The Airbus A320 went down in the French Alps with 148 people aboard on Tuesday morning, about 50 minutes after leaving Barcelona, 25 miles west of the Italian border. Shortly after reaching a cruising altitude of 38,000 feet, the plane descended rapidly for eight minutes until air traffic controllers lost contact with the plane at 6,000 feet. Emergency crews dispatched to the plane's last known location soon spotted debris, but no sign of any survivors. The small pieces—none bigger than a car, according to one local official—indicate the plane crashed at high speed, and searchers have already located one of the aircraft's two black boxes.

More than 400 police officers, firefighters, and others are on the scene, according to The New York Times. The BEA, France's equivalent of the National Transportation Safety Board, sent seven investigators, accompanied by experts from Airbus and the company that manufactured the plane's engines. They'll be joined by three German investigators.