A French interior ministry official says a black box has been recovered from the site in the French Alps where a plane crashed while traveling from Barcelona to Duesseldorf today.Â
All 150 people on board are believed to have died.
A spokesman for the French Civil Aviation authority says the plane never sent out a distress signal. He said it was the combination of loss of radio contract with control and the plane's descent which prompted the control service to declare a distress.
The spokesman says six investigators from the Bureau of Accident Investigations were en route from Paris and would be at the crash site by evening. One investigator from the region is already there.
German education officials say a group of 16 tenth-graders and their two teachers were on board the Germanwings plane that crashed in France.
A spokeswoman says officials have confirmed the school group from a high school in the city of Haltern, northeast of Duesseldorf, were on board the plane.
Haltern Mayor Bodo Klimpel told reporters at a press conference "this is, of course, the worst thing you could imagine."
And - a spokeswoman for the U.S. National Security Council says there is no indication the plane crash in the French Alps was the result of terrorism.
Bernadette Meehan said in a statement Tuesday "there is no indication of a nexus to terrorism at this time."
The White House says American officials have been in touch with French, German and Spanish officials to offer assistance.
French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve says investigators are working to pull information from the badly damaged black box voice recorder of a german airliner that crashed in the French Alps.Â
He tells RTL radio the cockpit voice recorder is believed to be "useable."
Helicopters are back in use for a second day of searching while ground crews slowly make their way to the crash site where 150 people were killed when the plane took a so-far unexplained eight-minute dive.
Meanwhile, the mayor of a town close to the site of the plane crash says bereaved families are expected to begin arriving today and that local families are offering to host bereaved because of a shortage of rooms to rent.
Leaders of France, Germany and Spain will also meet with them in a makeshift chapel set up in a gymnasium.
 (AP)
