Germanwings confirms flight crash, Lufthansa says it's a dark day for airline

Germanwings— the low-cost, no frills subsidiary of Germany’s biggest airline Lufthansa, today confirmed that an Airbus A320 flight carrying 144 passengers did indeed crash  in the French Alps as it flew from Barcelona to Duesseldorf. Flight 4U9525 crashed at 11:20 local time; 144 passengers, 6 crew on board, Germanwings said in a statement. An hour earlier, Lufthansa had said it is still uncertain about what happened to the flight. “We do not yet know what has happened to flight 4U 9525. My deepest sympathy goes to the families and friends of our passengers and crewon 4U 9525. If our fears are confirmed, this is a dark day for Lufthansa. We hope to find survivors,” CEO Carsten Spohr said in a statement. The Germanwings Airbus A320 plane sent out a distress signal at 10:45 am local time then crashed in a mountainous zone at an altitude of about 2,000 meters (6,550 feet), said Pierre-Henry Brandet, the French Interior Ministry spokesman. Germanwings  has been operating since 2002 — part of traditional national carriers’ response from rising European budget carriers. It serves mainly European destinations. Shares in Lufthansa and Airbus fell sharply as news broke about the crash. While shares in pan-European plane-maker Airbus fell 4 percent, Lufthansa  was down 4.1 percent.

The A320 is one of Airbus’s biggest selling aircraft, with nearly 3,900 delivered and almost 7,600 ordered in total.  

[caption id=“attachment_80586” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Getty Images[/caption] Brandet told BFM television that he expected “an extremely long and extremely difficult” search and rescue operation because of the area’s remoteness. Capt. Benoit Zeisser of the Digne-le-Bains police, said there were some clouds but the cloud ceiling was not low and there did not appear to be turbulence. He told the French network iTele he could not comment yet on the state of the debris site. In a live briefing Tuesday, Hollande said it was probable that a number of the victims were German. He said the area of the crash was remote and it was not clear whether anyone on the ground had been injured by the crash. “It’s a tragedy on our soil,” he said, adding he would be speaking with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.   The German Federal Bureau of Aircraft Accident Investigation said it was sending three people to France to join the investigation. French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve, the country’s top security official, was among those headed to the crash site. With inputs from AP