Germanwings Flight 9525 Crashes in French Alps; German Chancellor Speaks.
COSTELLO: All right, the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, talking about this plane crash. Let's listen.</s>ANGELA MERKEL, GERMAN CHANCELLOR (through translator): We don't know much about the flight and the crash yet. And we don't know the cause. Today I'm concerned with the depth of suffering that is being brought to so many people. My thoughts are with those people who have lost somebody. There are many Germans among them. This suffering is incredible of the families. We will do everything to get the help that they need in these difficult hours. In the last hours, I have talked to the French president, Hollande, as well as with the Spanish prime minister. We have discussed and agreed that our countries have to help each other in any form and we -- with the forces at the site and at the airports. The foreign ministry has introduced a crisis center, which is coordinating everything. The Foreign Minister Steinmeier and the transport minister will go to the region this afternoon. I will go there tomorrow to make -- to draw my own picture so that I know what I'm talking about. Let me say finally that the hour that we all mourn, we have to think of the victims and their families and their friends. Thank you.</s>COSTELLO: All right, that was the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, talking about that plane that went down, Germanwings Flight 9525, 148 people on board. The passengers believed to be from Germany. You heard Ms. Merkel say many, many passengers were from Germany. Also on board, Spanish passengers and also Turkish. I want to rejoin Karl Penhaul. He's at the Barcelona Airport, where this plane took off from. Families are starting to arrive. Tell us about that, Karl.</s>KARL PENHAUL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (via telephone): Hi, Carol. Yes, as the moments pass, more and more family members are arriving at a crisis center that has been set up at Terminal 2. In fact, as we speak, another two ladies have just gone through the gate in front of me, heading towards the crisis center. Apparently relatives of some of the passengers on board. We do know that there were Germans on board. We know that there were Spaniards on board as well. But so far airline authorities haven't given us either a full list of passengers or the nationalities that were on board. We're expecting some kind of press release from them in literally the next few moments. So far no further confirmation either of why that Germanwings flight may have left around a half an hour late from Barcelona's Terminal 2 airport. It was due to leave, we're told, around 9:30 local time and didn't leave until just after 10:00 local time. The weather has been bad in the Barcelona region for a number of days now, but no indication at this stage whether weather was a factor in the delayed departure. But as I say, expecting a press release any moment now. In fact, I see the lady now heading towards us with a printed press release. If you are able to hold on, that may give us some additional information.</s>COSTELLO: Absolutely.</s>PENHAUL: This is a press release from members of the crisis center. It is headlined, "Germanwings." Last-minute reports, it says, from Germanwings. And if you bear with me, I shall translate some of it from Spanish and let you know what it says. It's confirming the accident, the crash of its plane around 11:00 a.m. local time in the region of Niece (ph). That is information that we already knew. It says on board Flight 9525 there were 144 registered passengers and six crew, 144 passengers and six crew, so 150 people total on board. It says though that right now there is no additional information available. Germanwings is carrying out a complete investigation and until that investigation is complete, we cannot give any more information, says the Germanwings press release, which has just come off the printing machine now. It says that Germanwings will update journalists as soon as it has any additional information to add. They have also added to their press release the number -- a crisis number where any relatives can phone for additional information. So I guess the only piece of information that perhaps we didn't have pinned down before, 144 passengers on board and six crew members. But this press release just come out from Germanwings. The airline company says it is giving no additional information at this time and will carry out -- and is carrying out already a full investigation. And then, of course, the human side, again, as the minutes tick by, more family members arriving at the crisis center set up alongside Terminal 2 at Barcelona Airport, the location from which this aircraft set out from, Carol.</s>COSTELLO: All right, Karl Penhaul, thank you so much. I appreciate it. As you heard Karl say, 144 passengers on board, six crew members, 100 (ph) people total. And it's believed all 150 did not survive the crash. Again, a Germanwings Flight 9525. That's an Airbus A320 aircraft, crashed this morning on its way from Barcelona, Spain, to Dusseldorf, German. I want to bring back in our aviation experts Peter Goelz and Mary Schiavo. Peter, I don't know if you heard Tom Foreman's report, but he said that as the plane was flying along, there was a dip in speed that lasted perhaps five minutes and then it speed up again, right? It started to climb. And then the speed dipped again and then shortly thereafter the plane crashed. Does that tell you anything?</s>PETER GOELZ, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Well, no, it's simply a focus of the investigation at this point. You know, that it's an interesting piece of information. The plane should have been on auto pilot at that point. The speed should not have been varying. That it did vary is a point that investigators will zero in on as soon as they get the black boxes, the flight data recorder in particular.</s>COSTELLO: Tom also mentioned censors on the plane that could have frozen over, Mary.</s>GOELZ: Yes.</s>COSTELLO: Can you expound on that?</s>MARY SCHIAVO, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Yes. There was a -- there has been a warning put out by Airbus that this particular plane model, a 320, 321 had something called a stuck angle of attack indicator, and it had happened on another Lufthansa flight back in November. I think it was November 5, 2014. And what had happened there is the plane itself was giving erroneous readings of its angle attack. And that just means nose up or nose down, that's angle of attack. And the indicators on the side of the plane there, through what Tom had showed us, the pitot tubes, that they had put out a warning that they needed to go check these things because it had given some bad angle of attack readings. Now, what would have happened there is you would have seen the altitude and you might have seen the altitude fluctuate and you probably would have seen that maybe even before the air speed. But if you dip your nose down, your air speed's going to go up. And if you put your nose up, the air speed's going to go down, if you don't adjust your thrust. So that could be a possible explanation. But who knows. But in these other instances, the pilots were able to recover because they were highly trained pilots. Lufthansa pilots are quite good generally speaking and they were able to recover. So that was the warning about this angle of attack indicator that has been out.</s>COSTELLO: OK, we'll talk more after a break. Thanks so much. I'll be right back.