All Aboard Cypriot Jet Died on Impact, Coroner Says

Autopsies on 118 bodies recovered from the Aug. 14 plane crash near Greece’s capital show that all passengers and crew members died on impact, a chief state coroner said Sunday.

Coroner Fillipos Koutsaftis said examination of DNA, tissue and dental records would continue in an effort to identify those bodies too damaged by the crash and ensuing fire for families to recognize them.

Helios Airways Flight 522 had been flying from Cyprus to Athens with 115 passengers and six crew members when it crashed into a mountain about 25 miles north of Athens. Three bodies are missing.

Investigators are examining whether the plane’s pilots were incapacitated by a loss of cabin pressure, but have not determined what went wrong on the flight before it crashed.

Shortly before the crash, two Greek air force F-16 fighter jets were sent to intercept the flight. Pilots reported seeing the co-pilot slumped over the controls, apparently unconscious, officials have said.

Public Order Minister Giorgos Voulgarakis said security procedures were modeled on measures drawn up for the Olympics last year, but said the plane had not been shot down.

“An explosion in the air would have spread the wreckage over a much wider area,” Voulgarakis was quoted as saying by the Chora newspaper. “If this incident had taken place during the Olympics, the chances of it being shot down would have been extremely high.”

On Saturday, state-run NET television reported that tests on blood found in the wreckage indicated that a flight attendant who reportedly received flight training was in the cockpit when the Boeing 737-300 crashed. The 25-year-old’s father said he believed that his son was trying to save the flight when he died.

“I believe my son had the courage to do what was necessary,” Andreas Prodromou’s father, Dinos, said. “Unfortunately, he didn’t make it.”