PARIS (Sputnik) – At least 150 people on board a Germanwings Airbus A320 that crashed in southern France on a flight from Barcelona to Dusseldorf were from Germany, Spain, and Turkey, French President Francois Hollande said Tuesday.
“The victims of the aircraft were passengers from Germany, Spain, and Turkey. There shouldn’t have been any French citizens on board, but we are so far not completely sure,” Holande said after a meeting with Spanish King Felipe VI in Paris.
On Tuesday, the Germanwings flight en route from Barcelona to Dusseldorf crashed in a remote mountain region in southern France. According to the airline, 150 people were on board.
Fifteen German teenagers were among the 150 passengers of the Airbus that had crashed in the Alps, the Local Spain reported Tuesday. The teenagers were returning from a school exchange trip in Catalonia, the website said, citing a source at the Giola Institute in Barcelona.
The Spanish crisis cabinet said that some 45 Spaniards had been on board the jet. However, neither Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy nor Catalonian President Artur Mas could confirm the information. The majority of passengers reportedly were German.
The search and rescue operation continues.
Germanwings is a low-cost affiliate of German airline Lufthansa, which was created in 1997. Tuesday's Airbus A320 crash has been the first accident in the history of Germanwings.
The Airbus 320 that crashed Tuesday was reportedly 24 years old. As of January 2015, aircraft average age of the fleet at Germanwings was 9.2 years, according to the company's website.
