'Mayday' calls from doomed jet - Cry on wrong frequency went unheeded, reports say

[radiolalaland]

Monday, August 22, 2005; Posted: 6:43 p.m. EDT (22:43 GMT)

ATHENS, Greece -- A "tired or weakened" man sent two "Mayday" calls from a Cypriot airliner before it mysteriously crashed in Greece, killing all 121 people aboard, according to a preliminary report on the accident by a Greek investigator.

The report, released Monday, said an F-16 pilot who was escorting the doomed jetliner reported that the pilot of the craft was not in his seat late into the flight -- and that in the final 10 minutes of the flight, a man sat in the pilot's seat "wearing an oxygen mask" and "tried to send specifically two times the SOS or emergency 'Mayday' signal."

But the emergency call was not heard because he was tuned to the wrong frequency, it said.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe/08/22/greece.crash.mayday/index.html?section=cnn_topstories

 

[blantonl]

How do they know that the emergency calls were made, if they weren't "heard" - perhaps the CVR?

 

[radiolalaland]

Probably from the black box that records all the information. That would be my guess.

How do they know that the emergency calls were made, if they weren't "heard" - perhaps the CVR?

 

[Colin9690]

Probably from the black box that records all the information. That would be my guess.

The Black box records all voices in the cockpit, and ones heard on the radios, and the Flight Data Recorder shows every detail about the flight for the entire trip (airspeed, control inputs, crash forces, etc)