PAX Aboard Penultimate Helios Flight Say Cabin Was Unusually Cold

On its second-to-last flight before crashing near Athens, Greece, passengers aboard a Helios Airways 737-300 complained of bitter cold and the fact that flight attendants ran out of blankets. It's the latest information to surface that belies statements from Helios, saying there were no problems with the aircraft prior to its crash last Sunday.

As ANN reported earlier this week, there are a number of questions surrounding Sunday's mishap, which killed all 121 people on board. But perhaps most troubling is word that there may indeed have been major problems with the environmental controls on board the aircraft just hours before it crashed.

“It is horrifying to think that it could have been us who were killed,” Louise Gates, 48, told the London Times. The resident of England was aboard the Helios 737-300 on a flight that left Heathrow at 2230 local Saturday night. It landed at Larnaca, Cyprus, at 0415 the following morning, then departed for Athens at 0900. The 737 crashed three hours later.

“It was absolutely freezing on that plane. Everyone was asking for blankets but the steward told me they had run out," Gates said. "I used to fly a lot when I worked for Air France and I have never experienced such cold conditions on a flight. Something was definitely wrong.”

But that's not the story Helios executives told -- at least, not at first. “We have spoken to members of staff and there was nothing to bat an eyelid at,” a Helios spokeswoman told the Cyprus Mail.

But the airline later admitted the same 737-300 underwent sudden decompression in December after a door failed to seal properly. The aircraft made an emergency landing at Larnaca. Three people were taken to the hospital with injuries resulting from the incident.

Helios's former chief mechanic, Kyriakos Pilavakis, told the Mail, “The indications were that air had escaped from one of the doors – the right door on the rear."

Pilavakis wasn't the only employee to complain. The family of copilot Pambos Charalambous, who was killed in Sunday's mishap, said he often complained about technical problems on the aircraft that were often left unaddressed.

“He told me the plane had a problem and I urged him not to fly," his mother, Artemi Charalambous, told the Mail. "He told the company about it getting cold on the plane and they told him it would be fixed.”

FMI: www.flyhelios.com