Wolverhampton father killed in Germanwings plane crash

Martyn Matthews, aged 50, was travelling to a meeting in Germany and had been on business in Barcelona as the jet crashed into a mountain yesterday.

He leaves children Jade, 20, and Nathan, 23, as well as a wife, Sharon, aged 48.

Mr Matthews was a quality manager at Tipton-based automotive firm Huf UK, part of the German-owned Huf Group .

Neighbours of Mr Matthews said they were unaware that he was believed to have been on board the Germanwings flight.

Police standing outside Mr Matthews' home in the Old Hall Park area of Wolverhampton asked reporters not to knock at the door of his semi-detached home.

Four people later left the property without comment.

A spokeswoman at the Tipton site declined to issue any statement in tribute to Mr Matthews out of respect for his family.

Paul Andrew Bramley, 28, who was originally from Hull, was also confirmed to have died in the crash.

The Foreign Office issued a statement on behalf of Mr Bramley's family.

It said: "Paul was studying hospitality and hotel management at Ceasar Ritz College in Lucerne and about to start an internship on April 1.

"Paul had just finished his first year at the college and had taken a few days holiday with friends in Barcelona, before flying back to the UK via Dusseldorf to meet his family."

Mr Bramley's mother, Carol, lives in Majorca and is currently in the UK, having flown over to meet him.

She said: "Paul was a kind, caring and loving son. He was the best son, he was my world."

Mr Bramley's father, Philip, who lives in Hull, said they are both deeply shocked and will miss him.

Marina Bandres Lopez Belio, 37, originally from Spain but living in Manchester, died with her seven-month-old son Julian Pracz-Bandres when the jet crashed in the Alps.

Her husband Pawel Pracz revealed that she had been visiting her family in Spain for her uncle's funeral and bought the tickets at the last moment.

He said in a statement released by the Foreign Office: "I'm with my closest family in Manchester, and in close contact with our family in Spain at this very difficult time. We are devastated and would like to request that we be allowed to grieve in peace as a family without intrusion at this difficult time."

Announcing that three Britons had died, Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said: "We cannot rule out the possibility that there are further British people involved.

"The level of information on the flight manifest doesn't allow us to rule out that possibility until we've completed some further checks."

In the Commons, Prime Minister David Cameron offered his "deepest condolences" to those who had lost loved ones in the crash.

He said: "It is heart-breaking to hear about the schoolchildren, the babies, the families whose lives have been brought to an end.

"The Foreign Office is working urgently to establish whether any further British nationals were among those on board."

On what appears to be his Facebook page, Mr Bramley said he went to Hull Grammar School, one of the oldest private schools in the country, before moving abroad to study hospitality.

The search resumed today with helicopters surveying the scattered debris lifting off at daybreak.

Yesterday, the cockpit voice recorder was retrieved from the site, French interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve said. Although badly damaged it will offer vital clues into the crash's cause and a crucial two-minute span when the pilot lost contact , officials said today.

"The black box is damaged and must be reconstituted in the coming hours in order to be useable," Mr Cazeneuve told RTL radio.

Key to the investigation is what happened during the minutes 10.30am and 10.31a.m., said Segolene Royal, a top government minister whose portfolio includes transport. From then, controllers were unable to make contact with the plane.

The voice recorder takes audio feeds from four microphones within the cockpit and records all the conversations between the pilots, air traffic controllers as well as any noises heard in the cockpit. The flight data recorder, which Mr Cazeneuve said had not been retrieved yet, captures 25 hours' worth of information on the position and condition of almost every major part in a plane.

Ms Royal and Mr Cazeneuve both emphasised that terrorism is considered unlikely.

Investigators retrieving data from the recorder will focus first "on the human voices, the conversations" followed by the cockpit sounds, Transport Secretary Alain Vidalies said.

He said the government planned to release information gleaned from the black box as soon as it can be verified.

Victims included two babies, two opera singers, an Australian mother and her adult son holidaying together, and 16 German high school students and their teachers returning from an exchange trip to Spain.

In Seyne-les-Alpes, locals had offered to host bereaved families because of a shortage of rooms to rent, said the town's mayor, Francis Hermitte.

The plane, operated by Germanwings, a budget subsidiary of Lufthansa, was less than an hour from landing in Dusseldorf on a flight from Barcelona when it unexpectedly went into a rapid eight-minute descent. The pilots sent out no distress call and had lost radio contact with their control centre, France's aviation authority said.

Germanwings said 144 passengers and six crew members were on board.

An Air France flight from Paris to Saigon crashed just a few miles from the same spot in 1953, killing all 42 people on board.