With white sheets and hastily requisitioned flags, villagers and police in the remote French Alpine community of Seyne Les Alpes were turning their youth club building into a makeshift funeral home.
As the search and rescue helicopters descended from the high peaks, hope faded even of finding intact bodies from the Barcelona-Dusseldorf flight. A team of 10 helicopters had scoured the area for a day, while 300 firemen scaled the steep slopes in search of bodies. Last night the operations resumed.
The day had dawned beautifully. It was, according to one Air France pilot, a fabulous day for flying. Gerard Monchablon, in the cockpit of his plane, was flying high above the clouds over the southern French Alps. Suddenly, across his radio, came the terrible news that a plane nearby had crashed. "It was the only aircraft near me. Then two Mirages [French fighter jets] arrived."
Down in the valley below, in the hamlet of Beaujeu, a local man outside his home near Digne Les Bains heard an unusual sound. "It was strange," he told local newspaper Le Dauphine Libere. "I'm used to planes going overhead, but not like that. It was low; it was really low. Normally if it's low it's a military plane. I couldn't see because of clouds, but from the noise I could tell it wasn't a military plane. I would have said it was trying to keep its altitude."
Emile Gall, also below the clouds in the village of Seyne, did not see the plane either. "But I heard it. I heard it flying really low." She, too, thought that it was a military plane. "Then I heard a funny noise, like an engine misfiring. Then I heard a big muffled sound."
