An Airbus A320 registration D-AIPX, operated by Germanwings, has crashed near Digne les Bains in the mountainous French Alpes-des-Hautes province on Tuesday morning 24th March, 2015, shortly after 10:47am local time. Flight 9525 was carrying a total of 144 passengers, two pilots and four cabin crew. A distress signal was issued by the pilot flying at 6800ft.

“We do not yet know what has happened to flight 4U 9525. My deepest sympathy goes to the families and friends of our passengers and crew on 4U 9525. If our fears are confirmed, this is a dark day for Lufthansa. We hope to find survivors.“ ” Carsten Spohr, CEO of Deutsche Lufthansa AG

Set up in 1997, Germanwings GmbH is based in Cologne, has been wholly owned by Lufthansa since 2009. They are an affiliate member of Star Alliance and fly to 86 destinations with their fleet of 81 planes. I have not flown them. Skytrax rates them as a three star airline. They have not had any previous major incidents. There have been over 6450 A320s  built. I have flown in A320s a total of 84 times.

This is the second major accident in 2015. In February, Taiwan’s TransAsia flight 235 hit a bridge after takeoff.  38 died and 15 survived.

My thoughts to all those impacted by this disaster.

More information from:

•  https://twitter.com/germanwings
• the BBC
• The airline’s website is down after being inundated