LE VERNET, France (AP) – The families of those killed in the Germanwings plane crash released white balloons into the air Friday, holding a ceremony in the Alpine village exactly four months after the plane’s co-pilot crashed the Airbus 320 into a nearby mountain.
The inter-religious service under a tent honored those whose bodies went unidentified. Those remains were buried on Thursday night at the nearby Le Vernet cemetery, but families visited the grave at the close of the service as the balloons floated skyward.
French prosecutors say co-pilot Andreas Lubitz locked the pilot out of the cockpit on the March 24 flight from Barcelona to Duesseldorf, then set the aircraft on its doomed course. All 150 people aboard the plane died, mostly German and Spanish.
The town sub-prefect, Patricia Willaert, estimated that 300 family members attended the service at the memorial stone laid near the mountain where their loved ones died.
Among those absent was Carsten Spohr, the CEO of Lufthansa, Germanwings’ parent company, who decided not to attend “because of the tense atmosphere that has arisen in recent days” as a result of an open letter from a group of victims’ relatives, company spokesman Helmut Tolksdorf said.