were cold, forcing the pilot to switch on the heating, adding that a funny noise could be heard during take off and landing.
It has also transpired that on the fateful day, the last man to have had contact with the pilot of the plane was an unqualified stand-in, as the proper official had been on night-shift duty.
Hadjigeorgiou also alleged that Civil Aviation was biased in favour of Helios Airways at the expense of other airlines.
For instance, he said, charter firm Eurocypria had on one occasion asked for permission to hire two American aviators, but their request was denied. By contrast, Helios had no problem hiring five pilots, even though they did not have EU licences, Hadjigeorgiou maintained.
Worse, Hadjigeorgiou said, Civil Aviation was deliberately misleading EU air safety authorities by painting a rosy picture of the department, when that was anything but.
In one case, he had personally asked permission to set up a helicopter school based at Paphos airport, and his request was immediately granted. At the time – around August 2003 – Hadjigeorgiou was not even employed at Civil Aviation. Yet this did not stop officials there from passing him off as the head of the ‘new unit’, giving a false and exaggerated impression of his position.
This was done to con foreign air safety authorities into thinking that Cyprus’ Civil Aviation was a robust organisation, he claimed.
Hadjigeorgiou’s indictments were promptly seized upon by the victims’ relatives, who said their worst fears were coming true.
Nicolas Yiasoumis, who heads a committee representing the aggrieved relatives, yesterday described Hadjigeorgiou’s statements as “a most official… confirmation of the problems we suspected [with Civil Aviation].
“It’s sad because the department was burying its head in the sand. To this day, they are plagued by the same problems,” Yiasoumis said.
Civil Aviation is just one of the organisations the relatives are blaming for the disaster. Manufacturers Boeing are also being sued in the United States for a string of alleged construction flaws on the 737-300.
“Those in responsible positions need to feel the weight of the chairs they’re sitting on…they must realise this is not just another desk job,” added Yiasoumis.
The report on the causes of the crash is due out sometime next month. It is believed that a combination of decompression problems and pilot errors caused the plane to fly unpiloted for almost three hours before running out of fuel and crashing just north of Athens.
One mystery that continues to baffle is why the pilots continued their ascent beyond 10,000 feet, evidently ignoring a possible decompression warning that sounded just minutes into the flight.
Copyright © Cyprus Mail 2008
Really?
