Germanwings said 72 Germans were killed in the first major air passenger disaster on French soil since the 2000 Concorde accident just outside Paris. Madrid revised down on Thursday the number of Spanish victims to 50 from 51 previously. As well as Germans and Spaniards, victims included three Americans, a Moroccan and citizens of Britain, Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Colombia, Denmark, Israel, Japan, Mexico, Iran and the Netherlands, officials said. However, DNA checks to identify them could take weeks, the French government said. The families of victims were being flown to Marseille on Thursday before being taken up to the zone close to the crash site. Chapels had been prepared for them with a view of the mountain where their loved ones died. (Additional reporting by bureaus in Paris, Berlin, Frankfurt and Madrid; Writing by Mark John; Editing by Peter Graff)
Germanwings said 72 Germans were killed in the first major air passenger disaster on French soil since the 2000 Concorde accident just outside Paris. Madrid revised down on Thursday the number of Spanish victims to 50 from 51 previously. As well as Germans and Spaniards, victims included three Americans, a Moroccan and citizens of Britain, Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Colombia, Denmark, Israel, Japan, Mexico, Iran and the Netherlands, officials said. However, DNA checks to identify them could take weeks, the French government said. The families of victims were being flown to Marseille on Thursday before being taken up to the zone close to the crash site. Chapels had been prepared for them with a view of the mountain where their loved ones died. (Additional reporting by bureaus in Paris, Berlin, Frankfurt and Madrid; Writing by Mark John; Editing by Peter Graff)
“No matter your safety regulations, no matter how high you set the bar, and we have incredibly high standards, there is no way to rule out such an event,” CEO Carsten Spohr said. The world’s attention will now focus on the motivations of Lubitz, a German national who joined the budget carrier in September 2013 and had just 630 hours of flying time – compared with the 6,000 hours of the flight captain, named in German media only as “Patrick S.” in accordance with usual practice. Robin said there were no grounds to suspect that Lubitz was carrying out a terrorist attack. “Suicide” was also the wrong word to describe actions which killed so many other people, the prosecutor added: “I don’t necessarily call it suicide when you have responsibility for 100 or so lives.”
Lubitz gained sole control of the aircraft after the captain left the cockpit. He refused to re-open the door and sent plane into its fatal descent, Marseille prosecutor Brice Robin said. He did this “for a reason we cannot fathom right now but which looks like intent to destroy this aircraft,” Robin told a news conference in Marseille broadcast live on national TV. Describing the final 10 minutes of the passengers on board as the plane hurtled towards a mountain range, Robin said sound recordings from one of its black boxes suggested most of them would not have been aware of their fate until the very end. “Only towards the end do you hear screams,” he said. “And bear in mind that death would have been instantaneous … the aircraft was literally smashed to bits.” The CEO of Lufthansa, parent company of Germanwings, said its air crew were picked carefully and subjected to psychological vetting.
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