German Airbus A320 plane crashes in French Alps

Germanwings A320 aircraft flying from Barcelona to Düsseldorf goes down in southern French Alps with 150 on board

All 150 passengers and crew on an Airbus A320 flying from Barcelona to Düsseldorf are believed dead after it rapidly lost height and began an as yet unexplained descent into a remote and mountainous area of southern France.

The chief executive of Lufthansa’s lowcost arm, Germanwings, said the aircraft reached its cruising height of 38,000ft at 10.45am, 44 minutes into the flight, and began the descent just a minute or two later. Contact was lost at 10.53am when the plane was at 6,000ft.

The dead are believed to include 45 Spanish and 67 German nationals. A school party of 16 German teenagers returning from an exchange trip to Spain were booked on the plane but school officials could not say if the group had boarded.

The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, who said she would travel to the crash site on Wednesday, said the crash had plunged Germany, France and Spain into “deep mourning”.

Spain’s King Felipe VI said he was cancelling his state visit to France to return to Spain. The country’s prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, also spoke briefly to the press. “We’re facing a dramatic and very sad accident,” he said. “We’re going to do everything in our power to help, to help the families and give them our support.”

The French weather station said the meteorogical conditions were calm at the time of the accident and that the sky was “completely clear”, with almost no wind.

The Airbus A320 crashed in the commune of Méolans-Revel, an isolated area of small villages and hamlets that are difficult to reach. Debris is scattered over an area of 2 sq km, according to French search and rescue.

Sebastien Giroux, one of the first eyewitnesses, said he saw the aircraft flying very low. “There was no smoke or particular sound or sign of anything wrong, but at the altitude it was flying it was clearly not going to make it over the mountains,” he told BFM-TV. “I didn’t see anthing wrong with the plane, but it was too low.”
Initial reports said a distress call was made by the pilots at 10.47am but French authorities later said this was not the case.