UPDATE: Germanwings crash site difficult to reach, French police say + Pilots fail to send an SOS

With its snow-capped mountains and picturesque deserted hamlets, the Bleone Valley, where a Germanwings jet crashed Tuesday, is a stunningly beautiful but sparsely populated spot.

Tiny villages are scattered along the gorge, which rises from the apple and pear orchards and the gray stone riverbed of the valley floor to heights of more than 2,000 meters (1.2 miles) above sea level.

Many of these villages, which were bustling communities in the 19th century, now lie abandoned or survive with just a handful of inhabitants. One dead-end road, the D107, winds its way through Prads-Haute-Bleone, passing churches and a campsite that offers a peaceful retreat for summer hikers.

"There is no access by road; emergency crews are coming in by air, using helicopters," he said.

Capt. Benoit Zeisser from the Gendarmerie in the nearby town of Digne told CNN the aircraft was lying in "difficult terrain."

French President Francois Hollande warned "it will take some hours for the emergency services to reach the crash site." 

Photographs posted on Twitter hours after the plane disappeared from radar showed helicopters preparing to take off, and emergency vehicles lining up ready to receive the victims' remains.

The bodies of those on board the plane are expected to be taken to the gymnasium at the local high school in Seyne les Alpes, some 10 kilometers (6 miles) from the crash site, which will be used as a temporary morgue.

French police in the region have pleaded with locals and visitors to stay away from the site, urging them "not to clutter the roads," leaving them clear for emergency vehicles.

The final moments of Germanwings Flight 4U 9525 were shrouded in mystery today after air traffic controllers claimed they received no SOS despite the jet nosediving 32,000ft in just eight minutes.

 All 144 passengers and six crew were today presumed dead after the Airbus A320 crashed in a remote region of the French Alps en route from Spain to Germany. 

Two babies and 16 German children from the same school on an exchange trip are believed to be among those killed.

Earlier reports quoted aviation sources in France as saying the pilots issued a Mayday distress signal and requested an emergency descent minutes before it hit the ground.

However, civil aviation authorities later denied that air traffic controllers received any such call. 'It was air traffic control that decided to declare the plane was in distress because there was no contact with the crew of the plane,' a source told AFP. 

Germanwings chief executive Thomas Winkelmann said the aircraft began descending at 10.45am, just a minute after reaching its cruising height of 38,000ft. 

This descent lasted eight minutes, he told reporters in Cologne. Radar and air traffic control contact broke off at 10.53am when it is understood to have crashed.

Families of crash victims arrives Airport

Germanwings said it was thought that 63 of the passengers on board were Germans, while reports from Spain suggest that around 45 Spaniards may have been on the flight. He said the captain on board was experienced and been with the airline and with Germanwings’ parent company Lufthansa for more than 10 years and had clocked up 6,000 flying hours on this particular Airbus model.

Mr Winkelmann said the plane had had a normal service at Dusseldorf yesterday and its last major check-up had been in the summer of 2013. He added that teams from Germanwings were in Dusseldorf with the families of those on board and that Lufthansa and Germanwings’ technical staff were on their way to the crash site to assist with the investigation. 

Debris from the jet, operated by Lufthansa's Germanwings budget airline, has been found scattered over a wide area near Barcelonnette in an inhospitable region of the Alps. About 150 firefighters and high mountain police are being deployed to the scene, although officials warn it could take days to retrieve any bodies. 

Witnesses have described hearing an explosion 'like the sound of dynamite' then seeing fighter jets fly past, suggesting the passenger plane had been under military escort.  

Aviation expert Chris Yates told MailOnline that it was difficult to explain why the pilots would not send an emergency call.

He said: ‘Air crash investigators will need to examine the black boxes, the flight data recorder and the voice recorder to determine exactly what happened. 'It is possible that the pilots sent a distress signal that was not received by Air Traffic Control. A thorough examination of the recorders will help provide a precise sequence of events.’  

Families of crash victims arrives Airport

Grieving families have been gathering at Dusseldorf airport in Germany, where the jet was due to land, to await news of the rescue and recovery operation.

French president Francois Hollande said he did not expect there to be any survivors. 

He said: 'It's a loss, a tragedy which has happened on our soil. 'I am seeking information about homes in the area it came down. It's difficult place to access. In the meantime solidarity must prevail.' 

He said he believes most of the passengers were German, Spanish and Turkish. 

According to flight data from FlightAware 24, the aircraft was cruising at 38,000 feet at 532mph at 9.30am local time (10.30am GMT). 

It started losing altitude to 37,975 by 10.31am with the speed reportedly increasing to 548mph. But 10.41am, the last reported radar returns had the aircraft descending to 6,800 feet at 434mph. The aircraft took around ten minutes to drop 31,200 feet.

The cause of the crash was not immediately known, with weather conditions described as good in the region and the airliner flying at an altitude high above the Alps.

The area is inaccessible for vehicles but helicopters are able to deposit vehicles at the site.  About 150 firefighters and high mountain police are being deployed to the scene, including 40 officers from Grimp – a unit within the Fire Service that specializes in rescue operations in dangerous and inhospitable environments. 

Fifty vehicles, including 4x4s, quads and ambulances, are also being deployed. Dog teams will also investigate at the scene.  It emerged today that a safety warning was issued last year when a sister plane of the one involved in today's disaster suddenly lost altitude.

The European Air Safety Agency (EASA) issued an Emergency Airworthiness Directive after an Airbus A321 went into an uncontrollable dive north of Pamplona, Spain before pulling out. 

According to the safety warning, the Lufthansa jet, with 109 passengers and crew aboard, was at 31,000 feet when it started to descend without any input from the pilot, at a rate of 4,000 feet per minute, before the flight crew managed to regain control at 28,000 feet.

According to the EASA, a safety system designed to protect the jet reacted to incorrect data due to a faulty sensor. The safety warning related to all Airbus A318, A319, A320 and A321 – including the Airbus A320 involved in today's disaster. 

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said he understood between 142 and 150 people were on board the Germanwings A320 and feared dead. 

Alain Vidal, Secretary of State for Transport, Sea and Fisheries, was more final, insisting there were no survivors. But Pierre-Henry Brandet, spokesman for the Interior Ministry, told BFM TV said: 'As long as land resources have not arrived we cannot say for certain. 

'Helicopters and several hundred people are involved in the search and rescue.'   

Spanish vice-president Soraya Saez de Sanataria said 45 people with Spanish surnames were travelling on the Airbus A320.

She later said two babies were among the dead. Spanish PM Mariano Rajoy said in a hastily-arranged press conference he was cancelling his diary and heading back to Madrid to head a crisis cabinet.  

He described the accident as a 'dramatic and sad' piece of news but declined to talk about the victims. He said: 'I profoundly regret this very sad accident. We are going to do all we can.'

He also confirmed he had spoken with German chancellor Angela Merkel and Spanish King Felipe VI. The monarch announced today shortly after arriving in France for a three-day official visit that he was cancelling the trip. 

Sixteen German schoolchildren and their teachers are also feared to be among the dead. 

The youngsters, aged 15 and 16, had just finished an exchange programme at a state school in the Catalan village of Llinars del Valles. Sources at the school said some of the youngsters had left their passports behind and had to return to get them, sparking hopes some had saved their lives by missing the plane.

The group is thought to include 16 schoolchildren and two teachers from a school in Haltern am See, 50 miles from Dusseldorf. They had spent nine days in Llinars del Valles, staying with students and staff at the village's Giola Institute.

Parents and teacher associations are waiting for an official announcement. 

The jet was travelling from the Spanish coastal city of Barcelona to the German city of Dusseldorf when it came down in the Le Massif des Trois Eveches 30km from the town of Barcelonnette.

Surrounded by mountains and with few clear trails to the snow-covered area, gaining access to the crash site is expected to take some time. 

German media reports say there is a wide field of debris visible.  

According to the mayor of Barcelonette, some kind of distress signal was received at 10.47am local time. The plane crashed into a small valley around 2,000m (6,500ft) metres above sea level. 

The body of the plane is understood to have been found intact, according to Europe1. Pierre Polizzi, the owner of a nearby camping site told Al Jazeera: 'The plane crashed just 2km from here, high on a mountain.

'There was loud noise and then suddenly nothing. At first I thought it came from fighter jets that often hold drills in the area.' One eyewitness in the village of Le Vernet, where some wreckage has been sighted, told Le Parisien newspaper: 'This morning I heard a massive thud and soon after saw several jets fly over.

'The initial sound was like an avalanche or like the sound of the dynamite they use to cause an avalanche.

'Then around noon I looked out of the window and saw a column of smoke rising into the air. We're around 3km away, but also in the mountains and snow bound.'

German airline Lufthansa said it has no information yet about the crash of a jet belonging to its Germanwings subsidiary, describing it as a 'dark day.'

'We do not yet know what has happened to flight 4U 9525,' Lufthansa chief executive Carsten Spohr said via Twitter.

'My deepest sympathy goes to the families and friends of our passengers and crew on 4U 9525. If our fears are confirmed, this is a dark day for Lufthansa. We hope to find survivors.'  Shares in Lufthansa and Airbus were down 4.7 percent and 2.1 per cent respectively after news of the accident.

Lufthansa was also hit by a four-day pilots' strike last week, although this did not affect Germanwings. The European Aviation Safety Agency said: 'It is very sad news that the Germanwings flight 4U-9525 from Barcelona to Dusseldorf crashed in the south of France. All our thoughts are with the families of the victims.

'We are closely monitoring the latest information and we are in contact with the French authorities, Airbus and other organisations involved, in order to provide any support possible.' Airbus, who manufactured the jet in November 1990, added: 'We have been informed of an accident involving an A320 Family aircraft and all efforts are now going towards assessing the situation. 

'We will provide further information as soon as available. Our thoughts are with those affected by this tragic event.' The crashed A320 is 24 years old and has been with the parent Lufthansa group since 1991, according to online database airfleets.net. 

Germanwings today is the low-cost subsidiary of German national carrier Lufthansa, and was first branded in 2002. The company's history can be dated back to 1997, however, when it was known as Eurowings.  

The airline's main hubs are at Cologne Bonn Airport, Stuttgart Airport, Hamburg Airport, Berlin Tegel Airport and Dusseldorf Airport with further bases are Hannover Airport and Dortmund Airport. Lufthansa have announced that Cologne-based Germanwings will be going back to its roots and re-branding back to Eurowings in autumn this year.

There are a total of 81 aircraft in Germanwings' fleet, with an average of 9.2 years, flying to 86 destinations around the world. The fleet includes the Airbus A319, Airbus A320 and the Bombardier CRJ900. There had never been a fatal crash in Germanwings' history until the reports of today's tragedy.

Back in December 2010, a Germanwings flight was said to be 'moments from crashing' after the pilots were overcome with fumes on landing at Cologne. 

The plane had 150 passengers on board, and officials accused Germanwings of 'playing down the incident' to 'avoid investigation'. 

The first flight of an Airbus A320 took place in February 1987 in Toulouse, France, watched on by Prince Charles and the late Diana, Princess of Wales, who were guests of then French Prime Minister Jacques Chirac. More than 1,400 people attended the opening at the French company's headquarters.

The first delivery of the aircraft was to Air France on March 26, 1988.

Airbus A320 aircraft have been part of Lufthansa fleet, including its subsidiaries, since 1989.