A flight attendant on board the Cypriot airliner that crashed near Athens killing all 121 on board last week made a "mayday" distress call while trying to land the plane at Athens airport, dpa quoted the state television NET as saying Sunday. Investigators are hoping that clues about what happened in the cockpit might be provided by the black box voice recorder recovered at the crash site and sent to experts in Paris for analysis. It had been feared that the recorder had been destroyed in the crash, for only its casing had been found until Friday. According to reports from NET, experts in Paris decoded the box and heard the words "mayday, mayday, mayday" from Andreas Prodromou, identified after DNA tests on blood discovered by investigators in the cockpit. Prodromou, a trained small aircraft pilot standing in as cabin crew, has been identified as the mystery person trying to land the 737 jetliner, according to video footage taken by two F-16 fighter planes ordered to intercept the plane. Officials are also waiting for Paris experts to release information on the data recorder, which keeps the plane's technical information. The pilots of the two Greek air force jets that shadowed the aircraft before it crashed into a mountainside in Grammatiko say they saw the oxygen masks on the plane had been activated, and that the co-pilot was slumped over the controls. The pilot was missing from his seat. His body is one of three yet to be recovered. Greek coroners said all other 118 bodies have been examined. While officials have identified most, they are still waiting for dental records in order to conduct DNA testing of the remaining victims. As the investigation into the causes of the Helios Airways crash continues, Greek officials are trying to determine the nature of the mechanical failure that prevented the plane's pilots from activating emergency systems and knocked out their communications. --more 1526 Local Time 1226 GMT
