German Jetliner Crashes In Southern France, All 148 Aboard Feared Dead

Via the New York Times:

A German plane carrying at least 142 passengers and six crew members to Düsseldorf from Barcelona crashed on Tuesday in southern France, the French civil aviation authority confirmed. The wreckage of the aircraft, an Airbus A320 operated by Germanwings, a budget subsidiary of Lufthansa, was located by a French military helicopter near the town of Prads-Haute-Bléone, according to Eric Héraud, a spokesman in Paris for the aviation authority, the Direction Générale de l’Aviation Civile. The pilots declared an emergency at 10:47 a.m. and descended rapidly to around 5,000 feet from a cruising altitude of 38,000 feet, while flying over the town of Barcelonnette in the Alpes de Haute-Provence region, Mr. Héraud said. President François Hollande of France said that many of the victims were German. “The conditions of the accident, which have not yet been clarified, suggest that there might not be any survivors,” he said.

Germanwings is owned by Lufthansa.