Autopsies: Passengers died on impact of crash

? Autopsies on 118 bodies recovered from the Aug. 14 plane crash near Athens show all passengers and crew died on impact, a chief state coroner said Sunday.

The coroner, Fillippos Koutsaftis, said examination of DNA, tissue and dental records would continue in an effort to identify those bodies too badly damaged by the impact and the ensuing fire for families to recognize them.

Helios Flight 522 had been flying from Larnaca, Cyprus, to Athens with 115 passengers and six crew when it crashed into a mountainous region near the village of Grammatiko, about 25 miles north of Athens, in Greece’s worst air disaster. Three bodies have not been found.

Investigators are examining reports that the plane’s pilots were incapacitated by a possible loss of cabin pressure, but have not determined precisely what went wrong on the flight before it crashed.

A former chief mechanic at Helios said the plane lost cabin pressure during a December flight after a door apparently was not sealed properly.