150 die in German plane crash

Rescuers have recovered the black box of a GermanWings plane which  crashed yesterday in the French Alps on its way from Barcelona to Duesseldorf, killing all 150 people on board.

The Airbus A320 – flight 4U 9525 – went down between Digne and Barcelonnette. None of the 144 passengers or six crew is expected to have survived.

French air investigators were last night examining a black box cockpit voice recorder (CVR).

Investigators are puzzled as to why the crew did not send out a mayday or distress signal as flight U49525 rapidly lost altitude for eight minutes, or why the pilot did not change course to avoid smashing into a rocky ravine at around 430mph (700kmh).

In the last 10 minutes of the flight, there was total radio silence from the crew of the Barcelona–Düsseldorf flight operated by Lufthansa’s low-cost subsidiary.

Yesterday’s crash happened around 11.am local time in calm weather. Unverified information from plane-tracking websites appeared to rule out an explosion or a mid-air stall, both of which would cause a much faster descent. Experts said planes such as the Airbus would be able to glide for some distance in the case of total engine failure.

David Learmount, the operations and safety editor of Flightglobal, said on Twitter: “German-operated A320s do not crash in the cruise. Not these days. This one is weird.”

The dead are believed to include 16 German schoolchildren. French and German leaders have expressed shock.

“This is the hour in which we all feel deep sorrow,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel told reporters, adding that she was planning to travel to the crash site.

A rescue helicopter has reportedly reached the site of the crash, in a remote mountain area.

Gilbert Sauvan, a local council official, told Les Echos newspaper that the plane had “disintegrated”.

“The largest debris is the size of a car,” he said.

The passengers included a German school class on its way back from an exchange trip.

Sandrine Boisse, a tourism official from the ski resort of Pra Loup, told the BBC that she had heard a strange noise in the mountains at around11:00 (10:00 GMT).

“At first we thought it was on the ski slopes, an avalanche, but it wasn’t the same noise,” she said. “I think it was the noise of when a plane goes very quickly down.”

The plane began descending one minute after reaching its cruising height and continued to lose altitude for eight minutes, Germanwings managing director Thomas Winkelmann told reporters.

He said the aircraft lost contact with French air traffic controllers at 10:53 at an altitude of about 6,000 feet

Although it began its life as an independent low-cost carrier, Germanwings is wholly owned by its parent Lufthansa.

It operates increasing numbers of the group’s point-to-point short-haul routes and takes many passengers from German cities to Mediterranean sunspots.

The airline has an excellent safety record with no previously reported accidents. The average age of its Airbus fleet is just over nine years old, though flight 4U 9525 was a 24-year-old A320.

The plan was to phase out the Germanwings brand and replace it with Eurowings.

There has been a longstanding dispute with the Vereinigung Cockpit union over early retirement. Pilots went on strike for three days around this time last year

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said he had sent Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve to the scene and a ministerial crisis cell had been set up to co-ordinate the incident.

The interior ministry said debris had been located at an altitude of 2,000m (6,500ft).

Spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet told BFM TV that it would be “an extremely long and extremely difficult’’ search-and-rescue operation because of the remote location.

Spain’s King Felipe, on a state visit to France, thanked the French government for its help and said he was cancelling the rest of his visit.

The Airbus A320 is a single-aisle passenger jet popular for short and medium-haul flights.