alps. if you re just joining us german wings flight has crashed in the french alps. about 65 miles north of nice. a distress call went out at 10:47. it disappeared off the radar at 11:20 debris has been found. the president of france has call td tragedy. al does not expect any survivors to be found given the fact that the area is so remote. search and rescue teams are currently headed to the area. we should point out the distress signal was quick, and without information. right. we also understand, too, the french president said this is a tragedy on our soil. we re still trying to piece together what happened. why there was some distress signals. it doesn t seem as though the plane ever changed course. joining us now a former navy fighter pilot and fox news correspondent.
it shows there is debris in the mountains. number one, 80 minutes into the flight, if that report proves to be correct 80 minutes into the flight, they were reporting a problem almost immediately from takeoff. you could solve a lot of problems in that period of time. what does it go to tell you as a pilot if you have a problem early and you re in the air on 80 minutes. he didn t deviate off of course during that time he s referencing. we need to wait and see if he did deviate. at this point, you know, he may have try today make a turn. if you end up with an engine failure, for example, you may not want to turn into that engine. the airplane i flew the engines were close enough together, it was considered axial thrust. i could turn into a dead engine. in a bigger plane you probably don t want to. it probably depends on what is on your left or right. what does that mean? if the engine on the left wing is out, that means you don t want to go to the left. in certain airplanes yes
he was obviously in a decent. the french president knows probably exactly what happens because he s been listening to air traffic control or they have reported what happened. there is probably quite a bit of dialogue going on, which we re not getting now. unfortunately, so that s why i m speculating. but it is very interesting, again, that the airplane didn t go in a direction where there were more airfields and away from the mountains. i don t know why. and was operating at an unsafe altitude of 6,800 which was not high enough for that area. if he was flying at 6,800, there was something really a big problem. so i suspect, though, he was higher. but i don t know that. general, here s the thing, this is what s different from the last time we lost an a 320 plane. we know where this is, it s not in the water. it will be easier to find out what happened between the transmissions, control, as well as the pilot. and also, you have a plane
have to be looking at. because it was flying. it just didn t drop out of the air like the airasia airplane that went into the thunderstorm. we knew had a good inclination that was a weather problem. we do not hear that it wasn t a sudden impact and it disappeared. it was flying. the pilot and air crew were talking to their own operations, as well as air traffic control, which has not been released. sure. general, let me ask you something, this is not a long flight, correct? how long do you expect to be in the air if you re going from barcelona to germany? do you have any idea how long the rescue crew might have to get to a plane on the french alps. they are racing there. it is very difficult in that area. they ll go in, again, depend on what the weather is like with helicopters and search and rescue to look and get the location. so they can get a ground force
he could have landed. and when you look at the map you ve got up there right now and the route from barcelona up to germany, you can see if he had gone to the west, there is dijon and other airfields he could have gone to. that is what is confusing. i don t have any of those facts. maybe it was a fuel issue. you brought up something else i thought was telling. this is an aircraft that is highly automated has the ability to fly and land successfully. perhaps the fuel took out the one engine and took out the second. maybe he wasn t aware, thought he could make it. when you go on a single engine, you immediately want to go towards a divert airfield. he is not going to try to make germany. we do know the plane went down while it was flying between