Avionics Guy God Its Me Again
Eastward arly on the morning time of fourteen August 2005, Alan Irwin, and so 44, was with his partner, Donna, and their two immature children in an apartment in Larnaca, Cyprus. It was a convenient base, merely minutes from the airport. Irwin was an aircraft engineer; he had become obsessed with the technical aspects of planes as a immature man in the Purple Air Forcefulness, post-obit in the footsteps of his father, too an aircraft engineer and pilot. "I enjoy being around machines," Irwin says. "If they're broken, they're cleaved. You can't become aroused at them. People can be quite frustrating."
Irwin went on to piece of work for airlines such as McAlpine Aviation and Monarch, and by 2005 had been a freelance licensed engineer for 15 years. The work suited him: it was well paid, and he liked to travel. He had worked in Kuwait, Mainland china, Malaysia, the Heart East, Africa, Mexico, Miami.
That April, Helios Airways, the low-cost Cypriot airline, hired Irwin for six months. He was a familiar face, having worked there in 2002. Small-scale and trim, with wavy hair, he had an amiable, hands-on style his managers liked. Helios was based at Larnaca airport and had three aircraft – all Boeing 737s. Irwin's chore was to do the "turnarounds": checking the aeroplane over later it arrived and ensuring it was safe to accept off again. On some days he was needed for only a few hours. "The work was interesting and the quality of life fabulous," he says, from the home he designed and built himself in Bedfordshire. A pool tabular array stands in the open-plan living room. "My lad used to stand on a plastic box the size of a acme hat to accept his puddle shot," he remembers. His son is now half dozen foot v.
That twenty-four hours, Irwin had started work at 1am, finished at around 6.30am and was planning to take his children to the beach. It was the school holidays and his family were over from Bedfordshire, where they lived during term time. At 8am, the telephone rang. It was the operations centre at Helios request Irwin to go into the role. He didn't think much of it. "Sometimes the engineering manager just wanted to chat almost the flight program or shift patterns," he says.
Just Irwin found the operations room in crisis. They had lost radio contact with one of their planes. Flying 522 had taken off from Larnaca for Athens at 6.07am. The flight fourth dimension was one hour and 45 minutes. It was now more than than two hours since takeoff and the airplane was still in the air, with 121 people on board. The office had received a chilling study from 2 jets scrambled by the Hellenic air force to intercept the plane: the helm'south seat was empty; the person in the outset officer's seat was slumped over the controls; the just three passengers visible were motionless, wearing oxygen masks; and masks were dangling from overhead units. "Anybody was thinking terrorism," Irwin says.
His response was measured. "Engineers aren't particularly reactive people. I don't panic. I just have the data and piece of work through it." The plane, now on autopilot, was circling over Athens, as if waiting for permission to land. Irwin calculated that it had taken off with enough fuel to exist in the air for around three hours. In another twenty minutes, flight 522 would crash. Every bit the news of the impending disaster spread, the operations room filled up. "It was decided I couldn't be of any use," Irwin says. "They said, 'Go habitation. We'll telephone if we demand you.'"
At ix.03am, flight 522 crashed into a hillside about the hamlet of Grammatiko, 25 miles from Athens, killing everyone on board. At that place were 115 passengers, from Hellenic republic, Cyprus and Australia, and six crew. A fireball destroyed several acres of scrub and pasture land.
T here is a ritual to aviation disasters. When a plane crashes, each twisted and charred fragment is painstakingly located, mapped and tagged, with findings submitted to investigating boards who probe and question, and depict conclusions. Information technology is based on the principle that what we acquire from one accident can help forbid another. But the rituals of disaster also involve a arraign game, with a tendency to point to homo error.
This has played out in the contempo catastrophic crashes of two Boeing 737 Maxs. In the immediate wake of these crashes, involving newer planes, Boeing suggested the arraign lay with the pilots. "Procedures were not completely followed," said Boeing'due south then CEO, Dennis Muilenburg, at a news briefing in April 2019. A month afterward, Boeing admitted information technology had known well-nigh a software problem with its 737 Max planes a year earlier the fatal accidents – though it insisted that in that location were plans to address it. This week, however, a damning report by Us politicians establish that a "cleaved safe civilization" at Boeing had contributed to both crashes.
Earlier this month, a Boeing spokesperson told the Guardian that, since the 737 Max crashes in 2018 and 2019, the company had developed a software update "expected to reduce the crew's workload in non-normal flight situations and prevent erroneous data" from being shared. "Boeing is working closely with the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) and other international regulators to meet their expectations every bit nosotros work to safely return the 737 Max to service."
Later the Helios crash, attending focused on a number of employees, including the airline'southward main pilot, Ianko Stoimenov, who was in accuse of training and supervising pilots; and the captain, Hans-Jürgen Merten, who died in the crash. Of Merten, the blow report said: "His Eastward German heritage meant he was likely a man of few words who was non very comfy around people." But a large portion of the blame was attributed to Alan Irwin. For him, it was the showtime of an viii-year legal boxing. It destroyed his 20-yr relationship with his partner; he lost his job and his equilibrium.
Later the disaster, Greek air investigators determined that flight 522 had crashed because it had failed to pressurise properly. As it climbed, the air in the motel had go too sparse to breathe, causing most people to lose consciousness. The investigation quickly focused on the theory that the pressurisation selector switch had been left in "transmission" rather than "auto", and attributed this to human mistake – principally that of Irwin who, they said, had not returned the switch to its correct position later a safety bank check; and of incompetent pilots who had failed to spot the error.
This narrative was soon leaked to the printing. "Alan Irwin… is at the eye of the inquiry after reports that a knob used to control motel pressure was left in the wrong position after a safety check," stated the Times.
Meanwhile, Boeing was also attributing the crash to human error. "Helios's ground engineers did non follow Boeing's correct procedure," said Stephen Preston, a lawyer hired by the manufacturer, in a individual deposition to the Greek courts seen by the Guardian. "At to the lowest degree 16 split up mistakes were fabricated by the footing staff, the flight deck coiffure and the passenger cabin crew. If any one of these mistakes had not been made, the accident would not take happened."
But the causes of the crash were more than complicated. Since 1994, there had been a history of incidents involving a disruptive alarm arrangement on Boeing 737s. A alert horn on the plane would sound for two very different reasons: problems with the takeoff configuration (incorrect positioning of fly flaps, for example) or every bit an altitude alarm – a loss of force per unit area that leads to less oxygen on the plane. Boeing had been alerted to this as a safety concern – nigh recently by the manager of Nasa's Aviation Safe Reporting System (ASRS), the year earlier the crash.
For Irwin, this design flaw was crucial. "The crew have to take some responsibility, considering at the end of the day they are in command of the plane," he says. "Simply if Boeing had listened to previous concerns, the crash wouldn't have happened."
West hat did, and didn't happen, in the early hours of xiv Baronial 2005? At 1.25am, flying 522 arrived at Larnaca airdrome from Heathrow. As Irwin walked out to the aeroplane, the pilot told him about a tech log entry: noisy door. Motel crew had heard a banging sound coming from the door used for loading catering supplies. "No problem, I'll look at information technology," Irwin said.
That twenty-four hour period Irwin was working with Malcolm Fowler, then 39, a British engineer on a six-week contract with Helios. Irwin decided to carry out a cabin pressurisation leak check, to examination the integrity of the door.
He switched the pressurisation selector switch to manual. This closes the outflow valve and means air inside the cabin cannot escape. (When the switch is in auto, a figurer calibrates the pressure inside the plane automatically.) He told Fowler to sit by the trouble door. They waited for a few minutes, but heard nothing. Irwin depressurised the airplane, returning the switch, he stresses, to auto.
The flying took off. At 6.12am and at an altitude of 12,040ft, and climbing, the alarm horn sounded. At 6.14am, the captain contacted the operations centre at Helios. Irwin was still on the airfield; he would always stay for 30 minutes after takeoff to brand sure a plane got clear. He spoke to the captain. "He said, 'My cooling light is off.' There are two equipment cooling fans; if they neglect, they bring the low-cal on. So I said, 'Well, they're meant to be.'" In the blow investigation report, Irwin is recorded as asking the captain to confirm that the pressurisation console was selected to auto. The captain replied, "Where are my equipment cooling circuit breakers?" Irwin told him they were behind his seat, and the call ended at 6.20am. Irwin went home.
Based on the flight data, the accident investigation report subsequently concluded that the crew had "reacted to the warning horn as if it had been a takeoff configuration alert. Had the flying crew realised the significance, they should take immediately donned their oxygen masks."
When Irwin watched the backwash of the crash on Idiot box a few hours later, he was stunned. "I felt numb because of all the people on board and the crew, who were friends – I'd known them for years," he says. When the plane came down, it was travelling at an estimated speed of 400mph. The force of the bear upon was enormous, spreading chunks of metallic and other fragments over ii rocky hills. Near victims were found still strapped into their seats. The galley carts were stowed, suggesting the cabin crew had not nonetheless begun to serve food or drinks. The most intact part of the plane was the tail section. Radiant among the burnt scrub and twisted metallic was a giant portrait of the Greek sun god: the crest created in Helios's glory days.
T hree hours afterward flight 522 went down, a senior Helios executive put in a phone call to Kenyon International Emergency Services, based in Bracknell, Berkshire. Catastrophes are Kenyon's business. The company is on a servant with many of the earth's airlines, national governments and track companies to provide practical help after a crisis: it leads efforts to recover and repatriate human remains, return possessions and help bereaved friends and relatives.
At 1.30pm, a briefing was held at Kenyon's crisis management centre, where a rapid response team had been assembled. Some members flew to the crash site; others identified hotels in Republic of cyprus and Hellenic republic where the bereaved could gather to receive information and back up.
Kenyon's co-owner and CEO, Robert Jensen, has learned many lessons in his 20 years with the company. One is that the airline should send a condolence letter to the bereaved: "Information technology is a formal acknowledgment – of the loss, that life is changed and will for some time exist very hard. And that the visitor involved, though maybe not responsible, has a homo face."
Simply in the case of flight 522, families did not receive a letter.
Sean Gates, a lawyer who advises companies represented by Kenyon, attributes this to a fright of criminal prosecution: "Everybody at Helios was very scared of putting their head in a higher place the parapet. Nobody wanted to say sorry because that could be admitting error. Robert [Jensen] and I stayed upwardly one dark until 2 o'clock drafting the condolence alphabetic character, getting the wording correct. Nosotros gave information technology to the board at Helios, just nobody would sign it. Ultimately no letter was sent."
Gates notes that the antipathy "ramped up" every day; staff received threats, intimidation and abuse. The crash had been the deadliest in Greek history. Several children had been on lath. "It reinforced the idea: this is a bad visitor, they don't intendance, and so they should exist accountable," Jensen says.
The crash was now an international news story. Information technology was a "ghost airplane", a "flying tomb", with people passed out in their seats for more than two hours. The forensic report concluded that victims had been alive on impact, though in a "deep, non-reversible coma". There was a hero and a mystery: in the last 30 minutes (all that was documented on the cockpit recorder), a cabin attendant had used the emergency code to open the locked cockpit door, saturday in the captain's seat and tried, too late, to take control of the aeroplane. Every bit the engines flamed out and the aircraft started its rapid descent, he made an attempt to level it, alleviating the bear upon. How had he remained conscious? Why had he not entered the cockpit sooner?
The Greek-led accident investigation got under way. According to Gates, "The regulations are admittedly clear – the job is to discover the causes and non to assign blame. But straight abroad," he alleges, "there was a blame mentality. And, ultimately, Alan got caught up in that."
W hen Irwin arrived at the police station in Larnaca, four days after the blow, he presumed it was for a casual chat – that the law might need technical help. Apace, still, the atmosphere changed. "It started to get a bit heated. I idea information technology might be a skillful fourth dimension to have a solicitor, but in case. The police refused. They said, 'You're not under caution – y'all are merely assisting with an inquiry.'
"Right at the end, one of the officers said, 'I put information technology to y'all that you left the switch in manual and you caused the accident.' The other officer said, 'You lot don't have to answer that question, only it volition be on your argument.' And then I said, 'No comment.'" After that, they drew the 12-hour interview to a shut.
At that indicate, Irwin even so didn't conceptualize that he would be charged: "In that location was nothing criminal to answer for, I'd done my task." On 29 Baronial, he flew back to the United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland, at Helios'due south suggestion. Only his proper noun and address were published in the British newspapers. A lensman followed Irwin and Donna as they drove through their village. "He went the wrong way circular a roundabout, leaning across, trying to get a photograph. That distressed Donna."
Irwin had a job lined upwards at easyJet. But when managers realised he was implicated in the Helios crash, they withdrew the offer. It was simply subsequently engineers who knew Irwin spoke up for him that he was taken on. Life resumed, with Irwin however regarding the Greek blow investigation as misguided. "I even so had faith in the system," he says.
The linchpin of the example against Irwin was that, when investigators found the pressurisation mode switch at the crash site, it was in manual. Irwin had already acknowledged that he had turned the switch to manual to do the pressurisation exam. This, the investigators alleged, proved that the switch had remained in this position throughout the flight.
Except that it was not left in transmission, says Irwin, who argues that investigators had not accounted for the distorting effects of impact. He points out that the stem of the switch had been forcibly bent several degrees past manual. There were as well deep gouge marks on the faceplate of the switch, suggesting trauma from the crash.
The switch was shipped for assay to Boeing's laboratory in Seattle. It was Boeing, under the supervision of an accident investigator, that concluded that the switch was in manual on impact. This finding formed the basis of the blow investigation report, published in 2006, which concluded that the crash had three direct causes: the switch existence in manual; the failure to place the cabin warning; and the crew being incapacitated by hypoxia, or lack of oxygen. (Boeing did not escape censure: the written report too recorded "ineffectiveness of measures taken by the manufacturer in response to previous pressurization incidents" as a "latent" cause.)
The report's finding that the switch was in manual formed the basis of the subsequent prosecution against Irwin; the wreckage was never examined past the Greek court. "The court more than or less took what was in the report as gospel," says Phil Giles. Formerly with the Great britain Air Accidents Investigation Co-operative, Giles was brought in as a technical adviser for Irwin'south defence force team. He had worked on such high-contour cases as the Lockerbie bombing, and interviewed Irwin at length. "I gave him a bit of a hard time," he says. "He didn't bullshit, he just came out with what he did."
Giles'south gut feeling was that Irwin had put the switch dorsum to auto. His theory is that "it's possible that the crew, for whatever reason… may take unintentionally left it in transmission when they took off". Irwin's caption for the crash is that the system that controlled the outflow valve failed. But, of course, there was no proof either way.
When Stephen Preston appeared before the Greek courts on Boeing'due south behalf, on 20 and 21 February 2008, he gave a slew of reasons why the crash had been caused by homo error: one 3rd of Helios employees were seasonal and "many did non take Greek or English equally a mother tongue"; Helios engineers "failed to use common sense… by leaving the pressure level system selector in transmission"; the pilots were "low standard" and their "inability to work together" was "well documented", owing in function to the East High german captain'southward "authoritarian nature".
Co-ordinate to Preston, the pilots "failed to react correctly" to the altitude alert alarm. "It appears [the get-go officer] reacted to what he took equally a takeoff configuration alarm signal, despite the fact that the airplane was flying at 12,000ft." This mix-up, he suggested, was so ridiculous as to be almost farcical. He pointed out that Boeing 737s had flown safely for decades and that, in millions of flights, "the Helios blow was the one and only accident in which pressure issues were not understood or were not put correct". But this downplayed a number of near misses and a string of complaints virtually the warning organisation.
When asked by the estimate, Preston acknowledged that Boeing had been informed of six "air pressure instances" before the Helios crash. On 15 February 2001, a Boeing 737 on a flight from Kristiansund to Oslo in Norway was climbing above 10,000ft when the captain and starting time officeholder were surprised to hear the alarm horn. Neither associated information technology with a pressurisation problem. Knowing that takeoff configuration couldn't be the crusade, they assumed that the trouble was the horn itself and switched it off, only realising their mistake when the oxygen masks dropped in the cabin. A further four serious pressurisation incidents, all involving confusion over the warning horn on Boeing 737s, were reported to the Irish air accident investigation unit between 2000 and 2005. In 2004, the manager of Nasa'south ASRS had brought the same safe business concern to Boeing'southward attending. Accident investigators had identified 10 incident reports on Nasa'southward database over the previous decade, in which flying crews admitted to having, at least momentarily, misinterpreted a alert horn.
Preston told the Greek judge that the main cause, in five out of the six cases, was the "repeated habits of pilots to deactivate the air-conditioning systems and the air supply pipes from the motors, in club to assist takeoff, without reactivating these functions after takeoff".
But "if the director of Nasa ASRS gives you lot a safety warning, you exercise something about it," Giles says. "Boeing didn't. And and so we had the accident."
In Preston'south deposition, the assumption was that when the alert horn sounded, the airplane pilot would know the cause and respond appropriately. But Giles points out that the startle factor is huge: "Things will go off and yous think: what the hell is that?"
Preston told the courtroom that US aviation regime had confirmed in 2003 that Boeing's cabin altitude alert arrangement provided an "adequate level of condom"; and that, since the Helios crash, Boeing had updated its cabin crew transmission to include guidance on how to differentiate betwixt the two causes. He stressed that this "was not motivated by any notion that the 737 or any of its systems was in any way ineffective".
Merely a document seen for the offset time past the Guardian reveals quite a unlike picture. Eighteen months earlier, a Boeing safety assessment summary, conducted past the FAA in response to the Helios crash, had acknowledged that the pressurisation failure and the alert system were "likely a significant contributing factor". The condition was predictable to occur once more, was "not probable to exist detected by flying/motel/footing crew" and brought "the plane inside one foreseeable failure of a catastrophic event". This document, far more damning in its cess, was not made public.
When I show information technology to Alan Irwin he is aghast. He had no idea of its beingness.
I rwin was charged with manslaughter on 7 April 2008. "Officers from New Scotland Yard called me on my mobile. They said, 'We demand to meet up.'" He was served with courtroom papers in a coffee bar at Luton drome, where he was working for easyJet. "I was gobsmacked," he says. "Totally dismayed. I'd done nil incorrect."
At the chief prosecutor's office in Athens a month afterwards, he was escorted by a large, powerful homo with a auto gun: "I was being treated like a criminal." The prosecutor released him to await trial in the United kingdom.
His way of dealing with the court case was to remain detached. He read accident reports, canvassed experts, studied flight recorder details and won the support of Nadine Dorries, his MP. He approached it "as if I wasn't involved, almost as a third party. That'south the merely way you can proceed sane." Donna, however, was more fragile.
The couple met when Irwin was 27 and Donna was 22. Their son was born in 1995; their daughter in 1997. "It was an awesome life and we were really happy," he says. Then, in 1998, the couple lost their third child during labour. Donna's womb, weakened past an earlier caesarean, complanate during the delivery. "Our daughter, Katy, was starved of oxygen. Poor little thing was born brain-damaged and passed abroad within three days," Irwin says.
Donna had a hysterectomy: an abrupt end to the couple's plans to take a big family. At 32, she was grieving for the loss of her child and her fertility. "She never let Katy go," Irwin says. "It was agreed that the first 1 of us who passed away would be buried with Katy'south ashes."
Irwin says Donna'southward way of coping was to potable. "Information technology started off with just wine, then spirits, anything." By the time Irwin was charged with manslaughter, she was already a heavy drinker. "The thought of me being incarcerated somewhere, leaving her on her own with the children, contributed to her drinking getting out of hand."
The couple separated in 2009 and Irwin was awarded custody of the children. Equally he awaited trial, he was getting to grips with beingness a unmarried father and relying on his parents, who lived nearby, for back up. "I stripped out i of the bedrooms and put all the kids' school clothes in there for the week: all lined up on hangers, ane for each day, so the kids knew exactly what they had."
He tried to protect his children from the court instance, simply they heard rumours at schoolhouse. "I always played it downwards: 'Don't worry about it, Dad will sort it out.' But they were frightened."
In December 2011, six years subsequently the crash and three years after existence charged, Irwin, then 51, found himself in a courthouse in Athens, on trial for the manslaughter of 121 people. In a windowless room, he sat past his lawyer, wearing his only suit – pinstriped and made past a tailor in Kuala Lumpur when he had worked for Malaysian Airlines more than 20 years before. Nearby was Ianko Stoimenov, Helios's main airplane pilot, every bit well as CEO Demetris Pantazis and flight operations managing director Giorgos Kikkides. All iv faced the same charge of manslaughter past negligence.
"One lady came up to me in court property a picture of her young son in a white military machine uniform," Irwin remembers. "She went round each of us, ane by one. She was furious. She blamed us for this boy'south death."
The trial occasionally descended into farce: a technical practiced had Alzheimer'south, and Irwin's barrister was compelled to bring together a national barristers' strike. Phil Giles believed Irwin should never accept been charged. "It's upwards to the flight coiffure to configure the plane for flight, non the engineer," he says now.
Stoimenov, now 59, had moved to Cyprus with his wife and ii children from Bulgaria in 2000. After the accident, he lost his job and was tried for manslaughter in ii court cases (the start, in Cyprus and not involving Irwin, was dismissed and the defendants acquitted).
"When I first heard we were going to be prosecuted, my wife went to meet a lawyer," Stoimenov says. "She came back crying. Simply to look into the case was €150,000. I was basically my ain lawyer." Between preparing pleas, he worked every bit a flying examiner and teacher in Oxford. "I don't know how I survived. My kids were teenagers – they need you, and I was basically batty." His son left university in Sofia because he could no longer beget the fees.
On 20 April 2012, the day of the verdict, Irwin was advised not to be in courtroom: "My barrister said, 'If they don't have your appeal straight abroad, they may put yous in prison there and and then.'" He had dropped his children at school and was at home in Bedfordshire when his barrister called. He had been sentenced to 121 years – one for every person who died. "I said, 'That's quite a long time. Mind, the last 50 have flown by.'" The flippancy was his style of masking fearfulness and disbelief. Subsequently that day, his barrister called back to say his sentence had been reduced to 10 years because the court was not authorised to impose longer sentences. "I just shrugged," Irwin says.
He was already looking ahead to a process he had more faith in. "I had been warned past my barrister even before the trial started that I would exist found guilty, and the offset time I'd become a decent hearing would be in the appeal court," he says.
In the lead-up to the appeal, Irwin tried to bear on equally normal, going to work. "Quite frequently I'd sit down in the evening with the dog next to me and go through papers, accident reports, figures," he says. But his conviction had been widely reported. "The kids got to hear about information technology. I only said, 'Don't worry, Dad's got information technology in hand.'"
Thirteen months later on, Irwin won his appeal. Again, his barrister advised him not to exist present for the verdict. "He called proverb, 'You've been found not guilty' – not exonerated, just not guilty. I didn't celebrate. A lot of people had perished. If the cabin staff and pilots could have come back and shared a drink, that would accept been the 24-hour interval to open up a canteen of bubbly." Donna never got to run into his name cleared. She died from an alcohol-related disease in 2012. Her ashes are cached with their baby daughter's. Virtually of Irwin'south legal beak was covered by insurance, just the case still cost him £60,000.
The other 3 defendants lost their appeals. Stoimenov had been sentenced to 121 years; by lunchtime that had been reduced to 10, and past the close of the day it had been converted to a fine of €79,000, payable within 10 days. He could non pay, but was saved from jail past the prime number minister of Bulgaria. "The Bulgarian government was convinced I was innocent," Stoimenov says. "Even now I have dreams of beingness in court. My girl started suffering from panic attacks. There were so many years when nosotros didn't know which way it was going to go."
Stoimenov and his family at present alive in Sofia, where he works as a airplane pilot, although, he says, "the shadow follows me". A 2018 job offer was withdrawn at the concluding infinitesimal, he thinks, "considering of Helios".
Kikkides, the flight operations manager, died of cancer in 2013. Helios CEO Pantazis retired, and is now an aviation consultant.
In 2007, the families of eight Cypriots who died in the crash filed for €76m (£69m) in compensation from Boeing, for having "the same alarm in place for two different types of dysfunction", according to their lawyer, Constantinos Drougas. The case was settled out of court and the families were paid an undisclosed sum.
"It's a tragedy on meridian of a tragedy," says Kenyon'south Robert Jensen now. "The airline fabricated mistakes, but people shouldn't have been sentenced to jail. What is the value of putting blame on someone else? It all comes down to dollars and cents: 'We're non liable – these other people are liable.'"
When approached by the Guardian for comment, a spokesperson for Boeing said: "The Greek Air Accident Investigation & Aviation Safety Board and the Greek courts independently found that the directly causes of the [Helios] blow were a failure to follow standard operational procedures."
From 2011, older Boeing 737s were retrofitted with two additional cockpit alert lights to alarm pilots to pressurisation bug. Thousands of planes were affected past the issue.
Irwin left easyJet at the end of his contract in 2010 and freelanced, before finally leaving the industry in January 2019, to become a property developer. He would like to run across the case reopened and his colleagues cleared. "Ianko and Demetris were found guilty in a court – they were held equally criminals and that will exist with them for ever."
He now lives with his grownup son, and is enjoying his work on an ambitious new housing development. Merely the many years and months he spent appealing his case will never leave him, nor the experience of being held accountable for a tragedy that was role homo error, part pattern flaw – and one that had been flagged many times before Helios flight 522 went down.
"I was the fall guy," he says. "One hundred per cent."
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/19/in-2005-helios-flight-522-crashed-into-a-greek-hillside-was-it-because-one-man-forgot-to-flip-a-switch
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