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More Bodies And Debris Found From AirAsia Flight; Teams Work To Identify Crash Victims; Sonar May Have Detected Wreckage; Black Box Recovery Could Take A Week; Bad Weather Cuts Plane Search Short; Victim Confirmed; Recovering the Plane

Aired January 1, 2015 - 13:00   ET

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


BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: Hi there, I'm Brianna Keilar in for Wolf Blitzer. It is 1:00 P.M. here in Washington, 6:00 P.M. in London, 8:00 P.M. in Jerusalem and 1:00 A.M. Friday in Surabaya, Indonesia. Wherever you are watching from around the world, thank you so much for joining us.

Up first, a gray suitcase, scraps of metal, two black bags, those are among the latest items recovered from AirAsia Flight 8501. And the first victim of the crash to be identified has been laid to rest.

Here are the latest headlines, searchers have now recovered the bodies of nine people. The body of a woman was identified and returned to her family for burial. Rough seas and waves as high as 10 to 13 feet are, once again, hampering the effort to recover more victims. Bad weather is hindering the search, as well, for the plane's flight data and cockpit voice recorders, those so-called black boxes. A search official says the pingers that help locate the boxes have about 25 days of battery power left. The devices and the wreckage will be key to determining the cause of the crash.

Ninety ships and aircraft were involved in this search. Right now, more vessels are expected to arrive by tomorrow and among them, a ship from Singapore with enhanced underwater detection, as well as another U.S. ship.

Searchers have yet to recover the bodies of 153 victims from the AirAsia disaster. And while the recovery effort continues, forensic teams work to identify the remains that have been found.

CNN's Andrew Stevens is joining us now live from Surabaya, Indonesia. Tell us about this process, Andrew, of identifying these bodies to make sure that families can properly put their loved ones to rest.

ANDREW STEVENS, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, it's a painstaking process, Brianna. Families are being asked to provide photographs, obviously, different types of photographs, too, of their family members. They've been asked to identify or send in any information on identifiable marks on the bodies, jewelry they may have been wearing, and also something which they could match in DNA samples, as well. If you consider the bodies will have been in the water already several days and that the decomposition would already have begun, so facial recognition is not going to be easy anymore. And the authorities are making a point of it to make sure they get it absolutely right because they do not want any mix-ups with misidentification.

We're here at the police hospital in downtown Surabaya. The crisis center has been moved from the airport in the past 24 hours to come down here so that families can be closer to the identification zone. Obviously, you can imagine what it's like here when bodies are being brought in. So far at Surabaya, we've only had eight bodies, and it does -- that speaks volumes about the difficulty the searchers are having in locating the fuselage, the main fuselage, of the plane where they think most of the passengers are still contained in. And it all just adds up to a very, very long and slow and painful process for the -- for the families of the victims.

KEILAR: What is -- since experts do think that most of the bodies will still be inside of that main wreckage, there have been some conflicting accounts, though, about whether sonar has detected the main part of the plane. What's the latest on that?

STEVENS: Yes, it's -- it is conflicting, and it, of course, adds to the pain, because the families think, we may get some closure sooner because we're getting reports that the main body of the plane has been found. Tony Fernandez, the boss of AirAsia tweeting out a few hours ago saying that he hoped the information that the -- that the plane had been located was right because it's so important to find that plane but nothing since.

And the rescue officials we've been speaking to, or the search officials we've been speaking to, excuse me, are saying, well, no, we haven't actually pinpointed it yet because, again, the seas are so rough. It's very difficult to get the acoustic listing devices which are towed along behind these ships to get -- to get them into the water and functioning properly. And, of course, you need divers, as well. Divers actually eyes on the wreckage.

All we know, really, is that there was a large shadow, they call it a shadow, was seen underwater. This is a few days ago now. They think that they got -- may have got a couple of echoes of where it is again, but we still have not heard anything concrete about whether it's actually been identified. But, certainly, if it had been identified, we would know by now, Brianna, because this is such a critical part of this whole mystery. You get to that main fuselage, you're probably going to also find the black boxes, which are at the rear of the plane, you know, find the voice recorders in the cockpits and that's when you start piecing together this whole tragedy.

KEILAR: That's right, it's so important. Andrew Stevens, thank you, from Surabaya live for us.

And I want to get more now on what evidence is telling us so far and what effect the weather could have played in this tragedy. Joining me now, CNN Aviation Analyst David Soucie. And on the phone, we have Alastair Rosenschein, he's an aviation analyst as well as a former pilot. The "Sydney Morning Herald" reporting now supposedly leaked information about the plane, hard data though if it is true. It says that Flight 8501 was traveling at a ground speed of around 70 miles per hour in its descent and before that was climbing at a rate of 6,000 to 9,000 feet per second. To you, Alastair, first, what do those numbers tell you if they're true?

ALISTAIR ROSENSCHEIN, AVIATION ANALYST (via telephone): Well, first of all, I think the 6,000 to 9,000 feet would've probably been per minute rather than per second.

KEILAR: Oh, the -- OK, yes.

ROSENSCHEIN: You know, the -- an aircraft at that altitude -- an aircraft at that altitude can't carry -- can't climb at that sort of rate. The only way any rate of climb of that nature could have happened would have been through an updraft in a -- in a severe thunderstorm. And even that is, you know, an extreme figure. The figure that you gave of 70 miles an hour, or 63 knots, would have been a forward ground speed. And that is below the normal flying speed of an airliner, so it suggests that the aircraft was stalled and was literally falling vertically down. So, those would be any interpretations you can give to those figures, as far as I can see.

Now, it is entirely possible that the flight crew were trying to regain control of this aircraft, but with that sort of forward speed, this aircraft -- their control inputs really had achieved so little indeed, and so the aircraft is only going one way, and that was down.

KEILAR: But, David, these numbers that are talking and that was per minute, pardon me on saying per second, 6,000 to 9,000 feet per minute. The climb, that was the initial part of this data, is that -- I mean, is that possible?

DAVID SOUCIE, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Oh, it's certainly possible. In fact, I've investigated one accident in which these numbers are almost eerily comparable over Colorado on Monarch Pass in which the aircraft had climbed at least those rates. And back to Alistair's point on the air speed, he's certainly correct that the airplane couldn't maintain flight at that -- at that speed.

However, what was the situation in this one that I had investigated was that the headwinds were such that coming out of a huge thunderstorm, similar to this over the Rockies, that the aircraft had sped up to incredible speeds and then slowed to very, very, very slow speeds, ground speed, but the air speed of the aircraft was still very high. With a forward headwind, you could show 64 knots with a 200-knot headwind, --

KEILAR: Yes.

SOUCIE: -- which is what this was the case. It could be actually a relative speed of over 200 miles an hour, which -- in which case it could sustain flight. So, while these facts and figures can put us in places, if we assume a theory in the first place, it makes sense. But we have to make sure that we are not -- that we're considering everything, and we certainly don't have everything at our disposal. KEILAR: That ground -- so, that ground speed of 63 knots is a

net speed. It's not necessarily --

SOUCIE: Correct.

KEILAR: -- the actual speed that the plane was going. Important to note.

SOUCIE: That's right.

KEILAR: Alistair, if the plane was truly in a nose dive of sorts, what would have happened then on impact? Would the plane have broken apart, could it have gone into the water with the fuselage pretty much impact?

ROSENSCHEIN: Well, there are two things here, if the aircraft was in nose dive, then it would have had the -- that could explain a very low forward ground speed. But as your -- as the other gentleman mentioned, in the case a high air speed, in which case the aircraft would have been flyable. But if the airplane goes vertically into the -- into the sea, it's going to break up. I mean, there's no question about that.

So, you know, what we're talking about here are the violent winds you get inside a thunderstorm, but these are commonly (ph) vertical winds, both upwards and downwards, rather than the typical jet stream where you could get 100 or even 200 knots as you can get over the Pacific. But there were no very strong horizontal winds in this area, so, you know, when you fly into this sort of extreme weather, you will get strange readings on the aircraft and readings that are transmitted to air traffic control through the -- through the transponder system.

But, you know, we're second guessing here. When they get the black boxes, as they are so called, then they'll be able to recreate the actual flight profile of the aircraft in a simulator and they'll be able to see exactly what happened to that aircraft. But it does seem to have been a severe weather event, at this point in time.

KEILAR: So, to that point, David, if this is a severe weather event, let's think of this in terms of if it were an American flight. Do you think that this plane would have been where it was? Do you think that perhaps it could have been cancelled or it could have been rerouted if it had been an American flight?

SOUCIE: Well, I suppose it could have been, whether it should have been or was or wasn't was -- is the pilot's decision. So, what that brings it into is the realm of judgment by the pilot, although in our -- in the United States, it would be dispatch's decision, decision made by dispatch, anticipating the weather. They have much more information available to them than does the pilot. So, an American airline, the airlines have a lot more information, I would guess. I'm not familiar with AirAsia as far as what their capabilities were on the ground. But, remember, this is a very, very dynamic weather area, and it can change. Within 15 or 20 minutes, you can go from just a rainstorm to an incredibly intense thunderstorm, and I think that's what happened here in my estimation.

KEILAR: Yes, was there hail, was there severe hail? That's one of the questions out there, too. David Soucie, Alistair Rosenschein, thank you to both of you. And we'll have Chad Myers talking more about the severe weather event coming up.

Later, we'll find out what it takes to recover a plane like AirAsia 8501. And we want to hear from you. You've had many questions. We've been putting them to our experts. So, use that hash tag 8501QS on Twitter, and we'll have our experts answer your questions.

Next, we'll get the latest on weather conditions in the area where recovery teams are looking for victims and evidence from the crash.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEILAR: Waves as high as 13 feet fuelled by strong winds and heavy rain, extremely challenging conditions for a search and recovery mission. This is exactly what crews are dealing with as they try to find and recover victims from the AirAsia crash.

Chad Myers joining us now. He's joining us from the CNN Severe Weather Center. And you have severe storms here, Chad. These were an issue the day the plane crashed. Now, there are reports that this plane made an extremely dramatic assent, and then it fell nearly straight down. That seems to be what the data indicates, if true.

CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Correct.

KEILAR: If that's verified, do you think it backs up speculation that there was some kind of unusual weather event that led to or contributed to this crash?

MYERS: The unusual part is yes. The more unusual part is that the pilot got the plane in that, either that he couldn't see the updraft, the updraft was in between two storms so he was seeing returns reflectivity but didn't see the updraft itself. You know, a lot of turbulence, when you call it clear air turbulence and you get bumps and it's clear outside, that's CAT. So clear air turbulence could be in between two storms. He's seeing two rain shafts and tries to go through them and in the middle is an updraft. And even at 6,000, 9,000 feet per minute is somewhere in the neighborhood of about 60 to 100 miles per hour. If you have a thunderstorm over Oklahoma and it makes golf ball-sized hail, in order to support that and make that golf ball-sized hail, it must have an updraft of 60 miles per hour. Baseball-sized hail or bigger has to have 100 miles per hour updraft. So those are the exact same numbers for golf ball to baseball size hail and we get that weather all the time.

So this isn't some unique never happened before thunderstorm. The unique, unfortunate part is that the plane got into this updraft and that's why in America we fly around these big storms. And the pilot obviously either didn't have a choice, didn't see it, and we saw the wall, the wall of storms that he was flying into, he thought maybe he had some place to get through as he was in jail trying to get through one of the bars, but at this point in time we know that he got into one of those updrafts otherwise the plane couldn't do what it did, it couldn't get 6,000, 9,000 feet higher in that minute because the plane can't pull that many g's, it doesn't have that much power.

KEILAR: Exactly. A very good point, Chad. And then so you've got the weather now that these search crews are dealing with -

MYERS: Sure.

KEILAR: Really hampering the efforts here to retrieve victims, to retrieve these black boxes. When will they get some clear weather?

MYERS: They will not. It's never going to get perfect. It's never going to be a calm sea.

Inside this data that we got from "The Sydney Morning Herald," that they got leaked to them, that we haven't independently confirmed yet but (INAUDIBLE) back, we now have a good lat long. We are now down -- the latitude and longitude of that plane is down to one-half of one second. You know, you get degrees, minutes, seconds. So the last location is right there. That's exactly - and you can find the numbers online if you want to go see them. They're not hard to find.

So the plane being right there. The winds have pushed some of the debris into this area right through here because the winds have been coming from the same direction for days and days and days. What also has happened is at night, when the sky gets dark, the skies clear up. In the daytime, when they can go see things, the skies again get cloudy with rain.

Here's tomorrow morning. Here's tomorrow night. The clouds go away. Here's tomorrow morning and the next morning, the clouds and the rain comes back in. What hasn't gone away the entire time have been the winds. The winds with these waves, 10, 12 feet high. Even right now, 25 miles per hour. Tomorrow, up to 35 miles per hour. And then 25 miles per hour again. So this is the weather that they're dealing with. They have white caps on top of high waves and they're looking for white pieces of an airplane. And it just makes things completely impossible out there. And if you can't get air assets in because the clouds are so low or the rain's too heavy, then that really limits your visibility, Brianna.

KEILAR: Yes, 35 mile per hour winds. Wow, they are definitely dealing with some tough conditions there. Chad, thank you so much, keeping an eye on that.

MYERS: You're welcome.

KEILAR: Still ahead, Captain Sully Sullenberger compares the conditions that he faced landing on the Hudson River with the conditions faced by the pilot of AirAsia 8501.

And, next, we'll show you what's happening at the hospital where those who were killed in this AirAsia crash are being taken.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEILAR: As victims are recovered from the wreckage of Flight 8501, they're being taken to a hospital in Indonesia. The staff there charged with the difficult and grim task of identifying the bodies. All the while trying to bring dignity to the deceased and closure to grieving families. Paula Hancocks has more.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

PAULA HANCOCKS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Sirens in the night announce their arrival. Victims of Flight 8501 on dry land and rushed into this hospital at Pangalanbon (ph). The next morning, two more bodies arrive. Red Cross and hospital workers take them to a private wing to be prepared for the next spot, identification by distraught families. The hospital director says he's here 24 hours a day to give the decease the respect they deserve.

"Because they've been in the water some days," he tells me, "the bodies are swollen, but otherwise they're intact."

Patients look on somberly. Their own ailments forgotten in the face of such tragedy.

Coffins are being delivered to give dignity to those who lost their lives so suddenly.

HANCOCKS (on camera): This hospital has never had to deal with a tragedy on this scale before. They have about two dozen caskets at the moment. They're being built as we speak. The hospital director says they will have 162, one for every victim of this crash.

HANCOCKS (voice-over): A final prayer for each soul. Leaders of six different religions take their turn. The victim's religion may not be known, but customs must still be observed.

"Their time on earth is over," says this pastor, "so many of our prayers are for the family. We ask God to receive their bodies and give the families strength."

One step closer to their final resting place.

So few victims have been found and treated, so many more still wait to be pulled from their watery graves.

Paula Hancocks, CNN, Pangalanbon, Indonesia.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KEILAR: We have much more coverage of AirAsia Flight 8501 ahead, including a look at the challenges of recovering pieces of a plane from the ocean floor.

Also ahead, we'll have the answers to your questions about the crash. Just post them on Twitter, use the #8501qs and we'll put them to our panel of experts who will join us with answers ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEILAR: Welcome back to our viewers in the United States and around the world. I'm Brianna Keilar, in for Wolf Blitzer, reporting from Washington.

Bad weather is once again slowing the search for more bodies and wreckage from AirAsia Flight 8501. Here's the latest now. Searchers have recovered the bodies of nine people. The body of a woman was identified and returned to her family for burial. It's the first of the funerals for the crash victims.

A search official says the pingers that help locate the plane's black boxes have about 25 days of battery power left. The flight data and cockpit voice recorders could be key in determining the cause of this crash. Search crews have recovered more debris from the plane, but they're still trying to pinpoint the location of the main wreckage.

And so many factors are complicating the search for more bodies and wreckage from the AirAsia plane, weather among them. Some bodies and debris have been found, but not the exact location of the aircraft. Once searchers find the plane, that's when the real work begins, bringing it to the surface. CNN's senior Washington correspondent Joe Johns joining us now to talk about this.

We know that it's been done before, Joe, but under these conditions?

JOE JOHNS, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Yes, it's really tough. And, you know, there's so much involved in this right now, Brianna, a couple U.S. Navy ships could be involved, a P-8 Poseidon aircraft, and that's just the start of it. An enormous job. It can take a long time. First, they have to map out where all the pieces of the plane are, a lot like how a crime scene technician logs the evidence when it's found. And then the heavy lifting beginnings.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOHNS (voice-over): How do you pull a plane up from the bottom of the ocean?

PETER GOELZ, FMR. NTSB MANAGING DIRECTOR: What you want to do first is to really map the entire accident scene.

JOHNS: We spoke with Peter Goelz, a former investigator with NTSB, who worked on the recovery and rebuilding of TWA Flight 800 that crashed after takeoff from New York City.

GOELZ: You document everything until you really get the information off the data recorder and the voice recorder.

JOHNS: He says the site needs to be treated like a crime scene and mapping the debris field before removing objects could be key to finding out what happened. Then comes the process of pulling up the giant pieces of debris from the bottom of the sea. GOELZ: You would have a number of lifting cranes, and you would

have teams of divers. And the divers, of course, even working at 100- foot depth, you'll have to have decompression chambers.

JOHNS: A potentially slow process because divers can only remain at depth for short periods due to health concerns. But does Indonesia have the know how to carry off a recovery effort like this? There are still questions about the location of all the debris.

DAVID GALLO, WOODS HOLE OCEANOGRAPHIC INSTITUTION: It seems like a fairly small body of water. But when you're out there, it's huge.

JOHNS: David Gallo, with Woods Hole Oceanographic.

GALLO: Usually, you're extremely careful not to say that you've found something until you ground truth it.

JOHNS: Woods Hole participated in the recovery effort in the crash of Air France Flight 447, off Brazil's northeastern coast, whose black boxes took almost two years to recover, footnoting what a painstaking process this