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The defender urged the judges to draw a line between the facts and the hypotheses. "What are the facts? The aeroplane cabin was depressurised. The Boeing 737-300 did not have effective light signals. Oxygen masks were not used. Consequently, the pilots lost consciousness which led to the tragedy." The rest is speculation. One of the allegations, including that of Yanko Stoimenov, is that the two pilots were not trained how to act in case of loss of consciousness. "There is no such training in civil aviation; it is only given in the case of military aviation. It does not make sense for civil aviation, - what is the sense of training someone who is not conscious due to the lack of oxygen? It makes sense in military aviation, because there the pilot may temporarily lose consciousness for other reasons and it is important for him to quickly recover," said Voudouris.

The main arguments of the prosecution rely on the report of the Greek board to investigate the crash, which, however, many institutions and experts have criticized and challenged. "There is no report of another government institution that has been subject to such criticism," recalls Stelios Voudouris. The black box of the plane has not been found, no analysis of the computer has been made, no microscopic analysis of important evidence has been made and other evidence has been lost. Boeing’s experts themselves state before the court in Cyprus that the status of material evidence received is such that it does not allow them to draw reliable conclusions.

According to the defence, the fatal Boeing 737-300 model built in the 1950s had serious problems with the pressurisation and cooling signalisation. There is evidence of more than 300 flights by that aircraft, which were on the brink of tragedy.

The judges were visibly annoyed while listening to the defender’s pleading. Only the chairwoman of the jury gave the impression of making notes at times. One of her colleagues was hardly containing herself from falling asleep. Neither they, nor the prosecutor asked any questions. Instead, they announced that they had been called to fill the composition of a multi-member panel that was meeting in connection with civil matters at the same time. The meeting was interrupted for over two hours. When it was resumed, the other representative of the "Ioannis Iriotis" law firm, who defends Helios’ chief engineer Alan Irwin, was heard.

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