HALTERN AM SEE, Germany Students and teachers at a small-town German high school broke down in tears once they realized that 16 classmates and two teachers were on board an ill-fated Germanwings airplane that crashed in France on Tuesday on a flight to Duesseldorf. The Airbus A320 operated by Germanwings, a budget subsidiary of Lufthansa, was less than an hour from landing in Duesseldorf on a flight from Barcelona when it unexpectedly went into a rapid descent. While investigators searched through debris from Flight 9525 on steep and desolate slopes, families across Europe reeled with shock and grief. "This is pretty much the worst thing you can imagine," said Bodo Klimpel, mayor of the German town of Haltern, rent with sorrow after losing 16 tenth graders and their two teachers. Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr called it the "blackest day of our company's 60-year history." Germanwings confirmed its flight from Barcelona to Duesseldorf went down with 144 passengers and six crew.
– As authorities try to figure out why a Germanwings plane went down in the French Alps—there was no distress call before the pilot's eight-minute descent, reports the AP—details are emerging about some of the 150 people aboard who are now presumed dead. That includes 16 kids, all about age 15, who were returning to Germany from a weeklong exchange program in Spain, reports Reuters. They and their two teachers were from the small community of Haltern am See in western Germany, where, as the New York Times notes, many people either knew the victims or were related to them. “This is the darkest day in the history of our city," says Mayor Bodo Klimpel, who was fighting back tears at a news conference. "A feeling of shock can be felt everywhere. It is about the worst thing imaginable." The mayor of Llinars del Valles, where the teens stayed in Spain, says his "whole village is distraught" as well. "The families knew each other," he says. "The parents had been to see them off at 6 this morning." Also on board were two opera singers, Maria Radner and Oleg Bryjak, who were returning from a performance together. Radner was with her husband and baby, and another baby was reportedly killed in the crash.