Crashed Airbus A320 'is disintegrated', says local official

Gilbert Sauvan, an official with the local council, told Les Echos newspaper: "The plane is disintegrated. The largest debris is the size of a car."

The plane which came down in the French Alps went into an eight-minute descent before crashing, it has emerged.

Looking at the #4U9525 crash scene in the French Alps brings home the reality of this aviation tragedy. #Germanwings pic.twitter.com/3cZbUWgBau

— Tom in Paris (@Tburgeswatson) March 24, 2015

All 150 people on board, including two babies, are thought to have been killed when the Germanwings Airbus A320 crashed near Digne on a flight from Barcelona to Dusseldorf today.

Germanwings chief executive Thomas Winkelmann said the aircraft began descending again shortly after it reached its cruising height, having taken off from Barcelona at about 10am local time.

This descent lasted eight minutes, he told reporters in Cologne. Radar and air traffic control contact broke off at 10.53am.

Germanwings said it was thought that 63 of the passengers on board were Germans, while reports from Spain suggest that around 45 Spaniards may have been on the flight.

Mr Winkelmann said there was still some confusion as to whether a distress signal had been sent from the plane, which came down in a remote area near a popular ski resort.

4.45pm UPDATE: A spokesman for the French Civil Aviation authority said the plane did not send out a distress signal. Eric Heraud said the plane lost radio contact at 10.30am on Tuesday, but “never declared a distress alert itself”. He said it was the combination of loss of radio contract with control and the plane’s descent which prompted the control service to declare a distress.

He said the captain on board was experienced and been with the airline and with Germanwings' parent company Lufthansa for more than 10 years and had clocked up 6,000 flying hours on this particular Airbus model.

Mr Winkelmann said the plane had had a normal service at Dusseldorf yesterday and its last major check-up had been in the summer of 2013.

He added that teams from Germanwings were in Dusseldorf with the families of those on board and that Lufthansa and Germanwings' technical staff were on their way to the crash site to assist with the investigation.

A spokeswoman for the US National Security Council said there is no indication the incident was the result of terrorism.

Bernadette Meehan said: “There is no indication of a nexus to terrorism at this time.”

The White House said American officials have been in touch with French, German and Spanish officials to offer assistance.

Schoolchildren and teachers are among the crash victims, reports say.

The German newspaper Bild reported that 16 pupils and two teachers were on the Germanwings airliner.

They had been taking part in a school exchange programme, a spokesman for the German town of Haltern told the newspaper.