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AirAsia 8501 Bound for Singapore Missing

Aired December 28, 2014 - 13:00   ET

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

MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hello, everyone. I'm Martin Savidge in for Fredricka Whitfield and we begin with the breaking news.

A passenger jet carrying 162 people has gone missing in Southeast Asia. Here is what we know right now. The official search at sea has been suspended because of darkness. It is just after midnight local time. And large ships with powerful lights will keep combing the waters of off Indonesia for AirAsia 8501. The more intensive efforts now had to pause until day break.

The air bus A320-200 left Indonesia around 5:30 a.m. local time bound for Singapore. Indonesian official say that about 45 minutes later, the captain asked to climb to above 38,000 feet because of stormy weather. Then the plane disappeared from radar.

Indonesian authorities say that they monitored the jet for another half hour before they lost contact. Now, families, of course, are desperate for any sign of what may have happened to this plane. There no Americans were on board.

Almost all of the passengers were Indonesian nationals. But the NTSB is monitoring the situation from here in the United States and says it is prepared to assist if that request comes in.

The situation, of course, is unfolding less than months after Malaysian airline flight 370 went missing in route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. And despite a massive international search effort, there is still no trace of that aircraft or the 239 people who are on board.

So let's get to correspondent Andrew Stevens who is now joining us. He is in Surabaya, Indonesia and that is where this missing jet took off from en route to Singapore and where reporters now are at the airport crisis center, that just now for the main terminal.

And Andrew, what are we hearing from the authorities there?

ANDREW STEVENS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, it is just heading out to 1:00 in the morning now, Martin. And there has not been much new information that I can the tell you about.

What I can say is that the search when it resumes in full force at first flight (ph) tomorrow, there will be seven Indonesian vessels, plus two Indonesian helicopters. We understand Malaysia is sending three vessels. Singapore is sending one aerial reconnaissance aircraft, and Australia has also offered to send vessels. We don't know where that offer is going to be taken up yet. But certainly, the focus in the next few hours is going to be move very much on to the search area.

We had the chief, the executive officer, the founder of AirAsia. He arrived here in Surabaya from Kuala Lumpur a few hours ago, Martin. And he was saying right now, his priority is being with the families of both the passengers and of course with the crew, 155 passengers on board plus a crew of seven. So that is where his focus is. He is not speculating on what may or may not have happened to that plane. Listen to what Tony Fernandes had to say about his own personal reaction.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TONY FERNANDES, FOUNDER, AIRASIA: We are devastated by what has happened. It is unbelievable. But we do not know what has happened yet so we will wait for the accident investigation when we find out what has happened.

Our concern right now is for the relatives and the next of kin. There is nothing more important for us, and for our crews and family, for the passenger families, and that we look after them. That is our number one priority at the moment.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

STEVENS: And just one little heart wrenching scene, we just saw about half hour ago I want to tell you about, Martin, two girls came to the crisis center behind me where information has been giving out to relatives. They both had parents, both parents on the flight. And they were actually in Singapore, where they went to school waiting for the parents to turn up. Their parents were joining them for the New Year's Eve celebrations in Singapore. And we all know now, of course, that flight never arrived. So they have come down here to Surabaya.

They are being chaperoned by members of the school. They are not speaking, but they looked like young teenager, and absolutely bewildered and shocked. And your heart just went out to these girls who may in one stroke may have lost both of their parent, each of them. Just terrible stories, and that is just one story. There were 155 passengers and seven crew. So many more stories like that to come out.

SAVIDGE: All right. Andrew Stevens, thank you very much, reporting are from Surabaya, Indonesia. That's where the aircraft originated on. Thank you.

CNN aviation correspondent Rene Marsh, she is live in Washington.

And Rene, you have been in touch with both air bus and the NTSB. First, what if anything is airbus saying about the -- at the aircraft, this particular one, the A320-200?

RENE MARSH, CNN AVIATION AND GOVERNMENT REGULATION CORRESPONDENT: Well, it is a newer aircraft, Martin. And we know that it was delivered October 2008. That would make it a little bit over six years old. As far as the flying time, we know it is more than 23,000 flight hours. So, it has made some reps, but at this point, it is a newer airplane. With we know as far as the A320 goes, the safety record is pretty good when you consider the reps that the aircraft has made. We oftentimes, you have heard it several times today referred to it as the workhorse. And it makes sense, because when you look at the big picture of just how many reps this particular aircraft has made around the world, it is a lo lot. I mean, airbus, itself, its own stat says that every two seconds somewhere around the world every day, an airbus is either landing or taking off. So that puts it to context.

At this point, airbus is being very careful with their language. They are not dipping into the arena of speculation. They are saying that they are waiting to gather more information but making it very clear that they are ready and willing to work with the investigators once this moves to the investigative stage.

We do know here in the United States that the NTSB already has the lines of communication open both with the airbus as well as the French equivalent of the NTSB. We also know that they are talking to the Indonesians as well. So lines of communication is open. But the primary goal at this point is finding that wreckage, because really, until that is done, there is but so much they can figure out without the wreckage -- Martin.

SAVIDGE: Rene, that is, you know, a heavily trafficked air corridor there. I'm wondering, you know, what about other flights in that region flying the similar route? Did anyone hear or see or report any problems?

MARSH: Right. So you know, we mentioned off of the top that the search rescue, the search and rescue is essentially at a halt. But to the your point here, that doesn't mean that everything is at a standstill. Investigators at this point, what they are wanting to do is to find out if there are pilots in the area who saw something that may be valuable inform information. They are also referring to the radar. They are looking at the different points that this aircraft hit. Looking at the flight path up to the point where they lost it.

With that data they are able to crunch some number, figure out things like how fast this plane was potentially going. We know roughly what the altitude was. So with the information that they currently have, they can pull out some data. However, they can go but so far until they find the wreckage.

SAVIDGE: And of course, all of us felt the same drop in our stomach and my God, not again and we harkens back to MH-370. But are there differences here than say the initial reporting of 370?

MARSH: There are differences. I mean, in this case, we are hearing as far as our reporting goes is that it took roughly 20 minutes or so before Indonesia alerted AirAsia that they lost all contact with the flight. It was much longer as it relates to Malaysia flight 370.

And also with flight 370, there were a lot of things that just really couldn't be explained. In this case, we heard from the pilot that there was bad weather, and that this pilot wanted to change course a bit and also go up in altitude. So we at least know what was going on in the mind of the pilot. Whereas with flight 370, there was a big mystery. We knew that they had signed off, but we didn't hear any word of any issues in the cockpits. So that is the major difference here.

SAVIDGE: All right, Rene Marsh, thank you very much for those very good insights.

Let's turn now to CNN aviation analyst, Miles O'Brien, he joins us. We are and also joined by aviation correspondent Richard Quest.

And Richard, let me turn to you first. We know -- well, let me just say this. Maybe we don't know, it has been reported that there have been heavy storms in the area at the time when this plane was flying and went missing. There had been some who suggested maybe it wasn't as bad as all that. He was climbing, wanted to climb at 38,000. It doesn't sound like you are going to climb over a heavy storm. What was going on?

RICHARD QUEST, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: OK. So, he was climb from 32,000 feet to 38,000 feet to these heavy storms. And now, what seems to be, and this is just from what the pilots are saying, and what is online at the moment, it looks as though the air speed of the aircraft was quite low, with dangerously low at that particular time. And what one 320 pilot told me, any climb at that sort of altitude has to be -- particularly a 6,000-foot climb has to be done with a measure with an increased measure of safety over on the speed side, because the window, if you like, or to use the pilot's phrase, the envelope gets narrower and narrower as you try make dramatic moves. So we don't know why, but clearly, what does seem to be the issue is the weather, the climb, the last call from the pilot and these are all coalescing around this particular instant when the plane then lost contact.

SAVIDGE: And Miles, the plane was flying through, and I hope I say this right, the inter tropical convergence zone, it is notorious for the worse of thunderstorms on the planet, I'm told. So, is it common for planes to be flying through this area to experience that kind of problems?

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN AVIATION ANALYST (via phone): Well, it is common to have these kinds of storms in that area. It is not ever advised for a flight crew to try to penetrate these any thunderstorm for that matter.

And so, if in fact they were using the onboard radar system to try to find a gap in the convective activity, and the lighter parts of the storm, if you will, to tread through, you will run into a phenomena called radar shadowing which means you can see the first line of thunderstorms, you might see a gap, but the radar is unable to penetrate into the imbedded line behind it. And what can happen is, you can fly yourself into a gap, and think that you are making your way around this, that thunderstorm activities, and it turns out to be essentially a sucker hole. And you are stuck inside of a dead end and you have to penetrate these bad storms. So, you know, this is exactly what air France 447 flew into few years

ago over the mid-Atlantic, it was in the inter tropical convergence zone, thunderstorm, embedded thunderstorm, and what happened in that case was (INAUDIBLE) to try the air speed sensors crossover (ph) and then a sequence of events after, whether the crash.

SAVIDGE: And I don't need to jump ahead and try to come up with the cause right away. But since you mentioned specific example, is it possible, Richard, that the same scenario happened as the one with Air France may have are repeated itself?

QUEST: Well, we don't know. But remember with the Air France 447, as Miles reminds us, it went through the ITZ, the (INAUDIBLE) then froze. It was said unreliable as speed indicator. But all of that was, if you like, the scenario, it was how the pilots responded to that particular situation that's ultimately doomed the aircraft.

So this is why you will hear people some like myself say weather on its own does not bring down the plane. And by that what I mean is weather will not cause the disintegration of the aircraft, the wing is not going to fall off because it is going through a thunderstorm. And what happens is a scenario is created that makes it much more challenging for the pilots to fly. And here, we have I would say a moderately experienced captain, 6,000 hours. We have reasonably experienced first officer 2,000 hours. By no means that the upper end of experience. But you have got a scenario being created. We don't know. Let me stop there, because at this point, any further comment just literally takes us into a realm that are pure unadulterated speculation.

SAVIDGE: All right, thank you, Richard.

Let me ask you this Miles, before I let you go, real quick. no emergency beacon, why?

O'BRIEN: Well, the emergency locater transmitter is designed to start emitting a frequency on impact in this scenario. But if it is submerged, you are not going to hear it. So that, this is saying, once again, we are at this point where we ask the question, why do we not have some the capability of knowing a little bit more about what is going on with these aircraft while they are in the air? And why don't I have some capability for realtime streaming data so we can understand a little better what is going on. And this is something the airlines have been resisting because of the cost. But in this case, we would have much more information right now of what has happened.

SAVIDGE: All right, Miles O'Brien, thank you very much.

Richard, I understand, we will be talking to you throughout the hour, thank you both.

We are will find out how the U.S. is responding to this latest missing plane right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) SAVIDGE: We are continuing our coverage of a missing AirAsia passenger jet. This is flight 8501 that left Indonesia at about 5:30 in the morning local time that was bound for Singapore. The jut had 162 people on board including 18 children with a crew of seven. Official say large ships with powerful lights continue to go on the water south of Indonesia for the plane.

But the more intensive efforts have to pause until daybreak. Heavy storms have been reported in the area. Indonesian officials say that the pilot requested to fly the higher altitude because of that weather. And of course, this incident comes just 10 months after Malaysia airlines flight 370 vanished on its way to Beijing with 239 people onboard.

Joining me now CNN international meteorologist Tom Slater and he joins us from the CNN weather center.

Let me ask you this, what was the weather conditions, Tom, at the time this happened?

TOM SLATER, CNN INTERNATIONAL METEOROLOGIST: Well, Martin for most of the time at CNN, I'm at CNN international, and this is a region of the world that we have been covering extensively almost every other day since the beginning of December. And the reason for this, as you look across the globe here as it is spinning here, and we are watching what we said, and I have heard you mentioned it too, Inter Tropical Convergence Zone. Since the beginning of the month, we are seeing unprecedented of flood emergencies with declared disaster areas as well.

Here is the line of cloud covered. Here is Malaysia and Indonesia, Southeast Asia and the southern areas of India where Sri Lanka has been dealing with problem. It's been ongoing. In fact, it is almost unprecedented what we are seeing.

This time of the year, the Inter tropical Convergence Zone drops from the monsoonal rains in India and come southward. So the pilots are dealing with already what is considered kind of a rough area to fly through. But this year, and this month in particular, we are starting to see miles of rainfall in blue, from Mozambique to Sri Lanka over towards the borders of Thailand and Malaysia, we have disaster areas that have been declared.

Now, the flooding in Mozambique is one problem. Sri Lanka, we had over 300,000 that have been displaced. And in the beginning of the month, we have a landslide because of the rainfall that buried over 300 people.

There are over one million people now that have been evacuated along the border of Thailand and Malaysia. There are states in Malaysia, there are provinces in Thailand, the emergencies right there are unbelievable. They cannot get enough crews to evacuate the people that need to be taken to shelters. And they just don't have enough shelters. But it is Indonesia where we have landslide and heavy amounts of rain. So this is the region of concern. Let's talk about this because

during that area and in the zone at this time of the year, you have air masses come in from the northeast and they come up from the south, so where they meet in those region, thunderstorms develop rapidly. And the problem is we just don't know if the pilot made its way into the thunderhead or if he was trying to maneuver around this region.

But what we are find here is where the convergence, these storms develops, it is the heights. They have to fly around it. When they get into these cloud tops, it is the icing that can be a problem besides these turbulence. So again, what we know, and this is realtime data of when the plane went missing. You can probably see the large thunderstorm here, avoiding the drafts and the turbulence around the large thunderstorm maybe trying to get its act together again in some clearing before we find themselves in the middle of another thunderstorm.

And all of these have been racing from west to east across the region. So we know that weather was bad. We know that pilots, martin, in this region watch this on a daily and nightly event, so again, we are going to have find more information. We will share some more with you just a little bit.

SAVIDGE: It is fascinating, Tom. Real quick, what are the conditions like for searchers when they resume in daylight?

SLATER: Well, depending on where the thunderstorms are. And they are going to be developing throughout the entire day because morning is going to be arriving here soon. We most likely believe that with the warm waters over to the java sea, there could be some pretty good visibility. But there are going to encounter more thunderstorms throughout the day. But where they develop, Martin, is almost impossible to say. So again, they are working with meteorological teams as well keeping an eye on that.

SAVIDGE: All right, international meteorologist Tom Slater, great to have your insights. We appreciate it. Thanks.

Now, we are joined by Peter Goelz. He is a former managing director of the national Transportation Safety Board, an NTSB official. And we have an NTSB official out who says that agency is monitoring the search and stands ready to assists is need be. So, what kind of help could the U.S. provide at this particular time, very early on?

PETER GOELZ, FORMER MANAGING DIRECTOR, NATIONAL TRANSPORTATION SAFETY BOARD: Well, the Indonesians know the capabilities of the NTSB. It is not likely that they will have a role here in this investigation. It is a French manufactured plane. The engines are (INAUDIBLE) led by the French. There were no American citizens on board, so that the NTSB will play a technical support role if requested by Indonesia. But the Indonesians are going to be reaching out, I think, to both the Malaysians and the French, perhaps the Australians to help them investigate this tragedy.

SAVIDGE: And once again, it seems that we are looking at the aircraft disaster in which there was no distress call or distress signal. Why would that happen?

GOELZ: Well, part of it is that the pilots are trained to fly their aircraft first when they are in a tough situation. If they are in an unusual situation, they are flying first, navigating second, communicating third.

But the reality is as has been reported previously, it is inexcusable that we are not tracking these aircraft that have significant transoceanic flights on a closer basis sick. The rescue and search and rescue people, they need to be going out before dawn to a targeted area. If they knew where they were headed, they will find this thing very quickly, I'm sure, but they need more help.

SAVIDGE: We said that. But of course, we went through all of this nightmare with MH 370. They still continue to try to locate that aircraft. And this happened, you know, at the beginning part of the day, in that part of the world, and I believe they searched for 12 hour, and found nothing. Does that suggest something?

GOELZ: Well, it may suggests that the initial information that the Indonesians had was fairly incomplete. Now, they have had a full 24 hours now to gather all of the available radar data from all of the available sources. They should be able to put that together along with the satellite data and have a more precise location on are where to target the search. Hopefully that has taken place.

SAVIDGE: Hopefully, it is. Peter Goelz, thanks very much. We appreciate it.

GOELZ: Thank you, Martin.

SAVIDGE: And we will get perspective of a pilot who has flown that route of that missing plane just ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SAVIDGE: Hello, I'm Martin Savidge. And we continue to follow the developments in the disappearance of AirAsia flight 8501. It was suppose to go from Surabaya to Singapore. It never arrived. And now the search is on for the 162 people who were onboard.

CNN's Erin McPike joins us from Washington.

Erin, I presume the administration has been brave and follows this closely?

ERIN MCPIKE, CNN GENERAL ASSIGNMENT CORRESPONDENT: Martin, that is right. President Obama was briefed last night while he was out to dinner in Hawaii. And White House officials say that they will continue to monitor this situation. And as of yet, there are no U.S. assets that has been designated to this search. We did get a comment from a official state department official a little bit earlier today. I want to read that to you.

That official says that the Indonesians and Singaporeans are leading the search for the missing airplane. As we have in the past, the United States stands ready to assist in any way that is helpful.

That state department official also said that there are no U.S. passengers which we talked about last night and early this morning. But confirmed that there were no U.S. passport involve in this flight.

The other thing we would point out though is that in the case of both MH-370 after that went miss, and after MH-317 was shot down over eastern Ukraine, those were both Boeing 777 aircraft. And that Boeing, of course, is an American company. So the NTSB, the FAA were involved in some of the technical support for that. In this case, the airbus is a French company. So the U.S. will, of course, have less involvement. But the U.S. has be asked first before they can begin to contribute assets and help in the search, Martin.

SAVIDGE: And what about the U.S. military in any way have they been asked to supply vessels or aircraft to help in the search?

MCPIKE: As far as we know, yet, there has been no ask made. But it is the same for any kind of U.S. assets, whether it is the military, other technical support, the U.S. has to be asked first. In the case of the financial assistance, the White House will have to sign off on that. But if the NTSB is asked to help in the search, that could happen automatically.

SAVIDGE: Got it. Erin McPike, thanks very much for joining us from Washington.

Now, we are joined by former pilot Les Abend, and we are also talking to former pilot Alastair Rosenschein. He joins us on the phone from England.

Alastair, let me start with you. You have flown the same path of flight 8501 before. So what can you tell us about that particular route?

ALASTAIR ROSENSCHEIN, FORMER PILOT (via phone): Well, that particular route at this time of year involve the very strong likelihood of (INAUDIBLE). Now normally, these are fairly spread out so you pick your way throughout them (ph). But this may not be the case on this occasion it seems like the aircraft, the pilots had asked to not only deviate, but also to try to climb up. And the idea of climbing up is even to go over the thunderstorms, and its remain visually in contact with the worst weather, because the thunderstorm could be embedded in other clouds so you are going to see (INAUDIBLE) except by the use of your weather radar which normally should be enough to pick your way around. But you know, I am looking at the weather you book on your screen, and it is quite clear that some of these thunderstorms are quite huge. So some 30, maybe 40 or 50 as nautical miles across. And so, a divert can would have to be quite large. And (INAUDIBLE) storms.

SAVIDGE: And Les, you know, you have flown through, obviously, spear weather as well in all of your many flights and travels. Is it the pilot's discretion, in other words, to say well, I wanted to do this, I want to do this, in other words, is a lot of this now, the plane being flown directly from the cockpit as opposed to guided from the ground by air traffic control recommendation?

LES ABEND, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Well, let me quality part of your question. First of all, we don't fly through thunderstorms. That's our objectives. So in that regard, we try to avoid them to the best of our knowledge, as my pilot/colleague Alastair has commented about.

It may have been a scattered area of thunderstorms, it may have been an even more embedded area of thunderstorms that they I tried to deviate around. And we yes, we do have control of the airplane. There is nobody on the ground that is going to be able to control the airplane.

We use autopilot in a function called heading select, so we turn to the heading that our radar seems to indicate will take us out of the worst. The industry standard is about 20 miles away from the storm to prevent turbulence and all of the bad things associated with it. And now, with Alastair has flown in that specific area, I flown in the Inter tropical Convergence Zone in south America, and I think you will agree with me that very often, in standard conditions, not as intense as this storm look, is that conduct yourselves tend to park themselves right in the same area all the time and the pilots that are experiencing this area know this as are able to at least predicted even before they take off.

Now, things -- it is a dynamic environment, but we certainly have the ability to use our radar to its fullest extent and to deviate around it. And with reference to the climb, we don't know for sure, once again we are all speculating here. He may just wanted a better ride for his passengers, very often going to a higher altitude would be a better ride. It does not actually mean that this particular aircraft was in some sort of trouble.

SAVIDGE: Alastair, what about a lightning strike on an aircraft? We have all wonder this before. Is it possible that the lightning can damage an aircraft to make it so it is unable to fly?

ROSENSCHEIN: No. Modern aircraft have a system called bonding where every piece of metal is bonded to the next piece. So a lightning strike to an aircraft will pass through the aircraft on one side to the other way on the ground maybe to another cloud and without doing so much damage. And then you have entry and can exit toll which typically might be an insult to the craft.

I have a few of them in my plan. But take note that that damage, the aircraft, the point in which still can (INAUDIBLE), but it is an irritation, it does require some work to be carried out on the aircraft to check there is no further damages, and check the composites which is going to be effected through a lightning strike. But no, lightning is not that thing to worry. And the real worry is turbulence and icing. There the two factors in from storm that maybe cause a problem.

The other this is extremely heavy rain, you can get in a cell. You can occasionally get an engine or even both engines flaming out literally through the weight of the water that is going through and distinguishing the flame of the engine. But it doesn't prevent the pilot from continuing to fly the aircraft. That maybe to make way to communications with the mayday or whatever to the ground when you even try to restart the engine, itself.

So you know, these are extreme conditions, the thunderstorms. And as my colleague in your studio said, it is important to avoid flying through them at all times but try to go around them, of course. But one does occasionally get caught in them, and I can't tell you one pilot who has not gone through from the storm either, through (INAUDIBLE) or just because there is no other way of getting around them, that could be situation, this pilots (INAUDIBLE) on this particular flight.

SAVIDGE: Les, I know you are going to remain with us.

Alastair Rosenschein, thank you very much for your insights as a professional pilot.

And we are checking what is being said on social media about this plane. We will tell you about it coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

SAVIDGE: Hello, everyone. I'm Martin Savidge.

Let's bring you up to date on our breaking news. A passenger jet carrying 162 people has gone down and is now missing in Southeast Asia. Here is what we know.

The official search at sea has been suspended because of darkness. It is middle of the night local time there, and the area is a shipping channel, and some of the ships are continuing to comb the water off Indonesia for the AirAsia 8501.

But more intensive efforts are on hold until daybreak which is several hours away. The airbus A-32200 left Indonesia about 5:30 a.m. local time, that is in the morning, bound for Singapore. Indonesian officials say that the captain asked to ascend, in other words to climb to avoid heavy storms. After that, the plane disappeared from radar at 38,000 feet.

Almost the entire flight path of this plane was over water. Families, as you can imagine, are desperate for any sign of what may have happened at this aircraft. There were no American onboard. Almost all of the passengers were Indonesian nationals. But the NTSB continues to monitor the situation from here in the United States and says its prepared to assist if that request comes in.

Of course, the situation is unfolding, less than 10 months after Malaysia airlines flight 370 went missing en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. And despite a massive international search effort that is still ongoing, there is still no trace of that aircraft or the 239 people who were on board.

CNN's Rosa Flores joins me now from New York. And Rosa, you have been tracking the traffic on social media. And I

can imagine just what people maybe saying given MH 370.

ROSA FLORES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, let me tell you, thoughts and prayers are pouring in from every single corner of the world. People wanting to express that emotions thoughts because this is a reminder of MH-370. And other folks are just saying, I can't believe that we've lost another plane in this day and age.

So we are seeing a little bit of everything, Marty. But we are also seeing officials going to social media to disseminate information and specifically other countries hopping to help the Indonesian government.

I want to show you the facebook page from Singapore's minister of defense because he is showing some of the assets that he plans to help with. Now, he is saying in his latest post, RS valor and RS supreme are going to set sail. These assets will take a day to reach the search and location area, but that they have already set sail. So the minister of defense of Singapore saying, we are offering these assets.

Malaysia's prime minister also going to twitter and saying that he has called the president expressed his deep concern and offered Malaysia's fullest support and assistance to Indonesia in search and rescue efforts.

Now, here is the other important thing, Asia Air is using their facebook page as a tool. They are posting a lot of information for the families so that they can go to this facebook page and gain useful information such as a phone number where they can call and get information. Another quick update, search and rescue operations are being conducted. They are being planned. It gives family members a sense of what is going on and what is being done to look for their loved ones.

And I want you to take a close look at the AirAsia logo, Marty, because it is gone from red to gray. And it is more of a change of color. It is really a change in mood as the families' hope that their loved ones are safe.

SAVIDGE: Yes. Rosa Flores, alright, thank you very much for monitoring the social media on this story for us. Thanks.

We are following other breaking news today, Italian firefighters vessels and Greek cruise are trying to put out a fire on the ferry off of the coast of Greece. The passenger who are onboard said it seems like the titanic and that people are dying of cold and suffocating from the smoke, (INAUDIBLE) burning from the heat of the fire on the deck.

We are joined on the phone by journalist Barbie Nadeau.

And Barbie, let's just ask you, what is the latest? What do we know?

BARBIE NADEAU, JOURNALIST (via phone): Well, we know right now that more that 165 people have been rescued, but more than 300 are still on this burning ferry. They reported the ferry on fire this morning local time at 5:00 a.m., that is 14 hours ago. So these people have been in various states of panic trying to get off of the ship.

Many of the lifeboats in the early hours were able to be deployed. But then there was a blackout also fire on the ship, and those electric arms, of course, don't work to lower the lifeboats. So these people in this situation have been on the ship all day long waiting for someone to rescue them.

Many of the rescues took place by helicopter. The Mediterranean, as you know, is not a difficult sea, but it is an extremely windy period of time right now, and the high seas are hampering the rescue operations as this (Inaudible), the sheer amount of smoke that the helicopter keep it down and try to get people off the ship.

The ship right now is about 13 miles off the coast to Albania and it is detach finally after hours and hours of struggle against high seas to the tugboat that we assumed is going to try to tow to Albania, but they are waiting for clearance from the Albanian port authority before they can make landfall as that port which is closest one. Still about 13 miles away is a long distance to travel with a burning ship -- Martin.

SAVIDGE: And now, you are in Italy, is that correct?

NADEAU: Yes, that is right.

SAVIDGE: OK. And I just wanted to find out, what are we hearing about how the captain and the crew have been handling this emergency? Because tragically, in other instance as recently, the news is not been good on that front. So what do we know here?

NADEAU: That is exactly right. And of course, the Costa Concordia famously, the captain Francesco Schettino abandoned ship and one of the first people off the ship. In this situation, though, people have come off the ship have applauded the captain and the crew as heroic for trying to keep everybody in the state of calm, trying to make sure that there is food and warmth and blankets and things like that for the people who are out on the deck of the ship. So we are seeing an entirely different situation. The Italian media, of course, is making a clear point that, you know, the Italian captains do know how to handle an emergency, a maritime emergency like this. So we are not going to have a repeat of the Costa Concordia. But the people that are on that ship are not in the clear yet. They are still a lot that has to be done to bring those people safety and to bring that burning ship in to a port of safe harbor at this point, Martin.

SAVIDGE: OK, we will continue to follow through your eyes and your information. Barbie Nadeau, thank you very much.

And we will have more on the missing aircraft in Asia right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SAVIDGE: We are continuing the coverage of missing AirAsia passenger jet and that is flight 8501. It left Indonesia at about 5:30 in the morning local time bound for Singapore. The jet had 162 people on board including 18 children and a crew of seven. Officials say that large ships now with powerful lights are continuing to comb the waters up Indonesia for that plane. For the more intensive efforts will have to be waiting until daybreak in that area. And that's one official says seven ships and two helicopters will search for the aircraft.

Heavy storms had been reported in the area where this jet vanished. Indonesian official say the pilot had requested to fly in a higher altitude because of that weather. And this incident, of course, just comes ten months after Malaysian airlines flight 370 vanished on its way to Beijing 239 people on board.

So let's bring in CNN aviation analyst and the inspector general for the department of transportation is Mary Schiavo and she now works for a law firm that represents the concern families after airplane disasters. And she is joining actually from studio.

Mary, Indonesian officials have said that the pilot, as I just mentioned, requested to fly at a higher altitude because of weather. And I am wondering what does that suggest to you in your expert opinion?

MARY SCHIAVO, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Well, my opinion is it suggests they were tracking their own on board weather radar and probably had received the various high reps and pilot warnings and maybe communication from other pilots that the weather in that area was particularly awful.

When we look at the weather screens now, the screen shots from what the weather was like, it's a solid sea of red. And I have worked accidents where planes went into those and it was not only have the energy level, thick thunderstorms and basically the sea of red that you see on the screen. But in every case where it has had accident, they worked where that happened, something else went wrong also, and usually two or three things.

In most cases like that, you have bad weather compounded by a mechanical issue, then compounded by a pilot decision making mistake, and that was a deadly combination in the accidents that I worked with bad weather.

SAVIDGE: But we've heard from other pilots, and we've spoken to them that they absolutely void those storm systems if possible, at least the thunder cell.

SCHIAVO: Absolutely. And in the case of the United States accidents that I had worked where they had gone into very severe thunderstorms, the NTSB, the national transportation safety board when they did the accident investigation, was extremely critical of the decision making. And in fact, some of those accidents led to more stringent rules, led to more robust meteorology in weather forecasting departments within each of the airlines and more requirements for checking the weather and pilot training, et cetera. But U.S. carriers have their own meteorological departments and you know play a role in helping to forecast. And so, it will be interesting and very important in the days to come

to see what this airline did to help give guidance to its pilots and if they had their own in house meteorologists and weather reporting services.

SAVIDGE: And once again, we got an aircraft that disappears with no distress call. Apparently no real message from the cockpit crew or perhaps even the aircraft itself. So much of that was criticized after MH 370, it's been ten months. What, is that just too short a time frame to expect change?

SCHIAVO: Well, unfortunately, it is when you are dealing with governments. I mean, there were, for example, after some crash in the United States has taken years or decades to get changed. And I think the consensus is everyone knows it needs to be done, but there's always a Specter of the expense that hangs overhead, the retro fitting aircraft that's always a big issue and then which system to adopt.

So while ICAO and others have said we've got to do something and to be searching for black boxes in the bottom of the ocean when you can easily stream the data and there are systems to do that so you don't have to do these breathless searches and you know, with search lights and, you know, impossible conditions, everyone agrees it has to change. But it's going to have to be a government that starts it. And you know, it would be nice if it was ours, but ICAO probably will have to push.

SAVIDGE: OK. Mary Schiavo, thanks very much, as always.

And I understand we have an air traffic control person on the phone and can talk to us now. That will be after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SAVIDGE: And we continue to follow developments on the missing airliner in Asia.

Joining me on the phone from the United Kingdom is air traffic control expert Phillip Butterworth Hayes.

And Phillip, as we have been talking about, air traffic control right now may be the initial guidance and help for any of those rescue efforts, no?

Now I'm told that Phillip dropped off the line. So we will continue to try to get back in touch with him to talk about how air traffic control could help with the ongoing search efforts.

Les Abend, you still there with me? Les, can you hear me? Martin Savidge here.

ABEND: MARTIN, I can hear you if you can hear me.

SAVIDGE: I can. OK, let's continue my conversation on air now regarding what we know of this particular aircraft. And let me start you off with the airbus A320, 200 version, I believe here. Pretty well known, pretty petition well flown aircraft, correct?

ABEND: It's a reliable airplane. It's been in existence for many years, decades really. It's got good systems on it. We use it all here in the U.S. It's a much lighter airplane than what we've been familiar with in previous reports with regarding the Malaysian airline 370 Boeing 777. That airplane weigh 650,000 pounds max gross weight. This airplane, the A320-200, is about 170,000 pounds at max gross take-off weight.

What that means, turbulence can affect this airplane more. It's not as flexible perhaps as a Boeing 777. It is still an aluminum structure wing, but once again, we're speculating. We don't know if turbulence or an encounter with a thunderstorm is necessarily the situation. What the pilots did with regard to altitude changes or requesting that particular altitude change may have just been for choppy air. And he may have been looking at his radar. Both pilots looking at the radar trying to avoid that nasty situation.

SAVIDGE: All right. Les, I'm going to ask you to stand by as we continue to follow. Things are fluid here. In the meantime, we'll start at the top of the hour.