The lives of a Swedish soccer team scheduled to board the ill-fated Germanwings flight on Tuesday were spared due to a last-minute change in plans.
Dalkurd FF soccer team from Borleange was all set to take Germanwings Airbus A320 out of Barcelona to the German city of Duesseldorf early Tuesday morning, according to the Agence France-Presse. From Duesseldorf, the team was to make its way home, but at the last minute it was determined the layover would be too long.
So they re-booked their trip on three separate flights, avoiding Flight 9525 from Barcelona, which crashed in the French Alps at around 10:45 a.m. All 144 passengers and six crew members were killed.
"We were supposed to be on that plane," Adil Kizil, the team's sporting director, told the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet.
"There were four planes that left around the same time and that flew north over the Alps. Four planes and we had players on three of them. You can say we were very, very lucky."
Team members announced they arrived at their destination after layovers in Zurich and Munich. But they expressed sorrow for the 150 victims, said to be of American, German, and Spanish nationalities. The flight's damaged black box has since been found and a recovery mission is underway at the wreckage site in the rocky, snow-covered French Alps near the town of Digne.
"To all those who have tried to contact us in the past few hours we are home and we are fine," goalkeeper Frank Pettersson tweeted, AFP reported.
"May they rest in peace."
