Police escort family members of an air crash victim at Barcelona's El Prat airport on Tuesday after a Germanwings airliner crashed near a ski resort in the French Alps with all 150 people on board feared dead, officials said. Photo: AFP

An Airbus A320 operated by Lufthansa's Germanwings budget airline crashed in a remote snowy area of the French Alps on Tuesday with 150 on board feared dead.

French President Francois Hollande said he believed none of those on board the A320 had survived, while the head of Lufthansa spoke of a dark day for the German airline.

Germanwings confirmed at a press conference its flight 4U9525 from Barcelona to Dusseldorf crashed in the French Alps.

It said 67 of the passengers were German. Spain's deputy prime minister earlier said 45 passengers had Spanish names.

"The airplane left Barcelona at 10:01 am. There were 144 passengers on board including two babies and six crew members," said a Germanwings spokesperson.

Among the victims were 16 children and two teachers from the Joseph-Koenig-Gymnasium high school in the town of Haltern am See in northwest Germany.

"At 10:47 am it left its travel and cruising altitude ... and entered into a descent stage. This stage lasted for a total of eight minutes. The contact between the plane and the French radar broke off at 10:53 ... The plane then crashed," the  spokesperson said.

Contact was lost when the plane was at 6,000 feet (1,828.8 meters).

The airline will not release data about the passengers until the families have been informed, and will coordinate with French authorities and air traffic control, the spokesperson said. The captain had been with Lufthansa for 10 years, and had 6,000 hours flying hours on the A320.

France's DGAC aviation authority said air traffic controllers initiated distress procedures after they lost contact with the Airbus, which did not issue a distress call.

France's Interior Ministry said debris in the jet crash is located at 2,000 meters altitude and the black box has been found.

Meanwhile, relatives of passengers started to arrive at Barcelona's El Prat airport to a room set aside for them.  

Germany's Angela Merkel will travel on Wednesday to the crash site. She called the crash a shock which had plunged Germany, France and Spain into "deep mourning."

"I will travel there tomorrow to get my own impression and to speak with local officials," the chancellor told reporters.

The accident happened in an alpine region known for skiing, hiking and rafting, but which is hard for rescue services to reach. As helicopters and emergency vehicles assembled, the weather was reported to be closing in.

French and German accident investigators were heading for the crash site in Meolans-Revel, a remote and sparsely inhabited commune in the foothills of the French Alps.

Lufthansa Chief Executive Carsten Spohr spoke of a "dark day" for the airline.

"We do not yet know what has happened to flight 4U9525. My deepest sympathy goes to the families and friends of our passengers and crew," Lufthansa said on Twitter, citing Spohr.

The A320 is a workhorse of worldwide aviation fleets. They are the world's most used passenger jets and have a good though not unblemished safety record.

Airbus said it was aware of reports of the crash.

The crashed A320 is 24 years old - at the upper end of useful life of an aircraft in first-tier airlines - and has been with the parent Lufthansa group since 1991, according to online database airfleets.net.

It had undergone a routine check Monday and a major inspection in August 2013.

It was the first crash of a large passenger jet on French soil since the Concorde disaster just outside Paris in July 2000.

In July 2000, an Air France Concorde crashed shortly after take-off from Paris's Charles de Gaulle airport en route for New York, leaving 113 people, mainly Germans, dead and eventually leading to the supersonic airliner being taken out of service.