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
hearing, which is a germanwings airliner has gone down in france. it was headed from spain, barcelona, to dusseldorf in germany, it s an a-320 like the one you re skieeing on your screen. that s the projected path of the flight. reports are that it went down 142 passengers on board. the point of intrigue right now in understanding this situation is that we are told by experts, mary sciavo and david soucie both of whom are on the phone that 95% of crashes happen on takeoff or landing. if the plane went down where it is reported it did in france. it would be in the mid point of its flight. fred pleitgen joins us from france. the french prime minister confirming there s been a crash. there was some reporting from reuters saying they were up to 142 passengers on this plane. two pilots and four cabin crew. and that apparently the plane
who are now tuning in if you are just joining us let us tell you what s happening, a germanwings air flight has gone down in the south of france flight number 9525 it had 142 passengers on board and six crew members. we understand that at 38,000 feet somewhere mid flight on its way from barcelona to dusseldorf something went wrong. a distress call went out and that airplane then lost altitude from 38,000 feet down to 24,000 feet in the space of about six seconds, although we don t know what distress call. it was several minutes, giving a rate of descent that mary sciavo has told us is not indicative of a full stall or something that would have made this craft break up in the air. french authorities, let s get to fred pleitgen in london. we re hearing confirmed information about several aspects. what are they saying? they have more information, chris, on the distress call