All 144 passengers and six crew were today presumed dead after the Airbus A320 crashed in a remote region of the French Alps en route from Spain to Germany.
Two babies and 16 German schoolchildren are believed to be among those killed.
Earlier reports quoted aviation sources in France as saying the pilots issued a Mayday distress signal and requested an emergency descent minutes before it hit the ground.
However, civil aviation authorities later denied that air traffic controllers received any such call.
'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,' a source told AFP.
Germanwings chief executive Thomas Winkelmann said the aircraft began descending at 10.45am, just a minute after reaching its cruising height of 38,000ft.
This descent lasted eight minutes, he told reporters in Cologne. Radar and air traffic control contact broke off at 10.53am when it is understood to have crashed.
Germanwings said it was thought that 63 of the passengers on board were Germans, while reports from Spain suggest that around 45 Spaniards may have been on the flight.
Debris from the jet, operated by Lufthansa's Germanwings budget airline, has been found scattered over a wide area near Barcelonnette in an inhospitable region of the Alps.
Witnesses have described hearing an explosion 'like the sound of
dynamite' then seeing fighter jets fly past, suggesting the passenger plane had
been under military escort.
Grieving families
have been gathering at Dusseldorf airport in Germany, where the jet was due to
land, to await news of the rescue and recovery operation.
French president
Francois Hollande said he did not expect there to be any survivors.
He said: 'It's a
loss, a tragedy which has happened on our soil.
'I am seeking
information about homes in the area it came down. It's difficult place to
access. In the meantime solidarity must prevail.'
He said he
believes most of the passengers were German, Spanish and Turkish.
According to
flight data from FlightAware 24, the aircraft was cruising at 38,000 feet at
532mph at 9.30am local time (10.30 GMT).
Shock: A man who appears to have been waiting for missing Flight 4U 9525 reacts at the airport in Dusseldorf where the Airbus A320 was due to land.
It started losing altitude to 37,975 by 10.31am with the speed reportedly increasing to 548mph.
But 10.41am, the
last reported radar returns had the aircraft descending to 6,800 feet at
434mph.
The aircraft took
ten minutes to drop 31,200 feet, suggesting the pilots may have been battling
to control or land the plane before it crashed.
The cause of the
crash was not immediately known, with weather conditions described as good in
the region and the airliner flying at an altitude high above the
Alps.
The area is
inaccessible for vehicles but helicopters are able to deposit vehicles at the
site.
About 150
firefighters and high mountain police are being deployed to the scene,
including 40 officers from Grimp – a unit within the Fire Service that
specializes in rescue operations in dangerous and inhospitable
environments.
Fifty vehicles,
including 4x4s, quads and ambulances, are also being deployed. Dog teams will
also investigate at the scene.
It emerged today
that a safety warning was issued last year when a sister plane of the one
involved in today's disaster suddenly lost altitude.
The European Air
Safety Agency (EASA) issued an Emergency Airworthiness Directive after an
Airbus A321 went into an uncontrollable dive north of Pamplona, Spain before
pulling out.
People waiting for flight 4U 9525 console
each other as news of the crash filters through at Dusseldorf airport
According to the
safety warning, the Lufthansa jet, with 109 passengers and crew aboard, was at
31,000 feet when it started to descend without any input from the pilot, at a
rate of 4,000 feet per minute, before the flight crew managed to regain control
at 28,000 feet.
According to the
EASA, a safety system designed to protect the jet reacted to incorrect data due
to a faulty sensor.
The safety warning
related to all Airbus A318, A319, A320 and A321 – including the Airbus A320
involved in today's disaster.
French Prime
Minister Manuel Valls said he understood between 142 and 150 people were on board
the Germanwings A320 and feared dead.
Alain Vidal,
Secretary of State for Transport, Sea and Fisheries, was more final, insisting
there were no survivors.
But Pierre-Henry
Brandet, spokesman for the Interior Ministry, told BFM TV said: 'As long as land
resources have not arrived we cannot say for certain.
'Helicopters and
several hundred people are involved in the search and rescue.'
Spanish vice-president Soraya Saez de Sanataria
said 45 people with Spanish surnames were travelling on the Airbus A320.
She later said two babies were among the dead.
Spanish PM Mariano Rajoy said in a
hastily-arranged press conference he was cancelling his diary and heading back
to Madrid to head a crisis cabinet.
He described the accident as a 'dramatic and
sad' piece of news but declined to talk about the victims.
He said: 'I profoundly regret this very sad
accident. We are going to do all we can.'
He also confirmed he had spoken with German
chancellor Angela Merkel and Spanish King Felipe VI.
The monarch announced today shortly after
arriving in France for a three-day official visit that he was cancelling the
trip.
Sixteen German schoolchildren and their teachers
are also feared to be among the dead.
he youngsters, aged 15 and 16, had just finished
an exchange programme at a state school in the Catalan village of Llinars del
Valles.
Sources at the school said some of the
youngsters had left their passports behind and had to return to get them,
sparking hopes some had saved their lives by missing the plane.
The group is thought to include 16
schoolchildren and two teachers from a school in Haltern am See, 50 miles from
Dusseldorf.
They had spent nine days in Llinars del Valles,
staying with students and staff at the village's Giola Institute.
Parents and teacher associations are waiting for
an official announcement.
The jet was travelling from the Spanish coastal
city of Barcelona to the German city of Dusseldorf when it came down in the Le
Massif des Trois Eveches 30km from the town of Barcelonnette.
Surrounded by mountains and with few clear
trails to the snow-covered area, gaining access to the crash site is expected
to take some time.
German media reports say there is a wide field
of debris visible.
According to the mayor of Barcelonette, some
kind of distress signal was received at 10.47am local time.
The plane crashed into a small valley around
2,000m (6,500ft) metres above sea level.
Timeline of terror: This graphic from
FlightRadar24 shows the path of the Airbus A320 until it dropped off the radar
after plunging 31,200ft in just ten minutes.
The body of the plane is understood to have been
found intact, according to Europe1.
Pierre Polizzi, the owner of a nearby camping
site told Al Jazeera: 'The plane crashed just 2km from here, high on a
mountain.
'There was loud noise and then suddenly nothing.
At first I thought it came from fighter jets that often hold drills in the
area.'
One eyewitness in the village of Le Vernet,
where some wreckage has been sighted, told Le Parisien newspaper: 'This morning
I heard a massive thud and soon after saw several jets fly over.
'The initial sound was like an avalanche or like
the sound of the dynamite they use to cause an avalanche.
'Then around noon I looked out of the window and
saw a column of smoke rising into the air. We're around 3km away, but also in
the mountains and snow bound.'
German airline Lufthansa said it has no
information yet about the crash of a jet belonging to its Germanwings
subsidiary, describing it as a 'dark day.'
'We do not yet know what has happened to flight
4U 9525,' Lufthansa chief executive Carsten Spohr said via Twitter.
'My deepest sympathy goes to the families and
friends of our passengers and crew on 4U 9525. If our fears are confirmed, this
is a dark day for Lufthansa. We hope to find survivors.'
French President Francois
Hollande (right) attends a meeting with Spain's King Felipe VI (centre) and
Queen Letizia at the Elysee Palace in Paris. The three-day state visit of King
Felipe VI and Queen Letizia of Spain has been suspended following the crash of
an Airbus operated by Lufthansa's Germanwings budget airline.
Shares in Lufthansa and Airbus were down 4.7
percent and 2.1 per cent respectively after news of the accident.
Lufthansa was also hit by a four-day pilots'
strike last week, although this did not affect Germanwings.
The European Aviation Safety Agency said: 'It is
very sad news that the Germanwings flight 4U-9525 from Barcelona to Dusseldorf
crashed in the south of France. All our thoughts are with the families of the
victims.
'We are closely monitoring the latest
information and we are in contact with the French authorities, Airbus and other
organisations involved, in order to provide any support possible.'
Airbus, who manufactured the jet in November
1990, added: 'We have been informed of an accident involving an A320 Family
aircraft and all efforts are now going towards assessing the situation.
'We will provide further information as soon as
available. Our thoughts are with those affected by this tragic event.'
The crashed A320 is 24 years old and has been
with the parent Lufthansa group since 1991, according to online database
airfleets.net.
Germanwings today is the low-cost subsidiary of
German national carrier Lufthansa, and was first branded in 2002.
The company's history can be dated back to 1997,
however, when it was known as Eurowings.
The airline's main hubs are at Cologne Bonn
Airport, Stuttgart Airport, Hamburg Airport, Berlin Tegel Airport and
Dusseldorf Airport with further bases are Hannover Airport and Dortmund
Airport.
Inhospitable terrain: The Airbus A320
disappeared from radar in the Alpes de Hautes Provence (above) in the southern
French Alps after sending a distress signal shortly before 11am (10am GMT)
Lufthansa have announced that Cologne-based
Germanwings will be going back to its roots and re-branding back to Eurowings
in autumn this year.
There are a total of 81 aircraft in Germanwings'
fleet, with an average of 9.2 years, flying to 86 destinations around the
world. The fleet includes the Airbus A319, Airbus A320 and the Bombardier
CRJ900.
There had never been a fatal crash in
Germanwings' history until the reports of today's tragedy.
Back in December 2010, a Germanwings flight was
said to be 'moments from crashing' after the pilots were overcome with fumes on
landing at Cologne.
The plane had 150 passengers on board, and
officials accused Germanwings of 'playing down the incident' to 'avoid
investigation'.
The first flight of an Airbus A320 took place in
February 1987 in Toulouse, France, watched on by Prince Charles and the late
Diana, Princess of Wales, who were guests of then French Prime Minister Jacques
Chirac.
More than 1,400 people attended the opening at
the French company's headquarters.
The first delivery of the aircraft was to Air
France on March 26, 1988.
Airbus A320 aircraft have been part of Lufthansa
fleet, including its subsidiaries, since 1989.
No comments:
Post a Comment