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A bus transporting relatives of the passengers of the Germanwings flight that crashed in the French Alps on Tuesday has departed on Wednesday evening from Barcelona, together with a support team from Catalonia's Medical Emergencies Service (SEM). In addition, on Thursday morning, Lufthansa, which owns low-cost airline Germanwings, will put on a plane from Barcelona to Marseille to transport other relatives, who will also travel with SEM teams. The CEO of the German company, Carsten Spohr, held a press conference in Barcelona El Prat Airport on Wednesday evening, in which he announced this measure, after meeting with some relatives. Spohr also stated that the accident was "incomprehensible" and that the aircraft had departed from Barcelona with a half-hour delay due to airport traffic and not because of a technical problem. During the day, relatives have been taken care of in a hotel in Castelldefels.

The President of the Catalan Government, Artur Mas, travelled on Wednesday morning to France in order to visit the crash site of the Germanwings Barcelona-Düsseldorf flight, which crashed in the Alps on Tuesday killing all 150 people on board. Out of the 51 passengers with Spanish passports whose identities have so far been confirmed, 39 of them were Catalans, although this figure is likely to increase in the coming hours. Furthermore, although not Spanish nationals, other victims had been living and working in Catalonia. Mas joined the Spanish Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy, who was also visiting the area together with the French President, François Hollande, and the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel. Rajoy and Mas flew together to France, and arrived at the crash site by road a few minutes after Hollande and Merkel.