Air officials said they received no SOS call as it dropped 31,000ft before smashing into a remote spot in the French Alps.
One of the black boxes has already arrived in Paris where investigators will be able to listen to the pilots' last conversations.
However reports have said that the plane's other black box has been damaged – potentially compromising an investigation.
A spokesman at Barcelona’s El Prat airport later confirmed the 144 passengers and six crew killed on the flight from Barcelona to Dusseldorf included 47 Spaniards, two Argentinians and seven Germans.
Among the victims were a couple who lived in Manchester, and their seven month-old baby.
Marina Bandres Lopez-Belio, 37, had jetted home to Spain with her Polish husband and their tot for an uncle’s funeral.
They had been unable to get a direct flight back to the UK.
On Tuesday evening Foreign Secretary Phillip Hammond said it was "likely" there were Brits on the doomed plane.
Two babies and 16 German pupils from the same school were reported to be among the dead.
Also on board was German opera singer Maria Radner, 34, her partner and their baby.
They were were returning home to Dusseldorf after she performed in Barcelona. Her co-star Oleg Bryjack was also on the flight.
Rescuers said the Airbus A320 – operated by Germanwings, a low-fare carrier owned by air giant Lufthansa – had “disintegrated”, leaving wreckage strewn across a mountainside.
“
There is nothing left but debris and bodies”
Christophe Castaner, deputy of the Alpesde-Haute-Provence region
German Foreign Minister Frank- Walter Steinmeier described the crash site as “a picture of horror” after being flown over it by helicopter.
Early reports suggested the pilots had sent out a Mayday distress call before flight 4U9525 hit the ground at 400mph but the authorities later denied receiving any message.
Search teams were last night said to have discovered the black box flight recorder among the wreckage, spread over two miles.
Witnesses have described hearing an explosion “like the sound of dynamite”.
Experts speculated that the rate of descent suggested the pilots could have become unconscious.
The White House said they did not believe it was a terrorist attack, while forecasters said weather in the area was “nothing out of the ordinary”.
The captain of the flight was experienced and had been with the airline for more than 10 years, clocking up 6,000 flying hours.
The 16 schoolchildren, said to be between 15 and 16, were from Joseph Konig school in Halternam See in western Germany.
They were flying home after a week-long exchange visit with students at a school near Barcelona.
Two teachers were also on the flight.
Haltern’s mayor Bodo Klimpel, said: “This is pretty much the worst thing you can imagine.”
Rescuers began arriving at the crash site in the afternoon, and released photos from helicopters showing smoking wreckage.
Christophe Castaner, deputy of the Alpesde-Haute-Provence region where the jet crashed, tweeted last night: “There is nothing left but debris and bodies.”
However, Germanwings said the jet had been checked by engineers on Monday.
The plane began descending just under an hour after take-off.
French air traffic controllers lost contact at 10.53am, when it was at 6,000ft.
Sebastien Giroud, owner of a sawmill, saw the plane flying low.
He told reporters: “I said to myself: ‘It won’t pass the mountains.'"
Sandrine Boisse, a local tourism official, told how she had heard a strange noise in the area.
She added: “At first we thought it was an avalanche, but it wasn’t the same noise. I think it was the noise of when a plane goes very quickly down.”
Prime Minister David Cameron and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said their thoughts were with the families.
Culled from :Daily Star
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