Some of the 16 high school students killed in Germanwings crash

As search and rescue teams continue to scour the treacherous terrain of the French alps in search of any survivors, communities around the world are trying to cope with the tragic loss of life sustained in the crash of a Germanwings aircraft yesterday morning that took the life of 150 people.

The Daily Mail is reporting that investigators are no closer to determining the cause of the crash which occurred after a mysterious eight-minute descent from cruising altitude.  During this time, the pilots of the Airbus A320 made no contact with the ground, contrary to what was originally reported. It is believed to have crashed into the mountainous terrain at about 500 mph, which nearly disintegrated the plane and scattered small bits of debris over a large area.

Experts are considering several scenarios to explain this, such as a cracked windshield which might have caused rapid decompression in the cockpit and rendered the pilots unconscious. It’s also possible that the pilots were simply too busy dealing with the emergency to make contact. Another scenario is that the crash was planned, although this is considered to be unlikely at this time.

Even though the plane’s cockpit voice recorder has been retrieved, the New York Times is reporting that the second black box was found to be severely damaged with its memory card dislodged and missing. It is also reporting that one of the pilots left the cockpit during the flight and was unable to return. He can be heard banging on the door, trying to get back in. Prior to this occurrence, conversation between the two was normal.

Meanwhile, the human toll of the tragedy is becoming clearer as we learn more about the passengers who were on board the doomed flight which carried three Britons, two Americans, 52 Spanish and 72 German nationals.

The two Americans presumed to have died in the crash include Yvonne Selke of Nokesville, Virginia, a government contractor and longtime employee of Booze Allen Hamilton in Washington, DC and her adult daughter whose name has not been released.

Sixteen high school students from Joseph-Koenig-Gymnasium school in West Germany who were on an exchange trip to Barcelona also perished in the flight. They were accompanied by two teachers, Sonja Cercek and Stefanie T by Bild, who are also believed to have died.

The school’s headmaster, Ulrich Wessel, held a press conference yesterday saying that he was “shellshocked and lost for words” by the deaths of his students.

“When we first got the call we were hopeful thinking maybe they had missed the flight. But the minister told us that our students and teachers were on the passenger list,” Wessel said. “'Our sympathy most of all goes out to the parents who have lost their children, the grandparents who have lost their grandchildren. All the relatives. At the school at the moment is the husband of one of the young colleagues who died. They have been married for less than half a year. I'm speechless faced with this tragedy.”

The distraught parents of the deceased children assembled in a VIP room at Dusseldorf Airport where they were offered counseling with some requiring sedation.

One worker said: “They collapsed, and the screams of women echoed through the VIP room where they were taken. It was heartbreaking to see them punching in the numbers of their childrens' mobile telephones to try to reach them. And dropping them into their laps when there was no reply.”

Family members are expected to be flown to the Alps to claim the remains of their loved ones.

Also aboard the flight was Maria Radner, 34, an opera singer at the Deutsche Oper am Rhine in Dusseldorf, who was traveling with her husband and baby.

Three generations of a family from Sant Cugat del Valles in Catalonia – a grandmother, her daughter, and granddaughter, were also aboard the flight and were heading to Dusseldorf for a visit.

The IB Times is reporting that Carol Friday, 68 and her 28 year-old son Greig of Australia had been on vacation at the time of the crash. Her family described themselves as being “crippled with sadness” after the loss.

A young mother named Marina Bandrés López-Belio was also onboard the plane, travelling with her seven-month-old son Julian Pracz-Bandres. They were on their way home after attending her uncle’s funeral in Zaragoza. Her husband was not with her on the flight.

The manifest also includes a 23 year-old man and his new wife from La Llagosta who were married on Saturday, just two days before the crash.

Among the long list of the dead, one man, Manuel Blasco, managed to cheat fate when his wife convinced him to stick to his original flight and not take the doomed Airbus flight.

“I woke up with a cold and a bit of a temperature. I was going to change the flight and fly today with the plane that crashed,” he told Spain’s El Mundo newspaper.

His wife convinced him that because he was already awake, he might as well go to the airport and take his original flight, then rest when he reached his destination of Cologne.

“'I still asked at the Lufthansa desk when I got to Barcelona airport if I could change the flight but they said the plane that ended up crashing was very full and I'd have to pay a lot of money to reserve a seat. As I saw it was going to cost quite a lot, I ended up sticking to my original plan . . .”

It was a decision that saved his life.

As the full extent of the human tragedy unfolds, we continue to keep the victims and their families in our prayers, as well as the safety of the rescue teams as they search for clues as to what might have caused the fatal crash.

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