Cypriot airline Helios Airways is desperately seeking another aircraft to replace its destroyed Boeing 737-300, which crashed outside Athens yesterday morning killing all 121 passengers and crew. A company spokeswoman insisted the five-year-old airline was “operating as normal” to the UK this week, despite the fact one third of its fleet has been wiped out. She said Helios is today trying to secure a lease arrangement for another Boeing 737 aircraft so it can resume all normal scheduled and charter services from Cyprus as soon as possible. “We have three aircraft in our fleet and so it’s important we return to these numbers promptly,” she added. Investigators from Boeing, and Greek and Cypriot civil aviation authorities, are now at the crash site. The victims’ families have been flown to the site on a special charter service provided by the Greek government to help with identifying bodies. Crisis centres have also been set up to field calls from worried relatives. The spokeswoman said: “No routes to the UK have been affected so far and we do not expect any impact to UK flights tomorrow. We do not know yet what the impact may be later in the week.” It is understood the doomed flight from Larnaca to Prague did not have any UK nationals on board, although confirmation from British authorities is still to come.
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