By William Horobin and Jason Chow in Paris and Robert Wall in London
An Airbus A320 flying from Barcelona to Düsseldorf with 150
passengers and crew on board crashed in a remote, hard-to-reach
region of the French Alps on Tuesday, in the worst air disaster in
France in more than three decades.
The flight operated by Germanwings, a budget airline whose
parent company is Deutsche Lufthansa AG, went down near
Méolans-Revel, a small village of 300 surrounded by steep
mountains.
"The conditions of the accident suggest there are no survivors,"
French President François Hollande said in a brief televised
address.
Flight 9525 reached an altitude of 38,000 feet at 10:45 a.m., or
44 minutes after takeoff, and a minute later began an eight-minute
descent before crashing, Germanwings Chief Executive Thomas
Winkelmann said.
The airline said it is not sure why the plane began to fly at a
lower altitude and air traffic control had not authorized a
descent, a Germanwings official said.
Air-traffic authorities based in Aix-en-Provence tried to make
contact several times with cockpit crew when they noticed the plane
dipped below cruising altitude, said Roger Rousseau, the secretary
general for the SNCTA union of air-traffic controllers.
"Air-traffic control made multiple attempts and there was always
no response," he said. "There was no distress call from the plane.
No mayday call, no squawk from the transponder--nothing."
Mr. Rousseau said the plane didn't deviate from its course as it
lost altitude, which he said is an unusual pattern for a plane in
distress.
"The plane kept on its trajectory, and that's surprising to us.
If there's a loss of control, pilots usually lose their way too,"
the union delegate said. "That didn't happen in this case."
One of the black box recorders from the flight had been
recovered, French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said early
Tuesday evening. France's flight safety agency, BEA, will begin
analyzing the contents of the black box later Tuesday, the interior
ministry said.
The recording devices, which store conversations on the flight
deck and data on the aircraft systems, are usually key to
determining the cause of a crash. Extracting the information can
take only a few hours, though an in-depth analysis usually takes
far longer.
BEA has dispatched seven investigators to the scene along with
three German investigators and technical advisors from Airbus, the
French agency said.
Helicopters flying over the snow-covered crash area have spotted
wreckage but the remote location would likely make it hard for
recovery workers and investigators to reach the site, French
officials said. A lawmaker from the region who said he had flown
over it with the French interior minister described it as a
horror.
"I'm hoping there are survivors and the priority is to check for
any signs of life," Christophe Castaner said on French television.
"But when you see there is only debris of small size and body
parts, it's awful."
With no direct road access, emergency workers were bracing for a
complex operation that could involve hourslong treks and helicopter
relays. Complicating matters, heavy snow was forecast Tuesday
evening.
At an altitude over 6,500 feet, the crash site is at least two
hours away from the nearest road for any emergency crews hiking to
the area, said Damien Bon, a marshall with the local mountain
police. Five helicopters have been dispatched, he said, along with
300 emergency workers.
"It is really hard to get there," Mr. Bon said.
Mr. Hollande said he had spoken to German Chancellor Angela
Merkel--who he said was "particularly shocked." Flanked by the king
of Spain, at the start of an official visit in Paris, Mr. Hollande
said he and the Spanish monarch had decided to call off their
meeting.
Germanwings said there were 144 passengers and six crew on
board, including at least 67 Germans. Spain's government said it
believes dozens of Spaniards may have perished.
A group of 16 secondary school students and two teachers booked
on the flight are presumed to be among the victims, the deputy
mayor of the western German town of Haltern am See said. The
students had been on an exchange program at a partner school in
Spain, Hans-Josef Böing said.
On Wednesday, Mr. Hollande will travel to Seyne, a small town
near the crash site, where he will meet Ms. Merkel and Spanish
Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy.
"We still don't know much beyond the scarce details of the
flight, and there must be no speculation on the causes of the
crisis--everything will be thoroughly investigated," Ms. Merkel
told reporters in Berlin, expressing her "deep sorrow" over the
crash.
French officials, cited in French media, initially said pilots
had issued a distress call but later clarified the alert had been
issued by a ground-control officer, who saw the plane veering off
normal course on his radar.
The pilot of the A320 had more than 10 years of service. The
plane underwent regular maintenance on Monday and had its last
major safety check in 2013, Mr. Winkelmann said. The plane had
undergone all required safety upgrades after European safety
regulators issued a series of safety bulletins for the aircraft
type.
Lufthansa Chief Executive Carsten Spohr said via Twitter that
"if our fears are confirmed, this is a dark day for Lufthansa" and
expressed "deepest sympathy" for family and friends of passengers
and crew.
"We are in mourning because it's a tragedy that happened on our
soil," Mr. Hollande said, adding that several French ministers were
on their way to the crash site.
French authorities said they had mobilized 13 coroners to
collect body samples and help identify victims.
At Barcelona's El Prat airport, a crisis center for relatives of
passengers of the Germanwings flight has been staffed with a team
of psychologists and medical workers, said Artur Mas, the president
of the region of Catalonia. The regional government will also
arrange transportation for family members who wish to travel to the
crash site in France, Mr. Mas added.
The German Federal Bureau of Aircraft Accident Investigation
plans to send three officials to France to aid the crash probe, a
spokesman for the agency said. France would lead the probe, though
agencies from other countries with a stake in a crash usually are
involved.
Airbus typically also supports such investigations with
technical experts. The Toulouse, France-based plane maker said it
was "aware of the media reports and all efforts are now going
towards assessing the situation" and that it would provide updates
as available.
The crash is the first fatal accident for Lufthansa since 1993,
when two persons 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.
Lufthansa's Germanwings budget unit, founded in 2002, has had no
previous fatal crashes.
The Airbus A320 is the plane maker's 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.com.
The crash rate is about 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.
The A320 was powered by CFM56-5 engines from CFM International,
a joint venture of France-based Snecma and General Electric Co., a
GE spokesman said. The companies have offered their assistance to
investigators.
The A320 has been involved in some high-profile crashes, though,
including last year's crash of an AirAsia jetliner in Indonesia. It
was also the plane type involved in the so called "Miracle on the
Hudson" on Jan. 15, 2009, when a US Airways plane taking off from
New York's LaGuardia Airport lost power in both engines after
encountering a flock of Canada geese. Pilot Chesley "Sully"
Sullenberger landed the plane on the Hudson River.
Airbus is working on an updated, more efficient version of the
plane, called the A320neo for "new engine option" that is due to
enter service this year.
Commercial jet crashes are rare in European airspace, especially
in mountainous areas. In 1992, an A320 operated by Air Inter
collided with a 2,700-foot ridge on approach to Strasbourg, in
eastern France, killing 87 people.
Tuesday's accident was the deadliest crash in France since 1981,
when an Adria Airways MD80 crashed in Corsica killing 173
passengers and 7 crew. It was the deadliest crash in Western Europe
since Aug. 20, 2008 when a Spanair MD-82 crashed killing 148
passengers and 6 crew, and injuring 18 more onboard.
The crash of a Concorde supersonic jet operated by Air France in
2000 killed 113 people.
Stacy Meichtry and Christopher Bjork contributed to this
article.
Write to William Horobin at William.Horobin@wsj.com
Corrections & Amplifications
The designation of the Germanwings flight that crashed is Flight
9525. An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated it as
U49525. (March 24, 2015)
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