ATHENS, Aug 16: The mystery over what caused a Cypriot airliner to crash in Greece deepened on Tuesday as it emerged that a steward and his air hostess girlfriend had been in the cockpit when it went down, possibly trying to gain control after the pilots were incapacitated.

Andreas Prodromou and his girlfriend Haris Charalambous have been provisionally identified as the pair from video footage shot from the two F-16s scrambled after communications with the airliner were lost.

The Sunday crash, which killed all 121 people on board, was the worst air disaster to befall Cyprus and the local press has been full of tragic stories about whole families wiped out and children losing their parents.

Mr Prodromou had taken the job as a steward at Helios Airways after failing to find work as a pilot, despite strong pressure from his family not to take a position for which he was over-qualified, Antenna, a local television network, said.

In a tragic twist, he was only on the doomed plane as a last-minute replacement for a colleague without pilot training who couldn’t make the flight.

He had received the call less than three hours before takeoff and only agreed to go as his girlfriend was also working on the flight.

“He was a pilot and went to work as an air steward and I told him this is not a good job but he insisted,” his bereaved grandfather told Antenna, which did not give his name. “What do I say now?”

Antenna broadcast photographs of Mr Prodromou and his girlfiend embracing and reported that they had plans to marry.

The crew of the two Greek warplanes reported seeing the Cypriot airliner’s co-pilot Pambos Charalambous slumped over, perhaps unconscious, and German pilot Marten Hans Jergen not in his seat, while the cockpit’s oxygen masks were ‘activated’.

They said two people were seen wrestling with the controls of the Boeing-737 minutes before it crashed near Varnava, northwest of Athens.

The bodies of the co-pilot and a stewardess have been recovered but those of Mr Prodromou and the German pilot have yet to be found.

Mr Prodromou was one of two crew called in at short notice for the flight. Chief purser Louisa Vouteri, 32, a Greek national resident in Cyprus, was also called in to replace a sick colleague.

Niece of the publisher of the island’s Cyprus Weekly newspaper, Alex Efthyvoulou, she had been due to get married next month.

The third air hostess on the stricken flight, Meropi Sophocleous, 25, had grown up in the United States, where her parents and close family still live, and moved to Cyprus two years ago to take up the job with Helios.

ASPHYXIATION: Government officials and aviation experts have said the most likely explanation for the crash was a sudden and catastrophic loss of oxygen. The plane’s pilot had mentioned a problem with air-conditioning before losing contact.