Batman Posted March 24, 2015 Share Posted March 24, 2015 By Jean-Francois Rosnoblet SEYNE-LES-ALPES, France Tue Mar 24, 2015 10:24am EDT Slideshow: Germanwings crash in France (Reuters) - An Airbus operated by Lufthansa's Germanwings budget airline crashed in a remote snowy area of the French Alps on Tuesday, 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. The airline believed there were 67 Germans on the flight. Spain's deputy prime minister said 45 passengers had Spanish names. One Belgian was aboard. Also among the victims were 16 children and two teachers from the Joseph-Koenig-Gymnasium high school in the town of Haltern am See in northwest Germany, a spokeswoman said. 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. 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." 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. 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. 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. Lufthansa Chief Executive Carsten Spohr, who planned to go to the crash site, spoke of a "dark day for Lufthansa". "My deepest sympathy goes to the families and friends of our passengers and crew," Lufthansa said on Twitter, citing Spohr. The airliner crashed about 100 km (65 miles) north of the French Riviera city of Nice. French and German accident investigators were heading for the crash site in Meolans-Revel, a remote and sparsely inhabited commune, not far from the Italian border. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she would travel there on Wednesday. Germanwings and the Catalan regional government were preparing to transport Spanish relatives to the site. Family members arrived at Barcelona’s El Prat airport, many crying and with arms around each others’ shoulders, accompanied by police and airport staff. 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. 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. http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/03/24/us-france-crash-airbus-lufthansa-idUSKBN0MK0ZP20150324 This is so devastating :sad2::bigcry: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Danceteacher Posted March 24, 2015 Share Posted March 24, 2015 This is so terrible. I don't know what to say. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nina8 Posted March 24, 2015 Share Posted March 24, 2015 What a tragedy! Sympathies to families and friends. RIP. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cheeetaz Posted March 24, 2015 Share Posted March 24, 2015 I was shocked when i first heard it on the radio earlier today. Don't know why but this one really gets to me. Maybe because its a german airline and they were heading to an airport i've been to and traveled from many times. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sparky Posted March 24, 2015 Share Posted March 24, 2015 I'm not sure if the plane being 24 years old has much of an impact in terms of safety, maybe someone can expand further on this? Terrible tragedy, no chance on that terrain for the passengers :( Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Batman Posted March 24, 2015 Author Share Posted March 24, 2015 Don't know why but this one really gets to me. I suppose because we've had quite a handful of plane crashes the fast few months, and this one is really close to us, and unexpected. I mean, why the frick would the plane just smash into the mountains like that? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cheeetaz Posted March 24, 2015 Share Posted March 24, 2015 I don't think age has something to do with it. These days planes get checked and if necessary repaired on a regular basis. In fact i once heard a pilot somewhere, saying that he would prefer an old regular checked plane to a brand-new one. Probably because it has proven for the last two decades that it is functioning as it should be. This exact plane was checked yesterday according to multiple sources. Makes you wonder if it could have something to do with that (would be the most obvious right now) You can clearly see they started an unusual descent. It's a bit weird though because if you have a problem and need to descent you would turn around and fly away from the mountains, not straight toward them. I could imagine they had some sort of hydraulic problem / had no control of the airplane anymore or the pilots lost consciousness for some reason. If they would have had control and would have been able to fly the plane in a normal way, they would have done some course correction at some point. No one just flies straight into a mountain on a good weather day. EDIT: According to a german news article the plane was grounded yesterday because of a problem with the nose landing gear door. Could be a hint to a possible sudden depressurization at cruising altitude (would explain the descent and could lead to loosing you consciousness, although there should be an emergency oxygen system to avoid that) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Danceteacher Posted March 24, 2015 Share Posted March 24, 2015 There have been so many crashes lately...But this one effects me most, possibly because it is so close to home - Düsseldorf is the airport I regularly fly from. Many of my dancers have been on school-exchanges all over Europe this week, too, and to think it could have been any of them... A friend of mine who is a conductor just posted that there were some opera singers on the plane who were returning home from singing the Ring in Barcelona. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Black Rose Posted March 24, 2015 Share Posted March 24, 2015 RIP Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Batman Posted March 24, 2015 Author Share Posted March 24, 2015 They've broadcasting one tv special after another about this crash and trying to find out what might have caused the problem. And they also try to help the people that are mourning now by telling how to cope with their loss and what numbers they can call for help and so on. Oh man this is so sad. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Christa42 Posted March 25, 2015 Share Posted March 25, 2015 my heart is breaking Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
violet_hill2014 Posted March 25, 2015 Share Posted March 25, 2015 16 high school kids were among them, RIP. The sadest thing for the parents. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Batman Posted March 25, 2015 Author Share Posted March 25, 2015 16 high school kids were among them, RIP. The sadest thing for the parents. and three babies... 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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