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NEW DAY

AirAsia Plane Disappears in Stormy Weather

Aired December 29, 2014 - 06:00   ET

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


(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: AirAsia flight lost contact with air traffic controllers Sunday morning.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There have been reports of objects floating the search zone, do you know if they are linked to the missing plane? The early assumption is that the plane is at the bottom of the sea.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Passengers aboard a smoldering Greek ferry.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: One compared this to the Titanic.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Visibility is very, very bad right now.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, welcome to NEW DAY. It is Monday, December 29th. It's 6:00 in the east. I'm Michaela Pereira along with John Berman. Our Christine Romans will join us shortly.

We want to welcome all of our viewers in the U.S. and those around the globe. Of course, we begin with breaking news, Indonesian officials versus expanded the search, the search is likely to be suspended soon. Daylight is fading there.

Flight 8501 was on its way to Singapore from Indonesia with 162 people aboard when that aircraft vanished Sunday morning, minutes after pilots requested an altitude change in stormy weather. No distress call was made from that cockpit.

BERMAN: A search official this morning says that he believes the plane is likely at the bottom of the sea. That is their best conjecture at this point, although there doesn't seem to be any hard evidence of that.

Ships, planes, helicopters, they're scouring this busy shipping channel in the Java Sea looking for any sign of the plane. Of course, this is the second commercial jet liner to go missing in southeast Asia. This brings back so many memories of the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which was almost 10 months ago. That is a mystery that remains unsolved at this moment.

We are covering this story like only CNN can in all of the key locations. We want to get straight to Andrew Stevens, live on the ground in Indonesia -- Andrew.

ANDREW STEVENS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Chris. If you think about what's happened, it's now 36 hours since that plane went missing, and hopes here are fading.

Really, really ramped-up search today. More than 30 surface vessels, more than 15 aircraft. But still no sign. No concrete sign of what may have happened to 8501. And the frustrations, of course, for the families of the passengers, are growing.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

STEVENS (voice-over): This morning, grim new details as the search for AirAsia Flight 8501 continues. Indonesian authorities leading the search and rescue think the plane is likely on the bottom of the sea, based on coordinates of the plane's last transmission.

Here at Surabaya Airport, it's become crisis central. The distraught relatives of the 155 passengers briefed here earlier today behind closed doors.

Monday marks the first full day of searching since 8501 disappeared early Sunday morning. So far the plane has not put out any signals that could help pinpoint its location. Instead, crews search on this very broad search zone of the shallow waters of the Java Sea where the plane was last tracked. At 5:36 a.m. the Airbus A320 took off from Surabaya. Roughly an hour later, AirAsia says 8501 lost contact with air traffic control, vanishing en route to Singapore.

Weather reports indicate the pilots encountered severe storms that may have contributed to the fate of the passengers and crew.

MARY SCHIAVO, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Usually it's not one thing that brings down a plane. And for a modern jetliner, a strong, big jetliner to be brought down by turbulence, it's rare.

STEVENS: One theory: that the plane might have stalled as it climbed to a higher altitude. This screen grab, reported leaked by an Indonesian air traffic controller, seems to support that.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What it shows is this particular flight had an altitude of 36,000 feet and climbing, but traveling at approximately 105 miles per hour, too slow to sustain flight.

STEVENS: CNN could not validate the authenticity of that that image. But we do know that at 6:12 a.m., one of the pilot's radio took permission to avoid clouds by turning left and climbing from 32,000 feet to 38,000 feet. It would be the last known communication from the crew.

TONY FERNANDES, AIRASIA CEO: We are very devastated about what's happened. It's unbelievable. We do not know what happened yet. We will await the investigation to find out what's happened.

STEVENS: To these two teenage girls, whose parents were aboard the flight, all they can do is wait, holding onto hope that their families will soon be found.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

STEVENS: So many stories of despair and sadness. Now 150 of those passengers were Indonesians, and the families of these passengers are getting increasingly frustrated.

And they're actually now being asked by authorities, Michaela, if they can bring in pictures of their loved ones, if they can bring in any samples that would contain DNA. So obviously, authorities here preparing for the worse, as are many now of the family. Some still holding hope against hope that something miraculous may happen, but as the hours tick past, it seems increasingly unlikely, Michaela.

PEREIRA: Yes. It's heart-breaking to hear of their grief and anxiety. All right, thank you for that.

We know several other countries have joined now the search for the missing plane, including Singapore, Malaysia and Australia. Indonesian -- Indonesia, rather, has reached out to countries like the U.S. for underwater search technology.

We want to turn to Paula Hancocks, who's live now from the staging area in Indonesia with more. We know daylight hours are waning now, Paula.

PAULA HANCOCKS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Michaela. You can see dusk is falling here, and it's falling for a second day. So the air search is effectively over.

We've seen the past couple of hours here. It's been very quiet. We haven't seen the helicopters and planes landing as we have throughout the day.

Of course, those ships that are in the Java Sea will be able to stay there. They can keep their spotlights on. But of course, it's very difficult to see anything in the pitch black.

So, obviously, a very disappointing end to the second day for those relatives of the passengers and the crew.

Now, we did speak to the head of the search and operation here. This is Belitung Island. It's basically one of the islands that's closest to the last area that this plane was known to have been in, the last point of contact. And he basically says that they don't know at this point where the exact location is. He says they don't have the data to pinpoint where they should be looking. So what they have is like a 240-by-240-nautical-mile area, a huge area that they are combing through at the moment -- Michaela.

BERMAN: All right. I'll take it here, Paula. Thank you so much for the latest information on this search.

It is such an excruciating way for the families of the 162 people on board this flight, relatives crying, begging to know the fate of their loved ones, so many tears. This as the families demand answers to what right now, really, is the unknown.

Let's go to Will Ripley live in Beijing, tracking the families' stories for us this morning.

Good morning, Will.

WILL RIPLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: John, good morning.

And there are 154 people still missing here in China. Those, of course, passengers of Flight 370. And the families of those people know, perhaps better than almost anyone else, what this ordeal is like.

And this has become front-page news. It's all over not only the newspapers but also all over television here in China. And a headline right next to the missing plane is how this has brought people back to that day in early March when Flight 370 disappeared. And family members for ten months have been waiting, not knowing what happened to their loved ones, now sitting and watching the coverage and sobbing, because it makes them feel like it's happening all over again. They know exactly what the families of those 162 people are going through.

BERMAN: I know. It's a sadly familiar tale for many of those families. Will Ripley for us in Beijing this morning, thanks so much -- Michaela.

PEREIRA; All right. We want to turn to our CNN aviation correspondent, Richard Quest. CNN safety analyst David Soucie is here. He's also former FAA safety inspector and the author of "Why Planes Crash." Two gentleman that we turn to in times like this. And they've become all too familiar.

David, I want to start with you. We've heard that Indonesian search- and-rescue officials are effectively saying that they believe -- I think the word is our early conjecture is that the plane is at the bottom of the sea, according to a coordinate that they last received. What coordinate could they be talking about here?

DAVID SOUCIE, CNN SAFETY ANALYST: This could be the last information that came from the aircraft about where it was, either from secondary radar or from the ADSB. And that would have told them exactly where the aircraft was at the time it lost communication.

PEREIRA: And Richard, we know of this area where a lot of comparisons are being made between MH-370. This area was well-traveled. This was shallow water. Does its surprise you that nothing has been spotted or found, substantively, yet?

RICHARD QUEST, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: No, not really, because although you're still talking about a shallow area and a much smaller area than MH-370, you've still got to get the boats and the ships there, and you are still looking for a fairly small object in a rather large sea.

Michaela, the issue will, of course, be whether or not the plane -- I don't mean to put it unkindly -- whether it broke up in the air so you're looking at lots of debris or whether or not it broke up as it hit the water, in which case it will be a smaller debris field. Those are things they're going to be looking for. I am more confident that they will find something sooner. I don't think it's going to be that long a search.

PEREIRA: OK. We know issue that weather is an issue for search and rescue operators. We also know weather was an issue for the flight, itself.

David, talk to us about the weather. If the weather was as bad -- we've heard there were reports of terrible thunderstorms in the area -- would they have been bad enough to have prevented the plane from even taking off to begin with?

SOUCIE: Well, they weren't. Obviously, they have that information before they take off. So no, they wouldn't have taken off knowing that that cloud was there, that they couldn't pass it. But these clouds change very, very quickly.

PEREIRA: They do.

SOUCIE: And even if you tried to get over the cloud, by the time that you went over the cloud, knowing where the top was, the top could be climbing at a rate quicker than you are.

PEREIRA: So let's stay with that for a second. How badly can -- because I think so many of us that fly, it makes us nervous when we experience that turbulence when there's a thunderstorm or something in the area, that bad weather. How bad does it have to get and could a thunderstorm bring down an airplane?

SOUCIE: It's extremely rare. I've only done one accident investigation in which a thunderstorm actually brought an aircraft down, and that was a much smaller aircraft, much more susceptible to that type of weather. So it's very, very rare that that would happen. The destructive testing which I did early in my career to try to break airplane wings literally, they nearly touch each other before they'll break.

PEREIRA: Could it take out an engine?

SOUCIE: An engine is less likely even than that. The only thing that it might cause is a compressor stall, which is when the air into the engine is disrupted either by hail or by some kind of a cross-wind flow or a stall. That kind of thing can happen, but engines recover from that.

PEREIRA: Right.

SOUCIE: So again, that's less likely, even, than in a thunderstorm.

PEREIRA: Well, we know these new jets are so much more advanced than they ever used to be. And also, we just heard Mary Schiavo say it takes more than one thing, Richard, to bring a jet down.

So let's talk about some of the other aspects. We know that this plane went from 38,000 feet to 32,000 feet. Then there was about a four-minute gap before the plane dropped off the radar. What does that tell you? What questions does it bring to mind?

QUEST: I think you might have just misspoken. It was going from 32 to 38,000 feet.

PEREIRA: Pardon me. Pardon me. Yes.

QUEST: Just so we're on the same page. Yes, the plane was climbing at the time and there is this now radar picture that suggests the speed has bled off and was now dangerously slow. These are valuable clues.

To what David was saying the weather, itself, doesn't bring down a plane. The plane is built to handle that. What happens is, it's how everything responds to it. How the aircraft respond. Do any systems fail that the pilots have to respond to.

So here we have a situation that we believe is the plane is climbing. We know that for a fact. It appears it might have been going too slow. And then you have this gap where maybe the aircraft stalled.

And by stalling, of course, just to clarify, we're not talking here about the engine stopping, stalling of a car, for example. We're talking about the aerodynamics of the wing where there's not enough air flow over the wing to create lift. That in aviation is known as the stall.

PEREIRA: Right. And of course, other things you mentioned, you looked at the mechanical aspects of the plane. You also look at the experience of the pilots. What do we know of the experience of these pilots?

QUEST: There's a -- AirAsia puts out a statement saying that the captain had 6,000 hours, a total of 6,000 hours. Tony Fernandes, the chief executive, in one of his press conferences, said in all, he had 20,000 hours. So we're not quite sure exactly where that stands at the moment, whether it's 20 or whether it's 6.

The first officer had 2-and-a-half thousand hours of flight. So at those sort of levels and bearing in mind they were experienced pilots in that part of the world, they would have been familiar with the -- with the governance (ph) zone, with the actual bad weather that you effect in those, and those very violent storms that can come up so quickly.

PEREIRA: Right. We know the airline itself had, up until now, a pretty impeccable safety record, David. And it makes us turn to the technology on board. We haven't heard word of the emergency locator beacons being sounded. What do you make of that?

SOUCIE: Well, the emergency locator beacons, remember, are designed for impact. And once they're submerged underwater, the signal is not receivable. It's under the water; it can't transmit. So that the ELT itself is not going to be much benefit in a water type accident or a break-up of this thing.

PEREIRA: So interesting. We have all been talking about, you know, the comparisons that we were just here with MH-370. That's how we got to know you so well, was through all the coverage that we did with that. And during that conversation, we talked about the need to track these planes every second of the day. We were talking about the urgent need for that. Here we are again.

SOUCIE: You know, that's so incredibly, incredibly frustrating for me and for everyone: the families, everyone else. It's information that we had back at Air France 447. The recommendation was made then. The recommendation was even on the table before 447 about streaming this information.

If we had streaming information on 447, it would have made a difference. If we had streaming information on 370, it would have made a difference. And now here we are again, once more, trying to find an aircraft out there and letting families suffer during this time is just abhorrent to me the fact that this hasn't been done yet.

PEREIRA: Richard, final thought to you, because I thought about that. It's just days after Christmas. It's just before the new year. We have 100-something odd families now grieving as they wait for answers.

You feel, though, even though the search is likely -- the air search is going to be called off for the day because of night falling. You feel answers should be coming soon?

QUEST: Yes, experience tells me that this particular part of the sea is not going to be. I mean, it's going to be challenging. If they've got good primary, secondary, ADSB radar that they know roughly, then they're really working out where it's likely to have come down and first object to find.

We - frankly, Michaela, let's remember, we do only have MH-370 as the only case where nothing's ever been found. So common sense tells us it's going to be.

Very briefly, very quickly on David's point about tracking and radar. The fact is it's a disgrace. The aviation industry knows what needs to be done. Everybody knows what needs to be done. They just need to get off their backsides and do it.

PEREIRA: Sadly, just another remainder of that very fact here. Richard, we appreciate your expertise.

David Soucie here in studio with us, thanks so much. Obviously, there's a lot of other headlines that we need to get to. We turn to Christine Romans for that.

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Thank you for that, Michaela.

Rescue crews are racing against time to save more than 100 people, 100 people still stranded on that, a burning ferry in the Adriatic Sea between Greece and Italy. The Italian navy says at least 340 people have been rescued. Massive undertaken. But five people have now been confirmed dead. The fire believed to have started in the parking bay. It's been burning for well over 24 hours. Two hundred twenty cars -- vehicles on board that ferry.

A major turning point in Afghanistan as the U.S. formally ends its combat role in the war-torn country. After 13 years, more than $1 trillion and the deaths of 2,200 servicemen and women, President Obama says the war in Afghanistan is coming to a responsible conclusion. Some 10,000 American troops will remain in Afghanistan to advise and assist Afghan security forces.

A city-wide tactical alert now in place in Los Angeles after two suspects opened fire on two police officers driving in their patrol car. LAPD now calling it a premeditated attack. The officers who were not injured returned fire. One suspect was arrested. The second suspect remains on the run, is considered armed and dangerous. Investigators say they've recovered two weapons used in that shooting.

And the controversy surrounding Sony Pictures' "The Interview" didn't stop fans from seeing the flick. The film raked in more than $15 million through online sales in its first four days of release. Sony says the movie was rented or purchased online more than 2 million times. The comedy...

BERMAN: (INAUDIBLE)

ROMANS: It really is. The comedy also took in almost $3 million at those theaters showing the movie this week, those independent theaters. It didn't have wide release. It still made almost $18 million.

BERMAN: No, because the big chains -- the big chains wouldn't show it if it was being released online at the same time, because they don't want to set that precedent.

ROMANS: And a lot of people who had no intention of every seeing that film right now curious about it.

PEREIRA: They are. And I heard that from people over the holiday saying, "Well, now, I have to see it."

BERMAN: It's their patriotic duty...

PEREIRA: I've heard that, as well.

BERMAN: ... to go see "The Interview."

PEREIRA: Good to see you both of you, by the way.

ROMANS: Nice to see you, too.

Still ahead, we're going to explore the role that weather, did it play a role in the disappearance of AirAsia Flight 8501. We're going to look at how big a contributing factor it might have been. We're also going to examine comparisons being made with the crash of Air France 447.

BERMAN: Also going to sift through all the facts that we have right now. There are not many, but there are some that are crucial and may give us some sense of what went wrong.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: Good morning. The very latest now on the search for AirAsia Flight 8501. And right now the main focus is the weather when that plane vanished. Authorities lost contact with the plane just minutes after the pilots requested a change in altitude to try to avoid storm clouds. There are also new questions this morning about the flight speed.

So joining me to talk about this is CNN meteorologist Chad Myers. Also, director of special projects at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, David Gallo is with us.

And Chad, I want to start with you with this very latest information we're getting, reportedly a screen grab from air traffic control which showed this Flight 8501 rising in altitude, but perhaps flying too slowly at that altitude. Why would that be a concern?

CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Let's break this down for you. I'm going to take you where you are at 36,000 feet and give you a division number for how much air is up there. You know, when you go to the top of the mountain, you can't run as fast, because there's not much as much oxygen up there.

At 36,000 feet there's only 25 percent of the air that we have at the surface. So if that plane, in fact, was only going 353 knots, 406 miles per hour, multiply that by 25 percent. They are expecting that airplane to fly at 100 miles per hour at the surface. An A-320 does not fly at 100 miles per hour, not really, even with full flaps.

Here is the issue up there. It's the air, and it's the speed, and you have to make those two constant. You keep your mach exactly the same. This plane was going too slowly for that altitude.

And you know, John, we've all been in airplanes when it starts to get bumpy. What does the air -- what does the pilot do? He starts to slow the plane, just a little bit, starts to bleeds off a little bit of speed to kind of make that ride a little bit better.

Well, if this was either pilot error, computer error, because this is a fly-by-wire aircraft. When you get into that type of vertical instability up and down, maybe those pitot tubes have a little bit of icing on them, as well, all of a sudden, like Mary Schiavo talked about, you know, we're talking about not one thing will bring down any one aircraft, but you put all those three things together, and all of a sudden we have a problem. That's exactly what happened to this airplane.

BERMAN: The pilots talking now say there's very little margin when you're dealing with speeds at that altitude.

Chad, hang on for a second.

The speed issue aside, David Gallo -- of course, David, we should say you lead the search efforts for Air Flight France 447, which disappeared in the Atlantic so many years ago at this point.

All that issue of speed aside, weather has been the main focus here. Because the pilots relatively experienced; the aircraft, itself, relatively new. The airline with a flawless safety record. So we're looking at the weather, because the pilot said they were concerned about the weather. Do you see a comparison between this flight, 8501, and what you studied in Air France Flight 447?

DAVID GALLO, WOODS HOLE OCEANOGRAPHIC INSTITUTION: Sure, absolutely. In many ways it's the same situation. They were approaching, in fact, the same kind of inter-tropical convergence zone, lots of big cells of weather.

In the case of Air France 447, they did get some icing on the pitot tubes, and the pilots pulled back on the stick, putting that aircraft, Air France 447, Airbus 330, into a stall. And it was that handoff between the computer saying, "I can't handle this spurious information. You fly the plane," where things started going wrong.

And we heard from Richard and Mary Schiavo -- Richard Quest and Mary about how things compiled to cause a disaster. And so, you know, there are some similarities in that regard.

BERMAN: Yes. Combination between the weather conditions, also equipment malfunction combined with pilot decision there, all added up?

GALLO: It's not a matter of shaking the plane apart. It's just causing enough bad information so now the computer says, "I can't deal with this. You fly the plane." And if they don't make the right moves right off the bat, things can go from bad to worse very quickly.

BERMAN: All right, Chad. Let's take a closer look at the weather, itself. What were the condition that these pilots were facing, that these pilots asked to move around or go on top of?

MYERS: We have thunderstorms -- we call them CVs -- on the map, and I'll show you, up to 50,000 feet tall. That's higher than this plane can even fly. So they can't get over the top of this, or the overshooting tops of the thunderstorm.

They have to get to what they believe to be the safest place around as they're looking at their radar on their screen on the glass in their cockpit, they're thinking, OK, maybe if we go here, it's going to be better. Let's request to go up here.

But there was weather all across the area. There were thunderstorms in a line all the way. They could have turned left or right for 50 miles and still been in the same type of weather that they got into, anyway.

This was a matter of getting the plane too slow as they approached these things. And you know, it's the reason why we don't fly jets into the hurricanes. Talk about hurricane hunter aircraft, they are propeller airplanes, because they won't have that problem with maybe a possible wind gust blasting through the jet at the wrong direction or cutting off that jet's air itself. And so it's -- there's so many things going on here, but I don't like 353 knots at 36,000 feet. Those numbers just don't add up. That plane will not fly.

And as Richard said, stalling doesn't mean the jets stop running, like your engine stalled. Stalling means that one or both of the wings don't fly anymore. And it's likely that one will stop flying before the other, creating a tilt of the airplane, and all of a sudden you're in, possibly, an unrecoverable situation. It was very difficult weather there, for sure. This weather is almost a hurricane without the wind speeds flying around, easily wind gusts up there to 100 miles per hour.

BERMAN: David, let's talk quickly about the search area itself. We, of course, went through the search for Flight 370, MH-370, in the South Indian Ocean. That area a thousand miles for shore, with ocean depths of miles and miles. This is a very different area, isn't it? We're talking about an area not terribly far from shore, with shallow waters in busy shipping lanes, areas that planes fly overhead quite often.

GALLO: Right. It's -- it will have its own challenges, though, Don (sic). I mean, we -- shallow water, you can have higher tides that will be pushing the vehicles, search vehicles around on the bottom. The visibility can be poor. So even though it's shallower water, it does have its own challenges.

The other thing, though, is not having a good last known position, a solid one. In many ways, it's a crisis. It's unbelievable to me. Because even now in this shallow remote controlled area, it's a huge search haystack to be looking for that needle. And the only reason that we don't know where that plane is, is because some aviation industry executives decided that it's just not that important. It's really shameful.

BERMAN: No. Clearly, that is an issue that needs to change; should have changed months ago or years ago. Certainly now, hopefully there is the impetus to get that done. David Gallo, Chad Myers, thanks so much for being with us. Appreciate it -- Michaela.

PEREIRA: All right. We'll have much more on the search for missing AirAsia Flight 8501, including a closer look at some of the clues: the timing, the cockpit recorder, if it's found. And how does this search area compare to that of missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH-370?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)