Families of victims mark 10th anniversary of the Germanwings plane crash

Commemorations have been held in France, Germany and Spain to mark the tenth anniversary of the Germanwings plane crash in the French Alps.

On the morning of 24 March 2015, Germanwings Flight 9525 departed from Barcelona and was supposed to land in Düsseldorf. But co-pilot Andreas Lubitz deliberately flew the plane into a mountainside, killing all 150 people on board, investigators concluded.

Among the victims were 16 students and two teachers from a high school in Haltern am See, a town in western Germany, who were flying home from an exchange trip to Spain.

The other passengers also included two babies, two renowned German opera singers, a member of an Argentine rock band, three generations of a family, a mother and son on vacation, a newlywed couple, business travellers, and many others. While most victims were from Germany and Spain, there were 17 nationalities among the dead.

Many relatives of the victims visited the crash site in the French Alps near the village of Le Vernet. Several local officials, along with Carsten Spohr, CEO of Lufthansa — the parent company of Germanwings — also laid flowers in memory of the lives lost.

In Germany’s Haltern am See, students placed roses in the courtyard of the Joseph König High School, and hundreds of people gathered in the rain to observe a moment of silence at 10:41 am, the exact time the plane crashed.

The school’s principal, Christian Krahl, emphasised the importance of remembering the tragedy, even for students who weren’t directly affected by it.

“We want to be close to those who are infinitely sad to this day,” he said.

Wreaths were also laid at the town’s cemetery, where some of the students are buried. A memorial in the form of a schoolroom stands there as a tribute to the young lives lost.

Commemorations were also planned at the airports in Düsseldorf and Barcelona. At Düsseldorf Airport, a book of condolences was available in the so-called Room of Silence for employees and travellers.

The crash caused shock worldwide when it was revealed that co-pilot Lubitz had locked the captain out of the cockpit and deliberately crashed the plane into a mountainside.

Lubitz had previously struggled with depression, but both his airline and authorities deemed him fit to fly. In the months leading up to the crash, he had been battling insomnia and feared going blind, but kept his struggles hidden from his employer.

“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,” Haltern am See Mayor Andreas Stegemann told German media.

“The Germanwings crash is a permanent part of our town’s history,” he said.

The crash site in France is now marked by a 5-metre “Solar Orb,” meant to represent the sun and the five continents. The memorial, made up of 149 gilded aluminium plates — marking all those on board except the co-pilot — was erected in 2017.