A fighter pilot who witnessed the "ghost plane" that tragically claimed the lives of 121 people on board uttered some chilling words during the incident.
Helios Airways Flight 522, dubbed the "ghost plane", tragically crashed in Greece in 2005.
The Boeing 737-300, known as ‘Olympia,’ was en route from Larnaca International Airport in Cyprus to Prague with a scheduled stop in Athens.
On August 14, 2005, disaster struck, claiming the lives of all 121 people on board— 115 passengers and six crew members, per the Mirror.
According to reports, communication with the aircraft was lost as it soared over Greece, prompting immediate concern.
Greek air traffic controllers tried in vain to re-establish contact for over an hour before the Greek military dispatched two F-16 fighter jets to intercept the plane.
The jets found the aircraft flying at 35,000 feet, making circles in the sky with no response from within.
Despite the efforts, tragedy unfolded just hours after takeoff. The aircraft eventually crashed into mountainous terrain near Grammatiko, Greece, killing everyone aboard.
The flight crew included Captain Hans-Jürgen Merten, 58, and First Officer Pampos Charalambous, 51, both experienced pilots with a combined total of nearly 25,000 flight hours. However, a fatal error occurred shortly after takeoff.
When a cabin altitude warning horn sounded, the crew mistakenly thought it was the takeoff configuration warning, as both alarms had the same sound.
They continued to climb, unaware that the cabin was slowly losing pressure.
Seven minutes into the flight, the crew reported what they believed to be an air conditioning issue to the airline’s operations center.
By the time the aircraft reached 18,000 feet, oxygen masks had deployed in the cabin, but the pilots were already succumbing to the effects of hypoxia, a condition caused by insufficient oxygen.
"The crew likely didn't realize what was happening due to the effects of hypoxia," the report indicated, per the Daily Star.
As the plane leveled off at 34,000 feet - well above the safe altitude for breathing without supplemental oxygen - the pilots were unconscious, and the plane began to circle on autopilot.
After multiple failed attempts to contact the plane, two F-16 jets were dispatched to intercept the Boeing 737. When the fighter pilots approached, they made a chilling discovery.
The fighter pilots could see that the captain’s seat was empty, and the first officer was slumped over the controls, unconscious.
Inside the cabin, oxygen masks dangled from the ceiling, but the passengers were motionless.
The only person who managed to stay conscious was flight attendant Andreas Prodromou, who used a portable oxygen supply to enter the cockpit in a desperate attempt to save the flight.
The chilling words of a fighter pilot who saw the aircraft before it crashed have now resurfaced online.
In the audio, which is between the pilot and crew on the ground, the pilot can be heard saying: "Mayday, mayday. Mambo, we have a civilian plane crash. We have a civilian plane crash. Mayday, mayday.
"Mayday, mayday. Athens, the civilian plane crashed to a mountain peak."
Listen below:The aircraft ultimately crashed into a hillside 25 miles from Athens, creating a fireball that left most bodies burned beyond recognition.
Investigators later uncovered a series of systemic failures that contributed to the catastrophe.
Helios Airways had reportedly been dealing with persistent issues with the aircraft’s air conditioning system in the weeks leading up to the crash.
In fact, seven separate inspections were conducted on the plane. The night before the crash, crew members reported hearing unusual banging sounds and even saw ice forming on one of the doors.
After the previous flight, Helios engineers conducted a pressurization test, switching the system from automatic to manual.
However, they failed to return the system to automatic, a critical oversight that led to the plane’s unpressurized climb out of Larnaca.
Pre-flight checks also missed this error, allowing the plane to take off without proper pressurization, resulting in the tragedy.
