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Sixteen children and two teachers from the same school were among the 150 people believed to have perished on the Germanwings flight. The youngsters were returning from a nine-day exchange trip in Barcelona when the plane was lost in a remote region of the French Alps.
Last night it emerged the school children almost escaped death because one 15-year-old girl had left her passport behind. But in a tragic twist, her host family offered to race the girl and all her travel documents to the airport in Barcelona directly, allowing them all to get on the flight in time.
The pupils were from the Joseph-Koenig-Gymnasium school in Western Germany, an English-speaking grammar. At Dusseldorf Airport yesterday parents who had expected to welcome their children home were in tears as news of the horrifying crash began to break. The distressed families were ushered into private rooms at the airport by the police and representatives of Germanwings, where they were offered counselling.
Several distraught family members were expected to be flown out to the Alps last night – while Angela Merkel prepared for a visit to the crash site herself, which is expected to take place today. The German students had spent over a week with the families of Spanish children who attend the Giola institute in Llinars del Valles, near Barcelona, to study the Spanish language. There were rumours that several of the students had missed the flight after one of them forgot her passport but hopes were subsequently dashed by Marti Pujol, the mayor of the Spanish village. The mayor revealed that the young girl had realised she left her passport behind after arriving at the train station with the rest of her companions to catch a train to Barcelona's El Prat airport. Children at the Giola Secondary School, where the exchange students were on exchange, spoke of their sorrow after hearing the news.
One, Anna Garcia, said: 'One of the German girls left a bag with all her travel documents inside at her host family's home. 'So they didn't hold the rest of the group up, the family took her to the airport and she was able to board the plane.' ‘Our German teacher is very affected by the news. He says he has to put on a brave face for the pupils’ sake but he is going through a very bad time.’
In emotional scenes in Haltern-am-See this afternoon, schoolmates of those killed in the disaster were seen comforting one another and embracing and they laid flowers at the school gates. 'Gone but not forgotten, lost but always with us. Our hearts are broken but you are forever in them,' read one to a girl called Kati. Another pupil called Ibrahim told a local TV station: 'I lost a good friend on that plane, 15 years old, a beautiful girl with everything ahead of her. We are in bits here. We cannot take it in.'
Memorial services are expected to take place at both the German and Spanish schools for the youngsters and their teachers this morning, and the Spanish government announced three days of national mourning. As messages of condolence flooded in from politicians and celebrities, national German football team player Benedikt Höwedes tweeted: ‘Our sympathies to the victims and their families of this tragic aircraft accident. Any one of us could have been sitting on board that plane.’
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