The German jetliner that crashed on Tuesday went down in the same part of the French Alps where a plane slammed into a mountain 62 years ago.
On Sept. 1, 1953, an Air France plane was coming in for a landing at Nice when it crashed into 10,000-foot-tall Mont Cimet, near the village of Barcelonette. All 33 passengers and all nine members of the crew were killed. The dead included Jacques Thibaud, a celebrated violinist.
The plane burned for more than three hours after the crash, according to news reports at the time.
The flight, aboard a Lockheed L-749A Constellation, was part of Air France service from Paris to what was then called Saigon, with stops in Nice, Lebanon, Iraq, Pakistan and India.
A Lockheed Constellation plane begins service on the Air France Paris-Saigon line in 1950. A Lockheed Constellation on the Paris-Saigon line crashed in 1953 into Mont Cimet, near the village of Barcelonette in the French Alps.
