News

Jet Carrying 150 Crashes Into French Alps, Everyone Presumed Dead

by Sean Levinson

A passenger plane carrying 150 people crashed in the French Alps on Tuesday morning.

Of the 150 on board flight 4U9525, 144 were passengers, including two babies, and six were crew members.

French officials have said it's likely no one survived.

The Germanwings Airbus A320 was heading for Dusseldorf, Germany, and left Barcelona at 9:55 am, according to ABC News.

Some reports say a distress call was made to air traffic control in Marseilles, France, saying "mayday, mayday, mayday," at 10:47 am, according to the Guardian.

But a spokesman from the airline says it's not clear whether a call was made.

It took the plane about eight minutes to drop from 38,000 feet to 6,000 feet before vanishing from radar just before 11 am.

The crash took place in a remote, mountainous region of the southern French Alps known as Meolans-Revel, according to ABC News.

There are a number of isolated villages nearby, and it is not clear if anyone on the ground was injured.

According to the Guardian, a French weather station said the sky was "completely clear" and showed no sign of dangerous conditions at the time of the crash.

Roughly 400 French police officers, firefighters and search and rescue workers have been flown to the area, which a French interior ministry spokesman described as "extremely difficult" to reach because of the snowy terrain.

The Spanish deputy prime minister has said that 45 of the passengers were Spanish while 67 others are presumed to be German.

Germanwings has a perfect safety record since it was launched by parent airline Lufthansa in 2002, according to the BBC.

This particular A320 was 24 years old, which is about 15 years older than the average Germanwings Airbus and the captain had over 10 years of experience.

Citations: Germanwings airliner 4U 9525 crashes in French Alps (BBC), Home> International Jet Crashes in Alps With 150 Aboard (ABC News), German Airbus A320 plane crashes in French Alps (The Guardian)