The Airbus A320 airliner which crashed in the French Alps between Barcelonnette and Digne, on Tuesday morning belongs to the German airline Germanwings, a subsidiary of Lufthansa.
The plane, flight 4U 9525, had been en route from Barcelona to Duesseldorf with 144 passengers and six crew.
Debris of the crashed aircraft was found at altitude of 6,500ft after crash near Digne les Bains.
There are 67 German, 45 Spanish and unspecified Turkish passengers among victims.
No one is expected to have survived, French President Francois Hollande said. He and German Chancellor Angela Merkel have spoken of their shock.
“This is the hour in which we all feel deep sorrow,” Ms Merkel told reporters, adding that she was planning to travel to the crash site.
Speaking earlier, Hollande said the “conditions of the accident, which have not yet been clarified, lead us to think there are no survivors”.
He described the crash as a tragedy, adding that it had taken place in an area that was hard to access.
Several German newspapers are reporting that the passengers included a German school class on its way back from an exchange trip.
Sandrine Boisse, a tourism official from the ski resort of Pra Loup, told the BBC that she had heard a strange noise in the mountains at around 11:00 (10:00 GMT).
“At first we thought it was on the ski slopes, an avalanche, but it wasn’t the same noise,” she said. “I think it was the noise of when a plane goes very quickly down.”
Spain’s King Felipe, on a state visit to France, thanked the French government for its help and said he was cancelling the rest of his visit.
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