Spotlight: German A320 flight crashes with 150 people on board

An Airbus 320 plane of German budget airline Germanwings with 150 people on board crashed in southern France on Tuesday while en route from Barcelona to Dusseldorf. No survivors were expected to have survived the crash.

Germanwings is a subsidary of parent company Lufthansa.

The Germanwings flight 4U9525 left Barcelona at 10:01 a.m. local time (0901 GMT) with 144 passengers, including two babies, and six crew members on board, said the airline's chief executive Thomas Winkelmann at a press conference.

The flight was scheduled to arrive in Dusseldorf at 11:35 a.m. local time (1035 GMT), but started to descend one minute after reaching its cruising altitude of 38,000 feet at 10:45 a.m.

The descent lasted for eight minutes and "at 10:53, the contact with the French radar was broken," said Winkelmann, "then the plane crashed."

According to the French government, the crash site was located in a snow-covered area in the French Alps which is particularly difficult to access and only helicopters can reach.

French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said 300 gendarmes and about 300 firemen were mobilized for the search and rescue operation, but there was little chance anyone survived.

Identities of passengers were not disclosed. According to Winkelmann, there were 67 Germans on board, including 16 students and two teachers who were on their way home after an exchange in Spain.

Spanish government confirmed there were 45 Spanish citizens among the victims. French President Francois Hollande said there were Turkish passengers in the plane.

There were no Chinese passengers on board, according to Winkelmann.

Causes of the crash remained unclear, though the French Interior Ministry announced Tuesday evening that the black box of the crashed plane had been found and transferred to investigators.

According to Winkelmann, the most recent routine check of the plane was carried out on Monday in Duesseldorf by Lufthansa Technik. The last "big check" took place as scheduled in the summer of 2013.

He added that the captain of the plane, who had worked for Lufthansa and Germanwings for 10 years, had accumulated more than 6,000 flight hours, while the crashed aircraft had flown 58,300 flight hours.

The aircraft was delivered to Lufthansa from the Airbus production line in 1991 and transferred to Germanwings in 2014. According to media reports, it was one of the oldest planes in Germanwings' fleet.

French Civil Aviation Authority said the crew of the flight 4U9525 didn't send a distress call as previously reported by the media, and that it was the air traffic controllers who declared the aircraft was in a state of distress because of the loss of contact with the crew.

German Federal Bureau of Aircraft Accident Investigation (BFU) sent investigators to France and a joint investigation by France, Germany and Spain was opened to find out the causes of the tragedy. A group of experts from Lufthansa, Germanwings, and Airbus were also dispatched later on Tuesday to the accident site.

Speaking to the French National Assembly about the cause of the crash, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said "at this point, no hypothesis can be excluded."

German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced she would travel to the crash site on Wednesday, one day after German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Transport Minister Alexander Dobrindt.

Merkel said Germany would work together with France and Spain to find out the causes of the crash, at a press conference where she expressed her shock and sorrow over the accident, as well as sympathy to families of the victims.

Hollande also expressed France's solidarity with Germany, Spain and the family members of the victims of the crash before meeting Spanish King Felipe VI in the Elysee.

King Felipe VI cut short his state visit to France as a result of the crash, and returned to Spain. Endit