Cyprus started three days of official mourning Monday as the island recovered from Sunday’s disaster when all 121 people were killed on board a Cypriot airliner that crashed on its approach to the Greek capital Athens.
The news shocked the island’s small Armenian community as a family of four were also on board the fatal flight, traveling together for the first time, with their 12-year-old son boarding his first flight.
Hagop and Hilda Tutunjian, and their young boys, 16-year old Ara and Baret, four years his younger, were on the Helios Airways flight from Larnaca to Athens, from where they would complete the journey for a holiday in Prague, Czech Republic.
Hagop, a graduate of the Melkonian Educational Institute, was among the core team struggling to save the school despite the AGBU’s unjustifiable persistence to close the school and sell all its assets. He was a member of the 7-person board of the Melkonian Alumni in Cyprus and was at many times at the forefront of demonstrations, often pursuing a calm and rational approach to public debates and arguments.
He started his community involvement as a teenage footballer, playing for the local AYMA team in the 1960s and early 1970s. He kept his interest in youth and sports over the years, coaching the AGBU-AYA junior football team and helped stage several plays, some of which he directed. He was involved with the Hamazkayin cultural club of Nicosia and served on the governing board of the Nareg Elementary schools of Cyprus.
Working in the Gulf for many years, he recently set up his own electrical supplies business.
Hilda (née Costanian), was a graduate of the American Academy and a member of the AYMA club in her earlier years. She was an active “mother of Melkoniantsi” and among the auxiliary team of supporters of the Alumni struggle to help save the school. She was actively involved in church activities, helping out with the Sunday school in Nicosia.
Ara was in his fourth year at the Melkonian and among the youth disappointed by the AGBU. His younger brother, Baret, just graduated from the Nareg in Nicosia.
Messages of support kept pouring in with friends and relatives by the sides of Hagop and Hilda’s remaining families – brother Albert Tutunjian, and parents Vartkes and Lilly Costanian.
“They shall be sorely missed, Hagop with his fiery but fair arguments, Hilda who kept faithful to her religious education, often visiting any church – Armenian or Greek Orthodox or even Catholic – and was a support for her sister who suffered a car crash nearly two decades ago. Ara was a young teenager in his prime and a rebel at times, while Baret made us all laugh with his youthful smile. These were kind people who did not harm a sole. They did not deserve this tragic end,” said a close friend of the family.
What should have been a celebration, marking the second holiest day for Greek Orthodoxy, the holy day of ‘Panayia Theotokou’ (the Virgin Mary, Mother of God), turned into a day of prayers as bells chimed somberly and the faithful started their annual pilgrimages to monasteries with a heavy heart.
There were no survivors among the 115 passengers and six crew, with complete families wiped out as all of the travelers were holidaymakers, 48 of whom were reportedly children.
Relatives of the air crash victims were also flown to Greece Monday to help in the grueling task of identifying the remains of their loved ones, many of whom were charred beyond recognition and needed blood samples to match their DNA.
Even though the tragedy dominated the front pages of the Monday newspapers, the local media were screaming at the incompetence of the airline as well as the civil aviation authorities that could not give out a list of passengers, even though 24 hours had elapsed. This was expected to happen later in the day.
The media have also reflected on public pleas for information and that an investigation of the circumstances that surrounded the mysterious crash be concluded promptly and with transparency.
On the other hand, calls for resignation have been directed at civil aviation authorities that granted the leased Boeing 737-300 its air worthiness certificate, while the general public outcry demanded that the airline be shut down.
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