16 students, 2 teachers dead
The German North Rhine-Westphalia state Education Ministry says a group of that 16 tenth-grade students and two teachers from Joseph-Koenig-Gymnasium High School in the city of Haltern, northeast of Duesseldorf. Local education minister
It was a Spanish language exchange programme and they were flying home after having what was probably the most wonderful time of their lives.
Haltern Mayor Bodo Klimpel:
This is, of course, the worst thing you could imagine.
Plane crashes in France
An Airbus A320 operated by Germanwings, the budget carrier of Germany’s Lufthansa crashes in a remote area of the French Alps Tuesday, near the ski resort of Barcelonnette, killing all 150 on board in the worst plane disaster in mainland France for four decades. The Airbus A320 plunged for eight minutes into a snowbound inaccessible mountain area in southeastern France. French officials say no distress signal had been issued. The plane, carrying 144 mainly Spanish and German passengers and six crew, was travelling from Barcelona to the western German city of Duesseldorf when it came down. Civil aviation authorities
The crew did not send a Mayday. It was air traffic control that decided to declare the plane was in distress because there was no contact with the crew of the plane
Lufthansa:
We’ve never had a total loss of aircraft in the company’s history until now.