Live: Germanwings Airbus crash updates

A Germanwings Airbus A320 en route to Dusseldorf from Barcelona has crashed in the French Alps near Digne on Tuesday morning.

0803: Authorities have indicated that they expect a long process in order to identify the victims. Spain has offered its help to the French authorities in order to speed up the process and have already collected DNA from the families of the victims that were present at the Pratt airport in Barcelona where the flight departed.

0745: Rescue operations have resumed on Wednesday morning with the effort focused on identifying the victims involved in the crash. Read more: Germanwings Airbus A320 recovery operation to resume.

0730: Good morning and welcome to our rolling coverage of the Germanwings crash in the French Alps. We'll keep you up-to-date with the latest developments.

---Wednesday, 25 March---

1647: French Interior Minister says the black box from the crashed Germanwings plane in the French Alps has been found, Reuters reports.

1630: Bodo Klimpe, the mayor of Haltern in Germany said 16 Year 10 students from the Joseph-Koenig School were returning home after spending just under a week in Spain. He said that parents arrived at school "expecting the worst" when after not being able to make telephone contact. "We are getting support from all sorts of authorities and we have a number of people well trained in counselling," he added. The sympathy is overwhelming."

1626: French police has tweeted a picture showing the area in which research is currently being carried out. The map also shows the no-fly zone that has been implemented over the site in a bid to aid the operation.

1620: Airbus' president Tom Enders is about to fly over the crash site in a helicopter from Marseilles, according to reports by BBC's Chris Bockman.

1616: Passengers from four different countrieswere on board flight 4U9525. According to initial reports, almost 50% of them were Germans, 42 Spanish, two Turkish and one Belgian.

1613: Belgium's authorities have confirmed that a Belgian citizen was on board the Germanwings flight.

1607: Flight 4U9525 is the second Airbus A320 to crash in less than four months, after Air Asia flight 8501 crashed in the Java Sea in December 2014 on its way to Singapore from the Indonesian city of Surabaya.

LIVE televised feed, from France24:

1601: Pictures posted by local newspaper La Provence, indicate debris are scattered over a very vast area.

1554: The schoolchildren thought to have been on board are from Haltern am See in northern Germany, "All the signs point to them being on board the plane" when it crashed, said a spokesman for the local authorities.

1552: "There were 16 children and two teachers who had spent a week here, poor things. The children were aged about 15," Marti Pujol, mayor of the village of Llinars de Valles near Barcelona, was quoted as saying by AFP. Along with the teachers, the kids left for Barcelona airport on Tuesday morning, he said, though he could not confirm that they had boarded the flight.

1546: Debris from flight 4U9525 appear to be scattered on a vast area

1535: The White House says US officials have offered their assistance to French, German and Spanish officials. In a statement, US National Security Council spokeswoman Bernadette Meehan said for the time being there was no indication the crash was the result of terrorism.

1527: Here's what we know and what we do not know about the crash of flight 4U9525.

1522: Germanwings flight 4U9525 is Lufthansa's first fatal crash since 1993, when two people were killed as flight 2904 crash-landed in Warsaw.

1509: Euronews news agency reported that only one of the helicopters has landed on the exact spot of the accident, while other helicopters are having trouble reaching the area due to weather conditions

1508: According to Reuters, French police at the crash site said it would take days to recover the bodies of those on board due to difficult terrain.

1459: "The plane is disintegrated," council official Gilbert Sauvan was quoted as saying by Les Echos newspaper. "The largest debris is the size of a car".

1456: The first pictures of the crash site are beginning to emerge.

1441: AP reports that French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said a helicopter has landed next to the wreckage but found no survivors.

1440: Sixteen schoolchildren and two teachers are believed to have been on the aircraft, a spokeswoman for the German town of Haltern am See has said. "We don't have any official confirmation yet," she said, but German local media that the children are from the Joseph Koenig school, adding the building has been closed and students sent home.

1434: "We heard a plane passing at a very low altitude but we didn't see it and it was strange as there's not a route that flies at that altitude there," Michel Suhubiette, a mountain guide based in Digne, was quoted as saying by French newspaper La Provence.

1430: French police and rescue teams are on the site of the crash and have confirmed that there are no survivors.

1423: Winkelmann added that the plane descended for eight minutes before crashing and that 67 Germans are believed to have been on board.

1418: Speaking at a press conference,Thomas Winkelmann, chief executive of Germanwings, said:

- Contact between the plane and French air traffic controllers broke off at 10:53 (9:53 GMT) at an altitude of approx 6,000ft, before the plane crashed.

- Lufthansa ground staff conducted the last routine check and inspection of the aircraft took place on 23 March in Dusseldorf.

- The last regular inspection on the plane was carried out in summer 2013.

- The captain had over 10 years of experience with Lufthansa and Germanwings, and more than 6,000 hours of flying Airbus models.

- A list of passengers will not be released immediately, to protect the relatives of the victims.

1409: According to German's Bild newspaper, a group of schoolchildren may have been on board the flight. The students were making their way back from a foreign exchange trip.

1352: A Germanwings official has confirmed that the aircraft's crew did not send a distress call before it crashed. This has led to theories that the plane suffered a technical fault or a mid-air collision which perhaps resulted in a loss of cabin pressure.

1350: Lufthansa has provided a toll-free number, 0800 11 33 55 77 or 900 808 890 from Spain, for all the families of the passengers involved to call for assistance.

1341: Aviation reporters say flight 4U9525 plunged at an unusually fast rate of 5,000 feet per minute before crashing.

1330: French interior ministry spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet has said he expected the search and recovery operation to be "extremely long and extremely difficult'' due to the remoteness of the crash site. Crash recovery teams were using helicopters to access the high-altitude site.

1312: “There are no victims from France, although that is not totally sure”, said Hollande.

1306: German Chancellor Angela Merkel is to make a statement about the incident at 13:30 GMT.

1249: French president Francois Hollande said the victims of the crash were most likely from Spain, Germany and Turkey.

1246: Reports in Spain suggest that while 45 passengers had a Spanish surname, the number of Spanish nationals on the plane was 42.

1243: A hotel worker in Digne, the closest town to the suspected crash site, was quoted as saying by BBC Radio 5 live the plane was flying "very low".

1234: Spanish PM Mariano Rajoy has said in a news conference that he has already spoken with the German Chancellor Angela Merkel, as well as with the Spanish King who was in France, Catalonia's regional leader Artur Mas and his main opposition leader socialist Pedro Sánchez.

1227: Reports from Spain indicate 45 of the passengers on board were Spanish and Barcelona airport has set up a room in Terminal 2 for family members, according to officials in Catalonia.

1212: German air safety experts are on the way to the crash site, according to Reuters.

1210: According to French satellite channel BFMTV, Germanwings is due to hold a news conference at 14:00 GMT at Cologne-Bonn airport

1200: Rescuers are now understood to be taking bodies of victims to an emergency morgue set up in a village not far from the site of the crash, according to the Daily Mirror's chief reporter Andy Lines. He added that the crash looked to have happened in the proximity of a ski slope.

1146: French Interior Ministry spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet says debris from the crash of an Airbus A320 have been located and the plane crashed at 2,000 meters altitude in the Alps, near the town of Barcelonnette, about 100 km north of Nice. He told BFM television that he expected "an extremely long and extremely difficult" search and rescue operation because of the area's remoteness.

1140: Lufthansa chief executive Carsten Spohr said on Twitter that the cause of the crash was still unknown. "We do not yet know what has happened to flight 4U9525," he said. "My deepest sympathy goes to the families and friends of our passengers and crew on 4U9525. If our fears are confirmed, this is a dark day for Lufthansa. We hope to find survivors.“

1134: Lufthansa shares were down 4.67% to €13.12, while Airbus shares were down 2.2% to €58.52.

1129: The plane made a distress call at 09:47 GMT then disappeared off the radar at around 10:20 GMT and French president Francois Hollande has confirmed the authorities expect to find "no survivors".

He added the crash happened in “an area that was very difficult to access” and did not know whether any homes had been affected on the ground.

“Solidarity is our first sentiment at this moment,” he said.

1125: The German air traffic control has confirmed the plane has crashed, while the French transport minister said a distress call was received by air traffic control at 09:47 UCT (09:47 GMT). According to reports, search and rescue teams are heading to the crash site at Méolans-Revel in the French Alps.

Meanwhile, the altitude and speed graphs of flight 4U9525 suggest the plane entered a steep but constant descent before crashing.

1059: According to reports from AFP, flight 4U9525 lost contact when flying at an altitude of 6800 feet altitude. The flight, operated by Lufthansa-owned Germanwings was carrying 148 passengers, including six crew members. The plane was 24 years old and had been with the Lufthansa since 1991, according to online database airfleets.net