Germanwings said its Airbus A320 aircraft that crashed in the French Alps on Tuesday started descending one minute after reaching its cruising height and continued losing altitude for eight minutes.
"The aircraft's contact with French radar, French air traffic controllers ended at 10.53 am at an altitude of about 6,000 feet. The plane then crashed," Lufthansa unit Germanwings managing director Thomas Winkelmann told a news conference in Cologne.
The company said it was unclear what caused the crash but that there had been no problems with the aircraft before takeoff. “There were no anomalies on the plane,” Mr Winkelmann said.
Airbus delivered the plane to Lufthansa in 1991, after which it flew exclusively for the German flagship carrier until it was transferred to the Germanwings fleet last year.
The crashed aircraft is older than the 11.5-year average age of Lufthansa’s 615-strong fleet.
“That is acceptable because maintenance standards inside the Lufthansa group are known as very high worldwide. As long as you have your maintenance schedule in place and follow all the procedures together with the manufacturer, there is absolutely no issue with the age of an airplane,” Mr Winkelmann said.
Routine maintenance was last performed on the crashed A320 by Lufthansa Technik on Monday, and the last regular major round of maintenance was in summer 2013, he said.
The pilot had been flying with Lufthansa and Germanwings for more than 10 years, he added.
“We need to use all of the Lufthansa group’s resources, maintenance, flight operations, cockpit crews and all other experts, to jointly with authorities and with Airbus find out as quickly as possible what happened,” Mr Winkelmann said.
Reuters