Alps plane search operation resumes

Written By Unknown on Rabu, 25 Maret 2015 | 19.15

Damaged flight voice recorder. 25 March 2015
The recovered cockpit voice recorder was badly damaged in the crash

A search and recovery operation has resumed in the southern French Alps after Tuesday's crash of a Germanwings plane with 150 people on board.

One of the "black box" recorders - recovered from a remote mountain ravine between Digne and Barcelonnette - has been damaged, officials said.

The leaders of Germany, France and Spain are due to visit the crash site.

The Airbus A320 - flight 4U 9525 - from Barcelona to Duesseldorf crashed after an eight-minute rapid descent.

There were no survivors.

Officials believe 67 of the 144 passengers were German citizens, including 16 pupils returning from an exchange trip.

A day of mourning was being held at the Joseph-Koenig-Gymnasium school in Haltern-am-See, north-west Germany, where the pupils were from.

More than 40 passengers were believed to be Spanish and UK Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond confirmed that three Britons were on board. The flight was also carrying citizens of Australia, Japan, Colombia, Turkey, Denmark, the Netherlands and Belgium.

The plane's cockpit voice recorder - recovered by a helicopter team on Tuesday - was damaged but could still provide information, French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said.

Transport Minister Alain Vidalies said if voices had been recorded the investigation would proceed "fairly quickly".

Investigators are still searching for the second "black box" - the flight data recorder.

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Key points

  • Weather reportedly good when A320 Airbus came down
  • Plane descended rapidly but sent out no distress signal
  • White House says no suspicion of terrorism

Live crash updates

Who were the victims?

What we know

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Map of crash site
Rescue helicopter at crash site
Helicopters ferried recovery teams to a crash site marked by smouldering debris

French President Francois Hollande, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy are expected to visit the crash scene later.

Mr Rajoy has declared three days of national mourning in Spain.

Bereaved relatives are also expected to visit the scene on Wednesday. The mayor of Seyne-les-Alpes, the town nearest the crash site, said local families were offering to host them.

Footage shot from a helicopter on Tuesday showed plane parts scattered on the rocky mountainside.

"The site is a picture of horror," German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said after being flown over the ravine.

"Everything is pulverised. The largest pieces of debris are the size of a small car," Gilbert Sauvan, president of the general council Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, told the Associated Press.

Students at Joseph-Koenig-Gymnasium school in Haltern-am-See. 25 Mar 2015
Pupils at the school in Haltern-am-See, Germany, are being offered counselling

Germanwings, a low-cost airline owned by Germany's main carrier Lufthansa, said some crew members were unfit for service on Wednesday "due to emotional distress".

It said one flight was being cancelled but remaining flights would be according to schedule.

Lufthansa and Germanwings staff held a minute's silence on Wednesday morning.

Meanwhile, the first Germanwings flight on the same route as the crashed plane took off from Barcelona on Wednesday morning but the flight number had been changed to 4U 9441.

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At the scene: Tom Burridge, BBC News, Llinars del Valles, Spain

The solemn faces, the tears, the dark sunglasses on a rainy day all spoke of a village that felt as if it had lost its own.

Pupils at the Giola secondary school in the village of Llinars del Valles spoke of the raw emotion felt during a private 15-minute ceremony of remembrance, for their 16 foreign exchange student friends who left on Tuesday morning to catch the Germanwings flight.

During the ceremony, they listened to a German song which their friends had played to them. A Catalan poem was also read out.

Parents and teachers had travelled from nearby villages to attend the ceremony. And those who live in this Catalan village, hundreds of miles from the German school where those who died studied, spoke of a profound sense of grief.

Today was a gloomy, rainy day in Llinars del Valles. Few smiles, many tears and a lot of silence.

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The plane began descending one minute after it reached its cruising height and continued to lose altitude for eight minutes, Germanwings managing director Thomas Winkelmann told reporters.

He said the aircraft lost contact with French air traffic controllers at 10:53 (09:53 GMT) at an altitude of about 6,000ft.

The plane, a single-aisle passenger jet popular for short- and medium-haul flights, did not send out a distress signal, officials said.

The White House has said there is no evidence so far of a terror attack. A Lufthansa official said they were assuming for the time being that the crash had been caused by an accident.

Rescue workers near crash site
Rescue workers and gendarmes assembled at an airfield near the crash site
The Germanwings Airbus A320 that crashed in France pictured at Milan Malpensa airport on 2 Sept 2014
The Germanwings airliner, pictured here in 2014, had been flying to Duesseldorf in Germany
Graphic showing descent of plane
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