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CNN NEWSROOM

Search for Flight 8501 Resumed; Ferry Passengers Rescued in Adriatic Sea

Aired December 29, 2014 - 10:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


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CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: In about eight hours from now, the sun rises in Indonesia and the search for a missing airliner becomes even more daunting. Search planes grounded by darkness will face an expanded area to comb for any clues in find finding AsiaAir (sic) Fight 8501.

CNN's Andrew Stevens is in the Indonesian city of Surabaya where the flight originated and where families have spent agonizing hours behind closed doors.

ANDREW STEVENS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Ultimately a frustrating day both for the search crews and for the families of the 155 passengers and seven crew aboard Flight 8501. No concrete evidence of the fate of that jetliner despite a much expanded search today with a lot more both vessels on the sea surface and also eyes in the sky. Nothing was found.

Reports earlier that some debris has been spotted by a Royal Austrlian Air Force reconnaissance plane, but the vice president of Indonesia telling us that there was no link to the flight, at least at this stage. He also told us that this was still very much a search-and- rescue operation, even though hope is fading. Rescuers are hoping there is going to be still good conditions for the next day search, which is in a few hours from now, as it continues to expand both in area and in number of vessels and aircraft involved.

Meanwhile here at Surabaya Airport at the crisis center the families of those on board wait increasingly frustrated for the news of their loved ones. They are being constantly updated but they've been telling us they're now getting more information from television reports than they are from the official channels. The frustration is growing but there is at this stage so little to report, and families keep coming back here to the crisis center in the Hope that they may get some little information, whatever it is, so they know what has happened to their loved ones. Andrew Stevens, CNN, Surabaya, Indonesia.

COSTELLO: AirAsia has a very good reputation for safety and the men flying the missing plane had thousands of hours of flight experience, flight 8501's captain who was from Indonesia has more than 20,000 hours of flying with more than 6,000 of them with AirAsia on the airbus A-320. The first officer, French citizen, also had more than 2,000 flying hours. According to Indonesian news media, the captain whose name is Irianto who like many Indonesians uses only one name, has been described as a fan of motorcycles and a devoted member of his local mosque.

Last week he reportedly visited the grave of his younger brother who had recently died. It's been more than 38 hours since the AirAsia flight vanished over the Java Sea amid violent weather. Last moments - before it disappeared the pilots' request to climb to a higher altitude was denied. Now those leading the search efforts can see that all evidence leaves little room for hope.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BAMBANG SOELISTYO, HEAD OF INDONESIAN NATIONAL SEARCH & RESCUE AGENCY (via translator): If the target is on land, it's easier than if it's an underwater location. Because our evaluation of the coordinates that we received suggested it is underwater our resumption now is that the aircraft is under the sea.

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COSTELLO: If AirAsia flight 8501 is really sitting at the bottom of the sea it could make piecing together what happened much more difficult. Joining me now to talk about that is John Goglia, former member of the National Transportation Safety Board. Good morning, sir.

JOHN GOGLIA: Good morning.

COSTELLO: Good morning. So the search has been suspended because, of course, it's night fall over the Java Sea but when the search resumes tomorrow how difficult will it be for authorities to find this plane?

GOGLIA: Well, fortunately, the ocean at that area of the world is not that deep. 150 to 200 feet deep and it's been mapped before. In other words, there's been a survey of the ocean floor accomplished. So it should not be that difficult. In fact, once we get a good fix on the location it will be relatively easy to recover the recorders which will give us a wealth of information about what happened.

COSTELLO: Right. The two so-called black boxes. The plane itself, though, what condition do you suppose it will be in?

GOGLIA: Well, most likely it's pretty well broken up structurally into the -- the wings will probably be together and the fuselage will be badly broken up. And much like TWA 800 that crashed off the coast of Long Island. It was pretty well broken up by the ocean, by the impact and as it settled down the pieces were spread out.

COSTELLO: So, will investigators salvage all the parts of the plane and rebuild it like they normally do in an investigation?

GOGLIA: It depends on what the black boxes say and what they find. We've done that in the U.S. for a number of reasons, not just to recover the airplane. When it gets difficult to determine how the airplane broke up, then you will recover all the pieces. If it's pretty clear what happened, you may not recover all the pieces, you'll just recover the victims of the accident and then leave the rest of it down there.

COSTELLO: Is it likely we'll know all the information we need to from these black boxes?

GOGLIA: High likelihood that the black boxes will tell us what happened. Very high likelihood. But sometimes they don't have all the story so we have to wait and see.

COSTELLO: From what you've observed over these past few days, what do you think happened?

GOGLIA: Well, that's a lot of speculation. It's probably four or five areas of concern to the accident investigators and that is we could have a - we could have had a problem with the phito-static system because the probes again have had another A.D. note - it was - issued against them by the European authorities meaning that the first time we've tried to fix it we didn't get it all so that they're back at that. Although we don't know what kind of probes were on this airplane so it's premature to say that. But that is an area of concern.

We also have the pilot's expertise flying in icing conditions. We've had that happen before with pilots who have low experience flying in icing conditions and make mistakes. We have also security issues which are not the accident investigators' role, but there are concerns around security that need to be explored as well.

COSTELLO: All right, John Goglia, former NTSB, thank you so much. I appreciate it.

GOGLIA: Thank you for having me.

COSTELLO: Let's talk about the role weather played in all of this. This plane supposedly went through violent thunderstorms. I want to show you a picture of the type of cloud that we're talking about. This is a large cumulous nimbus cloud. It can contain heavy thunderstorms, heavy rain and keep in mind it's also cold at 32,000 feet so these clouds could contain both rain and ice. Chad Myers is the expert on this? Here's here to tell us more about these clouds and how dangerous they can be for pilots.

CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: And they were far to the left and far to the right of this plane's path. There's the plane's path coming out of here at Surabaya. All the way to the left here, at least 100 miles. I know that plane is much larger than it truly is, and all the way to the right. This plane would have had to deviate left or right, a significant amount to miss these thunderstorms. A large mass of thunderstorms. Now, not a hurricane or typhoon or cyclone, but certainly in that area that they can form, very warm water at the surface, the water wants to rise in a big cumulate nimbus as you said thunderstorm develops. You have updrafts, you have downdrafts, you have eddies, you have circulation. It's just like flying through the Midwest. You would never want to fly around or fly through a 50,000 foot top over Oklahoma. That is going to be a violent right, so these pilots had to try to deviate around this. They either went left or right or it appears maybe they even went up a little bit trying to get around this storm or series of storms in a big long line.

It's the same type of line that we talked about the Air France disaster five years ago. It had to fly through a long line of weather right here at the ITCZ, the intertropical convergence zone where air converges. When air converges, Carol, at the surface, it can't go down because the ocean is in the way. So when the air converges it has to go up because there's nothing in the way there. This rising motion creates these thunderstorms and these thunderstorms can get very, very violent. Even right here. That's why we don't even fly. This is the same type of stuff that these C-130, these hurricane hunter aircraft fly through and they get really shaken up in this type of weather. Now they're flying through it on purpose, they're not flying jets, they're flying props, and they can breathe a little bit better, those engines can breathe a little bit better, and not be affected by in and out motion or left and right motion, or up and down motion that you can get with these big, big thunderstorms, Carol.

COSTELLO: OK, so I'm talking 2020 hindsight here, should that plane even have taken off that day?

MYERS: Oh, I don't think there's any indication that the plane was in danger when it took off or it would haven't left. I think that these storms develop so very quickly and became a long line so very quickly right in a row that the pilots just saw it and went "Where do we go now? And we're either going to turn around or we're going to try to find a way, a weave our way through this line of storms and most of the time, 99. Something number of times flying through and around thunderstorms is just absolutely fine.

COSTELLO: Chad Myers, thanks for your insight, I appreciate it.

MYERS: If you have questions about the disappearance of AirAsia flight 8501, we want to know what they are, so we can answer them for you. You can use our Twitter hashtag 8501QS. We are going to your questions later this hour.

Still to come in the "NEWSROOM," 419 people rescued from a burning ferry but their nightmare is not quite over yet.

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COSTELLO: We'll continue our coverage of AirAsia flight 8501 in just a minute but first the latest on that Italian ferry. The Navy reports that 419 people have now been rescued, but the nightmare is not over for the frightened passengers who have not reached port in the stormy weather and may be suffering from hypothermia or burns. The fire blamed for seven deaths started early yesterday morning in the Adriatic Sea. CNN's Max Foster has more for you.

MAX FOSTER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It's 24 hours these ferry passengers will never forget. They're the first group rescued by sea and after a full night of waiting it's their first glimpse of daylight and dry land in the Italian port of Bari. Pulled from danger on Sunday after the ferry the Norman Atlantic caught fire off the Greek Island of Corfu carrying 478 people. Treacherous seas, gale force winds and thick smoke acting as a wall between rescue teams and the passengers. As helicopters circled above, the painstaking and risky extraction began. Hoisting passengers one by one to safety and then lowering them back down again on to some of the surrounding merchant ships which were also batting the seas. On board, the fire raging. Officials believe the inferno sparked in the ship's garage. One passenger describing to Italian media the rubber on the soles of their shoes melting. All the while, out on deck, freezing temperatures whipped through those waiting for their turn to be airlifted. One passenger saying "It's like the Titanic." Italian authorities say at least five people have died, one man after he jumped or fell off the ferry. The injured were airlifted straight to a hospital in southern Italy where medics have been on standby. The fire on board now under control with all remaining passengers now accounted for. Max Foster, CNN, London.

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COSTELLO: All right, joining us now live from Athens, Greece, Elinda Labrapoulou, a CNN reporter. Can you bring us up to date on the passengers? Where are they now?

ELINDA LABRAPOULOU, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, a number of the passengers have been taken to the island of Corfu in Greece and a number of them have been taken to Bari in Italy. I was just talking to someone in Corfu, they are assuring me that the health of those who were on board is quite good. Most of them have been taken to hotels rather than just hospitals on the island. They will be spending the night there. As you can understand, most of them are extremely tired. We saw the images of them getting out of the boat covered in blankets taking really small steps, not yet being able to walk. I mean, for most people it's been an ordeal of about 35 hours of standing out there in the cold. Most of them seem to be in good health. According to the medical teams, just some minor problems, mainly to do with the smoke that they have inhaled and just being extremely overtired or suffering in some cases from hypothermia having been outside for so long, but overall it seems that they're in good shape and many of them are planning to go home tomorrow from what I understand.

COSTELLO: Any word on how this fire started?

LABRAPOULOU: Well, there have been all kinds of speculation that maybe the ship had not been loaded properly. What we do know is that Italy is -- has actually launched an investigation, a criminal investigation to see what the motives -- not the motives but what happened in this case, what the causes of the fire might be. But it's going to be a while before experts can actually assess what has taken place and before we have a final outcome on this.

COSTELLO: And I know the seas were too rough for authorities to deploy life rafts so should this ferry have been on the water at all?

LABRAPOULOU: It's difficult to say. I mean, it's a ferry that has made that journey very many times and certainly not always in very good weather conditions. But it's true that in terms of the lifeboats and then the rescue operations the weather has been really the main problem in all this. The rescuers got there quite quickly, the ships gathered around trying to get access. The helicopters were there, but it just took so long to be able to get all these people out because of the severe weather conditions.

COSTELLO: All right, Elinda Labrapoulou, reporting live from Athens, Greece this morning. Thank you.

Still to come in the "NEWSROOM," hopes fade and the search area grows in the frantic scramble to find a missing airliner. We'll talk about that next.

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COSTELLO: It's about eight hours until sunrise in Indonesia when search planes can return to the skies and scour the Java Sea for any signs of flight 8501. When that search resumes at first light, crews will face an expanded new area to canvass. CNN's Paula Hancock is at the staging area for the search.

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PAULA HANCOCK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The search-and-rescue operation for the missing AirAsia plane has definitely grown in size this Monday. We are at the airport on the island of Belitung. And you can see, the military helicopters have been coming in all day. Also, some search and rescue helicopters. What they're basically doing is going out on sorties that coming back here to refuel, have a briefing to find out where they should be going next and then heading off. This is becoming one of the staging areas for this search-and-rescue operation.

Now, this island is one of the closest areas to that last point of contact that the plane had and this is the area that much of the search-and-rescue operation is focusing on. According to one official we just spoke to, the search area now is 240 by 240 nautical miles, so a very large area. They're cordoning it off, sectioning it off to make sure that there's no overlap, to make sure they don't miss any areas. They're doing this very systematically. Now, I did speak to First Marshal Supriyadi. He is in charge of a search and rescue operation in this area, and he says that at this point, they haven't managed to narrow the search down.

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FIRST MARSHALL SUPRIYADI, SEARCH AND RESCUE OPERATION (through translator): We're still searching all areas. Later if we get new data, at least the specific location, then we can narrow it down.

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HANCOCK: I did ask the first marshal if he believed there's the possibility of any survivors still. He said that if the plane crashed in water it is unlikely but if it managed to crash on land, maybe in the jungles to the east of here then survivors are possible. Paula Hancocks, CNN, Belitung Island, Indonesia. (END VIDEOTAPE)

COSTELLO: All right, still to come in the NEWSROOM, We're taking your questions about the disappearance of AirAsia Flight 8501. If you have a question, it's simple. Go to Twitter. Use the hashtag 8501qs.

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COSTELLO: And good morning, I'm Carol Costello. Thanks so much for joining me. The search for missing AirAsia Flight 8501 has been suspended until light returns in Indonesia tomorrow. It's nighttime there. 162 people were on board that plane when it vanished on Sunday. We've been asking for your questions about this latest mysterious flight disappearance. Just go to Twitter, use the hashtag "8501qs" if you have a question. We'll be looking at it. Joining me now to answer your questions, Captain Les Abend, a contributing editor at "Flying" magazine and Mary Schiavo, a CNN aviation analyst and former inspector general of the U.S. Department of Transportation. Welcome to both of you. I'm glad you're here.

LES ABEND, CONTRIBUTING EDITOR, FLYING MAGAZINE: My pleasure.

COSTELLO: Thank you. So, a lot of people have been tweeting this question "If the weather was so bad, why was that plane allowed to take off?" You want to tackle that, Mary?

MARY SCHIAVO, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Absolutely. You know, that's an excellent question and a question that really has to be asked by the investigators of the airline because, you know, the theories on that have changed dramatically now that we have on board weather radar and weather facilities right in the airlines. And a lot of U.S. carriers will opt to cancel flights rather than not just risk the lives but also risk the schedule. And that's a very good question given that wall of red, of that horrible weather. I think the answer is they shouldn't have been there but that remains to be seen by the investigation.

COSTELLO: As far as the equipment on board the plane, Les, did the pilots have enough information to determine how to get around that storm? Because they're the ones that are making the decision, not air traffic controllers.

ABEND: Absolutely. Of course. They had weather radar on board, and it's probably a very sophisticated radar on the A-320. It has the ability to adjust the antennae automatically and the pilots can do it manually. And that tends to be an art. But they can see where the cells are left to right. Of course, deviations, what is the appropriate way to go? So that they definitely have systems available to them.

COSTELLO: OK, so they have systems available and we know, Mary that the pilot asked to ascend so he could get higher so he could get through that terrible cloud with the thunderstorms included, but air traffic control said no, there were other planes in the sky. The other curious thing is there were other planes in the sky around this plane and they made it past that cloud safely. SCHIAVO: All right, but the difference in the weather can vary

dramatically, and particularly in a building thunderstorm situation. And if they were heading in the particular parts of the cloud, especially the parts on the thunderstorm, it's the area off -- what they call the area off the end of the anvil. A thunderstorm builds up in an anvil formation and if this plane had the misfortune of being near the end of the anvil, as Les will know, you learn this in basic flight school, that particular area is really violent. Hail, unbelievable winds. Terrible wind shifts and shear. You know, it can vary dramatically in just a few miles as to what they are experiencing. And also, their rate of climb would have affected it. If they were climbing very quickly there, the engines were taking in lots of water, et cetera, it affects the performance of the aircraft, and the aircraft's performance might have been impaired.

COSTELLO: Wow. So les take us inside the plane. You're the pilot. You know there's this huge weather system ahead that you have to figure out a way around. So, what goes through your mind?

ABEND: Well, let's take it all the way back to operations. I mean, we show up, we go through a pre-flight process which includes not only the flight plan, but looking at the weather information and most of the time we do a self-brief. We have all that information available to us via our company's web sites and so on and so forth. Then we say, OK, well, is that route going to take us through that particular weather? Is it - Well, then we'll talked to our dispatcher and the dispatcher says "Yes, I've got you over here, because this looks like the path of least resistance, perhaps." And then if it's serious enough, like Mary mentioned earlier in the conversation, there's a chance the airline is going to start to cancel things because they're going to have issues where airplanes will be deviating around a very narrow corridor. But in flight we do have that weather radar and we can determine where we can pick that least pat -- that path of least resistance.

COSTELLO: So, you're the pilot in this case, and you talk to the air traffic control and you say "I need to go to 38,000 feet" and they tell you no. What happens then?

ABEND: Well, and that's a great question.