happening, they needed to get down in a hurry. that suggests the pilot had great urgency. mary we want to for people who are just joining us breaking news 142 passengers on board this a-320 airbus called germanwings, is the airline, and we believe there were six crew. the president of france, francois hollande has sent out this tweet. he said way tonight express to the families of victims of the air crash my solidarity this is a mourning a tragedy. it really truly is it seems as though we ve had far too many of them and we have an incredible group of aviation experts as part of our family here we ve got ton know. joining frus havana right now, richard quest is on the phone. it seems a little too often we re having to talk to you, richard, about these kinds of aviation disasters. in terms of history. give as you brief understanding.
mary sciavo to that it s very rare for an airplane to go down mid-flight. let s bring in david soucie 95% of these aircraft when there s crashes go off on takeoff or landing. and david soucie germanwings, 2008 and 2010 there were reports of flights that had toxic gases go into the cockpit and have you ever heard this information? is it relevant? it isn t at that point. but the airbus 320 as mary was saying is so rare that something would happen mid flight like this the airbus 320 is one of the most reliable aircraft. it s been around for so many years with a very good track record. so it s this is going to be something that s just totally anomalous right now. we re going to have to find out what happened as it goes forward. a couple more details about
aircraft it s not how old it is it s how it s been maintained. in germanwings case under the lufthansa group. germanwings is its point-to-point subsidiary that it flies across europe. it s been recently restructured as part of lufthansa. so 24 years old, i m not concerned. i m not really concerned about the age of the aircraft. that the particular point. for example, lufthansa technic, lufthansa s maintenance arm is one of the leading aircraft maintenance companies in the world and is contracted to many other airlines. so lufthansa technic, germanwings, they will all have been involved in maintaining this aircraft. it s interesting, because we ve seen the tweet, richard, from airbus and they were sort of saying they hadn t received official confirmation but that they were working to find out details. and accord together bbc, jerl
fred pleitgen based in germany. we know fred you ve taken this exact route a number of times, you ve flown it just recently. how long is the flight to begin with? i ve taken it with germanwings a couple of times. flight is a little bit over two hours. and it s interesting because i flew into london from berlin this morning with the german wings a-320. this airline is known to have very good safety track record. one of the reasons is that it s directly owned by lufthansa. it s known that the planes of this airline are directly serviced by lufthansa technique, based in frankfurt. the airline is based between the towns of cologne and dusseldorf. it s going to a place where they would have a lot of technology. this is a completely regular flight on their most common aircraft as well. the germanwings fleet is one that completely consists of the
because they had five crashes in five years. it turns out they weren t related to each other. but it s an issue,is since it was a pilot s union, there s a shortage of pilots but the airline needs to watch out for the fact that if they start cutting pilots they might have problems regrouping this is worldwide, there s such a high demand for pilots especially in china and other places the pacific rim area. i don t know pilots are in hot demand right now. mary, let s remind everybody what we re talking about here to our viewers, to the u.s. and around the world. germanwings flight 9525 according to flight aware.com. that s the flight now believed to have gone down in france the flight was headed from barcelona as you see, the flight path from barcelona in spain, was headed to dusseldorf in germany. but apparently has gone down in