France’s interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, has told RTL radio all options must be looked into to explain why the Airbus A320 ploughed into an Alpine mountainside on Tuesday but a terrorist attack is not the most likely scenario.
The fact that one of the black boxes can be used will be a boost to the investigation. The Associated Press spells out the significance of this here:
The plane had two such devices, actually orange boxes designed to survive extreme heat and pressure. They can provide investigators with a second-by-second timeline of the plane’s flight.
The voice recorder takes audio feeds from four microphones within the cockpit and records all the conversations between the pilots, air traffic controllers as well as any noises heard in the cockpit.
The flight data recorder captures 25 hours’ worth of information on the position and condition of almost every major part in a plane.
Reuters just breaking with this news:
FRENCH INTERIOR MINISTER SAYS BLACK BOX FROM PLANE CRASH IS DAMAGED BUT CAN BE USED TO FIND INFORMATION
As reported earlier there are fears that some of the victims on board the flight may be British. The Press Association also confirms earlier reports that a mother and her young baby who lived in the UK were on board.
Among those travelling on the plane with her baby was Marina Bandres, who came from Jaca in the Spanish Pyrenees and lived in Britain, Jaca mayor Victor Barrio said. Ms Bandres, reportedly 37, had been attending a funeral in the area for a relative.
Mr Barrio said he did not know if Ms Bandres’ husband was on the flight with her and son Julian, who was seven or eight months old.
Interesting point made here on safety of flying and the modern age.
If the aviation safety record of 1973 were applied to 2013, a jetliner would be crashing every 41 hours http://t.co/zQpwfJJWHQ #4U9525
— Jon Ostrower (@jonostrower) March 24, 2015
Our correspondent Angelique Chrisafis is on the road to the area of the crash and points out that the mountain village of Seyne-les-Alpes has become the centre of operations.
Francois Hollande, Angela Merkel and Mariano Rajoy are due to arrive at 2pm to visit the operations centre.
A make-shift chapel has been set-up and some families are expected to arrive shortly. Scores of rooms and a holiday centre in the area have been set up for families and more than 50 specialists will be assigned to take care of them.
It could take days or more for special services to be able to retrieve the victims’ remains after such a high-impact crash.
Here is some of that AFP story:
The arduous search for the 150 victims of the worst aviation disaster on French soil in decades was set to resume at dawn Wednesday, as European leaders visit the site of the tragedy to pay their respects.
The accident’s cause remains a mystery but authorities have recovered a black box from the Airbus A320 at the crash site, where debris was believed to be scattered over four acres of remote and inaccessible mountainous terrain, hampering rescue efforts.
Lieutenant Colonel Jean-Marc Menichini said a squad of 30 mountain rescue police would resume attempts to reach the crash site by helicopter at dawn Wednesday, while a further 65 police were seeking access on foot. Five investigators had spent the night at the site.
It would take “at least a week” to search the remote site, he said, and “at least several days” to repatriate the bodies.
Video images from a government helicopter Tuesday showed a desolate snow-flecked moonscape, with steep ravines covered in scree. Debris was strewn across the mountainside, pieces of twisted metal smashed into tiny bits.
The plane was “totally destroyed”, a local MP who flew over the site said, describing the scene as “horrendous”.
French President Francois Hollande, his German counterpart Angela Merkel and Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy were expected to reach the scene around 2:00 pm (1300 GMT).
Agence France-Presse, the French based news agency, has just filed its morning take on the crash. It says more than 300 policemen and 380 firefighters have joined the search for the bodies and wreckage.
Mountain rescue police are also on the scene. Five investigators had spent the night at the site.
France, Spain and Germany will be waking up to another day of this tragedy about now. The news overnight has been limited. And the recovery process for both the bodies of the deceased and parts of the plane will be slow especially if the predicted bad weather in the Alps continues.
Here is a reminder of some of the newspaper headlines which will greet citizens in those countries this morning.
The family of Australians Carol and Greig Friday have agreed to the release of two pictures of their relatives.
Updated
It is being pointed out that the recovery effort is likely to be hampered by pretty harsh weather in the south of France.
Thick fog, snow & near vertical slopes to make today's #Germanwings #crash recovery efforts grueling. pic.twitter.com/0MgdqLBivM
— Pedram Javaheri (@JavaheriCNN) March 25, 2015
The family of Carol and Greig Friday have released a statement. It reads:
Our family is in deep disbelief and crippled with sadness and would like to ask for privacy.
Carol was a loving Mother of two, a devoted wife to her husband Dave and a sister to three brothers.
She celebrated her 68th birthday on March 23rd. Carol was a registered nurse, midwife and maternal and child health nurse, most recently working for the City of Casey.
She was a talented artist and enjoyed spending time creating with her local art group.
She loved to travel and has seen many of the world’s greatest sights. Carol loved life! She enjoyed every minute with her family and friends.
Greig was to turn 30 on 23rdApril. He was a loving son to Carol and Dave and an exceptional brother to his sister Alex.
He was adored by all of his family and friends. Greig was a Mechanical Engineer who studied at Monash University and had since worked for Jacobs Engineering as an acoustic engineer.
He also loved to travel and had just completed a course for teaching English as a foreign language, which he was hoping to do in France in the coming year.
Greig was a man who loved others and life with a full heart!
Carol and Greig were enjoying a few weeks holiday together at the start of his European stay.
They were both extraordinary and exceptional people who were loved by many, who they loved in return.
They will forever be with us in our hearts, memories and dreams.
Australian victims named as Carol Friday and Greig Friday
The foreign minister, Julie Bishop, has named the Australian woman killed overnight in the crash.
Two Australians, Carol Friday and her son, were on board the flight. Consular officials have been in contact with the Friday family and are providing all possible consular assistance.
Our thought and prayers are with them at this unimaginably difficult time.
Her son has been named as Greig Friday. They were both from Melbourne.
Updated
More pictures are coming through of debris spotted at the crash site near Seyne les Alpes:
Two Colombians, three Mexicans among dead
Two Colombians were among the 150 people killed in a plane crash in the French Alps on Tuesday, AFP reports.
Maria del Pilar Tejada and Luis Eduardo Medrano died in the crash, the Colombian foreign ministry said, after French officials indicated there were no survivors from the Airbus 320 jet wreckage.
“The news was confirmed directly to the family of the victims,” a ministry statement said, without providing further biographical details of the deceased.
It expressed its “most sincere condolences” to the victims’ relatives, France, Germany, Spain and other countries affected by the disaster.
Elsewhere, there are reports from Mexico that three Mexican passengers were on board:
Familia y empresa confirman la muerte de tres mexicanos; hasta el momento la cancillería no lo ha hecho http://t.co/LNqoY9suO4 #Germanwings
— 24 HORAS (@diario24horas) March 25, 2015
As investigators begin their attempts to discover the reasons behind the aircraft’s crash-landing, a pressing question will be why the plane descended when it did, and why the pilots did not communicate with air traffic control past that point:
Altitude chart and map showing the location where #Germanwings flight #4U9525 crashed with 150 people on board pic.twitter.com/pEqpEKYmXk
— Agence France-Presse (@AFP) March 25, 2015
Two Argentine nationals on board: reports
AFP cites an Argentine diplomat confirming that two Argentine nationals were on board the aircraft.
Santiago Martino, an official at the Argentine embassy in Paris, reportedly told Radio America:
We got in touch with the crisis center and they told us officially that there were two Argentines who boarded the flight.
The French authorities have said there was no chance for any survivors given the rough terrain and difficult access.
However, the Argentine foreign ministry has not issued a statement.
Germany’s soccer federation says the national team, the current World Cup holders, will play with black armbands when it takes on Australia in a friendly on Wednesday.
It said there will be a minute of silence before kick-off for the 150 people who died when a Germanwings plane crashed in the French Alps en route from Barcelona to Duesseldorf.
Federation president Wolfgang Niersbach said “this overshadows everything … We owe it the victims and their families to commiserate as a soccer family.”
Loss of two Australian passengers 'a great tragedy': Victorian premier
My colleague Melissa Davey has more on the two Australians who were on board the crashed aircraft.
The Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews, has made a short statement about the two people from that state who died in the tragic crash, saying they were from Melbourne, and that their families were being offered consular support from the federal government, she reports.
Andrews told reporters:
I think all Victorians are very sad to wake up to this tragic news.
This is a great tragedy – it’s very, very sad news for all of us. Our thoughts, our prayers, our best wishes and our support, most importantly, will be with that family and anyone else who is affected by this terrible tragedy.
I can’t provide any more details than that other than to say officials of my department, and indeed myself personally, will contact the family at the appropriate time and extend our personal best wishes to them, and any assistance that the Victorian government can provide for this family will be there for them in what is a very, very difficult set of circumstances.
My message to that family, and indeed to those for whom this incident will be a very painful reminder of other disasters in recent times, whether it’s MH370 or MH17, this will be a very raw moment for many Victorian families who have had to live through those tragedies just in the space of the last 12 months.
The families of all those affected by this disaster are in our hearts today.
And Senator Christine Milne, leader of the Australian Greens, has issued this statement about the crash:
On behalf of the Australian Greens I extend our deepest sympathies to all those who have lost loved ones in yesterday’s plane crash in the French Alps.
I am particularly sad to hear that a Victorian woman and her adult son have been killed. Our hearts go out to their family and friends.
We all travel; we’ve got friends who travel, children who travel. This is a tragedy that hits home because so many people have died, many of them young, and it appears so random. We get the sense that in other circumstances, it could have been any one of us or our family or friends.
Updated
Germanwings cancels flights out of Düsseldorf
Seven flights have been cancelled as crew members were too upset to fly. The Associated Press sends this report:
Germanwings has had to cancel seven flights out of Düsseldorf because a number of crew members felt they were unfit to fly following news of the accident.
Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr said that he understood the crew members’ sentiments.
“One must not forget: many of our Germanwings crews have known crew members who were onboard the crashed plane,” Spohr said.
“It is now more important to ensure psychological assistance if needed. And we will get back to a full flight operation as soon as possible then. But for me, this is rather secondary now,” he added.
Chesley Sullenberger, the US Airways pilot who crash-landed an Airbus 320 in the Hudson river in New York in 2009, has been talking to Sky News Australia about the Germanwings crash.
Asked about the eight-minute silence from the cockpit of the stricken plane before it crashed into the Alps, Sullenberger said the two pilots might have been concentrating on rectifying some problem with the flight:
Pilots must first fly the aircraft and only then try to communicate .
He added that “the cruise portion of the flight is statistically the safest”, but said unforeseen problems such as a lack of cabin pressure, or fire or smoke in the aircraft, could have prompted the pilots to make a descent.
With the search and rescue operation suspended until dawn in France, investigations into the causes of the crash will begin in earnest on Wednesday:
Brice Robin, the public prosecutor at Marseille in charge of the criminal inquiry, told reporters that the plane had hit the mountain at an altitude of 1,500m:
It’s too early to establish the cause of this accident.
For the moment, the investigators working with the gendarmes are interviewing witnesses to have a more precise idea about what happened.
The black box has been flown by aircraft to Paris this evening to be examined tomorrow [Wednesday] morning.
We have obtained copies of the contact between the control tower and the pilots of the plane. These show there was no contact with the plane after it started losing altitude and when the air traffic controllers tried to contact it there was no response.
Newspaper front pages: round-up
The front pages of European newspapers are emerging now and are unsurprisingly dominated by news of the crash.
German newspaper Bild dons a black ribbon on its masthead:
Die Titelseite. #4U9525 pic.twitter.com/jcuFETfVcP
— BILD (@BILD) March 24, 2015
Spanish newspapers El Mundo, La Razon, ABC and El Pais also focus on the tragedy:
La tragedia de #Germanwings, en portada de los cuatro periódicos nacionales este miércoles 25 de marzo. pic.twitter.com/Yvku1NxaeJ
— Alex Rozada (@alexrozada) March 24, 2015
This is the International New York Times; US president Barack Obama has called the crash “heartbreaking”:
Wednesday's International NY Times: Jet crash in Alps kills 150 #tomorrowspaperstoday #bbcpapers #Germanwings pic.twitter.com/l7yhdHmPdH
— Nick Sutton (@suttonnick) March 24, 2015
And the Guardian front page in the UK:
Wednesday's Guardian front page: The 8-minute descent to death #tomorrowspaperstoday #bbcpapers #Germanwings pic.twitter.com/MG6TM7qkLf
— Nick Sutton (@suttonnick) March 24, 2015
Australian prime minister Tony Abbott has been speaking at a press conference about the Germanwings crash:
A terrible tragedy has taken place in the French Alps.
Our hearts go out to the friends and family of all on board. We stand ready to help in any way we can .
Reuters files this report on the recovery efforts and investigation into the crash, which will begin at first light in France:
French investigators will sift through wreckage on Wednesday for clues into why a German Airbus ploughed into an Alpine mountainside, killing all 150 people on board.
The A320 jet operated by Lufthansa’s Germanwings budget airline was obliterated when it went down in a rugged area of ravines on Tuesday while flying over France en route to Düsseldorf from Barcelona.
No distress call was received from the aircraft, but France said one of the two black box flight recorders had been recovered from the site 2,000m (6,000 feet) above sea level. A person familiar with the recovery effort told Reuters that this was the cockpit voice recorder. Investigators will also need the other black box which records flight data, information that is essential for probing air accidents.
Civil aviation investigators from France’s Bureau d’Enquetes et d’Analyses (BEA) are expected to hold a news conference on Wednesday afternoon.
In Washington, the White House said the crash did not appear to have been caused by a terrorist attack. Lufthansa said it was working on the assumption that the tragedy had been an accident, adding that any other theory would be speculation. French president Francois Hollande will visit the area on Wednesday along with German chancellor Angela Merkel and Spanish prime minister Mariano Rajoy.
Germanwings said the plane started descending one minute after reaching its cruising height and continued losing altitude for eight minutes.
“The aircraft’s contact with French radar, French air traffic controllers, ended at 10.53 am at an altitude of about 6,000 feet. The plane then crashed,” Germanwings’ Managing Director Thomas Winkelmann told a news conference.
Winkelmann later said some Germanwings crew members had declared themselves unfit to fly, leading to some cancellations. “We understand that on a day like today, they wouldn’t feel able to fly,” he told German broadcaster ZDF.
Experts said that while the Airbus had descended rapidly, it did not seem to have simply fallen out of the sky.
A Lufthansa flight from Bilbao to Munich on Nov. 5 lost altitude after sensors iced over and the onboard computer, fearing the plane was about to stall, put the nose down. As a result, the European Aviation Safety Agency ordered a change in procedure for all A320 jets.
Asked whether something similar could have occurred on Tuesday, Winkelmann said, “At this time this evening, we are ruling out a possible cause in this area.”
The aircraft came down in a region known for skiing, hiking and rafting, but which is difficult for rescue services to reach. The base of operations for the recovery was set up in a gymnasium in the village of Seyne-les-Alpes, which has a private aerodrome nearby. A small team of gendarmes camped overnight on the mountainside to secure the crash site.
The A320 is one of the world’s most used passenger jets and has a good safety record. The Germanwings plane was 24 years old and powered by engines made by CFM International, a joint venture between General Electric and France’s Safran.
The UK Manchester Evening News reports that a woman from Manchester and her young son are believed to have been on board the Germanwings aircraft.
It says that Marina Lopez-Bello, who was from Spain but living in Manchester, was believed to have taken the flight after returning to her family home in the Pyrenees to attend her uncle’s funeral.
The MEN reports that a college in Spain attended by Lopez-Bello has posted a tribute to her.
As yet, the passengers have not been officially identified.
A bit more on the plane and its crew, via Press Association:
Germanwings said the captain on board was experienced and had been with the airline and its parent company Lufthansa for more than 10 years and had clocked up 6,000 flying hours on this Airbus model.
Germanwings said the plane had a normal service at Düsseldorf yesterday and its last major check-up had been in summer 2013.
Despite the Germanwings disaster and other recent losses such as AirAsia flight QZ8501, the downing of MH17 in Ukraine and missing flight MH370, the rate of aircraft accidents is at a historical low, reports my colleague Nick Evershed:
Figures from the Bureau of Aircraft Accident Archives (BAAA) make the Germanwings crash in the Alps the 17th such incident in 2015, compared with 33 that occurred up to the same point in 2014.
It also takes the total number of fatalities for 2015 so far at 247, which assumes the 150 on board today’s Germanwings crash have all died.
In 2014, the BAAA says 1,328 died in aircraft accidents – the highest annual fatality figure since 2005 due to a series of crashes including AirAsia flight QZ8501 and MH17 in Ukraine.
The rate of accidents for 2014 is at the lowest since at least 1973 and the overall trend is towards flights having fewer accidents overall.
Despite the decreasing rate for accidents, the rate for fatalities has increased in 2014 over 2013, though historically it is still relatively low, with the overall trend being downwards:
Airline: technical problems 'not a safety issue'
There have been reports in the German media suggesting that the plane involved in yesterday’s crash had been grounded 24 hours before it took off from Barcelona due to “technical issues”.
The Guardian has been in touch with airline Germanwings, who said this was not a safety issue:
Amid reports that the plane had been recently grounded owing to safety concerns, a spokesman for Germanwings said there had been a problem with the door for the plane’s landing gear which was investigated on Monday, but which was not a safety issue.
“It was only a problem with the nose landing gear door, so just the door in front of the nose landing gear, and it had to be repaired not for safety reasons but for acoustic reasons,” he said.
“It was an acoustical problem and not a safety issue.”
He said after the issue was investigated, the plane was passed for flight. “It was cleared to fly again.”
What we know so far
This is Claire Phipps, taking over our live coverage. Here is a round-up of the key developments:
The crash site
Germanwings flight 4U9525, travelling from Barcelona to Düsseldorf, crashed in the French Alps near Digne-les-Bains on Tuesday, with, it is believed, the loss of all 150 people on board. Lufthansa vice-president Heike Birlenbach said the company is treating the crash as an accident, but French prime minister Manual Valls said “no hypothesis” could be ruled out.
Images from the crash site shows debris strewn over a wide area. German foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who flew over the area, called it “a scene of horror”.
The passengers
Details have emerged of the 144 passengers:
- Early reports indicate there were 67 Germans, 45 Spanish, two Australians and an as-yet undetermined number of Britons on the plane. There were also two pilots and four cabin crew.
-
Sixteen students and two teachers from the Joseph-Koenig Gymnasium high school in Haltern, Germany, were on board, returning from a Spanish exchange trip.
- Two Australians, a mother and her adult son from Victoria, are confirmed to have been on the flight.
-
The UK foreign office said it was “sadly likely” that a number of British nationals were on the plane.
- Opera singers Oleg Bryjak and Maria Radner – along with Radner’s husband and baby – were among those lost.
The cause of the crash
The plane’s black box has been found, but it is not yet clear whether this is the voice or data recorder. Search crews in France suspended their operation due to nightfall and poor weather, and plan to resume at dawn on Wednesday. But the remote location of the crash makes access difficult and weather conditions are expected to deteriorate over the next 12 hours.
An unexplained descent lasting eight minutes began about 45 minutes into the flight. The plane dropped from its cruising altitude of 38,000ft to 6,000ft. Contact was lost at 10.53am, when the plane was at 6,000ft. The French aviation regulator has said no distress call was issued, despite earlier reports to the contrary. In the last 10 minutes of the flight there was total radio silence.
British nationals "likely" to have been on plane
No names or numbers have been released, but the UK foreign secretary Phillip Hammond has just issued a statement saying it’s “sadly likely” there were British nationals aboard Germanwings flight 4U9525.
Here are his comments:
This is a tragic incident for those involved and their families, I send my deepest condolences to those who have lost family or friends.
I don’t want to speculate on numbers of British nationals involved until we have completed our checks on all the passenger information. However, based on the information available to us, it is sadly likely that there were some British nationals on board the flight. We are providing consular assistance and will give further help as more information becomes available. We are working closely with the French, German and Spanish authorities, and the airline, to establish the facts.
The UK Air Accident Investigation Branch, and UK Disaster Victim Identification experts, are also standing by to offer assistance to the French authorities, if required.
Updated
As has become customary with these tragedies, Germanwings has altered its logo on social media to reflect the company’s grief at the loss of 150 lives aboard one of its planes.
The Australian prime minister, Tony Abbott, has also offered his condolences to the friends and families of those lost on the flight.
PM Abbott statement on the #Germanwings crash: pic.twitter.com/1aRWEXf1r5
— Karen Barlow (@KJBar) March 24, 2015
Australians are waking to the news that two of their nationals were aboard the Germanwings flight 4U9525 that crashed some 12 hours ago in the French Alps. The Australian foreign minister, Julie Bishop, confirmed a Victorian mother and her adult son are among the 150 victims of this tragedy.
My colleague Shalailah Medhora reports:
“It would not be appropriate to disclose further details of our citizens at this stage due to privacy considerations of the family,” Bishop told reporters early on Wednesday morning. “Further details, as the family agrees to the release of those details will be made.”
The foreign minister said that the Australian government is “seeking to identify if there were any other Australians, dual nationals or permanent residents on this flight.”
Bishop and prime minister Tony Abbott are expected to send their personal condolences to their French, Spanish and German counterparts once the details of the crash become clear.
“At this stage it appears Germany, France and Spain were the countries most affected,” Bishop said.
“Our thoughts and prayers are with the friends and families of all those killed but particularly with the loved ones of the two Australians who have lost their lives,” Abbott told reporters on Wednesday. “Our consular officials are doing what they can for the families.”
Australian consular officials will travel to the crash site to help at the incident coordination centre.
Updated
Summary
- Germanwings flight 4U9525 crashed in the French Alps and none of the 150 people on board are thought to have survived. Lufthansa vice-president Heike Birlenbach said the company is treating the crash as an accident, but French prime minister Manual Valls said “no hypothesis” could be ruled out for the downed flight traveling from Barcelona to Düsseldorf.
- Search crews suspended their operation due to nightfall and poor weather, and plan to resume at dawn on Wednesday. The plane’s black box has been found, French interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve said, without specifying whether he meant the voice or data recorder.
- There were 144 passengers, including two infants, 16 German schoolchildren, and two opera singers. It is believed that there were 67 Germans, 45 Spanish and two Australians on board, but Lufthansa said it is working to verify nationalities of passengers.
- The remote location of the crash makes access difficult and conditions are expected to deteriorate over the next 12 hours as a storm system moves into the region, bringing rain, strong winds and high-elevation snow.
- An unexplained descent lasting eight minutes began about 45 minutes into the flight. The plane dropped from its cruising altitude of 38,000ft to 6,000ft. Contact was lost at 10.53am, when the plane was at 6,000ft.
- The French aviation regulator has said no distress call was issued, although there has been some confusion with others saying it was.
- Images from the crash site shows countless pieces of debris strewn over a wide area. German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who flew over the area, called it “a scene of horror” and a witness said “everything is pulverized”.
- French, German, Spanish, American and British leaders have expressed their sorrow and shock at the tragedy. French President Francois Hollande described it as a “tragedy on our soil”, and American President Barack Obama said the US would support its allies however it could in the wake of the “awful tragedy”.
The the path and altitude of Germanwings flight 4U9525 from Barcelona en route to Düsseldorf when it crashed in the French Alps.
Candles have also started to appear outside the Josef-König School in Haltern in tribute to the 16 students and two teachers who were on the flight, reports Louise Osborne from Germany.
Reported to be a 15-year-old participant in the German TV show Voice Kids and from Haltern, Ibrahim Soufjan tweeted in German that a friend had been on the flight: “Guys I’m so incredibly sad … They were students from our grade. Among others was a very good friend of mine.”
He went on tweet: “The grief cannot be expressed in words. They were all so young and all that they would have experienced, they will not experience.”
A second opera singer, Maria Radner, was among the victims with her baby and husband, the AP reports, along with a Spanish mother with her seven- or eight-month old child.
The mayor of the small Spanish town of Jaca in the Pyrenees mountains says that a woman originally from the town died in the crash along with her baby boy.
Jaca Mayor Victor Barrio said Marina Bandres had been attending a funeral in Jaca for a relative and was taken to the Barcelona airport by her father.
Bandres lived in Britain. Barrio did not know if her husband was on the flight with her and the boy, Julian, who was seven or eight months old.
Police sent climbers to establish a route to the site to ship staff and equipment tomorrow #Germanwings pic.twitter.com/qyF2F9Aalv
— inti (@landauro) March 24, 2015
At Düsseldorf Airport, balloons and candles have started to appear in tribute, Louise Osborne reports for the Guardian from Berlin.
In a photo published on the Bild website, one tribute read: “Dear parents, sisters, brothers, friends and loved ones, stay strong, Düsseldorf, the world and I grieve with you. You are not alone. Belief, love hope.”
Meanwhile, the German and European Union flags at Germany’s Foreign Ministry were flying at halfmast.
After arriving at the site, German foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said: “It’s a scene of horror on the ground. The grief of the families and loved ones is immeasurable. We must now stand together. We are all united in tremendous grief.”
Search crews spent the afternoon scouring the remote crash site in the French Alps, but have suspended the operation due to nightfall and bad weather.
French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said earlier today “there is little hope” of finding survivors but that “up until the last minute we have to do everything we can.”
A police official near the scene of the crash has told journalists there that the recovery operation will take days.
French police will send rescue staff on site at dawn to start evacuating bodies, says Col Menichini. Operation wil take days #Germanwings
— inti (@landauro) March 24, 2015
Two Australians were on board Germanwings flight 4U9525, foreign minister Julie Bishop has confirmed.
“Sadly I can confirm that there were two Australian citizens onboard, a mother and her adult son from Victoria,” Bishop said, declining to say more out of respect for the family’s privacy.
She said her office is working to determine whether any other Australians were on board, and offers her condolences to the governments of Germany, France and Spain.
“It would be premature to speculate on what may have caused the loss of the aircraft,” she continues.
“Lufthansa are working on the assumption that the plane crash was an accident but I understand that relevant authorities will undertake detailed investigation. If anyone has concerns for the welfare of their family and friends in the region I urge them to, of course, attempt tocontact them directly but if you’re unable to contact them and still hold concerns for their welfare, I suggest that they call the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade emergency center.”
Bishop says she spoke with Australia’s ambassador to France, who is working with the French authorities to coordinate the recovery of remains. She adds that Australian officials will liaise with French authorities to assist in the recovery effort.
There are believed to have been 67 German nationals on board the flight, and the Spanish government said there were 45 passengers with Spanish last names on board.
Opera singer Oleg Bryjak was also on board, as were employees of pharmaceutical company Bayer, Spanish clothing brand Desigual, Delphi Automotive and Fuji were among the companies who said they had at least one employee on board the flight.
Ashifa Kassam reporting from Madrid has more on the Spanish victims of the crash, and the families who are contacting the government and airliner:
The city of Olot, some 70 miles north of Barcelona, was in mourning after it lost three of its residents in the crash. One was the wife of a staff member for the political party Republic Left of Catalonia, reported Efe news. The 33-year-old was travelling to Dusseldorf on business, along with another 42-year old woman.
Both were heading to the Anuga Food Tec fair in Cologne, one of the world’s leading trade fairs for food production. As the fair opened its doors on Tuesday, nobody could talk about anything else, communication director Christine Hackmann told La Vanguardia. “We’re very worried and watching the situation carefully, but right now we can’t be sure that any of our visitors were on the flight.”
Meanwhilet in Barcelona’s El Prat airport, Spanish authorities have designated a special zone for the relatives and friends of those believed to be on the flight.
People started arriving at noon and were quickly shuttled by police to meet with crisis specialists and psychologists, Ashifa reports. “By midafternoon, the number of people who had come to the airport with concerns about their loved ones had reportedly swelled to more than 100.”
Updated
A five-person team will stay the night to watch over the crash site, reports a journalist on the scene.
Rescue staff in Seyne -- Only 5 rangers will spend the night on site to protect area #Germanwings pic.twitter.com/Q3N8cpspuX
— inti (@landauro) March 24, 2015
More pictures are coming in from the crash site. They show that the plane broke up into many very small pieces on impact with the mountainside. There are only a small number of larger pieces of debris.
This zoomed-in version of the same picture shows the larger pieces of debris in more detail.
As night falls and Europeans mourn for the passengers who have been identified, more details about the victims are emerging. Louise Osborne and Ashifa Kassam report for the Guardian from Berlin and Madrid:
Before the sun rose on Tuesday morning, one group of teenagers in the Catalan town of Llinars del Vallés had already dragged themselves out of bed.
For the past week, the 14- and 15-year olds had shared their homes and lives with 16 teenagers from western Germany. They had become fast friends months earlier when the Catalan students travelled to the town of Haltern in Germany months for the first part of the exchange. Now, before dawn on this Tuesday morning, they faced the tough task of saying goodbye to their friends.
Accompanied by their families, they dropped their friends at the town’s train station, some 25 miles from Barcelona’s El Prat airport, exchanging hugs and promising to keep in touch.
Hours later, the Catalan students reacted with shock, sobbing as they were told that their friends were believed to be on the Germanwings flight 4U9525 as it crashed in the French Alps on Tuesday morning. “They’re completely distraught,” said Marti Pujol i Casals, the mayor of Llinars del Vallés. “They spent 24 hours a day with these kids this week.”
Haltern mayor Bodo Klimpel confirmed that 16 students and two teachers from the Joseph-Koenig Gymnasium high school were on board the flight. “This is the worst thing imaginable,” he said.
Many of the parents had learned of the crash through the media, said Klimpel, and rushed to the school for more information. They had suspended classes for the day, but were planning on opening tomorrow.”There will not be normal tuition as you can imagine. There will be plenty of opportunities for students to exchange views, opinions and feelings on the tragic accident.”
Spain’s deputy prime minister, Soraya Sáenz de Santamaria, has declared three days of official mourning. “Our principal worry right now is guaranteeing psychological help to the relatives,” she said.
In Llinars del Vallés, psychologists from the Red Cross have been brought in to help the students, said mayor Pujol i Casals, as well as offer support to the many host parents who are grieving. “You have this child staying in your home, you take them on excursions to Barcelona and in the end you’ve looked after this child as if it were your own for the week – there’s a lot of pain in this community today.”
For now, his concerns lay with another group of German teenagers on exchange in the town, he said, this one made up of 35 students from Hamburg. “They’re supposed to fly out tomorrow morning.” The group was terribly nervous, he said, with one girl fainting when she heard the news of the plane crash. “They’re not going to sleep tonight.”
You can read their full piece here.
Updated
Aerial footage of the crash site in the French Alps and its environs, as aired on France 24.
Search operations suspended overnight
From Kim Willsher, reporting from Paris: “At 8pm French time, the air search and rescue operation was called off as night fell. It will start again at dawn tomorrow.”
Brice Robin, the public prosecutor at Marseille in charge of the criminal inquiry, said the plane had hit the mountain at an altitude of 1500 meters.
“It’s too early to establish the cause of this accident,” Robin said. “For the moment, the investigators working with the gendarmes are interviewing witnesses to have a more precise idea about what happened.
“The black box has been flown by aircraft to Paris this evening to be examined tomorrow morning.
“We have obtained copies of the contact between the control tower and the pilots of the plane. These show there was no contact with the plane after it started losing altitude and when the air traffic controllers tried to contact it there was no response.”
Updated
The crash site is “a scene of horror,” German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier says, per an AP reports.
After being flown over the crash scene and briefed by French authorities, he said: “The grief of the families and friends is immeasurable. We must now stand together. We are united in our great grief.”
Search crews arrived quickly, France 24’s Christophe Baeur translates a gendarme general as saying on French television.
Gendarme general on France 2: Search teams on site 50 minutes after #Germanwings crash. #4U9525
— Christophe Bauer (@KrsBauer) March 24, 2015
Those crews found a horrifying scene, AFP and AP reported, with a police officer saying: “There is no need for any rescue operations, everyone is dead.”
“Everything is pulverized. The largest pieces of debris are the size of a small car. No one can access the site from the ground,” Gilbert Sauvan, president of the general council of Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, told the Associated Press.
Sandrine Boisse, a tourism official who was near the crash site as the aircraft came down, told the AP: “It was a deafening noise. I thought it was an avalanche, although it sounded slightly different. It was short noise and lasted just a few seconds.”
Updated
As bad weather falls over the crash site and night descends over the mountains, complicating any investigation, Germanwings officials announce they do not plan to give another briefing until tomorrow.
#Germanwings isn't planning to give further information until Wednesday morning. #4U9525
— Hendrik Varnholt (@HendrikVarnholt) March 24, 2015
The Wall Street Journal’s Hendrik Varnholt says that the airliner is still trying to contact all the next of kin on the passenger and crew list.
Updated
Summary
- French authorities have said 150 people have died after Germanwings flight 4U9525 from Barcelona to Düsseldorf crashed in the French Alps. Lufthansa vice-president Heike Birlenbach said the company is treating the crash as an accident, but French prime minister Manual Valls said “no hypothesis” could be ruled out.
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The plane’s black box has been found, French interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve said, without specifying whether he meant the voice or data recorder.
- There were 144 passengers, including two infants and 16 German schoolchildren, and six crew on board. It is believed that there were 67 Germans and 45 Spanish on board.
- The remote location of the crash makes access difficult and conditions are expected to deteriorate over the next 12 hours as a storm system moves into the region, producing rain, strong winds and high-elevation snow.
- An unexplained descent lasting eight minutes began about 45 minutes into the flight. The plane dropped from its cruising altitude of 38,000ft to 6,000ft. Contact was lost at 10.53am, when the plane was at 6,000ft.
- The French aviation regulator has said no distress call was issued, although there has been some confusion with others saying it was.
- The first image from the crash site shows countless pieces of debris strewn over a wide area. A regional official told CNN the largest piece was the size of a small car.
- French, German, Spanish, American and British leaders have expressed their sorrow and shock at the tragedy. French President Francois Hollande described it as a “tragedy on our soil”, and American President Barack Obama said the US would support its allies however it could in the wake of the “awful tragedy”.
AirLive.net, an air traffic monitoring service, reports that there are “no more helicopters now over the crash site … due to night and weather is getting worse.”
The service also tweets a graphic of the flight’s altitude and speed.
PHOTO Graphic showing altitude and speed changes of #Germanwings flight (UK Time) @flightradar24 pic.twitter.com/ydfYG7zmD1 - @NewsHazbail
— AirLive.net (@airlivenet) March 24, 2015
Among those killed was opera singer Oleg Bryjak, Deutsche Oper Am Rhein director Christoph Meyer has told the Associated Press. Meyer said Bryjak was returning to Germany from a performance: “we have lost a great performer and a great person in Oleg Bryjak. We are stunned.”
The US State Department has said it cannot confirm whether there were any Americans on board the flight, and Lufthansa has said it is still working to verify passengers’ nationalities.
“Our thoughts and our prayers are with our friends in Europe,” President Barack Obama says, offering his condolences to those with family and friends on board the flight.
Obama giving opening remarks to a joint-press conference with Afghan president Ashraf Ghani.
“It’s particularly heartbreaking because [the crash] apparently includes the loss of so many children, including infants,” he says.
“I called German Chancellor Merkel and I hope to speak with Spanish President Rajoy later today to express the condolences of the American peopel and to talk about any help we can provide.”
“Our teams have been in close contact and we’re working to confirm how many Americans may have been on board.”
“Germany and Spain are among our closest allies,” he concludes, and “Our message to them is as a steadfast friend and ally, America stands with them at this moment of sorrow.”
Updated
Lufthansa treating crash as an accident
The crash is being treated as an accident “for the time being”, Lufthansa vice-president Heike Birlenbach has said at the airliner’s most recent press conference.
“We say it is an accident. There is nothing more we can say right now,” she said.
She also said that the plane, bound for Duesseldorf in Germany, took off from Barcelona 30 minutes late Tuesday but did not know what caused the delay.
Updated
Flight analysts are already trying to piece together what happened to Flight 9525, which just a few minutes after it reached its top cruising altitude, descended for a little under 10 minutes before it struck the earth. The AP has taken a look at what clues investigators will examine and the events they suggest:
• Breakup on contact or midair: “If the debris field is pretty compact, the plane most likely hit the mountains intact. If, it is scattered, the plane probably broke up midair.”
• Decompression: “Each takeoff and landing cycle and the pressurization and depressurization associated with it adds stress to the skin of the plane. Aircraft that fly short, frequent routes go through more of these cycles than planes flying long distances. In 1988, a 19-year-old Aloha Airlines Boeing 737-200 that had made frequent, short hops among the Hawaiian islands lost a large part of its roof.
“Flight 9525 reportedly descended at 3,000 feet per minute from its cruising altitude of 38,000, twice the normal speed of a descent.
“If there was some type of rapid decompression whether from metal fatigue or a bomb the pilots’ first move would be to get the plane down below 10,000 feet, where the air is breathable. The masks that come down from the overhead bins provide about 10 minutes worth of oxygen. So, a decent rate of 3,000 feet per minute would get the plane down to breathable air just in time.
“Todd Curtis, a former Boeing safety engineer, says that initial rate of decent is consistent with what you would see in a decompression situation.”
• Technical error: “Airbus jets have one of the most sophisticated cockpits. However, there have been issues in the past with some of the instruments there. The 2009 crash of Air France Flight 447 started because pilots were getting false air speed indications as it flew through a storm. Ultimately, pilot error led the plane into a stall but only after they were getting bad data.
“More recently, a Lufthansa A321, the slightly larger version of the A320, dropped about 4,000 feet in one minute after the autopilot unexpectedly lowered the jet’s nose. Following the November incident, the European Aviation Safety Agency issued a safety directive warning pilots about the possibility of an error with the angle of attack sensors on the plane. To pull out of a dive, a pilot would have to turn off two of the three air data reference units in the cockpit, the agency found, rather than just pull up on the jet’s sidestick.”
Pilot error: “The pilots might have somehow accidentally put the plane into a dive or stall and not be able to recover from it. Separately, the pilots could have been so focused on getting the plane below 10,000 feet that they didn’t realize how close they were to the mountains until it was too late.”
Flight 9525’s descent lasted eight to nine minutes and the aircraft was last in contact with French radar and traffic controllers at 10.53am local time, Germanwings’ Thomas Winkelmann said earlier today, laying out the few details we know so far about what happened.
Birlenbach says that Lufthansa is investigating whether it can bring relatives to the crash site. The logistics of such an operation would be difficult – it has been hard even to get investigators to the scene this afternoon.
She is asked about why the plane left late from Barcelona, but is unable to say why there was a delay of nearly 30 minutes.
Birlenbach is unable to shed any light on the conflicting information of whether a mayday call was made by the crew, or whether any other emergency signal was launched.
The last maintenance check of the plane was yesterday in Dusseldorf, she says.
Updated
Lufthansa is now giving a press conference, saying they are unable at this point to confirm all the nationalities of those on board the flight. There were 150 in total, 144 passengers, 67 of whom German.
“We have their names, we have of course the list” of passengers, Lufthansa’s Heike Birlenbach says, but they are working to verify who was on board with families. She says they cannot assume nationalities purely based on passengers’ names. Birlenbach is Lufthansa’s vice-president for sales and services Europe.
“Be assured that as soon as this information as this information, which should be sometime tonight, we will disclose this information,” she says.
“Everyone at Germanwings is shocked and deeply saddened,” she says, “please be assured that for Lufthansa it’s of the greatest importance to now focus on the investigation of this accident.”
She goes on to give information about the flight and the aircraft that is largely the same as at the previous press conference.
Updated
Francois Hollande, Angela Merkel, and Mariano Rajoy Brey will visit the crash site tomorrow, France 24’s Christophe Bauer reports.
French President, German Chancellor and Spanish PM to visit #GermanWings crash site tomorrow. #4U9525 http://t.co/4Q4QZPMzaO
— Christophe Bauer (@KrsBauer) March 24, 2015
Summary
- French authorities have said 150 people have died after Germanwings flight 4U9525 from Barcelona to Düsseldorf crashed in the French Alps
- There were 144 passengers, including two babies and 16 German schoolchildren, and six crew on board. It is believed that there were 67 Germans and 45 Spanish on board.
- An unexplained descent lasting eight minutes began about 45 minutes into the flight. The plane dropped from its cruising altitude of 38,000ft to 6,000ft. Contact was lost at 10.53am, when the plane was at 6,000ft.
- The French aviation regulator has said no distress call was issued although there has been some confusion with others saying it was.
- The first image from the crash site shows countless pieces of debris strewn over a wide area. A regional official told CNN the largest piece was the size of a small car.
- The location of the crash makes access difficult and conditions are expected to deteriorate over the next 12 hours as a storm system moves into the region, producing rain and high-elevation snow.
- The plane’s black box has been found, the French interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, said. He said it would help the investigation proceed more quickly.
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The French, German and Spanish leaders have expressed their sorrow and shock at the tragedy. French President Francois Hollande described it as a “tragedy on our soil”.
Black box found
The French interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, says a black box has been found.
A regional official has given CNN’s Hala Gorani an idea of the scale of obliteration of the plane.
Regional official Gilbert Sauvan tells me no piece of debris in #germanwings crash is larger than a "small car."
— Hala Gorani (@HalaGorani) March 24, 2015
The Guardian’s transport correspondent, Gwyn Topham, has been talking to experts about what might have caused the crash.
The airline said it could not give any reason why the plane crashed and added that it was too early to speculate on possible causes. The unverified flight data from plane tracking websites however appeared to rule out a large-scale explosion, with the plane apparently flying on relatively intact, or a midair stall, which would cause a much faster descent. Experts said planes would also be able to glide for longer in the case of total engine failure.
David Gleave, an air accident investigator and aviation expert at Loughborough University, said that based on the unverified data from plane tracking websites, “The descent appears to be consistent about 3000 ft a minute - not fast enough to be an explosive decompression, but it’s too fast if you were gliding. It appears to be a controlled descent.”
Tony Cable, who was the senior investigator into the Concorde crash, the last major air disaster on French soil in 2000, said that if there was no distress call made by pilots during the descent, likely starting points for investigation would be either a loss of control or pilot confusion, or a combination of both. One cause might be what investigators term a CFIT or controlled flight into terrain, where loss of instruments or irregular readings can make pilots lose their bearings and only become aware of danger too late if there is no visual reference - possible in the case of descending through thick cloud.
Image of crash site released
This is one of the first photographs to be released of the crash site. It shows a helicopter hovering above the mountains, on which can be seen countless small pieces of debris. The bleak image illustrates the scale of the task faced by the emergency response teams and why the French authorities have ruled out finding any survivors.
The mayor of Haltern. Bodo Klimpel, has confirmed that 16 students and two teachers from the Joseph-Koenig Gymnasium high school in the town, were on board the flight, returning from a week-long Spanish exchange trip.
Many of the families learned about what happened from the media before turning up at the school, said Klimpel.
The head of the school immediately suspended school after it became apparent that the plane had crashed, he said.
He added that the school would open tomorrow.
There will be an internal assembly tomorrow and we need to wait for everything else. We need to have absolute certainty about what the investigation will bring.
We have received gestures of condolences from our twin towns, also from colleagues in nearby towns. The sympathy is very overwhelming.
Updated
The US state department has said it is saddened by news of the crash and offered its assistance in the investigation. It said it is reviewing whether any US citizens were on board.
State Department issues statement on #Germanwings crash. pic.twitter.com/eFCIK0cahE
— Jason Seher (@jhseher) March 24, 2015
The local news website La Dauphine has published the first photograph of the crash site, showing small pieces of debris scattered over a large area.
The French parliament observed a minute’s silence for the victims of the crash.
#CrashA320 - L'@AssembleeNat observe un "instant de recueillement" http://t.co/QJH3Fy8CzL #Germanwings #DirectAN pic.twitter.com/gnR5P3PjXo
— LCP (@LCPan) March 24, 2015
Reuters has more on the distress call, an issue which has been causing confusion, with even Germanwings saying it was unsure whether one had been made, as it had received conflicting accounts. The news agency has spoken to the French aviation regulator, which seems to have contributed to the uncertainty:
Germanwings jetliner that crashed in the French Alps on Tuesday did not issue a distress call during its rapid descent, France’s aviation regulator said.
“The aircraft did not itself make a distress call but it was the combination of the loss of radio contact and the aircraft’s descent which led the controller to implement the distress phase,” a spokesman for the DGAC authority said.
The “distress” phase is the third and most serious of three stages of alerts used to help coordinate rescue efforts when an aircraft is considered in difficulty.
Earlier, the DGAC had said the aircraft issued a distress call at 1047 local time (0947 GMT) while descending from 38,000 feet to 5,000 feet.
This graphic starkly illustrates how the altitude of the plane dropped.
Meteorologist Eric Leister, from AccuWeather.com, has warned that conditions in the region where the search for the plane is ongoing are expected to worsen in coming hours.
He said:
The weather is going to be deteriorating near the crash site over the next 12 hours as a storm system moves into the region, producing rain and high-elevation snow.
School party reported to be on plane
Sixteen teenagers and two teachers from Haltern, a city in North Rhine Westphalia in western Germany, were among the passengers thought to have been killed in the plane crash, Germany’s biggest newspaper, Bild, is reporting, citing a spokesman from the city. The information could not be immediately confirmed. Sky is also reporting the news and says that the school did not want to comment at present.
Spox for Haltern town confirms to @NBCNews' @carloangerer 16 Joseph-König-Gymnasium students & 2 teachers were booked on #Germanwings #A320
— Alexander Smith (@AlexSmithNBC) March 24, 2015
Updated
Here is a gallery of images of the emergency response to the tragedy.
Summary of Germanwings press conference
- Germanwings flight 4U9525 from Barcelona to Düsseldorf reached its cruising altitude of 38,000ft at 10.45am, 44 minutes into the flight. Just a minute or two later, it began an unexplained descent.
- The descent lasted eight minutes: contact was lost at 10.53am, when the plane was at 6,000ft. The airline does not know why the descent was initiated.
- The airline is not sure whether a distress call was issued. The company spokesman said that it had conflicting information about the issue from air traffic controllers. French aviation sources have also given contradictory information on this point.
- There were 144 passengers, including two babies, and six crew on board. There are believed to be 67 German nationals on board.
- The aircraft was 24 years old, bought by Lufthansa, the parent company of Germanwings, in 1991. It underwent a routine technical check by Lufthansa technicians in Düsseldorf yesterday. It had received a major inspection in the summer of 2013.
- The captain had more than 10 years’ flying experience with Lufthansa and Germanwings, and had recorded more than 6,000 hours’ flying time.
- A team from Germanwings is on its way to the crash site to help with the investigation.
Updated
The spokesman says that although today is a “sad day” for the airline, it can be proud of its standards. It would be premature to ground the fleet, and normal flight operations would continue.
Information about the nationalities of the casualties will only be announced when the airline feels it can do so “without any shred of doubt”.
He adds that information will not be given out until all family members have been informed.
He says the primary focus is to understand the data supplied by the French authorities and French air traffic control. Once this information can be verified, there will be another press conference. The briefing ends.
Updated
Uncertainty over distress call
On the question of whether a distress call was made from the aircraft, a spokesman says the airline has received conflicting reports.
We have contradictory information about that ourselves, from the air traffic controllers, and we are uncertain as to whether a distress call was issued at all.
He said the company had no clear indication of why the pilots initiated the sharp, eight-minute descent, adding that there were “no irregular aspects” with the plane.
It is very important that we do not engage in speculation … We need to get to the bottom of what happened as quickly as possible.
At this stage Germanwings believed there were 67 German nationals on board, based on the passenger list, the spokesman said.
Updated
The Germanwings spokesman said the last routine check of the aircraft was yesterday in Düsseldorf. The captain had 10 years’ experience flying Airbus aircraft for Lufthansa and Germanwings.
We feel a deep feeling of sorrow vis-a-vis our passengers, the families ... our thoughts and prayers go exclusively to the victims. In parallel, we are going to work with the authorities to investigate [and] resolve the cause of the accident as quickly as possible.
Updated
Germanwings press conference
Germanwings is giving a press conference. Two babies were on board, the company spokesman says.
The aeroplane left Barcelona at 10.01am and the destination was Düsseldorf. There were 144 passengers on board, two babies and six crew members.
At 10.47am it left its travel and cruising altitude ... and entered into a descent stage. This stage lasted for a total of eight minutes. The contact between the aeroplane and the French radar [air traffic control] broke off at 10.53 ... The plane then crashed.
Updated
'No distress call made'
Contrary to earlier reports, the authorities in France now say that no distress call was made by the pilot, Kim Willsher in Paris reports.
Updated
Updated
The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, has expressed her sorrow about the news, saying these were “hard hours”.
She said the German authorities have agreed to cooperate with the other countries affected.
Merkel will visit the site of the crash tomorrow. Her foreign minister and transport minister are already en route.
She said:
This is a time and an hour of great sorrow and great grief. We should be thinking about people who have lost relatives and also friends.
Updated
Frances Perraudin, in the parliamentary lobby, sends details of David Cameron’s reaction to the plane crash. A spokesperson for the British prime minister said:
He has been informed of this tragic news of the aircraft that has been lost over southern France and he would wish to express how his thoughts are very much with the families and friends of all of those who were on that flight.
If there is any assistance or role that UK air accident investigators can play in response to this then of course the French and German forces will have our full support and engagement on that.
Updated
Updated
Louise Osborne sends this update from Germany:
The German vice-chancellor, Sigmar Gabriel, has written on his Facebook page:
This is terrible news that has reached us from France. We are all stunned by this terrible catastrophe that has taken so many people. Our thoughts are with the victims and their relatives. They deserve our sympathy. They now need all possible support. Personally, and on behalf of German social democracy, I express my deep sorrow.
The government spokesman Steffen Seibert has tweeted that the chancellor, Angela Merkel, is “deeply shocked” by the incident and will make a statement at 2:30pm (Berlin time).
Updated
The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, has cancelled all her upcoming appointments, according to the country’s largest newspaper, Bild. It said she had already spoken by telephone with her French and Spanish counterparts, François Hollande and Mariano Rajoy. She is due to make a public statement later today.
Updated
Kim Willsher, in Paris, reports that there was a mayday call, although other reports suggest otherwise:
During the flight the Airbus was in contact with air control at Marseille. The message was “mayday, mayday, mayday” and the pilot requested an emergency descent, meaning ATC had to clear all air space below the route of the aircraft. Apparently, an emergency descent generally happens at a rate of 5,000ft a minute, but the Germanwings flight was descending at 3,375ft a minute.
Gerard Feltzer, an aviation expert, told BFM TV that the plane was already extremely low when it issued its distress signal and he imagined the pilots had tried to deal with the emergency before issuing their message, at which point it appeared they had already lost control of the aircraft.
Francis Hermitte, mayor of Seyne-Les-Alpes, a village near the site of the crash, told BFM TV it happened in the Massif des Trois Evêchés which would have been the first major mountain range in the southern Alps that the aircraft would have come across. It’s 2,700-3,000 metres high.
Updated
The owner of a camping site in Alpes-de-Haute-Provence has told al-Jazeera that he heard the plane come down. Pierre Polizzi,owner of Camping Rioclar, said:
There was a loud noise and then suddenly nothing. At first I thought it came from fighter jets that often hold drills in the area.
The plane crashed just 2km from here, high on a mountain.
Updated
Just hours into his state visit to France, Spain’s King Felipe VI said he was cancelling his return trip to Spain. He was due to address France’s National Assembly tomorrow.
Updated
Updated
Pierre-Henry Brandet, spokesperson for the French interior ministry, told BFM-TV:
The aircraft debris has been localised, and we can only fear a heavy death toll. The first information from rescuers suggests that the number of survivors, if there are any, will be low, but until we have reached the site by land, we cannot say with any certainty. The rescuers are being taken in by helicopter.
The French transport minister, Alain Vidalies, said the plane crashed on the Estrop mountain range:
It is a very snowy area, inaccessible to vehicles, but that can be flown over by helicopters.
Updated
From Reuters:
The German government said it was sending air safety experts and its transport minister to the site of the plane crash and the foreign minister said his thoughts were with victims’ relatives.
“In these difficult hours our thoughts are with all those who must fear their relatives are among the passengers or crew members,” said the foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
The transport minister, Alexander Dobrindt, will travel to the crash site in southern France, his ministry said, adding that German air safety experts were already on their way.
Updated
Germanwings confirms there were 150 on board
Germanwings has confirmed on Facebook that there were 150 people on board, 144 passengers and six crew members.
#Germanwings confirms 150 people were on board, incl. 144 passengers & 6 crew http://t.co/zU6hn03xzU #4U9525 pic.twitter.com/sFfQX03ZUF
— RT (@RT_com) March 24, 2015
Updated
This video shows the statement by the French president, François Hollande:
The Spanish prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, has just been speaking. He said:
All I can tell you is that obviously I’m very sad, as many are, about this very dramatic accident.
We’re going to do everything in our power to help, to hlep the families, to give them our support.
Updated
This photo shows the crash area, giving an idea of how inaccessible it is.
BREAKING #GermanWings Here is a photo from helicopter of the crash area /France2 journalists http://t.co/wFg8KTSve2 pic.twitter.com/RnC5gT5w40
— AirLive.net (@airlivenet) March 24, 2015
Debris from the plane, but not bodies, have been found in the villages of Verdaches, Le Vernet, Auzet and Seyne-les-Alpes, 20km from Barcelonette and Digne, according to Le Figaro. It reports that the plane disappeared from the radar a little after 11am and a police helicopter saw a column of smoke in the area at 11.15am.
Debris is scattered over an area of 2sq km, according to French search and rescue.
Updated
Airbus says its thoughts are with those affected.
We have been informed of an accident involving an A320 Family aircraft and all efforts are now going towards assessing the situation.
— Airbus (@Airbus) March 24, 2015
We will provide further information as soon as available. Our thoughts are with those affected by this tragic event.
— Airbus (@Airbus) March 24, 2015
The Airbus 320 entered service in 1988. According to the Airbus website, there are 3,660 in operation.
Germanwings, which began operating in 2002, has 15 active Airbus 320s, according to the Planespotters website. The average age of its fleet, including other models, is 13.8 years.
Updated
There is a crisis line for people worried about loved ones who may have been on the flight. The number is +49 30 5000 3000.
Germanwings has changed the colour of its logo on its Twitter and
Facebook sites from red and yellow to grey and black.
#Germanwings changes profile picture http://t.co/zU6hn03xzU #4U9525 pic.twitter.com/u33ihmP83E
— RT (@RT_com) March 24, 2015
The carrier is due to hold a press conference at 3pm French time (2pm GMT).
This map shows the last known location of the Germanwings flight.
Updated
Ashifa Kassam, in Madrid for the Guardian, reports that French authorities have said there were 42 Spaniards on board.
The Catalan president, Artur Mas, is due to speak at 12:30 GMT.
The Spanish king and queen are already at the Elysée Palace in Paris for a previously scheduled meeting with the French president, François Hollande.
Updated
The plane was on its flight path for just under half of its route distance and at cruising speed.
The transport minister has comfirmed that a distress call was made by the aircraft at 10.47am local time, while the plane was “at 5,000 feet and in an abnormal situation”. The crash happened shortly afterwards.
The French newspaper Le Point is reporting that the Digne police were contacted just after 11am by air authorities.
Captain Benoît Zeisser told BFM TV that the location of the crash was “very difficult to access”, with areas of snow in the crash zone measuring between 500m and 2,000m. “We are in the process of doing everything possible to arrive at the location,” he said, adding that it was a question of minutes.
Updated
Ashifa Kassam, in Madrid for the Guardian, sent this update:
Spain’s airport operator, AENA, has confirmed that the plane left Barcelona at 8:55 GMT, a slight delay from its expected departure of 8:35 GMT. The spokesperson didn’t know the reason for the delay.
They’ve confirmed that there were Spanish nationals on board, but wouldn’t give a precise number. AENA also said it had designated a special room in Terminal 1 and 2 of Barcelona’s El Prat airport for family members and media.
Updated
Gilles Gravier, president of tourism in the Val d’Allos ski resort area, said nothing of the crash had been heard from the pistes in his village. He said 400 gendarmes, firefighters and emergency search and rescue personnel had been mobilised but the zone was “extremely difficult” to reach.
Florent Plazy, director of the local ski school ESF, confirmed the area was hard to access, even for mountain walkers.
Updated
According to the French weather channel La Chaine Meteo, the weather was very calm at the moment of the crash.
A webcam appears to confirm that the weather is still calm.
La Chaine Meteo added that although the weather was calm in the Alps, the plane had gone through a patch of unstable weather over the Mediterranean.
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The European commissioner for transport, Violeta Bulc, has expressed sympathy for the families of the passengers.
.@Bulc_EU: Our thoughts are with the families of the passengers on board of #Germanwings #Airbus #A320 - http://t.co/DYmEa3Wc6p
— European Commission (@EU_Commission) March 24, 2015
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Germanwings’ parent company, Lufthansa, has said it is a “dark day” if its fears are confirmed.
"We do not yet know what has happened to flight 4U 9525. My deepest sympathy goes to the families and friends of our passengers and crew 1/2
— Lufthansa (@lufthansa) March 24, 2015
"...on 4U 9525. If our fears are confirmed, this is a dark day for Lufthansa. We hope to find survivors.“ Carsten Spohr 2/2
— Lufthansa (@lufthansa) March 24, 2015
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A helicopter has reached the crash site, according to CNN and other news outlets. That would tally with the French interior minister’s statement that debris had already been located.
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Aviation journalist John Walton reports that the the last words from the cockpit were: “Emergency, emergency.”
1047 call: DGAC source says pilots called «urgence, urgence» (“emergency, emergency”), as opposed to a mayday call or 7700 squawk. #4U9525
— John Walton (@thatjohn) March 24, 2015
An aviation twitter feed says a distress call was received.
BREAKING Distress call was received by ATC at 9:47 UTC http://t.co/Ah5H6qxIRp pic.twitter.com/FBYoIWnYkD
— AirLive.net (@airlivenet) March 24, 2015
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Le Monde reports that 80 fire department staff are on their way to the crash site along with more than 200 police.
'Debris found'
The French interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, who is heading to the scene, said debris from the plane had already been found, according to Agence-France Presse.
This webcam purports to be of the area where the plane is believed to have come down although no sign of the plane can be seen at present.
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Germanwings says it does not have confirmation of the crash at present.
INFO: We have recently become aware of media reports speculating on an incident though we still do not have any own confirmed information...
— Germanwings (@germanwings) March 24, 2015
... Please monitor our website http://t.co/5mVrxAZ08K for periodic updates.
— Germanwings (@germanwings) March 24, 2015
The plane appears to have experienced a rapid descent:
Playback of flight #4U9525 with speed and altitude graph is available on http://t.co/FHoX6q0GHt pic.twitter.com/amfKBbdeok
— Flightradar24 (@flightradar24) March 24, 2015
Data from @planefinder shows fairly rapid descent for #4U9525 pic.twitter.com/CYzWEvqUNq
— John Walton (@thatjohn) March 24, 2015
'No survivors expected,' says French president
The French president, François Hollande, has said no survivors are expected:
There were 148 people on board. The conditions of the accident, which have not yet been clarified, lead us to think there are no survivors ... The accident happened in a zone that is particularly hard to access.
He said there was likely to be a significant number of German victims.
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An Airbus plane operated by Lufthansa’s Germanwings budget airline has crashed in southern France en route from Barcelona to Düsseldorf, police and aviation officials have said.
La Provence newspaper said the Airbus A320 was carrying 142 passengers, two pilots and four cabin crew, citing aviation officials.
The French prime minister, Manuel Valls, said he feared between 142 and 150 passengers and crew had died in the crash.
He told reporters:
We of course don’t know the reasons for the crash. We obviously fear that the 142 to 150 passengers and crew died today, given the conditions of this crash.
Valls said he had activated the ministerial crisis cell to help coordinate the aftermath of the crash. He added that he had sent the interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, to the site of the crash.
La Provence says the plane crashed between Digne et Barcelonnette.
This pinpoints the last recorded position of the plane.
Last position of Germanwings flight #4U9525 at 09:40 UTC http://t.co/FHoX6q0GHt pic.twitter.com/72pxGKolRM
— Flightradar24 (@flightradar24) March 24, 2015
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