[Drago]

"GermanWings" is owned by Lufthansa. Also: http://www.cnbc.com/id/102529669

[Drago]

Souls on board (148) reported here: http://www.cnbc.com/id/102529669

[Oldeconomybuyer]

BBC: An Airbus A320 airliner has crashed in the French Alps between Barcelonnette and Digne, French aviation officials and police have said.

The jet belongs to the German low-cost airline Germanwings, a subsidiary of Lufthansa.

The plane had reportedly been en route from Barcelona to Dusseldorf and was carrying 142 passengers and six crew.

[Erik Latranyi]

Prayers for their families

[jimbo123]

Clear weather. Pilot sent Sos. Rapid descent. Smells like muslims.

[BlackVeil]

Debris from the plane has been found near a remote French village, and already the RTE news site in Eire is reporting that no survivors are expected.

[Erik Latranyi]

Flight is reported to have climbed to 38000 feet (I think standard climb out of Barcelona), then descended to 6800 before disappearing.

[Oldeconomybuyer]

BBC: The plane had issued a distress call at 10:47 (09:47 GMT), according to sources quoted by AFP news agency.

[Road Warrior ‘04]

Terrorism?

[Oldeconomybuyer]

SKY News: Captain Mike Vivian, former Head of Flight Operations at the Civil Aviation Authority, told Sky News: “German Wings is a very competent company given it is owned by the main German flag-carrier and it flies basically short-haul routes.

“It surprises me, that this aircraft flying from Barcelona to Dusseldorf, would have been at low altitude because nobody goes low in the Alps unless you are landing at Zurich or Geneva.

[mware]

30 minutes into distress signal, and little to no contact with air traffic. I got a bad feeling about this.

[Oldeconomybuyer]

BBC: Bodies of victims are being taken to an emergency morgue set up at a gymnasium in village of Seyne-Les-Alpes.

France’s DGAC aviation authority confirmed the A320 crashed near the town of Barcelonnette about 100 km (65 miles) north of Nice. The prime minister’s office said the crash happened in Meolans-Revel, a remote commune in the foothills of the French Alps.

[mware]

Bodies and debris scattered over a wide area of ground.

[Oldeconomybuyer]

[Oldeconomybuyer]

Associated Press saying debris from the crash has been located. The crash site in the Alps was at an altitude of 2,000m (6,560ft).

[Oldeconomybuyer]

SKY News: A ‘very brief’ distress call was made when the Airbus A320 was at 6,800ft.

[Oldeconomybuyer]

[RayChuang88]

They're going to have to look at the black box data and find out if the recorders kept on recording right up to the time of the crash. If it did, they'll have to compare it against what happened to Indonesia AirAsia Flight 8501 late last year.

One intriguing possibility: the pitot tubes in the nose froze up and gave erroneous readings to the fly-by-wire computers, causing the plane to go out of control. That was what likely happened to Air France Flight 447 some years ago, an Airbus A330-200 airliner with a fly-by-wire system commonly used by Airbus.

[Old Sarge]

First thought: who was on the plane who dissed either Obola or Hitlery?

[Oldeconomybuyer]

BBC: Captain Benoit Zeisser of the Digne-le-Bains police tells French TV network iTele the cloud ceiling in the crash area was not low and there did not appear to be turbulence.

[Oldeconomybuyer]

SKY News: Germanwings aircraft began its descent ten minutes before it crashed. And appears to be way off its route.