The flight

Flight 9525, an Airbus A320, took off at 10:01 a.m. on March 24 from Barcelona, bound for Dusseldorf. The plane had 144 passengers and six crew members on board.

According to French aviation accident investigators, the plane began descending from its cruising altitude of 38,000 feet at 10:31 a.m. It lost contact with French radar at an altitude of 6,175 feet at 10:40 a.m., the investigators said.

Transponder data shows that the autopilot was reprogrammed by someone inside the cockpit to change the plane's altitude from 38,000 feet to 100 feet, according to Flightradar24, a website that tracks aviation data.

The aircraft crashed in a remote area near Digneles- Bains in the Alpes de Haute-Provence region.

Adapted from http://edition.cnn.com

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