Breaking News...LH LCC Germanwings A320 Crashes From BCN - DUS
A German plane carrying 144 passengers and six crew members to Düsseldorf from Barcelona crashed on Tuesday in southern France, the French civil aviation authority confirmed.
The wreckage of the aircraft, an Airbus A320 operated by Germanwings, a budget subsidiary of Lufthansa, was located by a French military helicopter near the town of Prads-Haute-Bléone, according to Eric Héraud, a spokesman in Paris for the aviation authority, the Direction Générale de l’Aviation Civile.
It was unclear when the pilots last communicated with air traffic controllers. About 40 minutes after takeoff, at approximately 10:40 a.m., radio contact with the aircraft was lost.
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Updated 13:45 ...Summary
The French interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, says a black box has been found.
- 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.
Updated Wednesday 16:08
PARIS — For about 10 minutes on Tuesday morning, the Germanwings jetliner with 150 people on board hurtled downward from relatively clear skies above the French Alps.
The rate of descent from its cruising altitude of 38,000 feet was alarming but still gradual enough to indicate that the twin-engine AirbusA320 had not suffered any catastrophic damage and might have remained under the control of the pilots or the autopilot. At no point during the descent was there any communication from the cockpit to air traffic controllers or any other signal of an emergency.
When the plane plowed into craggy mountains northeast of Nice, it was traveling with enough speed that it was all but pulverized, killing the 144 passengers and crew of six and leaving behind almost no apparent clues about what caused the crash.
