1st LD Writethru: Lufthansa says Germanwings airplane crash inexplicable

Lufthansa, the parent company of Germanwings whose A320 flight crashed in southern France, said on Wednesday that the tragedy was inexplicable as the aircraft had been in good condition and pilots were experienced.

"We cannot comprehend how a technically flawless airplane steered by two experienced pilots could encounter such a situation at cruising altitude," said Lufthansa chief executive Carsten Spohr in a statement, "We cannot believe that this has happened."

The Germanwings flight 4U9525 descended for eight minutes shortly after reaching its cruising altitude of 11,582 meters en route from Barcelona to Duesseldorf on Tuesday and crashed in southern French Alps with 144 passengers and six crew members on board. No was expected to have survived.

Causes of the crash remained unclear. Investigators from the German Federal Bureau of Aircraft Accident Investigation (BFU) and experts from Lufthansa, Germanwings and Airbus were dispatched to the crash site for investigation.

German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere, however, warned against speculation about causes of the crash, saying that there was no reliable evidence that a third party was involved.

According to Germanwings, the captain of the plane had worked for Lufthansa and Germanwings for 10 years and had accumulated more than 6,000 flight hours. The crashed aircraft had completed 58,300 flight hours and accepted its last routine check on Monday.

"Safety aviation is not a given," Spohr said, calling the crash on Tuesday a tragedy that his company "worked so hard against" and hoped "would never experience."

Earlier on Wednesday, Germanwings CEO Thomas Winkelmann announced that two special flights would be arranged on Thursday to send relatives of passengers from Barcelona and Duesseldorf to southern France. Another flight would take families of the six crew members to France. Endit