Families of victims mark 10 years since Germanwings plane crashed in French Alps
Investigators said the plane was deliberately downed in 2015 by the co-pilot, Andreas Lubitz.
Victims’ relatives travelled to the scene in the French Alps of the crash of Germanwings Flight 9525 10 years ago, while hundreds of people gathered in silence to mark the anniversary in a German town that was home to an 18-member school group on board the doomed plane.
The plane took off from Barcelona, Spain on the morning of March 24 2015, and was supposed to land in Dusseldorf, Germany.
But it never arrived because, investigators said, the plane was deliberately downed by the co-pilot, Andreas Lubitz.
The victims included a group of 16 students and two teachers from a high school in the western German town of Haltern am See who were flying home from an exchange trip to Spain.
Also killed were two babies, a pair of acclaimed German opera singers and a member of an Argentine rock band, three generations of the same family, a vacationing mother and son, a recently married couple, people on business trips and others going home.
Most came from Germany and Spain, although the victims came from 17 different countries in total.
Many victims’ families travelled to the crash site in south-eastern France on Monday.
In the nearby village of Le Vernet, local officials and Carsten Spohr, the chief executive of Germanwings parent Lufthansa, laid flowers.
The school’s principal, Christian Krahl, said it remains important to remember the tragedy even though today’s students did not experience it, German news agency dpa reported.
“We want to be close to those who are infinitely sad to this day,” he said.
Wreaths were laid at the town cemetery, where there is a memorial in the form of a schoolroom and some of the students are buried.
Commemorations were also planned at the airports in Duesseldorf and Barcelona.
At Dusseldorf Airport, a book of condolences was available in the so-called Room of Silence for employees and travellers.
Lubitz had in the past suffered from depression, but authorities and his airline later deemed him fit to fly.
In the months ahead of the crash, Lubitz suffered from sleeplessness and feared losing his vision, but he hid that from his employer.
“This state of shock, the deeply felt sympathy of all the residents for the families and the question of why this happened are still with us today,” Haltern Mayor Andreas Stegemann told dpa.
“The Germanwings crash is a permanent part of our town’s history,” he said.
The site of the crash in France is now marked by a five-meter (16-foot) “Solar Orb” meant to represent the sun and the five continents.
The memorial, made up of 149 gilded aluminium plates — marking all those on board except the co-pilot — was erected in 2017.
