THE 'FLIGHT Safety Foundation South East Europe - Middle East - Cyprus' has expressed concern that, seven years after the Helios air disaster, not all recommendations pertaining to the deadly crash have been implemented.
In a written statement yesterday, the foundation said no action has yet been taken with regard to what it views as one of the more important flight safety recommendations - the promised restructuring of the Department of Civil Aviation (DCA).
The foundation is a non-profit regional organisation affiliated to Flight Safety Foundation based in the United States.
"The transformation of the Department of Civil Aviation into an independent authority would result in greater autonomy and flexibility vis a vis decision-making, but would also allow for long-term planning and the more effective handling of flight safety as well as the other activities of the DCA," the statement said.
"In spite of the fact that - since 2006 when the Cabinet took the relevant decision [to reorganise the DCA] - various attempts have been made to implement that recommendation, over the last few years the matter has been put on ice for reasons that are beyond our understanding," the foundation noted.
It went on to add that all the other recommendations pertaining to international organisations and to Boeing have since been implemented, "despite the great costs involved".
On August 14, 2005, 121 people were killed when a Helios Boeing 737 crashed into the mountainside of Grammatiko, north of Athens, en route to Prague. Most victims were holiday makers from Cyprus.
The subsequent air crash report found the direct causes to be the non-recognition by the pilots that the cabin pressurisation mode selector was in the manual position during the pre-flight checks, incapacitation of the flight crew due to hypoxia, resulting in the continuation of the flight via the flight management computer and the autopilot, depletion of the fuel and engine flameout, and the impact of the aircraft with the ground.
However the report also listed latent, or underlying causes. These included the operator’s deficiencies in the organisation, quality management, and safety culture, the regulatory authority’s [DCA] diachronic inadequate execution of its safety oversight responsibilities, inadequate application of crew resource management principles, and ineffectiveness of measures taken by the manufacturer in response to previous pressurisation incidents in the particular type of aircraft.
Last December the four defendants in the Helios criminal trial were cleared of all charges; the Attorney-general has appealed the court's decision.
A report compiled by a committee of inquiry and released late last year found that seven members of DCA were criminally liable for the disaster, mostly on the grounds of dereliction of duty. That report's findings are not judicially binding.
In 2006, a year after the Helios crash, the European Commission voiced grave misgivings about the state of civil aviation.
At the time officials of the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) carried out an on-site inspection in Cyprus. In a report compiled shortly after, they concluded that DCA had still failed to comply with around two-thirds of EASA’s recommendations.
Today a memorial service for the 121 victims will be held in Paralimni, while a group of relatives will travel to Greece to attend a memorial at a chapel built at the crash site of Grammatikos.