Germanwings plane with 148 on board crashes in southern French Alps, no survivors expected

Paris: A German airliner crashed near a ski resort in the French Alps on Tuesday with all 148 people on board feared dead, officials said.

French President Francois Hollande said it was likely all passengers and crew on the Airbus A320 had perished in the crash. "There are not thought to be any survivors," the president told reporters after the disaster.

The plane was travelling from the Spanish coastal city of Barcelona to the German city of Duesseldorf when it went down in the Barcelonnette area, in southeeastern France.

The plane issued a distress call at 0947 GMT, sources said. The airliner was carrying 142 passengers and six crew members.

Interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve, who said debris from the plane had already been found, was heading to the scene. Germanwings and Lufthansa were not immediately available for a comment. Airbus had no immediate comment. The crashed A320 was 24 years old and had been with the parent Lufthansa group since 1991, according to online database airfleets.net.

"Flight #4U9525 was descending with a rate of about 3000-4000 feet per minute, which is quite standard for an airport approach... Flight #4U9525 initially climbed to 38,000 feet before before it started to descend and lost signal at 6,800 feet," Flight Radar 24 tweeted.

"Germanwings A320 D-AIPX is one of the oldest A320 with serial number 0147 and was delivered in Nov 1990."