The bodies of a newlywed British couple were found miraculously intact amid the charred wreckage of a Greek helicopter crash, while their veteran pilot survived the initial impact, fighting the ensuing flames but to no avail, first responders have said.
Alexander Cromie, 31, and his wife, Marie Ebert, 30, died alongside 53-year-old pilot George Raikos when their chartered helicopter plummeted into a craggy field on the island of Sifnos, moments before a scheduled afternoon landing, and start of their would-be honeymoon.
“The British victims were neither burned beyond recognition nor dismembered,” said Emmanuel Somarakis, a state doctor at the island’s lone medical clinic who first arrived at the scene to offer assistance.
The body pilot, he said, was also found intact, some seven metres from the fuselage.
"It appears that he ejected and tried to save himself," Dr. Somarakis told a Greek television network. “He had no visible fractures and seems to have actively battled the inferno before succumbing.
The grim revelation has investigators now believing that the chartered helicopter did not plunge violently from a high altitude, but instead suffered a sudden, fatal loss of control just 50 feet above the island's landing pad.
“Without any directional stability,” said retired Air Marshal Kostas Iatridis, “the aircraft that was flying at such low altitude must have spun violently on its axis, leaving the pilot no time to issue a distress call.
As a result of the crash, among the deadliest in recent aviation history here. Greece’s Civil Aviation Authority issued an emergency directive on Wednesday, ordering all operators of the specific helicopter model to immediately inspect their tail rotors.
All three bodies had been transferred to Greece’s main morgue in Piraeus for coroners to examine.