Germanwings crash: Air traffic controllers 'tried three times to radio pilots with no ... - Telegraph.co.uk

10:30:00 Germanwings flight 4U9525, call sign "Germanwings One Eight Golf", confirmed instructions from French air traffic control

10:31:02 Flight 4U9525 leaves its assigned cruising altitude without approval and begins to descend. Radar observes an average descent rate of approximately 17.8 metres per second (3,500 feet per minute). Attempts by French air traffic control to contact the flight on the assigned radio frequency radio link are not answered

10:35:08 Attempts to contact the flight on the international distress frequency are also unsuccessful

10:36:00 French air traffic control declares an international normalized emergency according to international norms. French search and rescue services are informed. Flight 4U9525 passes through an altitude of around 7600m (25,000 feet).

10:36:47 French air traffic control tries one last time to contact Flight 4U9525 German Wings on the international distress frequency. There is no response

10:40:00 Flight 4U9525 disappears from radar. The last known altitude was about 1890m (6,200 feet)

10:42:00 French air traffic control informs the search and rescue national control centre of the loss of radar contact.

10:49:00 Two military search and rescue helicopters head towards the location of Flight 4U9525's final radar contact. There is no report of the aircraft's Emergency Locator Transmitter (ELT) being detected

11:10:00 The wreckage of Flight 4U9525 is identified by search and rescue helicopters

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_{The plane appears to have disintegrated on impact}

One of the plane's black boxes has been found, but it was unclear whether it was the flight data recorder or the cockpit voice recorder. Investigators will continue searching for the second black box.

Weather did not appear to be a factor in the crash, with conditions calm at the time, French weather officials said.

Lufthansa, the parent company of Germanwings, said it was working on the assumption the crash was an "accident".

"Anything else would be speculation," Lufthansa vice president Heike Birlenbach told reporters in Barcelona.

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The arduous search for the 150 victims of the worst aviation disaster on French soil in decades resumed at dawn on Wednesday.

The accident's cause remains a mystery but authorities have recovered a black box from the Airbus A320 at the crash site, where debris was believed to be scattered over four acres of remote and inaccessible mountainous terrain, hampering rescue efforts.

More than 300 policemen and 380 firefighters have been mobilised. Lieutenant Colonel Jean-Marc Menichini said a squad of 30 mountain rescue police would resume attempts to reach the crash site by helicopter at dawn Wednesday, while a further 65 police were seeking access on foot. Five investigators had spent the night at the site.

It would take "at least a week" to search the remote site, he said, and "at least several days" to repatriate the bodies.

Video images from a government helicopter on Tuesday showed a desolate snow-flecked moonscape, with steep ravines covered in scree. Debris was strewn across the mountainside, pieces of twisted metal smashed into tiny bits.

The plane was "totally destroyed", a local MP who flew over the site said, describing the scene as "horrendous".

"The biggest body parts we identified are not bigger than a briefcase," one investigator said.

A crisis cell has been set up in the area between Barcelonnette and Digne-les-Bains along with an emergency flight control centre to coordinate chopper flights to the crash site.

French President Francois Hollande, his German counterpart Angela Merkel and Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy were expected to reach the scene around 2:00 pm local time.

The 144 passengers were mainly German and Spanish.

The high school in the small German town of Haltern attended by the 16 students on the plane was set to hold an event Wednesday to honour the victims.

"This is certainly the darkest day in the history of our city," said a tearful Bodo Klimpel, the town's mayor. "It is the worst thing you can imagine."

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