SEYNE-LES-ALPES, France — A black box recovered from the scene and pulverized pieces of debris strewn across Alpine mountainsides held clues to what caused a German jetliner to take an unexplained eight-minute dive Tuesday midway through a flight from Spain to Germany, apparently killing all 150 people on board.
Victims included two babies, two opera singers and 16 German high school students and their teachers returning from an exchange trip to Spain. It was the deadliest crash in France in decades.
The Airbus A320 operated by Germanwings, a budget subsidiary of Lufthansa, was about an hour from landing in Duesseldorf on a flight from Barcelona when it unexpectedly went into a rapid descent. The pilots sent out no distress call and had lost radio contact with their control center, France’s aviation authority said, deepening the mystery.
While investigators searched through debris from Flight 9525 on steep and desolate slopes, families across Europe reeled with shock and grief. Sobbing relatives at both airports were led away by airport workers and crisis counselors.
“The site is a picture of horror. The grief of the families and friends is immeasurable,” German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said after being flown over the crash scene. “We must now stand together. We are united in our great grief.”
It took investigators hours to reach the site, led by mountain guides to the craggy ravine in the southern French Alps, not far from the Italian border and the French Riviera.
Lufthansa vice president Heike Birlenbach told reporters in Barcelona that for now “we say it is an accident.”
Video and photos of the site showed scattered white flecks across a stony mountain and several larger airplane body sections with windows. French officials said a helicopter crew that landed briefly in the area saw no signs of life.
“Everything is pulverized. The largest pieces of debris are the size of a small car. No one can access the site from the ground,” said Gilbert Sauvan, president of the general council, Alpes-de-Haute-Provence.
The White House and the airline chief said there was no sign that terrorism was involved, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel urged reporters not to speculate on the cause.
French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said a black box had been located and “will be immediately investigated.” He did not say whether it was the flight data recorder or the cockpit voice recorder.
Germanwings is a low-cost carrier owned by Lufthansa, Germany’s biggest airline, and serves mostly European destinations. Tuesday’s crash was its first involving passenger deaths since it began operating in 2002. The Germanwings logo, normally maroon and yellow, was blacked out on its Twitter feed.
Germanwings said Flight 9525 carried 144 passengers and six crew members. Officials believe 67 Germans were on board, including the 16 high school students from Haltern and two opera singers.
Eric Heraud of the French Civil Aviation Authority said the plane lost radio contact with a control center at 10:30 a.m. local time but “never declared a distress alert itself.” He said the combination of loss of radio contact and the plane’s quick descent prompted the control center to declare a distress situation.
“We cannot say at the moment why our colleague went into the descent, and so quickly, and without previously consulting air traffic control,” said Germanwings director of flight operations Stefan-Kenan Scheib.
The plane crashed at an altitude of about 6,550 feet near the towns of Prads-Haute-Bleone and Meolans-Revels and the popular ski resort of Pra Loup.
Interior Ministry spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet told BFM television he expected “an extremely long and extremely difficult” search-and-rescue operation because of the area’s remoteness. The weather in the area deteriorated Tuesday afternoon, with a chilly rain falling.
Winkelmann said the pilot, whom he did not name, had more than 10 years of experience for Germanwings and Lufthansa.
The plane had a minor technical problem Monday with a nose gear landing door, Lufthansa spokesman Christoph Meier said. He said it was only a noise problem that did not appear to have any link to the crash.
The last passenger jet crash in France was the 2000 Concorde accident, which killed 113 — 109 in the plane and four on the ground.
About Airbus A320
The Airbus A320, the model of plane that crashed in France on Tuesday, is a workhorse of modern aviation:
Description: Similar to the Boeing 737, the single-aisle, twin-engine jet is used to connect cities that are between one and five hours apart. The plane is certified to fly up to 39,000 feet, its maximum altitude before its rate of climb begins to erode. The plane has an absolute altitude limit of 42,000 feet but can begin to experience problems as low as 37,000 feet, depending on temperature and weight, including fuel, cargo and passengers.
Safety record: The A320 family of planes has just 0.14 fatal accidents per million takeoffs, according to a Boeing safety analysis. Before Tuesday, the last crash of an A320 was AirAsia Flight 8501, which fell into the Java Sea off the coast of Indonesia on Dec. 28.
Where to find them: There are about 3,600 A320s in operation worldwide, according to Airbus. Airbus also makes nearly identical versions, the smaller A318 and A319 and the stretched A321. An additional 2,500 of those jets are flying. Nearly all major U.S. airlines have the jet in their fleets.
The Associated Press
