Return to Transcripts main page

CNN NEWSROOM

Airline Confirms Debris Belongs to Doomed Plane; GOP Leader Spoke to White Supremacist Group; Wedding Relocated for Obama's Golf Schedule

Aired December 30, 2014 - 10:30   ET

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


CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: The area of the Java Sea where that flight went down may actually help investigators recover the evidence needed to figure out exactly what went wrong.

Tom Foreman is here to explain. Hi, Tom.

TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi Carol.

It is a very forgiving area in a lot of ways because of the location. Where they're finding this debris right now is not terribly far off the shore here, about 100 miles or so, it is in water that as far as we know is not terribly deep. We're showing an average of up to 131 feet. It may be more like 100 feet or less in this area, that's what we believe.

That puts this easily within range of divers here and certainly when you put in more high tech devices to listen for the pingers connected with the flight data recorders, that sort of thing, you find a much easier job at hand here.

But I will say this, Carol, absolutely every single thing they find is going to count here. Every piece of equipment will help tell them whether or not this plane came into the water under power or whether it fell into the water. Did it come in nose first down here or did the whole body of it belly in like this? Did it hit tail first? All that is going to tell them something about what happened with the plane -- obviously the flight data recorders have a lot of information.

But sadly and truthfully even the condition of the victims here will tell them something. Were the people still in the main fuselage? Were they still buckled in? How did they come through this accident? And, of course, they want to move quickly to gather all of this because fortunately in this case this has been found really quite quickly after the wreck compared to some other accidents where it may take much, much longer.

There are currents out here and we've been talking for some time about the dramatic weather going on in this area. So every hour that they can't collect a piece of evidence it gives it more time to be caught up in these currents drifting this way or the surface winds in this case or the currents here. That can carry it away from its original site and then they have to reverse engineer where it came from. But Carol, what they're going to do is the same thing they always do in these cases, collect all the evidence they can, reassemble it and then ask themselves what does that tell them about why this plane went down? Because that is a really key question for investigators who want to prevent such accidents in the future and for families who just want to know what happened -- Carol.

COSTELLO: Tom Foreman reporting live this morning. Thanks so much. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: Recovery efforts have begun in the Java Sea. Two bodies have been found along with some wreckage from the plane. The black boxes have not been found but crews are very hopeful they'll be found soon.

Let's talk more about this search-and-recovery effort. I'm joined by CNN aviation correspondent Richard Quest and Lieutenant Colonel Kent Christensen -- he's an aviation consultant and commercial pilot. Thanks so much.

Thanks to both of you for being here.

Richard, I'll start with you. The bodies and debris were found off the coast of Borneo just about six miles from the last known position of the plane. What does that tell investigators?

RICHARD QUEST, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: It tells us -- it suggests and the lieutenant colonel will have more experience of actually doing it on the ground. It suggests, of course, that the plane came out of the sky pretty much intact because it's a fairly tightly-controlled, tightly-limited debris field. And that's both -- that makes it a lot easier in many ways to find firstly those who perished but also the wreckage.

COSTELLO: Also the wreckage. What does the wreckage field tell you, Colonel? Because they only found an emergency door exit floating on top of the water and some life jackets and, of course, a few bodies but nothing else as far as we know -- so far.

LT. COL. KENT CHRISTENSEN, AVIATION CONSULTANT: I think it's important to look at the debris field. The debris field initially you want to see how concentrated it is. If it's very concentrated, that's going to point towards the total aircraft going into the water. If the debris field is spread out then that is pointing towards a possible in-flight breakup.

One of the things you want to see -- I understand they recovered two bodies. My question would be are the bodies clothed or are they not clothed? Again, not clothed pointing towards an in-flight breakup; the air could shred the clothes off the victims and if they're clothed in the water then it points again towards the airplane going down in the water. So -- as a whole vehicle --

COSTELLO: As far as we know -- and we've examined the video footage that we have -- one of the bodies we know was found not clothed. It's just so difficult to talk about but I hear you. The bodies that were recovered, they were also not wearing life jackets so that probably tells you, Richard, whatever happened, happened very quickly.

QUEST: Oh, no question. We can pretty much say -- and maybe the lieutenant colonel agrees with me -- we can pretty much say that whatever happened was fast and it was dramatic and certainly no chance either for maydays, for major rescues to try and recover the aircraft and certainly no opportunities for people to be putting on life jackets.

We'll be looking to see, for instance, at what point there was a decompression of the aircraft as it came down, did it break up at all in the air, whether it had any oxygen masks becoming deployed -- all those sort of things.

But I think this is really skating around the point which is that this was a dramatic, catastrophic incident which took the plane out of the air with tremendous force and rapidity.

COSTELLO: Would that mean then -- you know, there was that two-minute lapse -- right. The pilot asking air traffic controllers, you know, I want to ascend so I can escape this storm and this turbulence. Two minutes go by, air traffic control tries to contact the pilot again, no response. So does it seem feasible that whatever happened, happened shortly after that initial response with air traffic controllers?

QUEST: Absolutely. That seems entirely possible. Two minutes is not a huge gap. It's a long time but the pilots will have known that air traffic control either has forgotten his request and he has to go back and ask for it again or that he's trying to move other air traffic about. The fact that the controller approved the diversion but didn't approve the ascent tells us that he knew he wasn't able to go. And the pilot will have known, well, there must be somebody up there above me that I can't go there.

COSTELLO: Do you think it will be fairly easy, Colonel, to find the black boxes?

CHRISTENSEN: I'm very confident they're going to find black boxes. The water is relatively shallow. They have a very concentrated search area now. And it's just going to be a matter of time before they do recover those. And they should be in fairly good condition.

I would like to make one point, what Richard is talking about. Two minutes in flight when the pilot is talking to a controller to deviate, that's -- it seems like a short period of time but the plane is going approximately eight miles a minute, six to eight miles a minute, so that's almost 20 miles, 18 miles to deviate. So what we typically do here in the U.S. is if the plane is in danger, the pilot has the authority to change direction first and then tell the controller what they're doing and so the controller's responsibility under radar control is to separate the other aircraft from it.

So that could be a cultural difference, just from the region; it could be communication issues or whatever but the captain was fairly experienced with 20,000 hours and 6,000 hours in type.

COSTELLO: So Colonel, from the air traffic control perspective, that two minutes, they had at least six planes around the area from what I can remember. Would it take the two full two to tell those planes either to, I don't know, slightly adjust their course so that this flight could ascend?

CHRISTENSEN: It is and the aircraft are separated by a thousand feet. If planes are on the same line flying, they're separated vertically by a thousand feet and so when these planes are doing this, the plane underneath can go left or right and the plane up top can go left or right. They might have other traffic routes near them, but they do have room to move around and you have room to make a u-turn. If you have a wall of weather that you know is going to destroy your airplane you can make a u-turn in the air and get away from that. That's another possibility, another out for the pilot.

QUEST: And also, to advance on what the colonel is saying, there's no indication from that request that there's an urgency about it. He's not said in the request "I have a really nasty thunderstorm that could well break up the aircraft in front of me. I'm declaring an emergency. I need to climb to 38,000 feet now." He said he's requested to go to flight level 3-8-0. Well the air traffic controller says, right, got a question from 8501 to go up there, he can't go up there. Let's see if we can move him there, hold him there, move this one over there." So this is normal air traffic control.

Until somebody says "I need it and I need it now" everything else is just, well, let's see what we can do and if we can't you have to stay where you are.

COSTELLO: The black boxes will tell us a lot about that. I wanted to ask you about this CEO of AirAsia.

QUEST: He's been speaking in the last hour or two, Tony Fernandes taking questions, refusing to speculate but once again making it absolutely clear that he's the CEO of the company, the buck stops with him. And he's spending his time with the families, with them explaining, helping and providing that which is necessary and most crucially saying to everybody this morning "I'm not going anywhere. I'm not going anywhere. We will provide whatever is necessary." Tony is one of those CEOs who this is his first major accident and you can tell.

COSTELLO: Richard Quest, Lieutenant Colonel, thank you so much for your insight. I appreciate it.

Still to come, the passengers aboard AirAsia Flight 8501 have their stories and so do the passengers who never showed up for that flight. (INAUDIBLE) next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: AirAsia now confirming the debris spotted in the Java Sea is from the missing Flight 8501. As the search goes on, we're also learning about some of the 155 passengers on board. Most are Indonesian but there are citizens from other countries as well. British national Choi Chi-Man was traveling with his two-year-old daughter. Jaden Ardee (ph) was traveling with four others members of his family. They planned to celebrate the new year in Singapore.

CNN's Rosa Flores joins me now with more on the passengers aboard that flight.

ROSA FLORES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, it's a really tough time for their families and for their friends as they get all of this news. I talked to the principal of the Surabaya Cambridge School and she knows five people on board the flight. She tells me that three of them her students, the other two her students' parents. Here's what she had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: She's a beautiful girl and always has fun and jokes with her friend. Were really so shocked with this news and we're praying (inaudible) and then we are waiting for good news.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FLORES: She said shocked and also they are also praying, she says. And that's what she says is that the entire community is doing as they come to grips with this new reality.

We're also learning about other people on that flight. Now, this is from our affiliate Channel News Asia. And this is a couple. They were missionaries, they were from South Korea but they were in Indonesia doing missionary work.

And hear this -- they were traveling to Singapore with their 11-month- old baby and all they were going to do was renew their visas.

There were also people who were no-shows to this flight who are now counting their blessings. Take a look at this. They tell us that they say quote, "Thank God, Jesus." They didn't get to get on that flight. And hear this -- this is a family of 10. 10 people who did not get on that flight and initially they were very upset because they didn't get notification that that flight departure time had changed. But now, of course, they're counting their blessings.

One more thing, during this difficult time, a lot of people don't want to talk to the media and rightfully so, they don't want to talk to people like myself who are telling the story to the world but one woman did. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): But my brother never flew with AirAsia so I kept calm. Then someone told me that they saw his name on TV. Then I saw it.

(END VIDEO CLIP) FLORES: And as you can see there, some pain just does not need translation. Remember, 162 people on board that flight and now 162 families just clinging on to hope, hoping for the best at this point. But, you know, getting the news that we're getting this morning, it doesn't look good for them.

COSTELLO: No, unfortunately not. Rosa Flores, thank you. I'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: Congressman Michael Grimm is stepping down. This after the New York Republican pled guilty to a felony tax evasion charge last week. Grimm made headlines earlier in the year for threatening a reporter who asked him about an investigation into his campaign finances.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Why haven't you declare (inaudible).

REP. MICHAEL GRIMM (R): (EXPLETIVE DELETED)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: Congressman Grimm says he will resign on January 5.

To another House Republican in hot water this morning, majority whip Steve Scalise denying ties to a white supremacist organization but admitting he likely spoke to that group in 2002. Scalise reportedly addressed a group founded by former KKK leader David Duke when he served in the Louisiana State House. The congressman maintains he didn't know the group held racist views and says he detests all hate groups.

CNN's Athena Jones is following that story from Washington. Good morning.

ATHENA JONES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol. This is not the kind of headline the Republican Party Wants to see as they prepare to take control of this new Congress, but that's right. Representative Scalise says that he does not remember speaking before this group founded by David Duke back in 2002 but that he went all around the state speaking to any groups that would have him to talk about his opposition to a tax increase that would affect middle-class families and some other issues.

So in an interview with the New Orleans "Times Picayune" he said he doesn't remember speaking there but if he did it was a mistake. He would haven't done so if he had known that this group, the name of which was European American Unity and Rights Organization, or EURO for short. He says that if he had known that this was a hate group, a group with white supremacist ties he would not have spoken before them -- Carol?

COSTELLO: All right. Athena Jones reporting live from Washington. Thanks so much.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, President Obama apologizing for what turned out to be a very unfortunate round of golf. It wasn't the score but the scheduling.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: President Obama called a couple on their wedding day to apologize. The newlyweds were supposed to get married at a golf course in Hawaii but at the last minute, their wedding had to be moved to another location because President Obama had scheduled a round of golf. The President says he wasn't aware of the wedding plans at the golf course and would have changed his tee time had he known.

CNN's Jim Acosta is in Hawaii with the President. Tell us more, Jim.

JIM ACOSTA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Carol, this was one round of golf you can't get a mulligan for. The President, that's right, he wanted to play golf at the golf course on the Marine Corps Base here in Hawaii just outside of Honolulu on Sunday and it turns out that round of golf was going to play through, right through the site of a wedding that was supposed to take place for Natalie Heimell (ph) and Ed Malou (ph), a military couple that lives in Hawaii. They found out, Carol, I talked to friends and family of the couple, on Sunday just after the rehearsal and just before their wedding that they had to change locations.

It turned out not to be a big deal. They moved just upside the hill where the wedding was supposed to take place, made room for the President to play golf and they had their big spectacular ocean view anyway but the White House caught wind of this. The President, who was obviously embarrassed, decided to make a phone call to the couple. Here's a bit of what played out after that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Nobody told us -- that they were going to have a wedding on the 16th hole. We would have skipped the 16th hole. But I hope the wedding went ok.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It did, thank you very much, it was a blessing in disguise.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We are just went right above the 16th hole so we were watching you golf.

OBAMA: That must have been kind of painful.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ACOSTA: Carol, it was one of those situations that would have turned any bride into a bridezilla but it sounds like this couple handled it just fine.

As it turns out this conversation, we got video of this yesterday, Carol, it went on for so long the couple was feeling like, hey, we're almost friends here, let's invite the President to the reception. They invited the President to the reception, he respectfully declined saying he'd already messed things up enough and that everybody would have to get magged to get into the officers' quarters on the Marine Corps base so they scrapped that idea but they did end up getting a call from the President.

COSTELLO: What a great wedding story. Come on. It was a great wedding story.

ACOSTA: And got it on video. It's the wedding video to end all wedding videos, basically.

COSTELLO: Although you would think that President Obama's staffers would have known that a wedding was scheduled to take place there.

ACOSTA: Yes, they claim they didn't know about it. It sounds like the golf course from what we were gathering from friends and family members -- they sort of made an executive decision. An executive action you might say on the part of the golf course to move this couple basically to another part of the base and essentially they were able, like they said in that video to look over the President, watch the President play golf and have their nuptials at the same time.

It's funny, this video is very revealing. You don't see this very often but somebody was smart enough in that he wedding party, Carol, to get their phone out and this happens a lot, and take video of the President, you know, talking to this couple on the on the so it gave us a revealing moment of the President sounding kind of embarrassed, to be frank.

COSTELLO: And very, very human. That's awesome. Jim Acosta --

ACOSTA: Absolutely.

COSTELLO: -- thanks so much. Reporting, live from Hawaii -- lucky man.

Thank you for joining me today. I'm Carol Costello.

"@THIS HOUR WITH BERMAN AND MICHAELA" starts now.