Nope. Not the :rice: this time.
All 150 passengers and crew presumed dead. :rip:
Germanwings Passenger Plane Crashes in French Alps - WSJ
All 150 passengers and crew presumed dead. :rip:
Germanwings Passenger Plane Crashes in French Alps - WSJ
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Germanwings Passenger Plane Crashes in French Alps Plane was flying from Barcelona to Düsseldorf; some 150 passengers and crew feared dead SEYNE, FranceThe crash of an Airbus A320 carrying 150 people from Barcelona to Düsseldorf plunged Germany and Spain into mourning as France rushed to mount a complex search-and-recovery operation in this steep Alpine region. Officials who flew over the crash site on Tuesday described an awful scene of desolation: a mountain face blanketed by small debris and body parts, suggesting the plane operated by the low-cost arm of Deutsche Lufthansa AG disintegrated when it hit the ground. The violence of the crash leaves little hope for survivors, French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said upon returning to Seynethe village where emergency workers have established a base campafter inspecting the site by helicopter.  The crash of Flight 9525 stunned Germany and Spain, whose nationals made up most of the flight manifest. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she would join Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy in Seyne on Wednesday to pay respects to the victims alongside French President François Hollande. The crash exacted a heavy toll on a small western German town, Haltern am See, which lost 16 teenagers and two teachers. The group was returning from a student exchange at a public high school near Barcelona.  This is the darkest day in the history of our town, said Bodo Klimpel, the towns mayor. Germanwings, a low-fare brand created by Lufthansa in 2002, had an unblemished safety record until Tuesday. With no direct road access to the crash site, emergency workers faced a difficult option: hourslong treks at altitudes of 6,500 feet or rappelling from helicopters unable to land on treacherous mountainous terrain. Complicating matters, heavy wind, rain and possibly snow was forecast Tuesday night. It is really hard to get there, said Damien Bon, a marshal with the local mountain police. Still, with over 600 police and military mobilized, together with 10 helicopters and a military plane, French authorities said they had recovered one of the two black box recorders from the Germanwings aircraft. The BEA, Frances flight safety agency, will begin analyzing the contents of the black box later Tuesday, the French Interior Ministry said. The recording devices typically provide the best clue why a plane crashed. Meantime, a dozen coroners were dispatched to Seyne to prepare for collecting body samples and helping to identify victims. As darkness fell, several mountain rangers remained stationed in the area to secure the crash scene, as authorities suspended the search effort for the night. French authorities said they werent ruling out any potential cause for the crash but didnt appear to suspect foul play. The fact that prosecutors in Marseilles were assigned to investigate the crashrather than the anti-terrorism unit based in Parisindicated investigators were focused on other theories. Flight 9525 took off from Barcelona at 10:01 a.m. local time with at least 67 German passengers and a large group of Spaniards on board. French officials said several Turks may also have been on the plane.  The plane had undergone regular maintenance the day before and had its last major safety check in 2013, according to Germanwings. In the cockpit, the pilot had over 10 years of experience, and had clocked more than 6,000 hours flying Airbus jets. Germanwings said the plane reached an altitude of 38,000 feet at 10:45 a.m., before embarking on an unplanned and unexplained eight-minute descent. French air-traffic controllers made multiple attempts to contact the flight but got no response, according to Roger Rousseau, the secretary-general for the SNCTA union of air-traffic controllers. There was no distress call from the plane. No mayday call, no squawk from the transpondernothing, he said. When the plane dipped out of radars view, the air-traffic controllers issued an alarm signal, which alerted military and police authorities. Moments later, the French military ordered a fighter jet to race to the area, according to a person familiar with the matter. Mr. Rousseau said the plane didnt deviate from its course as it lost altitude, which is an unusual pattern for an aircraft in distress. If theres a loss of control, pilots usually lose their way too, the union delegate said. That didnt happen in this case. The crash is the first fatal accident for Lufthansa since 1993, when two people died in an Airbus A320 crash in Poland, according to the Aviation Safety Network, an accident-tracking site run by the not-for-profit Flight Safety Foundation. A crew member and passenger died when the plane came off the runway on landing. The Airbus A320 is the plane makers most popular model, with more than 3,600 in service and more than 4,700 sold. The A320 family of planes suffers about 0.08 crashes per million flights, according to website AirSafe.comabout the same as for equivalent Boeing narrowbodies, it said. Airbus said the plane was delivered in 1991 to Lufthansa and had logged around 58,300 flight hours in some 46,700 flights. The plane was transferred to Germanwings last year, the carrier said. It is a tragic and very sad day for Germanwings and the entire Lufthansa family, Chief Executive Thomas Winkelmann said. |