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NEW DAY

Debris Found from AirAsia Flight 8501; AirAsia CEO Tweets Out Condolences; Interview with John Kirby

Aired December 30, 2014 - 07:00   ET

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


JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: And while this is going on, the families of the 162 passengers and crew, they were called in to receive this news, so many of them you can see it right here, shedding tears, trying to wrap their heads around. likely fact now that they will never see their loved ones again. Some learning the heart-wrenching news from graphic images appearing on Indonesian television.

AirAsia CEO Tony Fernandes tweeting out his condolences saying his heart is filled with sadness.

We're covering the story from all angles, all the key location.

I want to begin with Andrew Stevens live at the airport in Surabaya, in Indonesia. Hello, Andrew.

ANDREW STEVENS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hello, John. You join us just after the Indonesian President Widodo arrived here just a few minutes ago. And he's -- you can probably see part of the presidential cavalcade behind us here.

He's gone straight into the crisis center, closed off to the media for obvious reasons. He is now with the families of the victims of Flight 8501.

It has been an absolutely harrowing -- harrowing doesn't even begin to describe what these people have had to deal with today, as to the fate of their loved ones. The news started trickling out around about noon that debris had been spotted. Pictures were also circulating which did tend to suggest, showed that these were linked to an aircraft.

And then we had the news from the head of the search-and-rescue team in the Jakarta, the people in charge of this whole operation, saying that he was 95 percent certain that the debris was from 8501.

There were pictures also of bodies circulating. In fact, while this was being read out, while the news was being watched live by the families, a television station was also showing pictures, if you can believe it, of bodies in the water. That provoked scenes of hysteria, according to one man who was inside. I spoke to him.

His friend was on the flight. He, his wife, three children, mother- in-law and also a fiancee of one of those children, just to give you an idea of the family tragedies involved in this. And you know, so difficult, impossible to explain what they are going through.

Now the grim task begins, John. They have to identify the bodies. The bodies are expected to come back to Surabaya. There is a police hospital which is being set up for purposes of receiving the bodies and being I.D.-ed. And family members now being asked to provide whatever details they can about their loved ones.

We understand also, John, that on the scene there are Indonesian -- there is the least one Indonesian naval vessel. Conditions there aren't good, but we are being told -- we can't confirm it independently at the moment -- that the recovery of bodies continues there -- John.

BERMAN: Andrew, I understand the president of Indonesia is now giving remarks right there in Surabaya. By him is also the CEO of AirAsia, Tony Fernandes. Any sense of what they're saying?

STEVENS: Well, I can only imagine that, you know, condolences just aren't enough. It's just the presence, I think, the presence of the president sharing the grief of his citizens. He -- he's actually doing what he should be doing. He's with his people.

A hundred and fifty of the 155 passengers were Indonesian citizens. A lot of them were actually from Surabaya, as well. As far as we know, he has come out, and he is now making a statement, I believe, to the media. It sounds like it is in the Bahasa language. But no doubt he'll be talking about the tragic loss this country has had to deal with and continues to deal with.

He is with Tony Fernandes, as you said. We -- Tony Fernandes is the founder and the CEO of AirAsia. He has been constantly tweeting, Fernandes, about his own personal heartache, his own personal pain, and sending out condolences to the families and trying to basically be with them, if you like, in their hour of need.

So AirAsia staff are here. There are a lot of AirAsia staff here who have been tasked to look after individual members of families involved. But again, they can only do so much, John. This is now a process which is going to go on for a few days, as the bodies start coming back to Surabaya. It's going to be a very, very difficult time for so many people.

BERMAN: Andrew Stevens in Surabaya. We will go back to this news conference when we get a translation or it does start to take part in English. Our Andrew Stevens in Surabaya, thanks so much.

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: We want to turn now to Paula Hancocks. She just got back to land after going out on a boat to see those search efforts firsthand. Paula joins us now from Indonesia.

Paula, I'm very curious what conditions were like when you were out on the water? That gives us an idea of what search crews are encountering.

PAULA HANCOCKS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Michaela, we were further west than the location we're talking about here. But certainly, conditions were fairly good when we were out. It was a little choppy, but the visibility was quite significant. There was only a little bit of rain; really nothing to talk about. So visibility would have been good as well from the air.

And clearly, as you can see, the aircraft did spot parts of the -- of the debris. So it was -- the weather did hold, and that was very conducive to the search-and-rescue operation, certainly.

Now, as soon as we did hear the reports that, in fact, the location had been identified, the fishing boat we were on turned round and came back to harbor. It was just a local fishing boat who had offered to help, just showing the community here wanting to be part of this and wanting to do everything that they could.

And as you can imagine, the mood coming back to the harbor was very somber. These fishermen were not only trying to help with the search- and-rescue operation, but they are fellow Indonesians. And certainly, most of these passengers and crew on board this flight were Indonesian, as well.

One man who was part of the fisheries ministry, he was on board to try and look for some of the debris, said that he was extremely sad. He was relieved that it had been found but very sad that there was no sign of survivors -- Michaela.

PEREIRA: Yes. As you mentioned, the bulk of them were from Indonesia. It is going to hit that nation very, very hard. Paula, we thank you.

Any hope the families had of some sort of miracle vanished with the debris being spotted overnight. The news was met with tears and pain and grief from families who were there for the announcement. We want to turn to Will Ripley for more -- Will.

WILL RIPLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: And now, Michaela, perhaps even the hardest part for the families begins, because they have to wait for the victims to be recovered from the water, taken to area hospitals, which we know are preparing right now for the very sad and difficult process of identifying the bodies.

We know that already steps have been taken. Families were asked for photos. They were asked for DNA samples to assist in the identification process. But when you are pulling people out of the water, who did not survive an accident, and that have been in the water for a couple of days, it is a very grim task. We saw it here in Asia, in South Korea off Jindao, with the ferry disaster, and these families are going to have to, at some point, confirm the worst. That the people that they said good-bye to and got on Flight 8501, are now the people that are going to be arriving in area hospitals for identification. A very, very -- very tough time ahead for these folks, Michaela.

PEREIRA: It certainly is, Will, and our thoughts and prayers are with them.

BERMAN: All right. There's help from the United States arriving today. But now that the debris and some victims have been spotted, what will the American role be? Rene Marsh joins us now live from Washington to explain this.

Good morning, Rene.

RENE MARSH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, John.

Yes, s you said, overnight this has turned into a recovery mission. We know that the U.S. Navy dispatched the USS Sampson. On board that ship, we know there are two helicopters, usually used for search-and- rescue operations; also, cargo lifts. So what we may see is that they may be able to help in the recovery of wreckage that has been spotted on the surface.

We also know this ship has sonar equipment. But it is unclear at this hour whether the sonar equipment on board the USS Sampson is sophisticated enough to detect, let's say, a crucial part of the aircraft on the seabed. That is unclear. We've reached out to the U.S. Navy for clarification on that.

However, we do know the Indonesians, they officially asked the United States for help as it relates to sonar equipment. And that will be critical, because we do know that the heavier parts of the aircraft will be sitting on the seabed. So they need equipment to detect those pieces of aircraft.

Also the black boxes. We could see that they ask the U.S. for that tow pinger locater that was used with MH-370. Again, we know the NTSB here in the U.S. monitoring the situation, but they are willing and ready to help if needed.

BERMAN: Rene Marsh in Washington, thanks so much -- Michaela.

PEREIRA: Well, our next guests, John, know all about these sorts of investigations. They are both former heads of the National Transportation Safety Board. Jim Hall and Deborah Hersman join us. Deborah is now president of the National Safety Council.

So glad that both of you could join us. Unfortunately, you have far too much expertise in matters such as these.

Deborah, I'll start with you since you're here. We talk about the location of this debris. Not far from that last known communication with the plane, about six miles. What does that tell you? Things happen fairly quickly for this plane?

DEBORAH HERSMAN, PRESIDENT, NATIONAL SAFETY COUNCIL: It does. It tells you that things happened fairly quickly. But it also gives you some confidence that the things that we knew from past investigative activities, finding the last-known location of the plane, are very important. I think the 370 investigation really threw people off. And I think...

PEREIRA: It changed our expectations, really, didn't it?

HERSMAN: It really did. And I think it made people question a lot of the things that had worked for us in the past.

But you follow those protocols, you follow those procedures. You know where that last radar hit, where that last communication was, and what the crew might have communicated at the end. That will help you walk things back to be able to find where the aircraft could be and the best search pattern to look for.

PEREIRA: And Jim, that's a very good point that Deborah makes, is that, you know, we learned -- sadly, we learned from these tragedies and from these crashes. This, it would appear, has gone sort of -- I hate even saying this. That it's sort of a textbook investigation in terms of a few days after the crash, debris is found, and now the tough work begins.

JIM HALL, FORMER NTSB CHAIRMAN: Every investigation is different. This one, I believe, will underscore the need for floatable black boxes and emergency locating transmitters, the technology that's available in the military; as well as for cameras in the cockpit, a recommendation that was made in 1999, when I was chairman of the NTSB.

PEREIRA: Deborah, that's a good point. He talks about those calls and recommendations being made in '99. We know calls for further technological advances, which we know already exist, after MH-370 went away. Do you think this will increase the calls, once again? Or do you think we might be closer to maybe having some of those technologies implemented?

HERSMAN: You know, I think certainly in the hours before the aircraft a was found, the pressure was again mounting for better tracking, better surveillance of aircraft.

We have the ability to know where aircraft are in real-time and for them to be sending information directly to ground and to other stations about their position, about what's happening. And I think there was a lot of pressure after 370 to make that happen. And I think not finding the aircraft until today, that was another pressure that was operating.

But Jim raises a good point. There's a lot of new technology out there, whether it's video in the cockpit to really see what was going on, or recorders, deployable recorders, or simultaneous transmission. There's more that can be done to improve safety.

PEREIRA: So let's talk about that data -- flight data recorder. We know that it is sort of the all-important missing piece right now. Obviously, the priority is recovering the bodies so the families can get some measure closure; they can begin the burial and funeral process.

But that flight data recorder is going to provide answers. Tell us how quickly we could see information once it's in our hands, in the hands of authorities, that they can download that information and crunch through what happened?

HERSMAN: You know, for sure, the next 24/48 hours wrong belong to the recovery operations, looking for those bodies to be able to support the families.

But the investigators are going to be looking for the location of those recorders. We're looking for, really, redundant recorders, making sure that we have good data, both on the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder. We're looking for two hours on the cockpit voice recorder and potentially hundreds of parameters on the flight data recorder.

They pull those out. The most important thing is really to preserve that evidence, to not damage it as you're removing it and then you're getting it out of the water, making sure you keep it wet so that you don't lose the data that's on there and so that it can be dried in an appropriate manner to be read.

PEREIRA: I know it's conjecture, Jim, but at this point when we know where the debris was spotted, the troubles the pilot was said to be trying to get around, in terms of those incredibly large thunderstorms, some 50 kilometers wide in some estimates. Did it seem to you that that was a dangerous area or time to be flying? Or did there seem to you that there was something else that went wrong with this flight?

HALL: Well, we really don't know. And the recorders, hopefully, will tell most of the story. But that's why cameras in the cockpit are so important. It will give us an idea, a visual idea of the conditions the crew was facing and the actions that they took in regard to trying to safely maneuver the aircraft.

And of course, again, I underscore the fact that this is an unacceptable amount of time for a rescue to hope to have survivors alive.

PEREIRA: Yes.

HALL: And that's why I'm so for and have always been for these deployable recorders that are used in the military.

PEREIRA: Deborah, you know, we just saw the CEO and the president of Indonesia speaking at a news conference there. We monitored it to see what they would say. And I was thinking about the fact that there has been, you know, the families always want more answers. It has been fairly transparent for them. The families have been given a fair amount of information from what we can tell on the ground.

I imagine that's a challenge for investigators, weighing how much information you come public with; how much information you sort of keep to your own until you can confirm it and double-check. How do they make that balance? It must be very delicate.

HERSMAN: You know, many places there are protocols established for how you deal with the family members. In the U.S. we make every effort to brief the family members first before information is shared with the media. Everyone is facing a really difficult challenge in an environment like this. And I think particularly when they didn't know where the aircraft was, and they didn't know much, they didn't have a lot to share. But I think everyone learned from the 370 experience to really put

those families first and to keep them in the loop, even if you don't know a lot; to let them know what you know.

PEREIRA: We can only imagine that the finding of this debris from this aircraft is only making worse the knowledge for the families of Flight 370, that they still have no answers.

Jim Hall, Deborah Hersman, we thank you for your time and your expertise. Thanks for joining us here on NEW DAY.

We know the U.S. Navy has been called in to help now in the crash of AirAsia Flight 8501. What's the role they will play? We're going to take -- talk live, rather, with Pentagon press secretary Rear Admiral John Kirby, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: And welcome back to NEW DAY's continuing coverage of the crash AirAsia Flight 8501.

The USS Sampson, a guided-missile destroyer from the U.S. Navy's 7th Fleet, is expected to arrive at the search area later today. AirAsia confirms now that the debris field overnight is that of the missing jet. So the question is, now that this debris has been found, the first pieces of it, how can the U.S. be of help?

We want to bring in Pentagon press secretary, Rear Admiral John Kirby. Admiral, thank you so much for being with us. So to that question, now that this debris has been found, what do you see the U.S. role to be?

REAR ADMIRAL JOHN KIRBY, PENTAGON PRESS SECRETARY: Well, first let me express on behalf of all the men and women of the Defense Department our deepest condolences to those affected by this terrible tragedy. And we know that there are hundreds of families going through just an unspeakable, unspeakable ordeal. And again, our hearts go out to them.

As we've made very clear, we're ready to help in any way that we can. We've assisted in these kinds of searches before, unfortunately, so we have some experience at this. As you rightly pointed out, we have a destroyer, the USS Sampson. She's actually on station now, as of this morning, and she will be prepared to assist in any of the surface recovery efforts that are going on right now. The debris field, that kind of thing. I'm not aware that she's actually participated in any of that yet. But she is on station now and ready to help if needed.

We also have another ship that's being prepared to deploy to the region from Singapore, USS Fort Worth. That ship is getting ready to sail and can be ready in as early as a day or two to get on station and can be there fairly quickly.

We're also preparing aircraft, surface -- I'm sorry, air -- search aircraft, maritime patrol aircraft that can get on station to help, again, map the debris field on the surface. Now, once the debris field -- aircraft has been found on the bottom,

it's not too terribly deep. The Navy does have salvage capabilities that could be -- could come in handy, as well. But again, all that's a little bit further down the road, and we're not -- we're not at that point yet.

BERMAN: Maybe not too much further down the road, though, at this point with the first sightings of the debris. They'll now work backwards. Is any of that underwater capability part of the USS Sampson, part of this destroyer that is now on site?

KIRBY: No, the Sampson doesn't have that kind of equipment on board. I mean, she was dispatched pretty quickly yesterday to get on station as fast as possible from other duties that she was performing. So she has not been fitted out with any of that equipment.

BERMAN: So this does show the changing nature of this operation. You know, the vessel you have right there was to aid in the surface search, which really, they've had a breakthrough overnight with the spotting of this debris. The air search does continue. The United States is willing and able to take part in that, to try to further, you know, piece together this debris field. And as you said, the USS Fort Worth could be heading out any time from Singapore.

What are the capabilities that the U.S. has right now to help with the underwater search when they will be called in, to perhaps find these black boxes, find the fuselage at the main crash site?

KIRBY: Sure. As you may recall with the Malaysia Flight 370, we provided some towed pinger locaters. These are underwater sort of passive sonar devices that are used to help try to detect the pinging of the black boxes. Those could be brought in. Again, we've got no request for that right now. But we're certainly preparing ourselves for the eventuality that they could be used.

And we also have something called side-scan sonar, which we also used with Malaysia Flight 370 to help try to find debris on the surface -- on the bottom surface of the ocean. So that also could be of use.

Now, if they find the wreckage, and it's 160 feet, it's not as deep as what we dealt with, with Malaysia Flight 370. And if they find the wreckage, then side scanning sonar won't be of much help. But it is a capability that we have that could be used, if possible.

BERMAN: These are capabilities that we are all too familiar with now, the terminology we grew used to with the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.

In terms of coordination, these massive international search-and- recovery efforts, what have you learned -- what has the U.S. learned over the last year in dealing with Malaysia, that may now be, you know, brought to bear here off the coast of Indonesia?

KIRBY: Well, one of the things you learn in an operation like this is the need for good communication and coordination with your partners and to make sure everybody knows sort of where they fit into the scheme of things.

We are very much willing and able to support. We know we're not in the lead on this. And we'll work through the State Department and through the embassies in the region to provide the support that they need. We want to help, and we don't want to, certainly, hinder any of the efforts at all.

But you learn the importance of everybody bringing to this effort what they're capable of. Every country, every nation that participates in this, you know, has unique capabilities, and again, we want to focus on those that we can provide that might be of help.

BERMAN: Admiral, you know, it seems to me this is the second time in less than nine months we're talking about an effort like this. Are these things that the U.S. military, the Navy trains for, finding vessels under the sea like this?

KIRBY: Absolutely. The U.S. Navy is very, very competent and capable and must be. Because we have a fleet of submarines of our own that we -- that we need to be prepared to come to the assistance of, if possible. So the Navy is very capable at search-and-rescue-and- salvage operations. It's something that we train for almost every day.

BERMAN: Have you talked, have you checked in with the USS Sampson over the last 24 hours?

KIRBY: I have not communicated directly with the Sampson in the last 24 hours. However, I have been in touch with our operations center here at Pentagon, who has been in touch with the Pacific fleet headquarters out there, and monitoring what Sampson's doing. So that's why I say we know she's on station now. I don't know that she's actually participated in any recovery efforts, but she's standing by and ready, as well as her whole crew to do that.

BERMAN: The Sampson now on site, prepared to help as needed, as requested by the Indonesians, who are leading up this search effort. Admiral John Kirby, always great to have you with us. Thanks so much.

KIRBY: Thank you, John.

BERMAN: Michaela.

PEREIRA: All right, John. Search crews have now recovered debris from Flight AirAsia 8501. Several bodies of those on board have been recovered, as well. But there are still many, many questions surrounding the incident. Our experts are going to tackle some of your questions, straight ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PEREIRA: You're watching NEW DAY's continuing coverage of the crash of AirAsia Flight 8501. Once again, we welcome our viewers in the U.S. and around the world. We continue to follow our breaking developments. Here's what we know so far. Crews are recovering several bodies along with an emergency exit door

and aluminum cuttings from the ocean. The debris was found six miles from where that plane was last spotted on radar.

Pentagon spokesman Rear Admiral John Kirby just told us that a second ship, the USS Fort Worth, is being deployed to help in that search- and-rescue effort.

Relatives and friends of the 162 passengers and crew were called in to receive that grim news. They were overcome, understandably with emotion.

For the very latest in all these developments, let's turn right now to Andrew Stevens. He's live from Indonesia, where the country's president just spoke. What did we learn from what the president had to say, Andrew?

ANDREW STEVENS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, we learned, first of all, that there are three Indonesian naval vessels actually on site now. The president actually flew over the debris field and they obviously went in at quite a low altitude, because he said that there were three ships there. He described the conditions as foggy with high waves, two to three meters he said.