Return to Transcripts main page

LEGAL VIEW WITH ASHLEIGH BANFIELD

Confirmed Debris from the AirBus A-320; Three Bodies Found and Recovered from AirAsia Flight; Some Families Still Hold Out Hope

Aired December 30, 2014 - 12:00   ET

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


MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: "LEGAL VIEW" with Jake Tapper starts now.

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, everyone. I'm Jake Tapper, in for Ashleigh Banfield. Welcome to our viewers in the United States and around the world.

Almost 66 hours after AirAsia Flight 8501 disappeared from radar over the Java Sea, there are still plenty of unanswered questions. But this has been a day of answers, hard-rending though they are. Confirmed debris from the AirBus A-320 was found and recovered today about six miles from the plane's last known location off the Indonesian island of Borneo. A military aircraft had earlier spotted the outline of what appeared to be a plane on the ocean floor. The head of the National Search and Rescue Agency says at least three bodies have been found and recovered as well from the 162 passengers and crew on board, two women and a man. Among the recovered debris is a suitcase, a scuba tank and what appears to be part of an emergency exit, including an inflatable slide or life raft.

And for some of the grief-stricken family members, watching these scenes and hearing these details on live television, it has all been too much. The airline is promising each family, quote, "a dedicated team" of care providers to help them through their ordeal. AirAsia's CEO says, "words cannot express how sorry I am."

Let's go straight to CNN's David Molko. He's at the airport in Surabaya, Indonesia.

David, it is midnight where you are. Do we know whether teams are still out on the ocean searching?

DAVID MOLKO, CNN INTERNATIONAL: Hi, Jake.

Yes, right now the search effort is ongoing. This is, of course, different from the past couple of nights when they suspended it after dark. There were at least three ships in the area a few hours ago, this reporting (ph) to Indonesian's president, Joko Widodo. But he also called for all other assets, air, sea and land, to be moved to that search area where they found the debris and have begun to recover bodies.

Conditions there, weather conditions remain challenging. This is, we think, about 100 miles offshore from Borneo. The depths are fairly shallow compared to other places in the Java Sea and the ocean. But the weather conditions are challenging, as I mentioned. Waves up to about 10 feet, we're hearing. You know, they've been able to spot some bodies. Haven't been able to recover them. A really, really grim task.

We're also hearing from local media that they are sending divers out there and those divers will get in the water about 6:00 in the morning just after the sun comes up and begin the efforts to try and find more pieces of the aircraft, more human remains and to try to bring them home to the families who desperately want answers.

Jake.

TAPPER: The discovery of the debris and the three bodies, the three corpses, would seem to suggest the absolute worst-case scenario. But it seems that some family members are still holding out hope, correct?

MOLKO: That's right. I spoke to one couple who's from three hours outside Surabaya. They're staying in a hotel here. They had four family members on board that flight, flying to Singapore for a holiday. And they told me, you know, we understand that the chances are not good, but we still believe there's a small chance, a 5 percent chance, they said, that one of those, one of our relatives will still be alive. So there is that. There is that sense of hope.

You know, another family said to me, look, you know, we have to face reality. We have to stay strong. And the best we can hope for is that the remains come back to us. So certainly a country in mourning tonight.

Also, you know, we're hearing from the wife of the captain of the flight, Captain Iriyanto. He is from outside Surabaya. He was a former fighter pilot. You know, about this time yesterday, we were talking about his daughter, a tweet she had put out there on social media saying, "daddy, come home, I need you." So we heard from his wife. This is actually before they confirmed the debris was from the aircraft. But let's play you that sound.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WIDIYA SUKATI PUTRI, WIFE OF AIRASIA FLIGHT 8501 CAPTAIN (through translator): I would like to know where my husband is. I wish my husband was found immediately. I hope, as his wife, he'll be back well and alive. The children still need a father. I still also need a guidance from husband. He's a good husband, in my eyes, and he's a faithful husband, a great husband. I can't name all his qualities. He's a great husband for me.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MOLKO: You know, with stories like these and disappear -- aircraft crashes, disappearing planes, we talk a lot about the search and the investigation and what happened, but at its heart, as you heard there from the wife of the captain of the AirAsia flight, this is - this is a story -- it's a human tragedy. You know, 162 passengers and crew on board that plane. And chances are good that none of those people survived and none of them will be coming home.

TAPPER: Very sad. Thank you, David Molko.

So now comes, of course, the process of identifying the men, women and children whose remains will be found and brought to shore in the days or weeks ahead. Joining me to talk about that are the noted forensic scientists, Lawrence Kobilinsky of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and Heidi Snow. Ms. Snow lost her fiance on TWA Flight 800 in 1996 and has since been working to provide comfort to others suffering through the same situation.

Dr. Kobilinsky, let me start with you. Without getting into too much graphic detail, knowing the time frame and the fact that three bodies had apparently been found intact, I'm told two women and a man, will identification be difficult?

LAWRENCE KOBILINSKY, FORENSIC SCIENTIST: I don't think it will be as difficult as it would otherwise be in different kinds of crashes. I think once they have a body, they can determine a gender, age, ethnicity. There will be medical and dental records. They may have tattoos or scars. But ultimately, it will come down to fingerprints or, more likely even than that, is DNA analysis. And in order to do that, what they need are close biological relatives or evidence -- in other words, known samples, toothbrush, hairbrush, something of that sort, so that they can do a comparison.

Ultimately, it takes time. It's very difficult work. But because the bodies are intact, it makes things a little bit easier. There certainly has been some level of decomposition or else the bodies wouldn't have been found floating.

But as you said, Jake, there are 162 bodies that they are going to have to examine. And I think the first question is, what is the cause of death? Most likely it was a blunt impact when the plane hit the water at a high rate of speed. But that has to be determined. Could have been an explosion, could have been other explanations that right now we just don't know for sure. But once they have the bodies, they will be able to determine cause of death and reach their final conclusion as to what caused this crash.

TAPPER: Dr. Kobilinsky, let me just follow up on something you said. It may be that I misunderstood. I believe you said that the bodies wouldn't have been found floating if there hadn't been some decomposition. What did you mean by that?

KOBILINSKY: Well, normally, the body is going to have some level of air in the lungs. As a result of decomposition, microbes are going to produce gases, carbon dioxide, methane, hydrogen sulfide. And these gases pervade the tissues and body cavities and that gives buoyancy to the bodies. And then the bodies will rise and float. Obviously, the plane has been opened up, giving access of these bodies to the surface. But that's what it would require, gas in the body that would allow the body to float. Normally, the body is not buoyant.

TAPPER: OK. That's what I -that's what thought you meant. In addition to the family members providing relatives, providing a

toothbrush and hairbrush of victims, what other items, what other request is it likely investigators are making of the survivors -- the surviving families of the victims of this flight?

KOBILINSKY: Well, all the bodies are going to be x-rayed, these postmortem x-rays, and photographs, obviously. And they need to - they need to compare those to pre-mortem x-rays, dental records, medical records, if there were fractures, breaks in the skeleton and then repair took place. They will be able to identify a body simply based on that. Dental records are quite good. But DNA is the gold standard nowadays. And so having a close relative, parents, children, brothers, sisters would work fine in an identification.

Obviously, if you've got a toothbrush or a container that the person drank out of, you can secure a real true exemplar and then make the comparison that way. Should not be a difficult situation once all the samples are collected.

TAPPER: All right, Dr. Kobilinsky, thank you so much.

I'm afraid that we had some problems with the satellite feed from Heidi Snow. We hope to check in with her later today. Sorry about that to her.

So we are now seeing pieces of the wreckage from this plane. Already those pieces are yielding clues about what happened in the flight's final moments. We're going to have details on that coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TAPPER: Welcome back.

AirAsia is confirming that bodies and debris found in the Java Sea this morning are from missing AirAsia Flight 8501. Rescue teams recovered three bodies and debris in shallow water six miles from where the plane was last spotted on radar just off the coast of Borneo Island. The debris appears to include a blue piece of luggage, an emergency exit door and slide and a scuba tank.

Joining me to talk about the recovery efforts is CNN aviation analyst and the former inspector general of the U.S. Department of Transportation, Mary Schiavo, and CNN aviation analyst and former FAA safety inspector David Soucie.

Both of you, thanks for joining us.

Mary, let me start with you. I want to play some video of the debris. And if we could, tell me, what does it suggest to you. Let's show this video, if we could.

Mary, you're seeing this, I assume. And there's a suitcase --

MARY SCHIAVO, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Right.

TAPPER: Looks like some over - SCHIAVO: I saw it.

TAPPER: Yes.

SCHIAVO: Right. I saw it before. I tried to look very carefully. The suitcase doesn't have luggage tags, checked baggage tags. So I'm assuming it's from an overhead bin. The life raft is from the interior of the airplane. It's in a compartment in the overhead, like of like midway through the aisle. The scuba tank is probably not a carry-on. It could be ocean trash or it could be something that was checked. But we see two items that clearly would have come from the cabin. So I'm assuming that the cabin was breached. The life raft was not inflated. So I'm assuming that those items just came apart with the breach of the cabin.

TAPPER: David, is this still a search-and-rescue mission, even though three corpses have been found?

DAVID SOUCIE, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: You know, it's a matter of semantics. And in my investigations, I never actually made that distinction until all the bodies were accounted for. So I would still consider it a search and rescue until those bodies are accounted for. But it really doesn't matter at this point. The main objective right now is to try to obtain and retrieve the bodies themselves, whether they're alive or dead.

TAPPER: It is a tragedy, obviously. And it is a hard-rending and, in some ways, unpleasant to discuss some of these details, but investigators trying to figure out what exactly happened so as to prevent it from happening again, if possible, will be looking at all possible details. Mary, is it significant if the bodies are still clothed?

SCHIAVO: Yes, it is, because if they had fallen from an altitude, say, you know, 36,000 feet, where the plane was, most accidents where that occurs, where there's a break-up at very high altitude, for example, the shoot down of Iran Air, the clothing came off - almost all the clothing came off the bodies in the fall. So if they're still clothed, there is still clothing on them, you would suspect that they -- the cabin came down still intact and broke apart in the water.

TAPPER: And, David, obviously, finding the debris, finding these bodies, a big step in towards recovering all of the plane and all of the victims of this tragedy. But what does it mean now logistically? Does this mission shift to an underwater operation primarily now?

SOUCIE: Yes, what they'll do is they'll back-draft on any of the movements of the ocean itself and the direction of the wind. You notice that it's - that the debris is south and a little bit east of where they last got a fix on the aircraft. So that could have either been from the aircraft turning around, or from a stall, or it could be just from drift. So they'll back-draft up to where that came from, try to get all the surface debris collected first. And then, at that point, start focusing on looking for the beepers themselves, the pingers, the underwater locater beacons themselves to find the black boxes. Subsequent to that is when they would start looking for the substantial debris and deciding whether that aircraft has to come back up out of the water or not.

TAPPER: Right, and we know that this area of the ocean, of the Java Sea, is much more shallow than, for instance, the South Indian Ocean. It's a matter of a hundred, 150 feet, as opposed to thousands.

Thank you so much, David Soucie and Mary Schiavo. Appreciate it.

It will be important for searchers to reach the fuselage of the plane. Many factors go into exactly how they will try to find it. How far did the debris we've seen drift from the point where the plane went down? How close is the closest bit of land? We'll look in more detail at all of this coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TAPPER: AirAsia Flight 8501 crashed with no known survivors. And so far, only pieces of that doomed plane have been found floating in the Java Sea. While we now know the fate of AirAsia Flight 8501, many questions, of course, remain. The biggest is why? Why did it crash? The debris field is a clue towards answering that question, as well as the matter of where is the rest of the plane.

I'm joined now by CNN's aviation correspondent and host of "Quest Means Business," Richard Quest, CNN meteorologist Chad Myers, and David Gallo, a CNN aviation analyst and director of special projects at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

Chad, let me start with you. How far is the debris field from the last known location of the plane? And what are the conditions like in the Java Sea?

CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Somewhere, what I've heard today, and it's been the major numbers, somewhere around six miles, ten kilometers. So, six miles away from the last known location on the radar to where they found it.

And that's likely due to a wind drift. There's not much current in this area. And I'll get to that in a second. The weather is OK tonight. And this is going to be one of these things that we have to hope for the weather is good during the day. We don't need weather good at night because planes don't see much at night. So, weather is decent here. Storms are building to the south.

But watch what happens, almost the exact opposite of what happens in America, as storms build at 4:00 or 5:00 in the afternoon. Here in the Java Sea, the storms build at 5:00, 6:00 a.m. So here's where we are right now, a few showers but not much. By tomorrow morning, when they want to get back in the air, things get cloudy and stormy again right where they want to be. There's the search area. And then, tomorrow night, when it gets dark, the clouds are gone, the sky is clear. This is just one thing after another. And the next day, what's back, the storms. So the exact opposite in this diurnal perturbation of what we see here in America and that's exactly the opposite of what we want to see. We want to see clear skies when its clear, when it's daylight. So there's your current. Not very much. The good news is, if there are any survivors in the water, the water

temperature is 84 degrees Fahrenheit. That's warm enough for almost forever to be in that water without getting to hypothermia. Close, but, you know, forever is a long time. But -- so at least the water is warm. At this point in time, though, you know, Jake, we've - we all know what probably happened.

TAPPER: David, based on what we know, and obviously it's limited information still, but how hard do you think it will likely be to reach the plane and how can they recover it?

DAVID GALLO, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Well, Jake, the first thing is to find it, of course. And there's several ways to do that. One's direct observation. I heard this report of maybe seeing a shadow of a plane. That needs to be checked out. The other one is reverse drifting the debris, and that's probably going on right now to find out where x marks the spot on the surface of the ocean. Then there's listening for the pingers on the black boxes. That will take you to the black boxes and there will be the fuselage. And finally, there's a sonar search to look for the fuselage and wreckage on the bottom. All those things are probably underway right now or getting prepared to be put underway right now.

And once that happens, you know, it's going to be two things. One is a humanitarian effort from recovering any bodies that might be in the fuselage still at the bottom of the sea, and the other part is to begin the forensic investigation of the plane itself, recovering the black boxes and then looking at bits and pieces of that aircraft.

TAPPER: Richard, explain, based on your coverage of previous tragedies like this, how the condition of the plane can help investigators deduce what happened exactly.

RICHARD QUEST, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: The initial way is you just look at the metal. You look at the bends, the tears. You look at the dents. And knowing from what part of the aircraft it comes from and what it should look like -- for instance, if you take 447, they were able to look at things like galley carts, toilet doors, things like that. And by seeing how the metal and how the structure had been bent and pushed and twisted, they can work out where the impact -- what was the greatest forces. And from that, they know, for example, whether or not the plane went into the water nose first, whether it pancaked onto the water, did it break up in the air? Of course, not in this case, but if this was a case or there were a case of explosive, then you'd look for residue. So the mere wreckage tells them a lot about what -- how the plane entered the water and disintegrated. It doesn't as yet tell us why.

TAPPER: And, Richard, based on your coverage of similar tragedies, how long do you expect it to take investigators to find the rest of the plane? They have now found debris. Is there a normal duration between finding the debris and finding the rest of the plane or can it take potentially years, even?

QUEST: Oh, no, no, we're not talking years here. We're talking days, maybe weeks. I would not be surprised to find that they locate the main body of the debris, the main debris field, the fuselage in the next 48 hours. Thereafter, you're talking about either divers to go down to see with the eyes whether they can find the black boxes or immediately get very lightweight towed pinger receptor so that you're not talking about the big stuff coming in. So you're talking days, possibly weeks. I would be very surprised -- David has more experience of this than myself, but I - he might want to chime in, but I would be very surprised if we're talking a month or plus before they found this thing.

TAPPER: David, want to weigh in?

GALLO: Right. I agree completely. Yes, I agree with Richard completely. And I know that French NTSB, the BEA, is involved and they're very familiar with the Air France 447. Directed that. And they're involved here. So they know exactly what next steps - and I understand they're advising. So I think it's going to happen, as Richard said, within a month's time.

The most important thing at this point is that there's clear leadership and that there's an operational plan and an order of things to be done. And then, you know, things should fall into place fairly quickly. Should.

TAPPER: Should. David Gallo, Chad Myers, Richard Quest, thank you so much.

Several countries are helping in the search for this plane, as has been mentioned. The United States already has assets in the region. We'll look at what key equipment the United States and other countries will be contributing, coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)