French, German and Spanish officials on Monday laid wreaths at the site of a 2015
The familes and friends of victims observed a minute of silence at 10:41 a.m. (0941 GMT), exactly 10 years after from Barcelona, Spain, to Dusseldorf, Germany, crashed in Le Vernet, France, killing all 144 passengers and six crew members onboard.
In total, people from 20 different countries were killed in the incident, though most were from Germany (72) and Spain (50).
Germanwings was a low-cost subsidiary of , whose CEO Carsten Spohr was on hand in Le Vernet on Monday. Spohr said the tragedy of the incident .
Shock of Germanwings crash compounded by horror of deliberate cause
The by the horror of the fact that investigators surmised that the , had after the pilot left to cockpit to go to the bathroom.
When the pilot returned, he found that the co-pilot had locked him out of the cockpit and had initiated an automated descent of the Airbus A320.
Banging can be heard on cockpit voice recordings as the pilot desperately attempts to break into the cockpit. The co-pilot never answers requests from air-traffic controllers, with only his breathing being heard.
Pain and questions 10 years on
Ceremonies were also held in Barcelona and Dusseldorf, as well as in the western , home to 16 exchange students and two teachers who were killed on their flight home from Spain.
Haltern Mayor Andreas Stegemann told DPA news agency, “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. The Germanwings crash is a permanent part of our town’s history.”
Bertrand Bartolini, who was mayor of Le Vernet at the time of the crash, said that when he arrived at the site to access the situation he saw “a place of absolute horror,” adding, “I saw things there that I will never be able to talk about.”
Edited by: Jenipher Camino Gonzalez
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