Has the U.S. Media reported Cyprus Jet crash victims "frozen solid"?

[Up2Late]

Or are they covering that fact up as a favor to Boeing and the other Jet makers or the U.S. Airline Industry? :grr:

I've seen it reported in the non-U.S. Media, but I've yet to find it in any U.S. News reports. Here's some links:

Cyprus plane crash victims "frozen solid"
<http://go.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=9375246&src=rss/worldNews>

Victims died 'before Greek crash'
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4152806.stm>

Does anyone know if this type incident has ever happened in the past (a rapid loss of Cabin Pressure at 30,000 feet or more):shrug:

Here my post in LBN:

<http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x1702978>

[Extend a Hand]

1. I heard it mentioned

on air america today.

[ET Awful]

2. How about Payne Stewart's plane?

I believe it was climbing to around 39k.

edit: A good source for such information is http://www.airsafe.com/ You can find pretty much every serious incident and the cause involving commercial flights.

[Eugene]

3. It is just popping up on AP.

They are treating the frozen bodies
report with some skepticism.

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/world/wire/sns-ap-greece-crash-theories,0,5234136.story?coll=sns-ap-world-headlines

[Up2Late]

4. Thanks, Yup, they definitely are down playing reports from "Some media..."

Just as I thought the Corporate Media would do, then team them up with the Pilots Union...

It will be interesting to see how this one ends up being spun in the U.S. Media. :grr:

"...Some media have reported that the victims froze in their seats before the crash, but Greek officials said the bodies were not cold when they were found.

Chief Athens coroner Fillipos Koutsaftis said Monday that tests conducted on the remains showed that at least six victims were alive at the time of the crash. Those six could have been unconscious before impact, he said.

U.S. aviation experts said they could not understand the flight crew's behavior during the disaster. "It's odd," said Terry McVenes, executive air safety chairman for the Air Line Pilots Association, International. "It's a very rare event to even have a pressurization problem and, in general, crews are very well trained to deal with it."

Warnings should go off if an airliner suddenly loses pressure, and pilots are trained to put their oxygen masks on immediately and dive to about 12,000 feet, where there's enough oxygen to breathe, experts said.

[Up2Late]

7. Let the SPIN BEGIN! The AP now just issued ANOTHER version!

And it's by a different writer with several anonymous "Officials in the coroner's office..." sources! What a load of Crap the AP is!:mad:

It's like they are saying, "Now remember, it's after 5:00pm, we have over 8 hours to label established facts from earlier in the day "Theories" and what ever you do, focus on the 6 bodies that were NOT frozen solid, not the 115 that were!"

Here's the 5:00pm EDT version from the AP, see below to see the 7:32 Revisionist version:

Theories Abound About Greece Plan Crash

By MICHAEL McDONOUGH
Associated Press Writer

August 15, 2005, 5:10 PM EDT
<http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/world/wire/sns-ap-greece-crash-theories,0,5234136.story?coll=sns-ap-world-headlines>

LONDON -- The Cypriot airliner that crashed in Greece may have suffered a sudden loss of cabin pressure at high altitude, causing temperatures and oxygen levels to plummet and leaving everyone aboard suffocating and freezing to death, experts said Monday. If that happened, the Helios Airways jet may have been flying on autopilot long before it crashed, the experts said. The Greek government said the crews of two F-16 fighter jets that flew beside the jetliner before it went down Sunday saw its co-pilot slumped over the controls and its pilot missing from the cockpit. Oxygen masks dangled from the ceiling at 34,000 feet.

Authorities said the crash apparently was caused by technical failure that led to a high-altitude decompression. The plane went down in a mountainous region north of Athens, killing 115 passengers and six crew members. Some media have reported that the victims froze in their seats before the crash, but Greek officials said the bodies were not cold when they were found.

(clip)

Bill Waldock, an aviation safety professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Arizona, said one clue to a sudden pressure loss would have been frost on the windows because it's so cold at 34,000 feet. If the fighter pilots could see into the cockpit, the windows could not have been iced over, he said.

But Chris Yates, an aviation analyst at Jane's Transport, said he was not surprised by suggestions that those on board the Helios flight may have frozen. Temperatures at the altitude a passenger jet flies at can drop to 58 below, he said. Yates said it was likely the aircraft "was flying essentially on a ghost flight for a chunk of its journey. The aircraft could have been flying itself for an hour, an hour-and-a-half while people were freezing to death...."

<http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/world/wire/sns-ap-greece-crash-theories,0,5234136.story?coll=sns-ap-world-headlines>

(more at the link above)

And here's the 7:32 EDT version from a different AP writer:

Aug 15, 7:32 PM EDT

Coroner: 6 Alive When Greek Plane Crashed

By PATRICK QUINN
Associated Press Writer
<http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/G/GREECE_PLANE_CRASH?SITE=KING&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT>

ATHENS, Greece (AP) -- Initial autopsies showed that at least six of the 121 people aboard a Cypriot plane were alive but not necessarily conscious when the aircraft crashed while on autopilot, a coroner said Monday, as authorities struggled to explain the actions of the pilot and crew.

The results of the first six autopsies shed some light on the final minutes of Helios Airlines Flight ZU522, which crashed Sunday into a hillside in suburban Athens, killing all 115 passengers and six crew members. But they failed to answer all the questions.

(clip)

Athens' chief coroner, Fillipos Koutsaftis, said he could not determine whether the six people whose bodies were examined were conscious when the Helios Airways Boeing 737-300 plunged 34,000 feet into a mountainous area near the village of Grammatiko, 25 miles north of Athens. "Our conclusion is they had circulation and were breathing at the time of death," Koutsaftis said, but stressed: "I cannot rule out that they were unconscious."

Officials in the coroner's office said ongoing autopsies on another six bodies were likely to show similar results. They asked not be named because the results had not yet been publicly released.

<http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/G/GREECE_PLANE_CRASH?SITE=KING&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT>
(more lies and revisionist reporting at the link above)

[TNDemo]

5. It was on CNN.

They also said the skin was charred. If they were frozen, wouldn't they have thawed in the fire??

[Up2Late]

6. Nope, next time you crank up the Charcoal Grill, throw

...a Frozen steak on the grill, cook it until it looks done and see what you got. A still frozen steak with a burnt exterior.

Or try cooking a Frozen Turkey without thawing it first (Note: Do NOT try this with a Turkey "Deep Fryer," it will cause an explosion!)

[SteppingRazor]

8. As a general rule, you lose 3 degrees for every thousand feet...

So, at, say, 20k feet, you're 60 degrees colder than ground level. 90 degrees at 30 k feet, 120 at 40k, etc.
At least, that's the rule of thumb you use in mountain climbing. Given that, and given the fact that the plane was at cruising altitude (usually around 30k feet), I'm sure it was probably well below zero in the cabin. Possibly below the level at which frlesh freezes solid (though I must admit I'm ignorant of what that temperature is)
That said, do we really need to hear that people were "frozen solid?" Isn't it enough that the media is reporting that people froze to death before the plane crashed?
In point of fact, most people on board probably asphyxiated even before they froze.
But my point is, the media here has certainly been saying that most people on board were probably dead before the plane hit the ground. Do we need more than that? Isn't reporting on grisly details just the sort of sensationalism that is the problem iwth media in this country?

[Up2Late]

9. Not so, today on NPR's Talk of the Nation, they had another...

..."expert" saying (in very vague terms) that they had now done 24 autopsies and many of them did not freeze to death.

What pisses me off most is the MSM changing the facts to protect the Mega-corps in the U.S.

The other News agencies around the world don't do this, it's only us in the U.S. the get the bogus info, so we end up looking stupid when we talk to others around the world.

<http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4802140>