Germanwings crash: Crews refuse to fly 'for personal reasons'

The Airbus 320 involved had 58,300 flight hours and made over 46,700 flights since 1991

(Getty Images)

Crews were reportedly refusing to fly Lufthansa’s Germanwings budget airline yesterday, hours after the disaster.

Queues formed and some flights were cancelled as a result. A Lufthansa spokesman told ITV News: “The crews said that they did not want to board the flights for personal reasons which we cannot speculate about, which it is not our place to do.”

In Washington, the White House said the crash did not appear to have been caused by a terrorist attack, while Lufthansa said it was working on the assumption that the tragedy had been an accident, adding that any other theory would be speculation.

The A320 family has a good safety record, with just 0.14 fatal accidents per million take-offs, according to an industry safety analysis. This particular jet was delivered to Lufthansa in 1991 and had about 58,300 flight hours over 46,700 flights.

Lufthansa chief executive Carsten Spohr says initial information about the cause of the crash should be available “relatively quickly”.

Mr Spohr noted that authorities had found the first black box and said he would not speculate on the cause of the crash until its data had been analysed. He told Germany’s ARD television they would “try to find out and then understand how this blackest day of our company’s 60-year history could happen.” The recovery operation is expected to last a week.