Experts: Steward flew doomed plane (Crash in Greece last August)

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe/12/19/cyprus.crash.reut/index.html

A flight attendant was in control of the Cypriot Helios Airways plane before it crashed on a Greek hillside on August 14, killing all 121 people on board in Europe's worst air disaster this year, experts said on Monday.

Aviation experts said after re-enacting the doomed Boeing 737-300 flight from Larnaca in Cyprus to Prague, that the steward -- who had some flight training and used an emergency oxygen kit -- actually flew the plane for 10-12 minutes.

"We have indications that (he) controlled the plane. He took a portable oxygen device and opened the cockpit door using a code," Seraphim Kamoutsis, head of the Greek investigations team, told a news conference after the simulation.

Investigators are trying to work out what happened on the plane to render its two pilots unconscious, leaving the aircraft in the hands of the flight attendant before it crashed from lack of fuel. Until the simulation, it was not clear whether he managed to fly the plane or just grappled with controls.

I suspect a lot of folks will think the pilots let the steward take over and that's what caused the crash, rather than the reality which is that the pilots were disabled and the steward tried, albeit unsuccessfully, to take over.

onenote

ps on edit: I'm not criticizing the OP, but rather the headline writer

headline by the headline writer. I wanted to clarify but also wanted to note what crash the story was about.

I kept having visions of that bad Airport movie with Charlton Heston where the stewardess flew the crippled 747 till Heston was dropped in like "God".