That brings us to the end of our live coverage for today. You can continue to get the latest developments on our main story.

Spohr: What they [the families] have gone through is incomprehensible. It was difficult to be there.

Germanwings CEO Thomas Winkelmann tells reporters whoever wants to come to Germany or France from the other side of the Atlantic will be supported financially.

Image source, AP

Spohr: The aircraft will have 150 seats and we will see over the next few hours how many of those we can fill.

Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr says there will be a special flight to Marseilles tomorrow at 08:45 (local time) from Barcelona for family members. With the assistance of the French authorities they will then bring relatives to the crash site.

Lufthansa and Germanwings executives are expected to give a news conference shortly at El Prat airport in Barcelona.

The BBC's Tim Willcox has been reporting from Seyne-les-Alpes on Wednesday, watching as search and rescue teams head out to the treacherous terrain of the mountainside crash site.

He said it has been "a day of grief, bewilderment, but of huge professionalism here".

George Baker

Image source, George Baker

George Baker sent us this picture of the German flag flying at half mast at a Lufthansa flight training centre in Arizona.

Reuters reports a third US citizen was on board the flight. State Department Spokeswoman Jen Psaki said the name of the victim was not being released at this time.

BBC correspondent Tom Burridge
Llinars del Valles, Spain

There were solemn faces and sunglasses to hide the tears, as children in this small village held a private ceremony at their school. They read a poem and listened to a song that their German friends, here on an exchange, had played to them.

In the village's main square there was a moment's silence, a scene repeated across Spain, as the public learnt more about the Spanish passengers on board. It emerged a team of Swedish footballers made the best decision of their lives when they opted not to catch the flight.

The authorities in Catalonia have been collecting DNA samples from relatives, who are staying near Barcelona Airport, and Lufthansa is working to organise transport to take some of the families to the crash site.

Image source, AP

Rana Rahimpour
BBC Persian Service

The two Iranian victims on Germanwings 4U 9525 were both sports journalists who had travelled to Barcelona to cover Sunday's match between Real Madrid and Barcelona. Milad Hojatoleslami worked for semi-official Tasnim news agency and Hossein Javadi was a journalist at the Vatan-e-Emrouz newspaper.

They had waited at the airport in Barcelona for two days to find cheap tickets for a flight to Germany.

Image source, Getty Images

Here is another view of the area in the French Alps where teams are searching, as shown in this image provided by the French Interior Ministry.

Many countries are mourning the victims of the crash, with more than a dozen nations involved. French President Francois Hollande, seen here between Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, has promised to stand "shoulder to shoulder" with all of those affected.

Image source, AFP/Getty

Some more news on the US citizens thought to have died in the crash.

Drexel University said in a statement that Emily Selke graduated with honours in 2013, having been a music industry major, AP reported.

A statement posted on the Facebook page of her university sorority Gamma Sigma Sigma said Emily "always put others before herself and cared deeply for all those in her life".

Two Americans who were on board the Germanwings flight have been named as Yvonne Selke, from Virginia, and her daughter Emily Selke, AP reported.

AP said Yvonne Selke was a US government contractor. She was employed by Booz Allen Hamilton, in Washington, and worked with the Pentagon's satellite mapping office, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.

The BBC's Jenny Hill, who is in Haltern, says the trip the German exchange students took to Barcelona was oversubscribed.

"Scores of pupils from the school had wanted to join the trip," she said. "The school held a lottery to see which of the students would get a place."

Image source, Getty Images

A reminder of the inhospitable terrain investigators have been working in.

Image source, AFP

A crisis centre has been set up in the French Alps to help deal with the aftermath of the crash. The BBC's Tim Willcox visited the site, which is where families of the victims are likely to be accommodated.

French investigators say usable data has been extracted from the cockpit voice recorder of Germanwings 4U 9525, but it has so far yielded no clues as to the cause of the plane's crash. Latest BBC News story here, external.

A student who knew some of the German students who were killed in the plane crash is comforted during a minute's silence in front of the council building in Llinars del Valles, near Barcelona, Spain. The group of teenagers had been staying there on an exchange trip.

Image source, AP