A passenger plane carrying 144 passengers and six crew members crashed near the French Alps early Tuesday, killing all 150 aboard, reports say. Of those aboard, sixteen were students and two were teachers, all of whom were returning to Germany after an exchange program. Two of the passengers were babies.
"It's a tragedy on our soil," said French President Francois Hollande. "I want to express all my solidarity to the families of the victims of this air accident. This is a bereavement, a tragedy."
The plane was an Airbus, operated by Germanwings, and was en route to Düsseldorf, Germany, from Barcelona, Spain, but suddenly made an eight minute-long descent just before an hour into the flight.
However, there are no reports as of yet that confirm the reason for the crash.
"The visibility was good, and there were little clouds at low altitudes," Frédéric Atger from Météo France told the New York Times. "There were no convected clouds at the time of the crash, and the wind was light. There was no alarming weather. The flying conditions were usual."
A White House statement confirmed that the crash was not connected to any terrorist activity.
Kenneth Honig, the former commanding officer of JFK and LaGuardia airports in New York, told Fox News that the sudden plunge could have been caused by an engine failure, and added that the dialogue between the pilot and co-pilot recorded on the blackbox in the plane would help to narrow down the cause of the crash.
"All efforts are now going towards assessing the situation," Airbus said in a statement. "We will provide further information as soon as possible. Our thoughts are with those affected by this tragic event."
Meanwhile, there are 400 police officers and rescue personnel that are searching the area, according to the French Interior Ministry. However, the Ministry predicts that the search effort will be difficult because of the hostile conditions on the slopes where the crash occurred.
