Twenty-first anniversary of the Helios Airways flight 522 disaster

August 14, 2026, marks the 21st anniversary of the Helios Airways flight 522 disaster. On August 14, 2005, a Boeing 737-300 carrying 121 people—115 passengers, including 22 children, and 6 crew members—crashed into the mountainous region of Grammatiko, Greece, while en route from Larnaca to Prague with a stopover in Athens. Everyone on board perished, with many victims being Cypriot nationals.

Investigations revealed that the disaster was caused by a failure in the aircraft's cabin pressurization system. Earlier that morning, a ground technician had switched the pressurization setting from automatic to manual during a maintenance check, and it remained in the manual position during departure. The lack of proper cabin pressure led to hypoxia, leaving the crew and passengers in an irreversible coma as the plane continued on autopilot until it exhausted its fuel and crashed. Forensic examinations confirmed that victims were still alive at the time of the impact, though incapacitated by the lack of oxygen. The tragedy remains etched in the collective memory of Cyprus and Greece as one of the deadliest aviation incidents in their history.