Germanwings Plane Crash in France Leaves 150 Dead, Official Says
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Adam Berry/Getty Image(DIGNE, France) — An Airbus operated by Germanwings crashed Tuesday in the Alps in southern France with 150 people on board, including two babies, the airline confirmed.
The first images of the crash site emerged hours after the crash, which took place in a remote part of the French Alps.
As night descended in France, the search and rescue operation was suspended for the day. Bodies and debris will be brought down from the crash site Wednesday morning, according to a French Interior Ministry spokesperson.
French President Francois Hollande said there are “apparently no survivors.”
The passenger jet, an Airbus A320, crashed near the town of Digne as it traveled from Barcelona to Dusseldorf, Hollande said.
The plane was carrying 144 passengers — including 2 babies — and six crew members, Germanwings CEO Thomas Winkelmann said at a news conference on Tuesday.
Winkelmann said he feels “deep sorrow,” adding that the victims’ families will be informed before a list of names will be released. The list of nationalities of the casualties will be released as soon as the airline is certain, Winkelmann added.
Hollande said, “I want to express my solidarity to the family of the victims. We do not yet know the identities of the victims. It is a mourning we have to go through because it is a tragedy that has happened on our soil.”
Spanish King Felipe IV, who is in France for a pre-scheduled meeting with Hollande, said the passengers were German, Spanish and Turkish.
Germanwings said 67 Germans were on board. The State Department is reviewing whether there were any Americans on board.
King Felipe had planned to stay in France for three days but now said he is returning to Madrid to launch a crisis center.
The cause of the crash has not yet been determined, the Germanwings CEO said. The French Interior Ministry said the plane’s black box has been found and that it will be analyzed in the coming hours.
Lufthansa, which owns Germanwings, called the crash “an accident.”
“For the time being we are calling this an accident,” a Lufthansa official said at a news conference in Barcelona on Tuesday. “Everything else is speculation.”
At a White House news conference, President Obama offered his thoughts and prayers to the people of Germany and Spain, saying, “American stands with them at this moment of sorrow.”
Obama said he has called German Chancellor Angela Merkel and hopes to speak with Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy of Spain to “express the condolences of the American people” and to offer U.S. assistance as they investigate this “awful tragedy.”
“Our teams are in close contact, and we’re working to confirm how many Americans may have been on board,” Obama said.
The plane was flying at 38,000 feet — its normal cruising altitude — when it started to lose altitude and descended for 8 minutes, according to Germanwings. When the plane was at 6,000 feet, it lost contact with French radar.
Lufthansa said the plane went into operation in 1990. It was sold to Lufthansa in 1991 and then sold to Germanwings in 2014.
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