Search for bodies, clues in French Alps crash

SEYNE, France, Wednesday
Investigators combed through the pulverised wreckage of a German airliner today and examined its badly damaged black box for clues as to what caused the mysterious crash that killed all 150 aboard.

Hundreds of firefighters and police near the hamlet of Le Vernet in the French Alps launched a massive operation at the rugged crash site, accessible only by helicopter or an arduous hike on foot.

Meanwhile in Paris, experts began analysing one of the plane’s black boxes hoping to discover why the Germanwings Airbus A320 went down in good weather — an “inexplicable” disaster according to Lufthansa, the budget airline’s parent company.

Photos issued by the BEA air crash investigation office showed a mangled orange “black box”, its metal casing twisted badly out of shape by the violence of the impact.

French President Francois Hollande and his counterparts from Germany and Spain were due to visit the crash site at 2:00pm to pay their respects to the mainly German and Spanish victims of the air disaster, the worst in France for decades.

And relatives of the dead were to arrive Wednesday at a village near the crash site, where a counselling centre had been established.

Officials in Spain said at least 49 Spaniards had been killed in the accident and Germanwings said at least 72 Germans were dead. Transport Minister Alain Vidalies said that if voices have been recorded, the investigation would proceed “fairly quickly.”

BADLY DAMAGED BLACK BOX

“After that, if we have to analyse the sounds, that’s a job that will take several weeks, but it’s a job that can offer us some explanations,” Vidalies told French radio. Local prosecutor Brice Robin said initial elements could be available from the “very badly damaged” black box later Wednesday but warned “it could take several days to have all the results.”

A second black box, recording technical flight data, has yet to be found. Officials are scrambling to explain why the plane suddenly entered a fatal eight-minute descent shortly after reaching cruising altitude on its route between Barcelona and Duesseldorf.

No distress signal was sent and the crew failed to respond to desperate attempts at contact from ground control.

“It is inexplicable,” Lufthansa chief Carsten Spohr said in Frankfurt. “The plane was in perfect condition and the two pilots were experienced.”
French police set up road blocks near the crash site, ordering all non-official vehicles to turn around, an AFP reporter on the scene said. Just beyond lay a steep and broken landscape littered with the shattered pieces of what was flight 4U9525.

“It’s a zone that is very difficult to access, very slippery. There was rain and snow overnight. So we need to secure the zone before the investigators begin their work,” a spokesman for the French interior ministry, Pierre-Henry Brandet, told reporters. “We need to move forward methodically.” The plane was “totally destroyed”, a local member of parliament who flew over the site said, describing the scene as “horrendous”. (AFP)