Quote:

Human error caused Cyprus air crash- Greek report
Tue 10 Oct 2006 3:57 AM ET

(Updates with details, quotes)

ATHENS, Oct 10 (Reuters) - A series of human errors on the ground and in the air caused Cyprus's worst airline disaster, when a passenger jet crashed near Athens last year killing all 121 people on board, a Greek inquiry report said on Tuesday.

The report blamed deficient technical checks on the ground, failure by the pilots to pick up on compression warnings and a series of other mistakes for the Cypriot Helios Airways Boeing 737-300 crash.

The compression system regulates the oxygen supply, which decreased as the aircraft gained altitude and rendered the pilots and passengers unconscious.

"The report was submitted just now to the Greek Ministry of Transport and will also be delivered to the Cypriot side today," chief investigator Akrivos Tsolakis told Reuters.

The August 2005 crash was highly unusual because the plane on a Larnaca-Prague flight flew on autopilot for two hours, its pilots slumped over the controls, before running out of fuel and ramming into a Greek hillside.

Two Greek air force fighters were scrambled when the plane lost radio contact, and their pilots saw a flight attendant, the only person still conscious on the plane, grappling with the controls before the aircraft crashed east of the capital.