BBC- Alps plane crash: Search and recovery operation This page automatically updates

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By Alastair Lawson

All times stated are UK

  • The mayor of Seyne-les-Alpes near the site of the crash says that bereaved families are expected to begin arriving in his town shortly, AP reports. Mayor Francis Hermitte said that residents are offering to host the families because of a shortage of rooms to rent.

  • More images from the Joseph-Koenig-Gymnasium high school in Haltern am See, Germany, as students comforted each other on Wednesday morning.

    Students hold onto each other as they arrive at the Joseph-Koenig-Gymnasium high school in Haltern am See

  • Spain has declared three days of mourning and will hold a minute of silence across the country at noon (11:00 GMT). Spanish King Felipe VI cut short his first state visit to France on Tuesday after hearing news of the tragedy.

  • Wednesday morning at the Joseph-Konig-Gymnasium high school in Haltern am See in Germany. The school is mourning the loss of 16 classmates and two teachers who were on the plane.

    A police officer and a woman enter the Joseph-Koenig-Gymnasium high school in Haltern am See (25 March, 2015)

  • Germanwings will have to cancel more flights on Wednesday as some crew members decline to fly. “This is due to crew members, who decided not to operate aircraft today following the reports on the accident,” a statement on the company’s website says. “We understand their decision.”

  • Read more in this BBC report from 2014 about the differences between the two black boxes – the cockpit recorder and data recorder.

  • French interior minister confirms that the cockpit voice recorder is damaged. The second black box, the flight data recorder, has yet to be found.

  • Greig Friday, 29, from Melbourne, Australia, is one of those who died on the flight with his mother, Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said.

    Greig Friday from Melbourne (Undated handout photo)

  • Two opera singers – Oleg Bryjak, 54 and Maria Radner, 34 – who had performed on stage in Barcelona were among those killed.

  • The black box device recovered from the plane is the cockpit voice recorder, AFP has just reported. It is damaged and is being sent to Paris, sources close to the inquiry say.

  • Debris of the jet could be seen on Tuesday scattered on the mountain side near Seyne-les-Alpes.

    Debris of the crashed Germanwings passenger jet could be seen on Tuesday scattered on the mountain side near Seyne les Alpes in the French Alps

  • It will take “at least a week” to search the remote site, police told AFP, and “at least several days” to repatriate the bodies. More than 300 policemen and 380 firefighters have been mobilised in addition to a squad of 30 mountain rescue police. Five investigators spent the night at the site.

  • The BBC’s James Reynolds, in nearby Seyne-les-Alpes, says that answers may begin to emerge on Wednesday about the causes of the crash. There was no distress call from the pilots during the eight minutes the plane took to descend into the mountainside – and our correspondent says that the black box flight recorder will be the starting point for investigators trying to determine what went wrong.

  • Welcome to the BBC’s live coverage as the search operation continues at the scene of Tuesday’s Germanwings plane crash in the southern French Alps. All 150 people on board are feared dead.

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