Commemoration ceremonies are being held in France and Germany to mark the first anniversary of the deliberate crashing of a Germanwings flight in the French Alps, claiming the lives of all 150 on board.
More than 600 relatives of the victims are gathering in the Alpine village of Le Vernet, including the heads of the Germanwings parent company Lufthansa, Thomas Winkelmann and Carsten Spohr, to observe a minute’s silence on Thursday.
In Haltern, a town in Germany’s Ruhr region, ceremonies were being held to remember the 16 pupils and two female teachers of the local Joseph Koenig school.
They were on their way home aboard Flight 4U9525 when co-pilot Andreas Lubitz put the plane into a shallow dive, crashing it into a mountainside some 3km east of Le Vernet.
Lubitz, who was 27, crashed the Airbus A320 on March 24, 2015 as it was flying from Barcelona to Dusseldorf. Of those aboard the budget airline flight, 72 were from Germany and 51 from Spain.
Church bells in Haltern rang at 10.41 am, the time when the plane crashed, as an ecumenical service was held in the town’s central square.
The ceremony in Le Vernet was being kept strictly private. Several relatives were also heading into the mountain terrain to view the site of the crash.
Another ceremony was being held at Dusseldorf airport, the intended destination of the flight. “We will never forget this tragic day on which so many people had their lives taken from them senselessly,” a notice printed in local newspapers said.
Ahead of Thursday’s ceremony, Spohr said he was willing to look into a “constructive solution” to the case.
“From the start we said we would show generosity, and we have shown generosity in the first year,” he said in Le Vernet.
The company has paid out 50,000 euros ($A74,000) for each victim. A further 25,000 euros is to be paid, and next-of-kin are to receive 10,000 euros.
Court proceedings are being initiated in the United States centring on the Lufthansa training facility in Arizona. Lubitz interrupted his training there in 2009 owing to mental health problems.
Lawyers for the victims say he should not have been allowed to resume training to be a pilot.
