Families to visit Alps crash site

Relatives and friends of the 150 passengers and crew on Germanwings Flight 4U 9525 are due to go to the crash site high in the French Alps.

Lufthansa will operate two special flights - one from Barcelona and one from Duesseldorf - to Marseille, and both groups will travel on by road. 

Reports say one of the two pilots on the doomed flight had left the cockpit and had been unable to get back in just before the crash on Tuesday.

There were no survivors, officials say. They say the Airbus 320 from Barcelona to Duesseldorf hit a mountain after a rapid eight-minute descent.

Germanwings chief Thomas Winkelmann said 72 passengers were German citizens, including 16 pupils returning from an exchange trip. Spain's government said 51 of the dead were Spanish.

Other victims were from Australia, Argentina, Britain, Iran, Venezuela, the US, the Netherlands, Colombia, Mexico, Japan, Denmark and Israel.

Germanwings is a low-cost airline owned by Germany's main carrier Lufthansa. 

...BBCNews