A governmental contractor and her daughter from Virginia are the two of the three Americans presumed dead in a Germanwings crash that killed all 150 onboard.
The contractor, identified as Yvonne Selke of Nokesville, Virginia, was a longtime and highly regarded employee of Booz Allen Hamilton Inc. in Washington. Selke reportedly worked with the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.
The U.S. State Department is in contact with the third victim's next of kin, but is not releasing the name.
Meanwhile, Spain's government has raised the number of Spanish victims to at least 51.
The three British victims included a mother and her 7-month-old son, according to Britain's Foreign Office. The victim's husband said his wife and son had traveled to Spain for a family funeral.
France gets audio from jet's black box, hunts for 2nd one
French investigators cracked open a mangled black box and extracted audio from its cockpit voice recorder Wednesday, but gleaned no explanation for why a German plane dropped unexpectedly and smashed into a rugged Alpine mountain, killing all 150 on board.
The orange cockpit voice recorder - dented, twisted and scarred by the impact - is considered key to knowing why the pilots of Germanwings Flight 9525 lost radio contact with air traffic controllers over the French Alps and then crashed Tuesday during a routine flight from Barcelona to Duesseldorf.
French officials said terrorism appeared unlikely, and Germany's top security official said Wednesday there was no evidence of foul play.
Remi Jouty, director of the French aviation investigative agency, said an audio file was recovered by Wednesday afternoon, including sounds and voices. But he said it was too early to draw any conclusions from the recorder, which takes audio feeds from four microphones in the cockpit and records all the conversations between the pilots, air traffic controllers as well as any noises.
Jouty said the plane was flying "until the end" and was at 6,000 feet (1,820 meters) just before it smashed into the mountainside, well below its previous cruising altitude of 38,000 feet. He said the final communication from the plane was a routine message about permission to continue on its route.
He would not speculate on possible causes of the crash or rule anything out.
Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr, himself a pilot, said Wednesday that "we still cannot understand what happened yesterday." He said his airline "never in its history has lost an aircraft in cruise flight."
French President Francois Hollande, meanwhile, said the case for the plane's second black box had been found but not its contents. Jouty refused to confirm that about the flight data recorder, which captures 25 hours' worth of information on the position and condition of almost every major part in a plane.
"At this moment people are on the scene still searching," Hollande said, speaking alongside German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy in Seynes-les-Alpes, the town nearest to the crash site. Most of the plane's victims were German and Spanish.
"This is a true tragedy, and the visit here has shown us that," Merkel said.
Hollande promised that French investigators would do everything to determine the crash's cause.
Helicopters surveying the plane's scattered debris lifted off at daybreak for a look at the craggy ravine while emergency crews hiked through snow and rain over the steep, rocky terrain to the high-altitude crash site. In all, more than 600 rescue workers and aviation investigators were in the area, French officials said.
The crash left pieces of wreckage "so small and shiny they appear like patches of snow on the mountainside," Pierre-Henry Brandet, the Interior Ministry spokesman, said after flying over the debris field.
Investigators were zooming in on two key minutes Tuesday - 10:30-10:31 a.m. - said Segolene Royal, a top government minister whose portfolio includes transport. From then on, air traffic controllers were unable to make contact with the plane.
German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere told reporters in Berlin "there is no hard evidence that the crash was intentionally brought about by third parties."
The plane, operated by Germanwings, a budget subsidiary of Lufthansa, was less than an hour from landing in Duesseldorf when it unexpectedly went into a rapid, eight-minute descent. The pilots sent out no distress call, France's aviation authority said.
The four possible causes of any crash are human error, mechanical problems, weather, criminal activity or a combination of two or more. Investigators will use the cockpit voice and flight data recorders to map out and focus their work, said Alan E. Diehl, a former air safety investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board.
"Both will point you in directions of what is critical," Diehl says. "Based on what you learn from the recorders, you might focus on key pieces of wreckage."
Diehl says investigators will essentially work backward.
"You're usually dealing with a jigsaw puzzle with many of the pieces missing," he says. "You start eliminating things that didn't happen."
Lufthansa said two charter flights to France will be made available for family members who want to get as close as they can to the crash site. Locals in Seyne-les-Alpes offered to host the bereaved families due to a shortage of rooms to rent.
Germanwings itself cancelled several flights Wednesday because some crews declared themselves unfit to fly after losing colleagues.
"The management completely understands this, because we are a small family. Everyone knows everybody inside Germanwings, so it is a big shock for employees," said CEO Thomas Winkelmann.
Three Americans, including a mother and daughter, were among the victims, the U.S. State Department said Wednesday.
Winkelmann said the company had already contacted most families of the victims and was trying to reach the rest. He said victims included 72 German citizens, 35 Spaniards, two people each from Australia, Argentina, Iran, Venezuela and one person each from Britain, the Netherlands, Colombia, Mexico, Japan, Denmark, Belgium and Israel.
Some could have dual nationalities, for Spain's government said 51 citizens had died in the crash.
The victims included two babies, two opera singers, an Australian mother and son vacationing together, and 16 German high school students and two teachers returning from an exchange program in Spain.
The principal of Joseph Koenig High School, Ulrich Wessel, called the loss of 16 of his students and two teachers - one who had just gotten married and another who was soon to be - a "tragedy that renders one speechless."
"Nothing will be the way it was at our school anymore," he said.
Paul Andrew Bramley, a 28-year-old from Britain, had been studying hospitality and hotel management in Lucerne and was flying to meet his mother before starting an internship on April 1.
"He was the best son. He was my world," said his mother, Carol Bramley.
In Spain, flags flew at half-staff on government buildings and a minute of silence was held in government offices across the country. Parliament canceled its Wednesday session.
Barcelona's Liceu opera house held two minutes of silence at noon to honor two German opera singers - Oleg Bryjak and Maria Radner - who took the flight after performing at the theater last weekend.
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Hinnant reported from Paris. AP reporters Sylvie Corbet and Angela Charlton in Paris; Kristen Grieshaber in Haltern, Germany; David Rising and Geir Moulson in Berlin; Alan Clendenning and Jorge Sainz in Madrid; and AP Airlines writer Scott Mayerowitz in New York contributed to this report.
Latest updates
All times listed in Eastern Daylight Time. Local time in Paris (Central Europe Time) is 5 hours ahead.
2:50 p.m. EDT
Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr says the late take-off from Barcelona of the Germanwings plane that crashed in the French Alps was due to airport congestion and not related to the incident.
Spohr added the crash of the plane that killed 150 people remained "incomprehensible."
Spohr said Wednesday that "we still cannot understand" what happened in the "terrible accident." He said it is "too early for speculation" about the cause.
The aircraft "had a clean maintenance bill" from an inspection the day before Tuesday's crash and was "in perfect technical shape," he said. No distress signal was received from the plane.
Spohr said he had a "very, very emotional meeting" with the relatives of the victims.
Lufthansa, which owns Germanwings, has offered "immediate financial help" for those who need it.
2:05 p.m. EDT
The U.S. State Department says a third American has been identified as a victim of the plane crash in France that killed a total of 150 people.
The department said it is in contact with the victim's next of kin but is not releasing the name out of respect for the family.
A person close to the family earlier said American Yvonne Selke and her daughter Emily Selke were also among the victims.
1:25 p.m. EDT
Barcelona soccer club is joining three days of official mourning throughout Spain in memory of the Germanwings plane crash victims.
The club made the announcement in a statement Wednesday, saying club flags will be flown at half-staff. The Germanwings flight departed Barcelona and was bound for Duesseldorf when in crashed in France on Tuesday.
Two Iranian journalists who covered the "El Clasico" soccer match between Barcelona and Real Madrid on Sunday were among the crash victims.
12:45 p.m. EDT
The northeastern Spanish town of La Llagosta said two of the 150 crash victims were natives of the town, one of them a woman who had got married in the town on Saturday and was moving to Duesseldorf with her Moroccan husband, also a crash victim.
In a statement on its website, La Llagosta town hall named the woman as Asmae Ouahhoud el Allaoui, 23. The husband's name wasn't made available.
The town hall said another man born there, Francisco Javier Gonalons, 42, also died in the crash.
The town declared three days of mourning for the victims of the crash and said it would hold a silent, five-minute homage outside the town hall later Wednesday. The town has a population of 14,000.
12:30 p.m. EDT
The director of France's aviation investigative agency says there currently is not the "slightest explanation" for what caused the Germanwings plane to lose altitude and crash in the Alps.
Remi Jouty says the investigation could take weeks or even months.
Jouty says the plane was flying "until the end" - slamming into the mountain, not breaking up in the air.
He says the final communication from the plane was a routine message about permission to continue on its route.
12:25 p.m. EDT
The director of France's aviation investigative agency says audio has been recovered from the cockpit recorder salvaged from the crash of the Germanwings plane in the Alps.
Remi Jouty says the material includes sound and voices, and was extracted Wednesday afternoon from the mangled black box recovered from a mountainside.
Jouty says it was too early to draw conclusions from the recording. The case of the second black box, the flight data recorder, has been found, but not its contents, French President Francois Hollande said minutes earlier.
Jouty says he couldn't confirm that the case of the second black box had been recovered.
12:10 p.m. EDT
The Foreign Office identified Martyn Matthews, 50, a senior quality manager from Wolverhampton, as a victim of the crash.
"We are devastated at the news of this tragic incident and request that we are allowed to deal with this terrible news without intrusion at this difficult time," the family said in a statement.
He is survived by his wife, Sharon, and his two children.
11:50 a.m. EDT
A second group of German exchange students visiting the northeastern Spanish town of Llinars del Valles - where 16 high school students that were on the crashed plane stayed - has left for Germany as planned Wednesday.
But some decided to travel by train instead of by plane following the accident.
Llinars del Valles mayor Marti Pujol i Casals said the Institut Ginebro school had informed him that the students had been asked which way they wanted to travel and that some had decided to fly as originally planned while others decided to take the train. He gave no details as to how many traveled by train.
The students were attending a different school in the town from the one attended by the students killed Tuesday.
11:40 a.m. EDT
Two Americans presumed to have died in the plane crash in the southern French Alps include a U.S. government contractor and her daughter, according to a person close to the family.
The mother was identified as Yvonne Selke of Nokesville, Virginia, a longtime and highly regarded employee of Booz Allen Hamilton Inc. in Washington, and her daughter, whose name wasn't immediately available.
Selke worked with the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon's satellite mapping office, according to the person, who spoke on condition of anonymity because this person wasn't authorized to release information to reporters.
A person who answered the phone at Selke's home said the family wasn't providing any information.
A Booz Allen spokeswoman declined to comment, noting that Germanwings had not yet disclosed identities of the crash victims.
-By Associated Press writer Ted Bridis in Washington.
11:10 a.m. EDT
Spain's government has raised the number of Spanish victims in the crash from 49 to at least 51.
Earlier Wednesday, the government put the number of Spanish victims at 49 but later issued a statement saying two more Spanish victims have been identified, bringing the number to 51.
It had called the 49 figure provisional and said it was based on information from families and the airline's flight list.
Germanwings said Wednesday said that of 125 passengers identified, 35 were Spaniards. It said some of the 125 could have dual nationalities.
10:55 a.m. EDT
Investigators will use the cockpit voice and flight data recorders to map out and focus their work, says Alan E. Diehl, a former air safety investigator.
"Both will point you in directions of what is critical," Diehl says. "Based on what you learn from the recorders, you might focus on key pieces of wreckage."
The four possible causes of any crash are human error, mechanical problems, weather, criminal activity or a combination of two or more. Diehl says investigators will work backward, starting by eliminating what didn't happen.
"You're usually dealing with a jigsaw puzzle with many of the pieces missing," he says. "You start eliminating things that didn't happen."
10:45 a.m. EDT
Iran's official IRNA news agency is reporting that the foreign ministry says two Iranian journalists died in the Germanwings plane crash.
They were identified as Milad Hojatoleslami, who worked for semi-official Tasnim news agency and Hossein Javadi, a journalist at the Vatan-e-Emrouz daily.
9:40 a.m. EDT
Britain's Foreign Office identified three British victims:
-Marina Bandres Lopez-Belio, 37, and her son Julian, 7 months.
-Paul Andrew Bramley, 28.
Lopez-Belio's husband, Pawel Pracz of Manchester, England, said his wife and son had traveled to Spain for a family funeral.
"She bought the tickets at the last moment, and decided to return to Manchester quickly as she wanted to return to her daily routine as soon as possible," he said.
He was with family in Manchester, and in close contact with family in Spain.
"We are devastated and would like to request that we be allowed to grieve in peace as a family without intrusion at this difficult time," according to a Foreign Office statement issued on Pracz's behalf.
Bramley was studying hospitality and hotel management at Ceasar Ritz College in Lucerne and about to start an internship on April 1. He was flying back to Britain via Dusseldorf to meet with his mother.
"Paul was a kind, caring and loving son," his mother, Carol Bramley said in a statement. "He was the best son, he was my world."
9:25 a.m. EDT
The leaders of Germany, France and Spain are gathering in the French Alps near the site of a German budget airlines crash to pay homage to the 150 victims.
French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel arrived on a helicopter Wednesday on a mountain meadow whipped by strong winds. Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy also joined them at the scene, in the town of Seynes-les-Alpes.
Most of the passengers on the Barcelona-Duesseldorf flight Tuesday were German and Spanish, though people of many other nationalities were also aboard.
Hollande praised all the rescue workers who have been trying to retrieve debris and bodies from the hard-to-reach site.
9 a.m. EDT
Spain says it will send a six-member scientific police team to France to help with victim identification in the Germanwings plane crash, as soon as the bodies start to be bought down from the crash site.
Interior Ministry official Francisco Martinez also said six Spanish psychologists will be sent to the town of Seyne-Les-Alpes near the crash site and five to Marseille to help tend to victims' families.
He said Spain has also offered to send army search and rescue teams if needed. Tuesday's crash killed all 150 people aboard the flight from Barcelona to Duesseldorf.
8:50 a.m. EDT
U.S. President Barack Obama has called Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy to express his condolences following the crash of the Germanwings plane in which at least 35 Spaniards died.
Obama conveyed "his condolences and those of the American people to Spain and to the families lost on the flight," the U.S. Embassy in Madrid said. Obama also offered assistance from American officials.
Speaking in Parliament, British Prime Minister David Cameron also offered condolences on Tuesday's crash that killed 150.
"It is heartbreaking to hear about the schoolchildren, the babies, the families whose lives have been brought to an end," he said.
The British government believes three British nationals died, and is checking to see if there might have been more.
8:25 a.m. EDT
Germanwings has had to cancel a few flights since the crash because some crews declared themselves unfit to fly after losing colleagues.
A flight from Duesseldorf to Barcelona on Wednesday was scratched, along with some from Duesseldorf and Stuttgart on Tuesday.
Chief executive Thomas Winkelmann said some cockpit and cabin crews "didn't want to fly today or yesterday for emotional reasons."
He added that "the management completely understands this because we are a small family - everyone knows everybody inside Germanwings so it is a big shock for employees."
8:15 a.m. EDT
Three generations of one family - a schoolgirl, her mother and grandmother - were on the Germanwings plane that crashed, according to a town outside Barcelona.
A statement from Sant Cugat del Valles town hall didn't provide their names.
The girl was a student of a middle school for children aged 10 to 11 at Santa Isabel school in Sant Cugat.
"The students are very affected. The teachers are trying to help them any way they can," said a woman who answered the phone at the school. She refused to give her name or comment further.
-By Associated Press writer Jorge Sainz in Madrid.
8 a.m. EDT
France's aviation investigation bureau has released photos of the badly mangled voice data recorder from the Germanwings flight that crashed into an Alpine mountainside.
The images show the metal black box — which is actually a bright orange-red — twisted, dented and scarred by the impact of the crash.
The cockpit voice recorder was recovered on Tuesday and French officials say they are working to pull its data.
7:50 a.m. EDT
Germanwings' chief executive says the airline's current information is that 72 Germans, 35 Spanish citizens and two Americans were on board the flight that crashed in southern France.
Thomas Winkelmann told reporters in Cologne on Wednesday that the list isn't yet final because the company is still trying to contact relatives of 27 victims.
There were two victims each from Australia, Argentina, Iran and Venezuela. One victim each came from Britain, the Netherlands, Colombia, Mexico, Japan, Denmark, Belgium and Israel.
Winkelmann says in some cases victims' nationality isn't entirely clear, in part because of dual citizenship.
Spain's government said they had identified 49 Spanish victims, while Britain says it believes there were at least three Britons on board.
7:40 a.m. EDT
Spain's government says it has identified 49 Spanish victims of the Germanwings crash based on information from families and the flight list.
Interior Minister official Francisco Martinez says that the figure was provisional and could change.
Police in Barcelona say they have taken DNA samples from relatives of Spanish victims of the Germanwings crash to help with identification.
A spokeswoman said Wednesday they had taken 48 samples. She said more samples would be taken.
The samples, which will be sent to French authorities, were taken at Barcelona's El Prat airport and at hotels where the families are being looked after.
—By Associated Press writers Ciara Jorge Sainz in Madrid.
7:20 a.m. EDT
Executives, pilots and employees of German airline Lufthansa have held a moment of silence at company headquarters for the 150 people who died in the Germanwings crash.
The Airbus A320 flown by Lufthansa's low-cost division crashed on Tuesday in the Alps in southern France.
Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr, himself a pilot, observed the ceremony Wednesday at the company's main base. He said it was "a very emotional moment, to stand there with so many colleagues in uniform."
He said the company's first priority was helping the relatives of those who died.
He said it was "inexplicable for us, how an airplane in good mechanical condition, with two experienced, Lufthansa-trained pilots, could encounter such a tragedy from cruising altitude."
One of the plane's black boxes has been recovered, and authorities are investigating.
7:15 a.m. EDT
Germany's top security official says there is no evidence at this stage that foul play was involved in the plane crash in southern France.
Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere told reporters in Berlin on Wednesday that "according to the latest information there is no hard evidence that the crash was intentionally brought about by third parties."
He says that authorities are nevertheless investigating all possible causes for the crash of a Germanwings flight from Barcelona to Spain on Tuesday in which 144 passengers and six crew members died.
De Maiziere appealed to media to refrain from speculation about the causes of the crash.
7:05 a.m. EDT
France's air force says it scrambled a Mirage fighter jet to the area when the Germanwings flight lost radar contact, but arrived too late to help.
An air force spokesman said Wednesday that the Mirage 2000 took off minutes after it became clear that there was a problem and went to the A320's last known location, but arrived after it crashed in the Alps on Tuesday.
The spokesman said that the Mirage didn't locate the site of the crash. Helicopters later found the debris scattered across a mountainside. The spokesman wasn't authorized to be publicly named according to military policy.
-By Associated Press writer Sylvie Corbet in Paris.
7 a.m. EDT
The principal of the German high school where 16 students and two teachers died in the Germanwings crash says "nothing will be the way it was at our school anymore."
Ulrich Wessel, principal of the Joseph Koenig High School, said Wednesday that when the first call came about the crash, he hoped that the students had missed the plane.
But the regional governor informed local officials that they were on the passenger list.
Wessel says one of the teachers who was on the plane had been married for less than six months.
He said: "It is a tragedy that makes one speechless and we will have to learn to deal with it."
Wessel added: "I was asked yesterday how many students there are at the high school in Haltern, and I said 1,283 without thinking - then had to say afterward, unfortunately 16 fewer since yesterday. And I find that so terrible."
The students had been on a week-long exchange program in Spain.
6:50 a.m. EDT
In Spain, flags flew at half-staff on government buildings and a minute of silence was held at legislative and government buildings across the country in memory of the Germanwings crash victims. Spain's national parliament canceled its normal Wednesday session out of respect.
Barcelona's Liceu opera house held two minutes of silence at noon in homage to two opera singers - Oleg Bryjak and Maria Radner - who took the flight after performing at the theater last weekend.
In the small northeastern town of Llinars del Valles, parents and children attended a memorial service at the Giola Institute for the 16 German high school students and their two teachers who had been on an exchange program there for a week before boarding the plane. A minute of silence was held at the town hall at midday.
6:40 a.m. EDT
A French prosecutor says a joint investigative team will seek details about the Germanwings plane that crashed.
Marseille prosecutor Brice Robin says French, Spanish and German authorities would formally request information Wednesday about the plane's maintenance and the conditions of its flight.
6:25 a.m. EDT
Britain's foreign secretary says the government believes that at least three Britons have died in the Germanwings disaster.
Philip Hammond also said Wednesday morning that "we can't rule out the possibility that there could be further British people involved."
5:10 a.m. EDT
Students at the main high school in the western German town of Haltern are gathering by an ever-growing memorial of candles and flowers, weeping and hugging as they mourn the loss of 16 classmates and two teachers who died in a crash in the French Alps.
Fourteen-year-old Lara Beer says her best friend, Paula, was aboard the aircraft.
Wiping tears from her eyes, she says she was waiting for the train her friend was supposed to be on, but went home when she saw Paula wasn't on it.
She says: "That's when my parents told me Paula was dead."
School classes have been cancelled but students are being encouraged to come in to talk with counsellors and friends. The crash of the Germanwings flight from Barcelona to Duesseldorf killed 150 people.
5 a.m. EDT
A Spanish school says a second group of about 30 German exchange students is in the Spanish town of Llinars del Valles, where 16 high schoolers stayed for a week before boarding a plane that crashed in the Alps.
An administrator for the Institut Ginebro says the students are from the Hamburg area and are scheduled to leave Llinars del Valles within hours, but that teachers are considering delaying the departure in the wake of the crash. That's a different school than the one the students killed Tuesday had been attending.
The administrator spoke on condition of anonymity Wednesday because she was not authorized to speak publicly.
4:30 a.m. EDT
France's transport minister says work is beginning on retrieving vital data from the cockpit voice recorder recovered from the crash site of the Germanwings flight that went down on an Alpine mountainside, killing 150 people.
Alain Vidalies told Europe 1 radio that the initial focus for the black box investigators will be "on the human voices, the conversations," followed by the cockpit sounds.
Vidalies said no causes had been fully ruled out but "with what is already known the hypothesis of an intruder or an attack is unlikely."
Lufthansa and Germanwings staff around the world will hold a minute of silence at 10.53 a.m. (0953 GMT) Wednesday, Lufthansa said. That marks the time at which Germanwings has said contact with the plane was lost. Six Germanwings crew are among the dead.
3:55 a.m. EDT
The mayor of a town close to the site of the plane crash in the French Alps that killed 150 says bereaved families are expected to begin arriving in the town Wednesday morning.
Francis Hermitte, mayor of Seyne-Les-Alpes, says said local families are offering to host the families 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, Hermitte said.
Marion Cotterill, head of civil protection there, says the priority is to welcome families humanely. "We offer a hot drink, a smile, a warm regard, or psychological counseling if asked for."
Interior Ministry spokesman Paul-Henry Brandet says overnight rain and snow in the crash zone has made the rocky ravine slippery, increasing the difficulty of reaching the steep and remote area.
3:50 a.m. EDT
An Israeli citizen who lived in Spain was among the victims of the French plane crash, the Israeli Foreign Ministry said Wednesday.
Eyal Baum was 39 and lived in Barcelona with his wife, his sister, Liat Baum, told Army Radio.
"He was amazing, with a winning smile. Whoever met him fell in love with him from the first moment," Baum said, crying.
"The thought of what he went through in those moments is very difficult."
The crash Tuesday of the Germanwings Airbus 320 killed 150 people. There were no survivors.
A delegation from the ultra-Orthodox Jewish movement Chabad is traveling to the crash site to help in rescue efforts, Chabad Rabbi Eliyahu Attia told Army Radio.
3 a.m. EDT
French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve says the black box recovered from the crash site has been damaged but is believed to be "useable." He says it is the voice and cockpit sound recorder.
Cazeneuve told RTL radio on Wednesday that investigators were working to pull information from the black box voice recorder.
Although officials have been firm that no cause has been ruled out, Cazeneuve said terrorism is not considered likely.
Segolene Royal, another top French official, says the seconds between 10:30 a.m. and 10:31 a.m. are considered vital to the investigation into the crash. She says the pilot stopped responding after 10:31.
2:25 a.m. EDT
Pierre-Henry Brandet, spokesman for France's Interior Ministry, says investigators are working to recover information from the black box retrieved from the scene of the crash. Brandet told French network iTele that recovery crews are expected to reach the site where the Germanwings went down sometimes Wednesday morning.
He said no causes had been ruled out in the crash that killed 150 on board.
1:30 a.m. EDT
Helicopter operations have resumed over mountainsides in the French Alps where a German jetliner crashed, killing all 150 people on board.
Under overcast skies, with temperatures just above freezing, helicopters resumed flights Wednesday over a widely scattered debris field.
A black box has been recovered from the scene. 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 Tuesday when it unexpectedly went into a rapid descent. The pilots did not send out a distress call and had lost radio contact with their control center, France's aviation authority said.