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Flight 3407: Was the Crash Caused by Bad Weather and Ice? Reports From Crash Site; Former Airbus Pilot Discusses Crash

Aired February 13, 2009 - 11:00   ET

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


TONY HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: It is Friday, February 13th. The top stories this hour in the CNN NEWSROOM.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You felt like you wanted to go over closer to see if you could help people in the Houses or in the plane, but you didn't dare, because things are still exploding and you didn't know what was exploding.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARRIS: A hellish scene in suburban Buffalo. A plane hit a house and touches offer an inferno.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Our thoughts and prayers are with families and friends who lost loved ones. And as always our thanks go out to the brave first responders who arrived immediately to try and save lives and who are still on the scene, keeping people safe. Tragic events such as these remind us of the fragility of life and the value of every single day.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARRIS: Congress set for final votes on the stimulus package today. We are watching America's money crisis live in the NEWSROOM.

Good morning, everyone, I'm Tony Harris, and you are in the CNN NEWSROOM.

Continental Flight 3407 down. 50 people are dead in the crash, and red hot fire ball that followed. Federal investigators have just located the flight data recorders. They're on their way to Washington for analysis. Witnesses say the turbo prop dove into a house, making a direct hit. There you can see the tail sticking up in the burning wreckage. The front of the plane obliterated. From Goggle, you can see the House and neighborhood in the town of Clarence Center, as it looked before the crash. One person inside was killed. Remarkably, two others survived.

The Continental plane was a turbo prop on approach to Buffalo's airport from Newark. Witnesses say the engines roared and revved, then seconds later, suddenly quit. Seconds later, the impact. Light snow, a snow mix, some freezing rain, but the weather was certainly nothing out of the ordinary for the Buffalo area. Other pilots flying in last night did report some ice build-up. Last contact with Flight 3407 didn't raise any alarm.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Colgan 3407, approach.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Colgan 3407, Buffalo.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Colgan 3407, now approaching.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Delta 1998, look off your right side about the five miles for a dash eight, should be 43 hundred. You see anything there?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Negative Delta 1998, we're just in he bottoms and nothing off the TCAS.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CNN's Deborah Feyerick is not far from the crash scene in Clarence Center, New York. She filed this report a short time ago.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DEBORAH FEYERICK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Federal authorities are now on the ground. We're joined by NTSB's Steve Keylander.

How is this going to play out? You're on the ground. What are you looking for? I understand they have cordoned off the entire area.

STEVE KEYLANDER, NTSB: Right. They have cordoned off the scene. It's still a very hot fire spot and the incident commander still has control. We don't have primacy on the accident yet until he clears us to go in.

We have, however, been allowed to go in and search the tail section of the airplane to try to find the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder. We're hopeful to get those out of there this morning.

FEYERICK: OK. So the fact that those black boxes as we call them are in the tail, means it's a good chance you'll be able to get them quickly.

KEYLANDER: Well, we're hopeful. We think we can get them out of there, because the tail was intact enough that we think we can get to them. And hopefully they're in good enough condition and we can get them out of here on an airplane this morning back to Washington.

FEYERICK: OK, terrific. Let's talk about the evidence in the area. Obviously, police have been telling people, residents, that if they see anything, they're to leave it in place. How important is that? KEYLANDER: It's important to us that we document everything that has any association with the aircraft whatsoever. So, yes, they'll be doing that, asking them to leave things in place. They have got to cordone out as far as they can get it, and may even go out further if we do find something. But thus far we haven't found anything that leads us to believe that it's a part of the accident scene.

FEYERICK: Witnesses have said that it was almost a direct impact on this one house. Does that -- is that -- does that work in your favor, given that it seems a smaller area on some level?

KEYLANDER: I don't know that that's so much in our favor. Much but it is a confined area. One house was consumed by fire, and the explosion and impact of the airplane. It doesn't give us a larger area to work for, so I guess that could possibly be in our favor. We don't have to work for miles looking for wreckage, because it's in that confined area.

FEYERICK: let's talk about how this compares to other similar crashes you've investigated. I know it's hard to do a one for one. But any thoughts?

KEYLANDER: We haven't gotten to that point where we see similarities yet. We're still in the fact-finding, evidence-gathering phase. And, you know, we'll have more for you as time goes on, in the next couple of days. But right now, we're just assembling our team and trying to get organized. So we're not to that point yet.

FEYERICK: And I understand, and I won't make you stick to it, but how long does an investigation like this last?

KEYLANDER: I would say on average, you're looking at, you know, somewhere in the neighborhood of 12 months before it's all put together and a final report comes out before the board. That's give or take.

FEYERICK: But gathering the evidence on the ground is that likely to take days, weeks?

KEYLANDER: It depends on the fire. If we can get the fire down, and we can get in and start moving things around, and gathering what we need to gather, we may see a week, you know, getting that sort of thing. So it all depends.

FEYERICK: And finally, any initial thoughts when you saw the site for the first time?

KEYLANDER: Well, you know, when the NTSB is on scene and talking to people like yourself, its not a good thing. And those kind of thoughts -- my heart goes out to the people that are involved in the accident, the families that are hurting today. That's the tragic part of these kind of things. So those are my thoughts when I show up.

FEYERICK: OK. Sir, thank you so much for joining us.

Again, NTSB here, a lot of agencies on the ground looking to see just what there is, what they can piece together. Black boxes may be found, if they're lucky, as we heard by the end of the day.

Deborah Feyerick, CNN, Buffalo, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HARRIS: And just to clarify, since Deb filed that report, the flight data recorders have been found and are on their way to Washington for analysis.

David Luce lives 300 feet from the crash site. He heard the plane go down and got an up-close view of the devastation. He spoke with our Deb Feyerick earlier today on CNN's "American Morning."

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DAVID LUCE, CRASH WITNESS: We heard the plane and it was unusually loud, to clearly it was low. But the engines sounded like they were revving at very high speed, unnatural sound. So we're quite used to them, usually don't pay attention, but this obviously was something a little different. And then the engine cut out and stopped. And then within a couple of seconds, there was this tremendous explosion. So all of that happened in a period of about probably 15 or 20 seconds.

FEYERICK: You hear planes all of the time. They fly over your house. But this one really caught your attention. This one made you stop.

LUCE: Right. And every once in a while, you know, you have a plane that is coming very low, and sounds unusual. We've heard planes occasionally sort of drop an engine or something like that. We hear a funny sound. But this was, you know, rather different. But, again, you know, with the weather way it was, I thought -- my thought was, well, this is just another plane flying very low for a moment.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HARRIS: Man. Let's check in with Rob Marciano now in our Severe Weather Center.

And Rob, if you would, first of all, terrific work this morning, helping everyone understands the conditions the time of the crash last night. Let's turn back the hands of time, if we could, and once again, give us a sort of the scene. What kind of conditions was this flight crew flying in?

ROB MARCIANO, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Well, snow, for one thing. A little bit of freezing rain at the surface, for another thing. Fog, visibility at the surface was three miles. Ceilings were about to 2,000 feet, meaning as they made their dissent, they wouldn't see anything on the ground until they got below about 2,000 feet, maybe 3,000, at best. So that sort of visibility low. But, you know, these are professional pilots. They can fly with instruments, pretty much fly blindfolded, even in this kind of weather.

The problem is, the atmosphere was doing some funny things. It was transforming or transitioning from a mixture of rain and freezing rain and snow to an atmosphere that was more cold from top to bottom. We had a colder air mass rolling in.

So you see that here in this time lapse, as you turn back the time, as you asked. Rain and snow mixture here with a little bit of blue and pink there in the beginning of the clock. But as we roll in towards midnight and thereafter, everything turns to white. So there's your transition from warm to cold.

All right. Let's break down the flight of this thing, give you a little bit of a perspective as to how things went down. It took off out of Newark, obviously heading towards the northwest, got up to about 15, 16,000 feet, turbo props fly a little bit lower. That's right about where the tops of the clouds were, as you got towards western New York. And made that right turn around Scranton, around the Finger Lakes region, and then we lose radio contact at about 5300 feet and then the crash site a little bit farther to the north from there. And so that's what those pilots were enduring, what happened between 5300 feet and then the moment of impact, we sure don't know.

Another quick slice of the atmosphere, I want to show you this -- been showing this a little bit. It's a technical diagram that we look at as meteorologists. It shows you the atmospheric profile, in a vertical fashion. Basically, a weather balloon goes up into the atmosphere and sends back all sorts of data. This is temperature and dew point. When these lines are close together, that means you're in the clouds, pretty much. So this chunk of atmosphere from about 15,000 feet for the surface in the clouds. Those clouds, and the temperature in those clouds were sub freezing. With that high humidity, then you've got the chance for seeing some ice grow.

We have some logarithms that can calculate probabilities of seeing ice form. And this thick green line pretty much states there is a good possibility of seeing ice, either clear o rime ice, or in this case rime ice form on the aircraft or any aircraft flying through. So that's alarming.

This type of plane doesn't have a carburetor or fuel injectors. But this type of ice for planes with carburetor engines, that's called carburetor ice, a whole another thing. So certainly conditions -- that's called carburetor ice, a whole other tings. So certainly conditions were not the best for flying, but for professional pilots do it all the time.

HARRIS: All of the time, yes.

MARCIANO: You don't know what happened there, but weather didn't help. I can tell you that.

HARRIS: We're going to try to get the perspective from a former pilot, a man who has flown a lot, as we try to get some more answers to this.

The first sign of trouble came when Flight 3407 disappeared from radar. This Google Earth animation tracks the plane on its flight from Newark, New Jersey to the crash site in western New York. And joining me now to help us better understands what may have happened, former Airbus Pilot John Wiley, also a contributing editor for "Business and Commercial Aviation" magazine.

John, thanks for your time again. Thanks for your help. You have been with us throughout the morning offering valuable insight. If I had to pin you down on let's call it a working theory as to what caused this crash, what would it be?

JOHN WILEY, FORMER AIRBUS PILOT: First thing that gets my attention is the ice.

HARRIS: Yes.

WILEY: You've got reports of rime ice in the area. we've talked a little bit about that before. Clear ice, again, accretes on the wing. Rime ice, if you want to think of it as a coarse salt, sandpaper, the problem that you've got is it quickly erodes the lift capacity of the wings, so you can lose as much as 20, 30 percent or even more of your lift off of the wings when you start picking this ice up.

HARRIS: You know, John, I'm not a pilot. I'm not going to play one on television, certainly not at a time like this. But I am sort of curious. Is there an in-flight ice sensor on an aircraft like this that would indicate to pilots, hey, we've got some build-up here?

WILEY: You're not only going to get some cockpit indications, but also because you're going into the environment. Now, people are familiar de-icing on the ground, where we use the liquids.

HARRIS: Yes.

WILEY: But in flight, we use both anti-ice and de-icing systems. When we come into conditions where we are in the clouds, and we're in this visible moisture, and our temperature gets to 10 degrees Celsius, 50 degrees Fahrenheit, we start activating those systems. And those are the anti-ice systems because you don't want to pick the ice up on the airplane.

Recently, the FAA changed their perspective. It used to be that as far as the de-icing which comes after you start taking ice on to the airplane, FAA used to say wait until you've built up ice to activate these systems. Recently the FAA said no. Immediately upon encountering the icing conditions, turn the systems on, leave them on until you exit the conditions.

HARRIS: We are getting some indication that the auto pilot system had been engaged for this flight. I'm just sort of curious as to what kinds of conditions are present when the auto pilot is engaged. And is there some indication that, you know, you've got ice build-up, you need to get out of auto pilot and manually control your aircraft.

WILEY: Well, first off, shortly after the Wright brothers flew, a fellow named Sperry (ph) came up with the first auto pilot, which is to keep the wings level. And they have continued to develop until they are very, very, very sophisticated devices.

They're also extremely robust. They can control the airplanes. I've flown airplanes where we have engaged the auto pilot or had the capacity as low as 100 feet on takeoff. And then not disengaged the auto pilot until you were actually rolling out on the runway. Those are what's referred to as category 3B approaches. I have made those into Los Angeles and a number of other places. And the only thing you see is when you touch down on the runway is the center line runway lights.

HARRIS: Are you kidding me?

WILEY: You're a quarter of a mile or less in visibility, and you're moving at 150, 160 miles per hour.

HARRIS: OK. So I know there are other stages, as well and when you talk about robust systems that are available here. But I'm just sort of curious, if you're a pilot and you're engaged, your auto pilot system is engaged, I'm wondering, do you still have a sense of your aircraft? For example, might these pilots at some point have sensed -- and we don't know all of the particulars of the final moments here. Is there a moment when a pilot might have felt something amiss with the aircraft?

WILEY: Not necessarily, because these robust auto pilots can mask an evolution of a problem. In fact, recently, the FAA came out and said that if you're in icing conditions, we want you to disconnect this auto pilot every five minutes. To check and see how the airplane is flying.

There was an incident back in the 1980s, and early 1990s, a 747 over the Pacific, masked the conditions until the auto pilot let go, all of a sudden now you have lights, you have bells, the airplane rolled, lost approximately 20,000 feet or more in altitude before they were able to recover the airplane.

HARRIS: So, again, we don't know the particulars here. But it is possible that the pilot of this aircraft might not have realized the severity of the problem until very late in the process.

WILEY: I think that's a safe assumption. Because you do not continue into these conditions if you think you have a problem.

HARRIS: John, appreciate it.

WILEY: No problem.

HARRIS: Past problems with the type of plane that went down. We get the details from a CNN investigative reporter. We're back in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANTHONY TRIGILIO, CNN IREPORTER: As I was getting closer, I saw people pouring out from all sorts of neighborhoods and stuff life that. There's tons of fire trucks, tons of sirens, more than I've ever heard in my life. Lots of people all over the place. And it was -- it was pretty chaotic.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARRIS: You can imagine. CNN iReporter Anthony Trigilio is a film student who lives in the area. He says he grabbed his camcorder the moment he heard the extra crash.

Continental Airlines confirms the plane was a 74C turbo prop called Bombardier Dash 8 Q400.

CNN's "Special Investigation's Unit" Correspondent Andrew Griffin has been looking into the history of this type of plane.

Andrew, you're going to be joined in a moment by John Wiley. What are you finding, first of all?

ANDREW GRIFFIN, CNN "SPECIAL INVESTIGATION'S UNIT" CORRESPONDENT: The reason we have John here is because this plane is a safe plane, very few incidents or problem. In fact, the biggest problem with this has been, until now, landing gear issues, where the landing gear wasn't engaged after taking off. And they had a couple incidents where the plane had to come back and land on two wheels, having to skid down the runway.

But back in 2005, a Dash 8 100, the first model of this plane, was taking off from Newfoundland and climbed to 18,500 feet on auto pilot, Tony, when all of a sudden, the indication that something was in trouble it had a stick shake indicator. And that's why I want to bring John is because what happened was apparently is, as soon as that happened, this plane starts to stall.

WILEY: Yes. Your stick shaker goes off at a speed prior to getting into stall. It's a warning telling you you're close to the stall.

GRIFFIN: And what happened was this plane starts to pitch and dive.

WILEY: Well, after you go through the stick shaker, then you're down to the stall. And when that happens, generally nose will fall through, if you have a symmetrical situation. If you have symmetric power, both engines in the thrust setting and you have symmetric wings.

We don't know the ice accretion on this aircraft, because our ground report says that the aircraft was both wing-low and nose-low. So what will happen sometimes is when the airplane rolls off on the stall, it can go off on a wing.

GRIFFIN: I want you to remember that eyewitness that we saw of this plane. The wing went down and the plane came over the top.

Two thousand and five, the roll angle increased to 64 degrees -- tremendous. And then after nose-you have briefly, it decreases to 40 degrees down. And this plane in 2005 drops 40 degrees, 4,000 feet in about 40 seconds before the pilot is able to get control of the airplane again. And then pull back out. He is at 14,000 feet, so a lot more room than this plane.

But the eerie thing is, it was only after they come out of that dive that the pilot and copilot look back and realize it was ice.

HARRIS: Oh, boy. And John, you mentioned just a moment ago, nothing as a pilot gets your attention faster than any kind of indication of an icing situation.

WILEY: We refer to these as threats. And in the jargon of accident investigation, human factors and stuff, we consider these threats. And, yes, we want to talk about something to get your attention quick, ice.

HARRIS: Do appreciate it. John, thank you. Thanks again.

And as we have been reporting, Continental connection Flight 3407 slammed into a home outside of Buffalo, New York.

With a technology of Google maps, we can see exactly what the House looked like before the dead low crash.

Josh Levs is over at the touch screen wall with that.

Good to see you, Josh.

JOSH LEVS, CNN NEWS CORRESPONDENT: Good to see you, too, Tony. It's amazing. You can see behind me a picture. And we zoom in, so you can see what is happening.

This is some of the many pictures we're receiving. Thanks to Google, as you were saying, take a look at this. We were able to see we believe is the home hit. We believe it is, because Google has a thing called street-level view.

And I'm going it zoom in on the board and see if we can take a tour around the street, just so you can see that it is really a typical, suburban road. And I'm going to use this to take us on a tour down the street. And you can imagine, anyone who lives on any suburb at that looks like this can picture what it would be like to be there at home, 10:00 at night. And obviously, you hear the explosion, or if you are that incredibly unlucky home that gets hit.

Typical suburb. And I like to put that in perspective, because we see these videos of devastation, and it helps to remember this is a neighborhood, a community.

One more thing. A lot of people are contacting us today, saying what can they do, how can they get in touch with people? The congressman who represents that area has his own web page, Chris Lee. It's chrislee.house.gov. He has created a make-shift blog, and what he is doing is he's taking messages from people for the families of the victims. And I've got a graphic for you here. I just wanted to show you a couple of the messages that came in. Let's go to this full screen, because Tony, that came in at 2:00 this morning from Peggy Miller. "No awords I could type could ever ease your grief. But I wanted you to know you are in my thoughts and prayers."

And one more tht came in just before 1:00, "I can't believe this is happening in our backyard. My thoughts and prayers with all of the families and friends who lost loved ones."

And Tony, obviously getting a lot of help from our iReporters today. And keeping a close eye on ireport.com as well all day long. Any photos, videos, taken safely, that help tell the story of this. Or if you just want to express your thoughts of the families of the victims, go ahead, send this to ireport.com.

And Tony, I'll be back later this hour to share those with you.

HARRIS: And I know that you are also following our affiliate web sites, as well, for any additional reporting there. And I think -- I believe T.J. Holmes is going to be joining us, as well, later this hour, and certainly next hour, as we start to turn around some of those images from our affiliates in the Buffalo area.

Josh, appreciate it. Thanks for your help on the story.

LEVS: You got it.

HARRIS: Another big, big story for us, today, the $789 billion decision. The House headed to a vote soon on the massive stimulus plan. The latest from Capitol Hill. We're back in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HARRIS: Once again, we're going to try to get you as much of the affiliate material that we can from our local affiliates in the Buffalo area.

And just a short time ago, one of the reporters for WGRZ had an opportunity to speak with an emergency management coordinator. And the issue here is about concerns that are being raised about air quality in the area of this plane crash.

Have a listen to that conversation.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER, WGRZ: Any concerns, either short-term or long-term about air quality? Because that amount of fuel burning for that long, that's got to be an issue for people with respiratory problems around the -- at least the immediate area.

DAVID BISSONETE, EMERGENCY MANGEMENT: Well, that's a great question. Clearly, the jet -- what we call jet-a fuel, that was exhausted almost immediately in the beginning fire balls. That fuel burned off. We did have a fair amount of plume, of smoke coming off the property. But most of the -- most of the public was either already removed from the area, or behind closed doors, which was adequate for that type of exposure.

REPORTER: Speaking of that plume...

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARRIS: One of the anchors for our affiliate, WGRZ. A good question about the air-quality.

The plane was carrying 5,000 pounds of jet fuel. And, of course, 12 homes, we understand, in the area have been evacuated as a precautionary measure. Air quality, of course, would be a concern.

President Barack Obama expressed sympathy to the victims of the plane crash near Buffalo, but he is also keeping his focus on the economy, and the stimulus bill. In remarks to the business council just a short time ago, the president said, the spirit of the debate over the plan was good, but it is time to move forward.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OBAMA: As we meet, Congress is now poised to act. It's passed the House, it's passed the Senate. We expect a vote on the final version today. And one of the reasons we have come so far is because so many of you have recognized the urgency and necessity of taking action. All of us, government, business, labor and citizens, will have responsibilities to meet. And I will be looking to all of you for your ideas and innovations, for your help not only crafting the policies of the 21st century, but crafting a government for the 21st century that can be a partner with you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARRIS: Well, the House vote on the $789 billion economic stimulus plan expected within the next few hours. Congressional Correspondent Brianna Keilar is following developments on Capitol Hill.

Brianna, good morning to you. What's the latest? Bring us up to speed?

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: At this moment, actually, I'm just steps from the house floor where debate will be going on here shortly about this huge economic stimulus package. As you said, a vote to come here in a couple of hours. Then the Senate is going to follow tonight.

But this, Tony, is a day on Capitol Hill that history will judge. Depending on who you speak with, Republicans or Democrats, this is either a day where Congress is going to save the U.S. economy from going into a depression or this is the day that Congress makes the most expensive mistake it has ever made. And that's something that as we talk about the votes and all of the back and forth that has been going on, that's really what it boils down to. In all of these negotiations, finally, the - the result this economic stimulus package, there are some House Democrats who felt that it wasn't big enough, that it's just not enough, especially when it comes to education spending. There was something in their proposal that was new school construction that got stripped out, and they weren't happy about that. That's why we're seeing a vote today in the House instead of yesterday, because those House Democrats said they wanted time to go over this legislation before they took their vote.

Here's how House Speaker Nancy Pelosi talked about that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. NANCY PELOSI (D), HOUSE SPEAKER: Around here, the language means a lot worse, weigh a ton, and one person's understanding of a spoken description might vary from another's who wanted to see it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Meantime, on the Senate side, they are holding their vote later tonight. We understand that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is making some calls, trying to appeal to some more centrist Republicans. Remember, only a few critical Republicans on board at this point, and they're becoming even more crucial today, Tony, because we understand that Senator Ted Kennedy, who was here for the last vote and gave Democrats their 61st vote, so an extra vote there, he's not going to be there today. So it's going to be a squeaker. If they can't win anymore support, obviously they'd like to buffer that.

HARRIS: Absolutely. All right, our congressional correspondent, Brianna Keilar, for us. Brianna, thank you.

Plenty of questions about what brought down the plane in New York. Did ice on the wings play a role?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HARRIS: Crash investigators are at work outside Buffalo today. Here's what we know about the crash of Continental Flight 3407.

CNN confirms the plane's flight data recorders have been pulled from the wreckage. They're being flown to Washington for analysis. Witnesses say the turboprop dove into the house making a direct hit. There you can see the tail poking out, the front of the plane simply gone. From Google, you can see the house and neighborhood as it looked before the crash. One person inside was killed; remarkably, two others survived. The Continental plane was a turbo prop on a approach to Buffalo's airport from Newark. Witnesses say the plane's engines roared and revved, then suddenly quit. Seconds later, the fiery impact. A team from the National Transportation Safety Board out of Washington arrived at the scene of the crash earlier this morning and got right to work.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STEVEN CHEALANDER, NTSB SPOKESMAN: The fire is very hot, it's still burning out there. The incident commander is in control. He is the one that tells us when we can go in and start our investigation. So as far as picking up pieces and getting all of the things that we need to get to conduct our investigation, we haven't begun that yet. With the exception of we've been allowed by the incident commander to go in and try to retrieve the black boxes, if you will. The two recorders, the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder. We have investigators on scene, as we speak, trying to get those recorders out. Our intent is to get them out of here this morning and back to Washington and start the analysis of those as quickly as we can.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARRIS: And, again, we learned just a short time ago that the flight data and cockpit voice recorders have now been recovered and are, in fact, on their way to Washington.

The crash shook the neighborhood in Clarence Center where the plane went down. One resident says it sounded like a mini earthquake. When they heard the explosion, some people rushed to the site.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We pulled up in my truck right in the fire hall. We see the fire. We were in his room and we were just...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We were relaxing in my room.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Heard the plane come in.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Heard the plane come in, real loud, thought it was going right over my house, and we heard it explode and my whole room shook. So...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We look out the window, saw...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So we thought we'd check it out and came down here, and it was nuts.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARRIS: Boy. Flight 3407 was bound for Buffalo. It took off from Newark International Airport. That's where CNN's Senior Correspondent Allan Chernoff joins us now.

And Al, I know you've had an opportunity to talk to people who have flown to your location from Buffalo today.

ALLAN CHERNOFF, CNN SENIOR CORRESPONDENT: Yes, that's right, Tony. And I can tell you a lot of anxiety on those flights. People very nervous about getting on the plane, well aware of what happened last night. I do have one absolutely incredible story to share with you. I spoke just a few moments ago with David Begany (ph). He was supposed to have within on that flight last night from Newark to Buffalo. He missed it because his flight from New Orleans to Newark was delayed. HARRIS: Oh, boy.

CHERNOFF: I spoke with him as he had just stepped into his home near Buffalo, and he was watching for the very first time pictures of the crash on television. He said to me that God was watching over me. He said, it could have been me. My wife could have been with those other families. And he said, indeed, the flight that he took this morning, he did take a flight from Newark up to Buffalo this morning. He said that flight was very bumpy and quite anxiety-provoking. His wife said that friends and family have been calling all morning long, checking on her husband, and that she is just so thankful, and she is very, very sad for the other families.

HARRIS: Boy, that is incredible. All right, Allan Chernoff for us.

The weather typical for Buffalo in February, light rain and a snow mix. Some freezing rain thrown in, as well. Early speculation focuses on possible ice build-up on the plane's wings.

Here air traffic controllers check conditions with other pilots in the area.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL: Are you getting any kind of icing or anything there?

DELTA 1998: It doesn't appear to be building. We've got about a half inch. Quarter inch on us from the descend that has remained with us the whole time.

CACTUS 1452: Set the road for Cactus 1452. And we've been picking up on ice here for the last - oh, the last 10 minutes.

52, sir. We've been getting ice since 10, 20 miles south of the airport.

AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL: Cactus 1452, OK? If you could let me know when you get out of the ice. Aircraft coming up from the South was reporting that earlier.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

HARRIS: Boy, oh, boy. Let's check in once again with Rob Marciano.

And Rob, I see you're at our magic wall location. What have you put together for us?

MARCIANO: Well, you know, a lot of people have been asking what's the difference between clear ice and rime ice? We'll start with that.

Clear ice is something you see on a freezing rain event, say, on your car. They're difficult to find on an airplane that's been flying, so this one has been sitting still on the ground. So it's a little bit not real in that it's not flying. But you get the idea of what a clear ice actually looks like.

Now, the rime ice, which is what I think these pilots really have been dealing with more with this situation in Buffalo, is it looks like this. You see the leading edge of the wing there, and you can see the ice kind of build up, much like you would see in a freezer of an old, you know - nonfrost-free freezer.

HARRIS: Around the coils of that freezer.

MARCIANO: Exactly. So the apparently this plane, this Dash 8, which this is a picture right here, and you can actually see the black on the wings there. I'm told that's the device that the pilots use to knock the ice that builds off - builds on the wings, to knock it off. It's called a pneumatic boot and it actually inflates and shoots the ice off.

So we found some cool pictures demonstrating this. Kind of four pictures in sequence that shows the ice build up here on the leading edge of the wing. And then the pneumatic boot's going to work and kind of busting off that ice. And here's number three. And this is done in a wind tunnel. So it breaks off the ice and the wind, obviously, takes it away from the wing and the object is to get a clear leading edge of that wing to get the loft back to - the lift back to where it should be.

A number of pilots just told me, you know, it just doesn't take much ice to decrease that lift. In some cases, all it has to be is the thickness of some rough sandpaper, and boom, you've decreased your lift by 30 percent, you've increased your drag by 40 percent. So you can imagine what that might do to the performance of an aircraft. So this type of situation, Tony, and again...

HARRIS: Rob, can you hold that picture - can you take that back over and hold that up? Because I know you've got pilots in your family and maybe you can call your dad and your brother and maybe ask this question. I don't see John Wiley (ph) around. But I'm wondering, does that boot that you're describing that is supposed to inflate and knock the ice off the leading edge of that wing, does that happen automatically? Is there a sensor that says to the rest of the mechanism, inflate now, we've got an icing situation? Or is that something that has to be activated by the pilot?

MARCIANO: I can't say for sure whether or not there's a sensor that alerts the pilot. A couple of pilots I've talked to, it depends on the airplane that would alert the pilot. But the thing is - the controversy over recent years has been do you wait for the ice to build up and then knock it off?

HARRIS: Right, right.

MARCIANO: Or do you constantly keep it on so it doesn't allow to build up. And apparently, the new guidelines are, you fly into this situation, you keep that sucker on and you make sure that ice doesn't build up. HARRIS: All right. I know you'll call...

MARCIANO: I'll call dad. I'll wake him up.

HARRIS: Call dad.

All right, Rob, appreciate it. Thank you.

The crash of Flight 3407 is a tough one to cover. Even more so if it's in your own community. We are taking a look at coverage from a local level. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HARRIS: We have some new video that we're about to show you. Maybe we're showing it to you right now, the right of your screen, it's from Will Charland who we're going to speak to next hour. He lives in the Clarence Center neighborhood. In fact, he lives about three blocks away on Long Street. Last night, at just about the time of the crash, he was walking outside to a neighbor's house when he heard the plane overhead. He described a weird sound and visually seeing the plane very low in the sky. And then the next thing he noticed was the sky sort of lighting up. Obviously, the impact of the plane crashing into that home. And these are the pictures he was able to capture.

Let's sort of watch and listen here.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No, it hit already and I talked to her.

(SIRENS)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARRIS: My goodness. OK.

Joe, talk to me for a second. Boy. Joe Connelly in our control room. Joe, how quickly can we turn that around? I want to get to T.J. because I know we're also following what the affiliates are covering and some of the new details that they're able to bring to this story. So why don't we do that and maybe we can turn this around again, because it is clearly the most dramatic video and audio that we have seen so far.

But before I do that, can anyone give me an indication how much longer on this? OK. We'll turn it around. All right.

T.J. Holmes is with us now, and he is, of course, watching the coverage from our affiliates in the Buffalo area.

T.J., that clearly is the most dramatic video and audio so far. But I know you're following our affiliates' coverage as well. Wow.

T.J. HOLMES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, if you want to keep rolling that while I'm talking, that's great.

HARRIS: Yes, we're going to cue it up again.

HOLMES: That goes with what I was about to bring you and to talk to you about, in that so many people, of course, who were right there in that neighborhood and that area, that is - like you said, probably the - one of the best illustrations we have seen, if you will, of what people are describing. And what they are describing, time and time again, as we are looking at our affiliates and they're talking to their local citizens, is that you can't tell what that is. You can't tell there's a house there. You can't tell what is happening there. You don't see a plane, you don't see wreckage, you just know a house used to be there or is supposed to be there and you see nothing but this big fire. That is a lot of what our local affiliates are getting from our citizens there.

As we continue to watch this, I'm going to roll for you here, Tony, one sound bite from one guy who - I don't know if we can put a two box up and roll this. But he is going to describe exactly what this video is showing us.

Let's listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: My grandma who lives down the street here, lives on the corner, she called us and said that a plane had crashed. And we got here just a little bit before the fire trucks did. By that time we got out and everything, they were there. It was - there was - it looked like a bonfire, a huge bonfire. You couldn't even tell there was a house there. Couldn't tell there was a plane. And it's just so hard to take it all in at once, you know, with so many people. And we didn't realize, you know, what kind of plane, how big it was. So it was difficult.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HOLMES: You hear that, Tony? And it's amazing, that kid is describing exactly what we're seeing on the screen. And that is, it looked like a bonfire.

I want to pass along a couple more notes. We're certainly getting a lot of - the local affiliates are getting statements from local representatives, state senators, state representatives all wanting to add their help or throw their help in here. But one more thing want to pass along which the local affiliates are passing on to their viewers is that there is going to be prayer vigil this evening at 4:00 today. So, just in a few hours at Eastern Hills Wesleyan Church there in the area. That's being done in conjunction with all the churches in that area. So, we're keeping our eye on things and things like that and bringing it to you as the local affiliates are certainly passing this stuff along to their citizens.

HARRIS: Well, I'm about to do something that folks in the control room absolutely hate. And, T.J., stay with me as I do this. You can provide me some cover here. What I'd like to do is rerack that tape and as soon as we do that, let me know so that we can pitch to it so that we can see it and hear it in its entirety.

Again this is a video captured last night by Will Charland, one of our iReporters. And he lives just three blocks away from this address in the Clarence Center neighborhood last night where Flight 3407 went down.

Let's listen in.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTFIED FEMALE: Get some help for my daughter! She's hysterical!

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh my gosh! Is there anybody in there?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Let go of my husband!

UNIDENTIFIED PEOPLE: Police! Police!

(SIRENS)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No, it hit already and I talked to her.

(SIRENS)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARRIS: Our iReporter Will Charland captured these astonishing images from last night. We - I believe, Will is close. We're going to try to talk to him in just a moment.

You're in the CNN NEWSROOM. We're back in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HARRIS: The CNN iReporters were quickly on the scene after the Continental commuter jet went down. CNN's Josh Levs is watching these online for us.

Did you see the amazing pictures from Will Charland just a moment ago? We're going to try to get him on the phone - looks like next hour, but amazing pictures and amazing work form our iReporter.

LEVS: And he has sent those to us - yes, exactly, through iReports. Incredible. Well, we've been getting - and as Tony knows and a lot of you know, video can tell a lot of the story. Sometimes a still photo can tell a tremendous amount, too. So that's what I'm scrolling through for you here. The first ones are from Nicole Komin, these iReport photos. She lives in Buffalo. She drove over to the area of this crash. She did so safely. And she said she could feel it, she could smell it. Even the next morning, hours later she said she still smells that smoke.

Let's keep going through. I want you to see some photos that come to us from Anthony Dominguez. This is some incredibly powerful. In fact, we have these in our main story at CNN.com today. He said he looked outside, saw this flickering glow, and then a massive orange glow that appeared over these houses. He describes it going up and down pulsating.

And finally, we're going to take a look at some of these. These are from Blake Walker. This is actually a professional photographer, too. He was out. And Tony, he has lived in that area his entire life. Look at that. Look at that. I mean, you can barely even fathom that kind of smoke. And this is - as I was showing you earlier this hour, it's a small road in a suburban neighborhood just outside Buffalo. This is the last thing anyone would think would happen. Keep those videos, photos coming, folks. iReport.com. And Tony, I'll show you more next hour.

HARRIS: More next hour? OK, Josh. All right, we're following the braking developments of the Buffalo crash. We're back in just a moment.