4U9525 Germanwings flight with 150 people on board crashes in the Alps

USPA NEWS - The flight 4U9525 Germanwings, covering the route between Barcelona and Düsseldorf with 144 passengers and six crew on board, crashed Tuesday in the French Alps. No survivors. French military helicopters flew over the area and located the aircraft fuselage and some bodies.

The victims were German, Spanish and Turkish, as confirmed by the Spanish Government, which identified 45 passengers, and the German company itself. Among the passage were two babies and 16 German school children returning home after an exchange. The plane was an Airbus A320 with 24 years old and had taken off from El Prat airport in Barcelona, at 10 am. Forty-five minutes after flying 38,000 feet in a minute unexpectedly fell to 6,000 feet. It disappeared from radar in the region of the Alpes de Haute Provence, crashing near Barcelonnette.

Some sources reported that the plane had issued a distress call before crashing, but the end was denied by Spanish air traffic controllers. Later it was confirmed that the call had come from the air traffic control ground, after checking on their screens that the plane was abnormally low. A Germanwings technician, asked by TVE, was cautious about the causes of the accident, but said the way they are produced, with a very sharp decline that lasted just ten minutes, indicates that it could be a technical fault. The plane had spent his last full review in the summer of 2013 and according the company, was completely safe.

The Kings of Spain, Felipe and Letizia VI, who had arrived that morning to Paris for an official three-day visit -his first trip to state since the procalamación-, suspended the trip, according to the French Government, and returned to Spain. The Spanish government set up a crisis cabinet and chief executive, Mariano Rajoy, who was in a tribute to victims of terrorism in Vitoria, in northern Spain, canceled his schedule and returned to Madrid.

The Spanish Deputy Prime Minister Soraya Saenz de Santamaria, and the Minister of Development, Ana Pastor, traveled to Marseille to coordinate with the French authorities the rescue of victims. The plane crashed in a rugged area inaccessible by land, so the device is arranged to get from the air. French military helicopters flew over the area and located the aircraft fuselage and some bodies.

Germanwings operates from seven airports in Spain, including Madrid, Barcelona and Palma de Mallorca. In 2014 was the company that registered the highest growth among the 20 operating in Spain, with 1.9 million passengers. Germanwings is the low cost airline of Lufhtansa group. Lufthansa and Germanwings have established a telephone hotline. The toll-free 0800 11 33 55 77 number is available to all the families of the passengers involved for care and assistance.