Germanwings Plane ‘Pulverized’ in Alps

Germanwings Flight 9525 crashed Tuesday morning in the French Alps, killing all 150 people aboard, according to the airline. “There is no need for any rescue operations, everyone is dead,” one official on the ground said. “Everything is pulverized,” another said. The black boxes were already before search operations were suspended until dawn. Germanwings’ CEO said at a press conference that the flight descended for eight minutes from an altitude of approximately 38,000 feet until it crashed. It is unclear if pilots sent a distress call, but the French civil aviation authority said it could not reach the pilots as it followed the plane’s descent on radar. The Airbus A320 underwent routine inspection yesterday and recieved its last major inspection in summer 2013.