![]() When news first broke of the crash, a terrorist attack was feared due to the as yet unexplained circumstances of the crash of the Helios Airways flight 522 into an Athens hillside on Sunday. Tourism ‘unaffected’ by crash LARNACA (AFP) – The Cyprus Tourism Organization (CTO) said yesterday that the initial figures for tourist arrivals seem to be unaffected since a Cypriot airliner crashed in Greece killing all 121 people on board. But the company acknowledged the crash aircraft had been involved in a previous decompression incident on a Warsaw flight in December 2004. Helios Executive Chairman Andreas Drakou has strongly rejected any suggestions the private low-cost airline skimped on safety. They left behind toddler George with grandparents in Cyprus where they were on holiday. Another Cypriot couple, Demos and Margarita Xiourouppa, from Adelaide in Australia, died along with their two young daughters Ioanna, nine, and Sofia 10. His sister Chryso, five, father Odysseas Koutsofta, 28, and mother Xenia, 27, were all killed in the crash. One Paralimni family left behind a two-year-old child, Vassilis. The southeastern town of Paralimni, which lost 16 dead, five of them from a single family, announced 40 days of mourning. The government declared three days of official mourning but in some of the worst-hit towns and villages on the resort island of less than a million people some municipalities declared longer periods. Cypriot President Tassos Papadopoulos was to be briefed on the Greek investigation into the air disaster when he flies to Athens later in the day, before visiting the crash site. They took documents, the plane’s log book and have also interviewed former Helios pilots, mechanics and travelers who have a complaint against the company. On Monday, police raided Helios’s Cyprus offices. The attorney-general has told us to look into possible criminal acts,» said chief police investigator George Aristidou. «Investigations are at a preliminary stage. Cypriot police, heading the investigation into the crash and the airline, held a meeting with Attorney-General Petros Clerides, who was briefed about the problem which could see the company facing negligence charges. Another funeral was to be held later yesterday for a couple who were killed in the crash, the circumstances of which remain shrouded in mystery. The German pilot’s body has yet to be found. ![]() «We don’t want revenge we want the truth to come out.» The co-pilot was among 23 bodies flown back to Cyprus late on Tuesday from Greece after being identified by their relatives. «My father kept a diary about the problems of the airline and if that gets out the company will close,» his son Yiannis Charalambous told local Mega TV. The family of Charalambous, who had worked in Britain for 12 years and only returned to the island to be near his mother, are bitter and say he had constantly complained about the technical problems on the crashed aircraft. The funeral service, in the capital Nicosia, was for the co-pilot Charalambos Charalambous, 40, who leaves behind a wife and four children. ![]() «We are now at the end of a journey for one family and we will support them and the other families… there are many more funerals to come,» said a tearful minister. «Today is the first funeral after the tragic events of the crash in Greece,» said Health Minister Andreas Gavrielides. The local press has been full of tragic stories about whole families wiped out and young children left orphaned. The majority of those on Sunday’s doomed Helios Airways flight ZU522 were Cypriots, making it the worst air disaster to befall the island. NICOSIA – A grief-stricken Cyprus yesterday began to bury the first of its air crash victims after a Cypriot plane plunged into a hillside outside Athens, killing all 121 on board.
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