Germanwings plane crashes in southern France: police

Quote: By Jean-Francois Rosnoblet SEYNE-LES-ALPES, France (Reuters) - An Airbus operated by Lufthansa's Germanwings budget airline crashed into a mountainside in the French Alps on Tuesday, killing all 150 people 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. One of the plane's black box recorders has been found at the crash site, about 100 km (65 miles) north of the Riviera city of Nice, and will be examined immediately, France's interior minister said. In Washington, the White House said the crash did not appear to have been caused by a terrorist attack, while Lufthansa said it was working on the assumption that the tragedy had been an accident, adding that any other theory would be speculation. Aerial photographs showed smoldering wreckage and a piece of the fuselage with six windows strewn across the steep mountainside cut by ravines. "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," Brice Robin, prosecutor for the city of Marseille, told Reuters after flying over the wreckage in a helicopter. Germanwings believed 67 Germans had been on the flight. Spain's deputy prime minister said 45 passengers had Spanish names. One Belgian was also 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. Barcelona's Liceu opera house said on Twitter that two singers, Kazakhstan-born Oleg Bryjak and German Maria Radner, had died while returning to Duesseldorf after they had performed in Wagner's Siegfried at the theater. French police at the crash site about 2,000 meters (6,000 feet) above sea level said no one had survived and it would take days to recover the bodies due to difficult terrain, snow and incoming storms. Police said search teams would stay overnight at altitude. "We are still searching. It's unlikely any bodies will be airlifted until Wednesday," regional police chief David Galtier 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 aviation fleets and one of the world’s most used passenger jets. It has a good safety record. However, according to data from the Aviation Safety Network, Tuesday's crash was the third most deadly involving an A320. In 2007 a TAM Linhas Aereas A320 shot off a runway in Brazil, killing 187 people, while 162 people died when an Indonesia AirAsia jet went down in the Java Sea in December. SHARP DESCENT 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 rapidly, 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. "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. In emergencies, pilots are trained to try to fly the aircraft as their first priority, then pay attention to navigation and only then communicate with the ground. 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 recovery effort based itself in a gymnasium in the village of Seyne-les-Alpes, which has a small private aerodrome nearby. STORMS, SNOW, CLOUD 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. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she would travel to the site on Wednesday. Germanwings and the Catalan regional government were preparing to take Spanish relatives there. Family members arrived at Barcelona’s El Prat airport, many crying and with arms around each others’ shoulders, accompanied by police and airport staff. In Llinars del Valles, the Spanish village that hosted the German schoolchildren, Mayor Marti Pujol said the whole village was distraught. "The families knew each other," he told Reuters. "The parents had been to see them off at 6 this morning." King Felipe and Queen Letizia of Spain called off a state visit to France in a sign of mourning for the victims. They had arrived in Paris minutes after the crash happened. In Washington, President Barack Obama said his thoughts and prayers were with Germany and Spain after what he called the "awful tragedy". Airbus confirmed that the plane was 24 years old, having first been delivered to Lufthansa in 1991. It was powered by engines made by CFM International, a joint venture between General Electric and France's Safran. (Additional reporting by Robert Hetz, John Irish, Nicolas Bertin, Gregory Blachier, Tim Hepher, Alwyn Scott, Elena Gyldenkerne, Robert-Jan Bartunek, Matthias Inverardi and Sabine Siebold; writing by Giles Elgood and David Stamp; editing by Mark John and Peter Millership) ،،،، ...

Quote: German Airbus crashes in French Alps with 150 dead, black box found (Adds deaths of opera singers) * 67 Germans on plane, 45 likely Spanish, 16 children * Carrying 144 passengers and 6 crew * Plane came down in remote area of French Alps * Weather closing in around crash site * Airliner did not issue distress call * Graphic http://link.reuters.com/vyg44whttp://link.reuters.com/vyg44whttp://link.reuters.com/vyg44whttp://link.reuters.com/vyg44w By Jean-Francois Rosnoblet SEYNE-LES-ALPES, France, March 24 (Reuters) - An Airbus operated by Lufthansa's Germanwings budget airline crashed into a mountainside in the French Alps on Tuesday, killing all 150 people 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. One of the plane's black box recorders has been found at the crash site, about 100 km (65 miles) north of the Riviera city of Nice, and will be examined immediately, France's interior minister said. In Washington, the White House said the crash did not appear to have been caused by a terrorist attack, while Lufthansa said it was working on the assumption that the tragedy had been an accident, adding that any other theory would be speculation. Aerial photographs showed smouldering wreckage and a piece of the fuselage with six windows strewn across the steep mountainside cut by ravines. "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," Brice Robin, prosecutor for the city of Marseille, told Reuters after flying over the wreckage in a helicopter. Germanwings believed 67 Germans had been on the flight. Spain's deputy prime minister said 45 passengers had Spanish names. One Belgian was also 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. Barcelona's Liceu opera house said on Twitter that two singers, Kazakhstan-born Oleg Bryjak and German Maria Radner, had died while returning to Duesseldorf after they had performed in Wagner's Siegfried at the theatre. French police at the crash site about 2,000 metres (6,000 feet) above sea level said no one had survived and it would take days to recover the bodies due to difficult terrain, snow and incoming storms. Police said search teams would stay overnight at altitude. "We are still searching. It's unlikely any bodies will be airlifted until Wednesday," regional police chief David Galtier 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 aviation fleets and one of the world's most used passenger jets. It has a good safety record. However, according to data from the Aviation Safety Network, Tuesday's crash was the third most deadly involving an A320. In 2007 a TAM Linhas Aereas A320 shot off a runway in Brazil, killing 187 people, while 162 people died when an Indonesia AirAsia jet went down in the Java Sea in December. SHARP DESCENT Description Toggle Deadly Airbus A320 crash In the French Alps A Germanwings jet carrying 150 people from Barcelona to Duesseldorf slammed into a remote section of the French Alps on Tuesday, sounding like an avalanche as it scattered pulverized debris across a rocky mountain and down its steep ravines. All aboard were assumed killed. The pilots sent out no distress call and had lost radio contact with their control center, France's aviation authority said, deepening the mystery over the A320's mid-flight crash after a surprise 8-minute descent. (AP) Find more news-related pictures in our photo galleries and follow us on Tumblr 1 - 5 / 30 People comfort each other as they arrive at the Barcelona airport in Spain, Tuesday, March 24, 2015. A Germanwings passenger jet carrying 150 people crashed in the French Alps region as it traveled ... more 1 / 30 Associated Press | Photo by Manu Fernandez Share to FacebookShare to TwitterShare to Pinterest ClosePrevious imageNext imageGermanwings 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 rapidly, 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. "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. In emergencies, pilots are trained to try to fly the aircraft as their first priority, then pay attention to navigation and only then communicate with the ground. 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 recovery effort based itself in a gymnasium in the village of Seyne-les-Alpes, which has a small private aerodrome nearby. STORMS, SNOW, CLOUD 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 metres and relatively low clouds. That will not help the helicopters in their work," an official from the local weather centre 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. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she would travel to the site on Wednesday. Germanwings and the Catalan regional government were preparing to take Spanish relatives there. Family members arrived at Barcelona's El Prat airport, many crying and with arms around each others' shoulders, accompanied by police and airport staff. In Llinars del Valles, the Spanish village that hosted the German schoolchildren, Mayor Marti Pujol said the whole village was distraught. "The families knew each other," he told Reuters. "The parents had been to see them off at 6 this morning." King Felipe and Queen Letizia of Spain called off a state visit to France in a sign of mourning for the victims. They had arrived in Paris minutes after the crash happened. In Washington, President Barack Obama said his thoughts and prayers were with Germany and Spain after what he called the "awful tragedy". Airbus confirmed that the plane was 24 years old, having first been delivered to Lufthansa in 1991. It was powered by engines made by CFM International, a joint venture between General Electric and France's Safran. (Additional reporting by Robert Hetz, John Irish, Nicolas Bertin, Gregory Blachier, Tim Hepher, Alwyn Scott, Elena Gyldenkerne, Robert-Jan Bartunek, Matthias Inverardi and Sabine Siebold; writing by Giles Elgood and David Stamp; editing by Mark John and Peter Millership) ،،،، ...

Quote: Pls English-language dialogue only Regards

Quote: English writing seems far easier than Arabic

Quote: Co-pilot deliberately slams plane in Alps; families ask why Associated PressBy ANGELA CHARLTON and DAVID McHUGH | Associated Press – 16 hours ago  PARIS (AP) — Passengers with moments to live screamed in terror and the pilot frantically pounded on the locked cockpit door as a 27-year-old German co-pilot deliberately and wordlessly smashed an Airbus carrying 150 people into an Alpine mountainside. The account Thursday of the final moments of Germanwings Flight 9525 prompted some airlines to immediately impose stricter cockpit rules — and raised haunting questions about the motive of the co-pilot, whose breathing never wavered as he destroyed the plane and the lives of those aboard. "We have no idea of the reason," Marseille Prosecutor Brice Robin said, revealing the chilling conclusions investigators reached after reconstructing the final minutes of the flight from the plane's black box voice recorder. Co-pilot Andreas Lubitz's intention was "to destroy this plane." French, German and U.S. officials said there was no indication of terrorism. The prosecutor did not elaborate on why investigators do not suspect a political motive; instead they're focusing on the co-pilot's "personal, family and professional environment" to try to determine why he did it. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose nation lost 75 people on the flight, said the conclusions brought the tragedy to a "new, simply incomprehensible dimension." Devastated families of victims visited the crash scene Thursday, looking across a windy mountain meadow toward where their loved ones died. The Airbus A320 was flying from Barcelona to Duesseldorf on Tuesday when it lost radio contact with air traffic controllers and began plunging from its cruising altitude. Eight minutes later, it slammed into the mountainside. An analysis of transponder data by Flightradar24, a flight tracking service, showed that the autopilot was re-set to take the plane from 38,000 to 100 feet. The prosecutor laid out in horrifying detail the final sounds heard in the cockpit extracted from the mangled voice recorder. Lubitz, courteous in the first part of the trip, became "curt" when the captain began the mid-flight briefing on the planned landing, Robin said. The pilot, who has not been identified, left the cockpit for an apparent bathroom break, and Lubitz took control of the jet. He suddenly started a manual descent, and the pilot started knocking on the door. There was no response. "It was absolute silence in the cockpit," the prosecutor said — except for the steady breathing he said indicated Lubitz was not panicked, and acted in a calm, deliberate manner. The A320 is designed with safeguards to allow emergency entry into the cockpit if a pilot inside is unresponsive. But the override code known to the crew does not go into effect if the person inside the cockpit specifically denies entry. Instrument alarms went off, but no distress call ever went out from the cockpit, and the control tower's pleas for a response went unanswered. Just before the plane hit the mountain, passengers' cries of terror could be heard. "The victims realized just at the last moment," Robin said. "We can hear them screaming." Their families "are having a hard time believing it," he said, after briefing some of them in Marseille. Many victims' relatives visited an Alpine clearing Thursday where French authorities set up a viewing tent for family members to look toward the site of the crash, so steep and treacherous that it can only be reached by a long journey on foot or rappelling from a helicopter. Lubitz's family was in France but was being kept separate from the other families, Robin said. German investigators searched his apartment and his parents' home in Montabaur, Germany, where the curtains were drawn. The prosecutor's account prompted quick moves toward stricter cockpit rules — and calls for more. Airlines in Europe are not required to have two people in the cockpit at all times, unlike the standard U.S. operating procedure, which was changed after the 9/11 attacks to require a flight attendant to take the spot of a briefly departing pilot. Canada and Germany's biggest airlines, including Lufthansa and Air Berlin, as well as low-cost European carriers easyJet and Norwegian Air Shuttle announced new rules requiring two crew members to always be present. Some experts said even two isn't enough, and called for rules to require three. "The flight deck is capable of accommodating three pilots and there shouldn't ever be a situation where there is only one person in the cockpit," said James Hall, a former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, referring to the "jump seats" all airliners are equipped with. Others questioned the wisdom of sealing off the cockpit at all. "The kneejerk reaction to the events of 9/11 with the ill-thought reinforced cockpit door has had catastrophic consequences," said Philip Baum, London-based editor of the trade magazine Aviation Security International. Neither the prosecutor nor Lufthansa — the parent company of low-cost carrier Germanwings — indicated there was anything the pilot could have done to avoid the crash. Robin would not give details on the co-pilot's religion or his ethnic background. German authorities were taking charge of the investigation into Lubitz. Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr said that before Thursday's shocking revelations, the airline was already "appalled" by what had happened in its low-cost subsidiary. "I could not have imagined that becoming even worse," he said in Cologne. "We choose our cockpit staff very, very carefully." Lubitz joined Germanwings in September 2013, directly out of flight school, and had flown 630 hours. Spohr said the airline had no indication why he would have crashed the plane. He underwent a regular security check on Jan. 27 and it found nothing untoward, and previous security checks in 2008 and 2010 also showed no issues, the local government in Duesseldorf said. Lufthansa's chief said Lubitz started training in 2008 and there was a "several-month" gap in his training six years ago. Spohr said he couldn't say what the reason was, but after the break, "he not only passed all medical tests but also his flight training, all flying tests and checks." Robin avoided describing the crash as a suicide. "Usually, when someone commits suicide, he is alone," he said. "When you are responsible for 150 people at the back, I don't necessarily call that a suicide." In the German town of Montabaur, acquaintances told The Associated Press that Lubitz appeared fine when they saw him last fall as he renewed his glider pilot's license. "He was happy he had the job with Germanwings and he was doing well," said a member of the glider club, Peter Ruecker, who watched Lubitz learn to fly. "He gave off a good feeling." Ruecker said he remembers Lubitz as "rather quiet but friendly" when he first showed up at the club as a 14- or 15-year-old saying he wanted to learn to fly. Lubitz was accepted as a Lufthansa pilot trainee after finishing a tough German college preparatory school, Ruecker said. Lubitz's Facebook page, deleted Tuesday, showed a smiling man in a dark brown jacket posing in front of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. It was restored as an "In Memory" site following the French prosecutor's news conference. At the crash site, helicopters shuttled back and forth Thursday as investigators continue retrieving remains and pieces of the plane, shattered from the high-speed impact of the crash. The principal of Joseph Koenig High School in Haltern, Germany, which lost 16 students and two teachers in the crash, said the state governor called him to tell him about the probe's conclusion. "It is much, much worse than we had thought," principal Ulrich Wessel said. ___ McHugh reported from Montabaur, Germany. Greg Keller in Vernet, France; David Rising in Berlin; Kirsten Grieshaber in Cologne, Germany; Alan Clendenning in Madrid; Danica Kirka in London; Lori Hinnant, Thomas Adamson, Sylvie Corbet and Philippe Sotto in Paris; and Jim Kuhnhenn in Washington contributed to this report. ،،،، ...