A Helios Airways Boeing 737-300 full of unconscious or semiconscious crew and passengers ran out of fuel with a student pilot / flight attendant at the controls before crashing in Greece last week, according to a report in Flight International. The flight’s cockpit voice recorder has been recovered (in pieces), but its contents have not been publicly disclosed. The magazine said it obtained an exclusive interview with Capt. Akrivos Tsolakis, the head of the Air Accident Investigation and Aviation Safety Board, who confirmed earlier reports that a male flight attendant, identified by a Macedonian news agency as Andreas Prodromou, who had a few hours of private pilot instruction, managed to take the plane off autopilot and begin a descent. If true, that might help explain the plane’s final maneuvers, which included “a descent from 37,000 feet to 2,000 feet and then an ascent to 7,000 feet,” according to a report from The Associated Press.
