An Airbus A320 aircraft with five people on board crashed into the sea off the southwest coast of France on Thursday while on a training flight, regional authorities said.

“An aircraft crashed at around 5.00 p.m. (1600 GMT) off the coast near Perpignan. It was an A320,” said a spokesman for the maritime prefecture, the regional authority that covers the area in southwestern France.

The A320 is one of Airbus’s best-selling single-aisle airliners.

Officials from the DGAC, the French civil aviation authority were checking reports of the crash.

No further details were immediately available and there was no immediate comment from Airbus, a unit of European aerospace group EADS.

(Source: Reuters)