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A Germanwings (Lufthansa subsidiary) Airbus A-320-200 airliner has crashed in the French Alps. It is reported to have carried 154 people on board (including 6 crew members). Unfortunately, no survivors have been found so far. There were reports about the crew sending out distress calls shortly before the crash. The flight from Barcelona to Dusseldorf was last registered on the radar at 6800 feet.
http://www.laprovence.com/article/actualites/3326948/un-airbus-a320-secrase-dans-les-alpes-de-haute-provence.html
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/03/24/us-france-crash-airbus-lufthansa-idUSKBN0MK0ZP20150324
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/24/german-a320-airbus-plane-crashes-french-alps
[Edit 16:35 UTC. janrinok. Source: BBC] The 'black box' has been recovered. The aircraft descent took place over a period of approximately 8 minutes, and communication between the crew and the French air traffic controllers was 'broken' when the aircraft was at an altitude of around 6000 feet. The TV pictures being broadcast show a large number of helicopters being deployed to a snow free landing-zone but the surrounding mountains have significant snow cover and there is a low cloudbase. French authorities have said that the recovery of the bodies will take 'several days'.
(Score: 5, Informative) by VLM on Tuesday March 24 2015, @02:24PM
Artifact of their flight data importer, I bet.
Its been a long time since ground school, but you could only delete a flight plan up to two hours before scheduled takeoff and anyone can cancel a plan (anyone, as in ATC, FSS, you on your cell phone) but once its open I think it was a legal thing that only the PIC who activated/opened the plan can close it as a successful flight. And there seems little point in letting the plan time out and getting the french equiv of civil air patrol out to search when they already got planes orbiting the crash site.
So can't delete because its after T-2 hours of takeoff, can't close it because the guy who opened it is probably dead and its illegal (or at least "bad form") for anyone else to close a plan, but controllers cancel plans all the time for good reason. And they gotta do something or the civil air patrol will be automagically alerted although they've already found the crash site. So... cancel the flight plan, and it shows up on the website as cancelled.
Supposedly you get a nastygram in the mail (maybe worse?) if you fail to close your plan and the FAA sends out the searchers for you. Usually the destination ATC gets a call asking if you landed as the first step, but if they send out CAP and alert the emergency services you'll get a nastygram in the mail if it turns out you just forgot. And if you closed someone elses plan and they were huddled at a crash in the woods you'd be in big trouble. So I'm not sure of the border between illegal and merely hugely impolite WRT closing someone elses plan.
Most cancellations are paperwork/data entry F ups in the olden days (no I'm not flying from Chicago to Austria, something got messed up, cancel and start over) or the weather changed so either cancel the VFR plan and make a IFR on the fly or cancel the IFR because the weather is beautiful or screw the flight plan I'm going sight seeing along the way, or medical-ish (I got me a tummy ache so the layover is now going to be half a day not 30 minutes to top off the tanks).