An Airbus operated by Lufthansa’s Germanwings budget airline crashed in a remote snowy area of the French Alps yesterday, killing all 150 on board including 16 schoolchildren.
Germanwings confirmed its flight 4U 9525 from Barcelona to Duesseldorf went down with 144 passengers and six crew on board. It was the first crash of a large passenger jet on French soil since the Concorde disaster just outside Paris nearly 15 years ago. The A320 is a workhorse of worldwide aviation fleets. They are the world’s most used passenger jets and have a good though not unblemished safety record.
A total of 67 Germans are believed to have been on board, as well as 45 Spaniards. One Belgian was aboard. Investigators described a scene of devastation where the airliner crashed. “We saw an aircraft that had literally been ripped apart, the bodies are in a state of destruction, there is not one intact piece of wing or fuselage,” Bruce Robin, prosecutor for the city of Marseille, told Reuters in Seyne-les-Alpes after flying over the crash zone in a helicopter.
Airbus confirmed that the plane was 24 years old, having first been delivered to Germanwings parent Lufthansa in 1991. It was powered by engines made by CFM International, a joint venture between General Electric and France’s Safran.
French police at the crash site said no one survived and it would take days to recover the bodies due to difficult terrain, snow and incoming storms. “It is going to take days to recover the victims, then the debris,” senior police officer Jean-Paul Bloy told Reuters.
In Paris, Prime Minister Manuel Valls told parliament: “A helicopter managed to land (by the crash site) and has confirmed that unfortunately there were no survivors.”
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 also said that routine maintenance of the aircraft was performed by Lufthansa on Monday. Experts said that while the Airbus had descended sharply, its rate of descent did not suggest it had simply fallen out of the sky.
France’s DGAC aviation authority said air traffic controllers initiated distress procedures after they lost contact with the Airbus, which did not issue a distress call. “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 DGAC spokesman said.
The aircraft came down in an alpine region known for skiing, hiking and rafting, but which is hard for rescue services to reach. The search and rescue effort based itself in a gymnasium in the village of Seyne-les-Alpes, which has a small private aerodrome nearby.
16 children, 2 teachers from one school on board
• Two babies too
Sixteen children and two teachers from the same school in Germany were on board the passenger plane.
The children were returning to Dusseldorf after a week-long exchange trip with a school near to Barcelona, Spain. The mayor of the German town Haltern, where the children were students, said the news was “the worst that anyone could imagine.” Bodo Klimpel added: “This is the bleakest day in the school’s history, the children were aged about 15.”
Meanwhile, at another press conference, Germanwings said there were two babies on the flight.
The mayor said that some parents of the victims rushed to the Joseph-Koenig school after hearing news of the crash on the media. Others drove to Dusseldorf. Classes were cancelled as soon as details of the tragedy emerged, Mr Klimpel said. “The town is deeply affected and saddened, it’s in a state of shock that is palpable everywhere. It’s the worst anyone could imagine.”
Mr Klimpel said that the school would be open as usual today where an assembly would be held to talk about the tragedy. “There will not be normal classes, there will be an opportunity for children to talk about and process these terrible events.
“For our teachers this will also be a terribly difficult day, they lost two of their colleagues.” The Gerrmanwings plane, which was travelling from Barcelona to Dusseldorf, crashed in the French Alps between Barcelonnette and Digne carrying 144 passengers and six crew. There are not thought to be any survivors.
The school the children had visited was about 45 minutes from Barcelona, in the village of Llinars de Valles.
Black box found
The black box belonging to the Germanwings plane has been found as the cause of the crash remains a mystery.
French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said a black box has been located at the site. Weather has already been ruled out by experts as a cause, and United States officials said terrorism is also unlikely.
Investigators hope the black box will provide clues about the cause of the crash and will look at possibilities, including engine failure. Aviation sources suggests that the speed of the plane shortly prior to the crash about 350mph (300 knots) might suggest engine failure as a cause.
This is because 350mph is the speed a pilot would aim to reach before trying to “relight” the engines after a double engine failure, sources told Sky News. Flight 4U 9525, which left the Spanish city at 10.01am (local time) had started descending one minute after reaching its cruising height.
It then plummeted from 38,000ft to 6,000ft in less than eight minutes before it crashed.
French aviation authorities said the plane did not issue a distress call and lost radio contact with air traffic controllers at 10.30am.
Counsellors help grieving families
Sobbing and grieving families at both Barcelona and Dusseldorf airports were led away by airport workers and crisis counsellors. Family members arriving at Dusseldorf were taken from the main terminal to a nearby building, which has been partially covered with sheets for privacy.
In Barcelona, police escorted several crying women to a secure part of the airport. One held a jacket over the head of another woman, who was sobbing. German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, will travel to the region on Wednesday. She described the crash as “a shock which has plunged us into deep mourning in Germany, France and Spain”. The German leader added: “What concerns me now is the extent of the suffering, which this catastrophe has brought to so many people.
“My thoughts and condolences, and those of the entire government, go out to the people who have lost their lives, including many compatriots.” Ms Merkel urged people not to speculate on the cause.
Spanish king calls off visit to France
King Felipe and Queen Letizia of Spain called off their state visit to France in a sign of mourning for the victims. They had arrived in Paris minutes after the crash happened.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she would travel to the site where the plane crashed today.
Transport Minister Alain Vidalies told local media: “This is a zone covered in snow, inaccessible to vehicles but which helicopters will be able to fly over.” But as helicopters and emergency vehicles assembled, the weather was reported to be closing in.
“There will be a lot of cloud cover this afternoon, with local storms, snow above 1,800 meters and relatively low clouds. That will not help the helicopters in their work,” an official from the local weather center told Reuters.
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