Relatives of victims of the Helios 737 Boeing, which crashed 10 years ago in an area near Athens, gathered last night to honor their memory.
The relatives of 23 of the overall 121 victims lit candles outside the Church of Agia Zoni in the coastal town of Limassol, followed by a religious memorial service. The 23 victims were from Limassol.
In statements to the press, member of the Relatives` Committee Soteris Soteriades said that ten years have passed after the air tragedy and noted that the relatives are not satisfied with the way justice was delivered for those who are responsible for the air crash.
Justice, he said, has been bought off for a minimal amount.
Executives of the company and the company itself may have been found guilty and been convicted but no relative is satisfied with the way those responsible paid for their actions, he noted.
These 121 victims, he said, died because of state weaknesses, weaknesses of the Civil Aviation, the airline and the system itself.
The Boeing took off from Larnaca International Airport, on the 14th of August 2005 on its way to Prague via Athens. Three hours later it crashed on the mountain of Grammatikos, north of Athens, killing all 121 passengers and crew.
On February 2, 2013, a Court of Appeals in Athens convicted three of the four defendants in the Helios air disaster of 2005 and sentenced them to 122 years imprisonment each. Helios Director Demetris Pantazis, Flight Operations Director Andreas Kikkides and Chief Pilot Ianko Stoimenov were found guilty of manslaughter with conscious negligence, a misdemeanor.
Chief engineer Alan Irwin, the fourth defendant, who had checked the aircraft before the doomed flight, was found not guilty.
The Athens court found the three executives guilty of allowing the Boeing 737-300 to take off with an unfit replacement crew. The engineer was found guilty of failing to reset a pressure valve, causing both crew and passengers to pass out from lack of oxygen. The plane flew for hours on automatic pilot before running out of fuel and crashing into the hillside near Athens. The three executives were given the option to buy out their ten year sentence which they did, paying 73,000 euros each.
In Cyprus, the case, which was brought before the Nicosia Assize Court, was suspended following the Athens ruling. All charges were dismissed and the defendants acquitted.
