AFP/DPA/Reuters
Seyne, France
A plane operated by the budget carrier of Germany’s Lufthansa crashed in a remote area of the French Alps yesterday, killing all 150 on board in the worst plane disaster in mainland France for four decades.
Germanwings said that the Airbus A320 plunged for eight minutes into a snowbound inaccessible mountain area in southeastern France, but French officials said no distress signal had been issued.
The budget carrier said the aircraft reached its regular cruising altitude of about 38,000 feet (12,000m) at 10.45am (0945 GMT) but after one minute it left that height.
“The aircraft’s contact with French radar, French air traffic controllers ended at 10.53am at an altitude of about 6,000 feet. The plane then crashed,” Germanwings’ managing director Thomas Winkelmann told a news conference.
Winkelmann also said that routine maintenance of the aircraft was performed by Lufthansa on Monday.
The plane, carrying 144 mainly Spanish and German passengers and six crew, was travelling from Barcelona to the western German city of Duesseldorf when it came down near the ski resort of Barcelonnette.
French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said that there were no survivors, adding that the authorities “can’t rule out any theory” on the cause of the disaster.
He also said that the location and subsequent rains were posing difficulties to rescue crews.
One helicopter had managed to reach the site, but police told French broadcasters it could take days to recover victims’ bodies.
French meteorological agency Meteo France said weather conditions in the mountainous area of the crash at the time it occurred were clear, without the presence of clouds that can pose a challenge to pilots.
Spanish authorities said that 16 German teenagers on a school trip were feared to be on board the doomed plane, as tearful relatives converged on the airports in the two cities anxiously seeking information about their loved ones.
It was the first fatal accident in the history of Germanwings, and the deadliest on the French mainland since 1974 when a Turkish Airlines crashed, killing 346 people.
“It is a tragedy, a new airline tragedy, we will determine what caused the crash,” French President Francois Hollande said.
Hollande said that the dead included Germans, Spaniards and “probably” Turks, while Belgium said at least one of its nationals was on board.
He called German Chancellor Angela Merkel to express his condolences, and Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said he also spoke with Merkel.
“I lament, as we all do, this sad and dramatic accident,” Rajoy said during a press conference.
He said he had cancelled his agenda and added that Spanish equipment minister Ana Pastor Julian was en route to the site.
Merkel said she had cancelled all her appointments and would travel today to the crash site.
“My thoughts and my condolences and the whole German government go out to those who have suddenly lost their lives, including many of our compatriots. The suffering of their families is immense,” Merkel told reporters, adding that the affected countries were feeling “a deep sense of grief”.
Germany’s foreign minister and transport minister were already underway.
President Joachim Gauck cancelled a visit this week to South America.
German air accident investigators were also on their way to the scene of the accident.
Spanish King Felipe VI cut short his state visit to France after news of the tragedy.
Germanwings said that 67 Germans were believed to have been on board while Spain said 45 people with Spanish sounding names were on the flight.
A crisis cell has been set up in the area between Barcelonette and Digne-les-Bains along with an emergency flight control centre to coordinate the operation to the crash site.
“Ground access is horrible, I know the Estrop massif, it’s a very high mountainous area, very steep and it’s terrible to get there except from the air during winter,” local resident Francoise Pie said.
A witness who was skiing near the crash site told French television that he “heard an enormous noise” around the time of the disaster.
A French police helicopter dispatched to the site of the crash reported spotting debris in a mountain range known as “Les Trois Eveches”, which lies at an altitude of 1,400m (4,600 feet).
The plane belonged to Germanwings, a low-cost affiliate of German flag carrier Lufthansa based in Cologne.
“We’ve never had a total loss of aircraft in the company’s history until now,” a company spokeswoman told AFP.
Lufthansa chief executive Carsten Spohr described it as a “dark day”.
A spokesman for Airbus, the European aerospace giant, did not give any information about possible causes but said the company had opened a “crisis cell”.
French civil aviation authorities said they lost contact with the plane and declared it was in distress at 10.30am (0930 GMT).
However, the aircraft’s crew did not send a distress signal, civil aviation authorities told AFP.
“The crew did not send a Mayday. It was air traffic control that decided to declare the plane was in distress because there was no contact with the crew of the plane,” the source said.
In 1981, a plane crashed on the French island of Corsica with 180 people on board.
In July 2000, an Air France Concorde crashed shortly after take-off from Paris’s Charles de Gaulle airport en route for New York, leaving 113 people, leaving mainly Germans dead and eventually leading to the supersonic airliner being taken out of service.
The world’s worst air disaster remains the March 27, 1977, collision of two Boeing 747s on the runway at Tenerife in the Canary Islands, killing 583 people.
France’s leading air traffic controller union SNCTA called off a strike planned from today to Friday after news of the crash.
“We are suspending our planned strike as a result of the emotions created in the control rooms by the crash, particularly in Aix-en-Provence,” the union’s spokesman Roger Rousseau said.
Lufthansa itself was hit by a four-day pilots’ strike last week, although this did not affect Germanwings.
Shares in Airbus and Lufthansa were both down after the tragedy.
The German foreign ministry and Germanwings have set up crisis telephone lines.
Family members of those on board were being taken out of the main terminal at Dusseldorf airport to a special area.
Tear-streaked faces, set expressions among relatives in Dusseldorf
By Frank Christiansen and Ulrike Hofsaehs, DPA
Dusseldorf
Her face streaked with tears, the woman waiting at Dusseldorf Airport is quickly ushered away to an enclosed area on the arm of an airline assistant.
There were around 20 friends and relatives in the arrivals hall awaiting the return of passengers aboard Germanwings Flight 4U 9525 from Barcelona, their happy anticipation quickly turning to inconsolable grief.
Fifteen ministers are on hand to offer counselling, protected from curious glances in a VIP lounge.
The airport has set up a crisis team to deal with the aftermath of the fatal crash, and medical services are also at the scene.
“We are currently contacting the remaining relatives,” says a spokesman for Lufthansa, which owns Germanwings. “This is a black day for aviation.”
Airport staff guide relatives into the sealed-off lounge as they arrive to assist them “in presumably the darkest hour of their lives” in the words of Dusseldorf Airport spokesman Thomas Koetter.
Tearful eyes, set faces, expressions of horror are on their faces, as a police officer uses his hat to block the view of camera lenses.
Jutta Luedtke-Enking from Dusseldorf is standing waiting for her sisters with pink flowers in her hand and her face pale.
They are on another flight from Mallorca.
“I’ve often flown the Barcelona-Dusseldorf route with Germanwings. I’m at a loss for words. It’s terrible,” she says.
The staff designated to look after the relatives wear blue vests with “Airport Care Team” written on them in English.
They rapidly erect a screen in front of the lounge entrance.
The owner of an advertising agency waiting nearby for a client voices the key question: “Is there anyone she knows who is currently in Barcelona?”
Luckily she did not have to fly today, she says.
The news came in at the airport around 11.30am to the effect that Flight 4U 9525 had disappeared from radar screens over the French Alps.
However, the flight continued to be shown on the arrivals board – without arrival time, without gate number and without any further indication.
Many of the passengers in the departure hall just one floor up initially know nothing of the disaster, but word soon gets around.
There is astonishment all round. An elderly woman awaiting her flight to Mallorca is shocked by the news.
But she intends to continue with her flight, she says, folding her arms with determination.
The expressions on the faces of staff at the Lufthansa and Germanwings desks are serious.
“We heard of the crash ourselves on the news,” one says.
Minute-by-minute account of flight Germanwings A320’s final flight
The Germanwings Airbus A320 that crashed yesterday in the French Alps was delivered in 1991 and had completed about 46,700 flights.
It received its last routine check on Monday, Germanwings chief executive Thomas Winkelmann said.
The last fatal crash of a Lufthansa plane also involved an A320 that caught fire on landing near Warsaw in September 1993, killing two people and injuring 54.
The jet that went down yesterday was bought by Lufthansa in 1991 and been in constant service since then, passing to Germanwings in January 2014, the company said.
The following is a timeline of flight 4U9525’s final day of service, based on information from officials and the airline:
n 6:48am: The Airbus A320 takes off from Dusseldorf, heading to Barcelona. No problems are detected on the flight.
n 10.01am: The narrow-body, twin-engine jet leaves Barcelona 26 minutes later than planned on a return trip to Dusseldorf.
n 10.45am: The plane achieves its cruising altitude, according to Germanwings. Weather conditions were good at the time.
n 10.46am: The aircraft goes into an eight-minute descent that is not cleared with air traffic controllers.
The plane sinks at about 900m to 1,200m per minute, a speed comparable to landing, according to Flightradar24, a website that shows real-time flight information.
n 10.53am: Flight 4U9525 disappears from radar while flying at 6,000 feet, or 1,800m. It crashes about 100km northwest of Nice.
n 11.30am: Dusseldorf Airport receives notice about this time that the airplane has disappeared from radar, a spokesman says.
n 11.55am: The plane should be landing in Dusseldorf. Instead, relatives and friends of those on board are taken to a protected area at the Dusseldorf and Barcelona airports.
n 1pm: Germany’s Federal Office of Civil Aeronautics announces it is forming a crisis management group.
16 students on school exchange feared dead
Sixteen German teenagers on a school exchange trip were feared to be among the 150 dead in the crash of a passenger jet in the French Alps yesterday, officials said.
“There were 16 children and two teachers who had spent a week here, poor things. The children were aged about 15,” Marti Pujol, mayor of the village of Llinars de Valles near Barcelona, told AFP.
He said that the pupils and teachers left for Barcelona airport yesterday morning, though he could not confirm that they had boarded the Germanwings flight as planned.
Some of the staff at the high school where they had been on an exchange programme knew their flight number and the time of their flight, he said.
The school party was from the town of Haltern am See in northern Germany.
“All the signs point to them being on board the plane” when it crashed, said a spokesman for the local authorities in Haltern, Georg Bockey.
The flight run by Germanwings took off from Barcelona at 9.55am (0855 GMT) bound for Duesseldorf.
“Everyone in Haltern knew that they were due to arrive in Duesseldorf about noon,” Bockey told AFP.
Pujol said pupils at the Instituto Giola which the German visitors had attended during their exchange were being attended to by the Red Cross and psychologists.
French police and gendarmerie Alpine rescue units gather as they prepare to reach the crash site, near Seyne, in the French Alps.
