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AirAsia Flight 8501 Disappeared in Stormy Java Sea; Ferry Going From Greece to Italy Caught Fire

Aired December 28, 2014 - 17:00   ET

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


POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Hi, everyone. You're in the CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Poppy Harlow. Thanks so much for joining me this evening. At this hour, dawn is breaking in Indonesia. But the nightmare is very real for hundreds of people grieving and waiting any word on the fate of their loved ones aboard a missing passenger plane.

Here is what we know at this hour. AirAsia Flight 8501 vanished over the stormy Java Sea more than 22 hours ago. It happened during a flight from Indonesia to Singapore. Search efforts are scheduled to resume at day breaks so really moments from now, presuming the weather is favorable.

One hundred sixty two people were on board that airbus A-320, 18 of them children, including one infant.

The search is concentrating over a particular area of the Java Sea. That is a relatively shallow and heavily traveled shipping channel, two critical factors that could lead search and rescue to this missing airliner.

And in Vatican, city today Pope Francis offered prayers for those aboard that Flight 8501, for the search crews and the victim's families.

Well, families of the missing are in shock. They are understandably have a lot of questions at this hour. Only a few have spoken publically though about this tragedy. One of whom is anxiously awaiting word of her fiance.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I listen to the radio, local radio and they said that his plane was missing. That's all. And yes, he was supposed to be there last vacation before -- before us got married, was supposed to be his last vacation with his family.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: It is an absolute tragedy.

Let's go straight to panel and get more insight from our experts and all of these.

Mary Schiavo is the CNN Aviation Analyst, a former inspector general for U.S. Department of Transportation. Also joining me here in New York Les Abend, 777 Airline Captain, Jeff Gardere is clinical psychologist.

Thank you all for being here throughout our continuing coverage of this tragedy.

Mary let me get to you first. You, you represent victims and families of the airlines disasters, what do you think is going through the mind of these family members right now? Many of them who traveled to the airport crisis center and are waiting for any word.

MARY SCHIAVO, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Well, other than of course, shock and disbelief and grief. Why? Everything that goes through their minds starts with why. Why this? Why that? Why do we have different times for when the radar dropped, when the radio telephone communications drop? When the AVSB navigation hits-drop. Why are those different times? Why can't they find out where it was? Why were they going into this horrible weather in the first place? How could they climb to get over the thunderstorm? Questions -- just these thousands of questions are going through their minds.

HARLOW: Yes. So let's ask Les about that, I mean Les you're an airline captain. You don't fly A-320 but you fly 777. That we know what we do know is that the pilot was flying at 32,000 feet then asked to elevate to 38,000 feet. The "New York Times" is reporting that that request was denied due to traffic in the area. Given the storms with such a high ceiling, storms at 50,000 feet what do you make of the pilot's request. And what would happen if indeed it was denied?

LES ABEND, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Well, first of all, it would have been denied. It's a busy corridor. We've already established that. And that time of the morning it's true of equivalent to our red eyes across the country. So you get a lot of airplane traffic from that regard.

The request to go to a higher altitude may have simply been to get out of choppy air which is something we do on occasion on flights. A lot of times climbing gives us the best result for choppy air.

To deviate around the thunderstorm by climbing especially when they went to 50,000 feet, and granted the pilots may only know that by virtue of their initial pre-flight briefing when they are on operations. So they wouldn't be able to necessarily determine accurately how high that thunderstorm is. Nor with the weather forecasters be able to determine just by weather map.

HARLOW: And how much contact would the pilot, captain, the first officer, be having at that time with their traffic control? What would they be saying to them? Because they say, look, this is urgent we have to -- we have to move.

ABEND: Well, it would depend. We all strive to plan a head of the game. They would have had their radar on almost certainly. And you know, the radar has various rangers, it can go accurately all the way up to 180 miles and even beyond that. So they would have been looking at that going you know at this certain point in time we need to go left, we need to go right.

And one of the efforts may have very well have been to try to climb in an attempt, you know, to go over the top of the storms.

HARLOW: I want to get Jeff Gardere in just a moment. But let me first bring on Paula Newton, she's following this for us in Jakarta, Indonesia. Paula is on the phone. Can you tell us what you're hearing from the authorities at this hour and from any families?

PAULA HANCOCKS, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (via phone): Well, at this point, we have probably less than an hour before the search operation starts once again. It starts at 5:00 in the morning. Day break is about to start, that is when these plane and helicopters will get back in the air and try to find any indication of what happened to this plane.

Now, we know that there are seven vessels, seven ships at this point that the Indonesian search and rescue agency is providing there and from the water trying to see what's going on. We know that could have be at least two helicopters from here in Jakarta, maybe some other aircraft that is not being pinned down at this point.

And it is a region wide efforts, Malaysia is involved with three vessels. We know that Singapore lend its plane with meant to last yesterday is also involved maybe with at least one aircraft. And Australia, India also offering their aid.

So this is really a crucial time as day break starts. This is when this search could resume once again at an extremely difficult night for the families of those relatives knowing that the aircrafts have been grounded because of course it's just pitch black.

But I do have to mention, the weather conditions are at a concern. Where I am here in the capital in Jakarta, it's calm. But I could see, we understand that there have been constrictive thunderstorms. Visibility is not good. And some of these waves are particularly high as well which of course is going to be difficult for these aircraft wanting to fly as low as they can to try and get eyes on the surface of the water.

But also were being told by the search and rescue agency, it's a very broad location. So they have warned us that this isn't necessarily going to be easy.

HARLOW: Yes, absolutely.

Paula, let me ask you about the passengers. I mean, we know a number of them were flying to Singapore to celebrate New Year.

HANCOCKS: Well, that's right. The vast majority of the -- of these passengers and of course are crew were Indonesian. That is the vast majority. We know that -- a few said Koreans. We know that there was a Malaysian, one from Singapore. We understand one from Europe. So obviously, Indonesia has taken the front of this incident.

And many of those families are gone to -- that airport, whether the flight are originated from desperately find any information. Obviously very emotional seen at Surabaya Airport. So whether just sitting and having to wait and see if anything is

going to emerge, they don't have much information at this point. The AirAsia Indonesia has said, they simply don't know the status of the passengers and crew. As soon as I know anything, they will share it with the relatives. But one can only imagined just how desperately they are at this point.

HARLOW: Yes. You can't imagine it. You see the grief, the pain, the agony in their faces and those photos.

Paula Hancocks live for us from Jakarta. Thank you, Paula.

Let me go to you Jeff Gardere, s a clinical psychologist looking at this, one thing that has stood out to me in these 22 hours, the CEO of the airline has been very active on Twitter and on Facebook in touched with the public and therefore family members, talking to as many family members as he can.

How important it is that any bit of information that is known gets to the family first from the airline, not from us the media?

JEFF GARDERE, CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGIST: That's right. Well, certainly they don't want to make the same mistakes that they saw with MH370.

HARLOW: Right.

GARDERE: Where a lot of family members and friends were getting second hand information. And a lot of that information was inaccurate for some time. And it only made these family members much more upset, more agitated, angry to add on to their grief and their sadness and their shocked. So it's important that he talk with him directly and give accurate information. And I caution not giving just any information that's out there. It's got to be accurate information. Because this, you know, could go the other way for these family members.

Right now, they are pointing fingers at everyone. They are asking questions, so right now AirAsia isn't necessarily their friend in their minds, but they -- the airline has to win them over by treating them extremely well and letting them know they are a priority.

HARLOW: And what we're showing you are some Tweet on the screen from the CEO of AirAsia, Tony Fernandes. This one reads, as I your group CEO will be there through these hard times. We will go through the terrible ordeal together. And I will try to see as many of you as I can.

Of course, right in the hours following the suspected potential crash. Again, we don't know, we know that he travelled to Surabaya there to be with the family members because most of the passengers are from there.

Quick break. We'll be back with our special coverage right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) HARLOW: It is daybreak. Very soon and just moments in Indonesia and the search for missing AirAsia Flight 8501 should be resuming at any moment.

Let me go straight to our Will Ripley who is live for us in Beijing.

Will, I know you've been following all the details on the search and rescue effort. What do we know at this point?

WILL RIPLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes. We know that we are literally now minutes away from the scheduled start of this search, which is going to be crucial in the coming hours. Certainly for families in Surabaya who have had to go through a very, very difficult night as you might imagine, and a night of pain that families here in Beijing know all too well.

This is front page news here, Poppy, dominating the news here, here in Beijing. There were 154 Chinese on MH370 and a lot of families in this city that were going through the very same thing that the families of AirAsia Flight 8501 are going through right now, Poppy.

And reading some of their interviews in the papers this morning, they were sobbing, watching the coverage because it has brought them back to that awful first day on March 8th. And they still, all of these months later, some of the families here in China are still holding out hope that there -- that their loved ones might come home.

HARLOW: Right.

RIPLEY: So imagine this kind of agony stretch on for months. That's what these triggering here in China for families, Poppy.

HARLOW: So I wonder Will, because you and I talked about it so much during the MH370 coverage. The fact that those families felt like that they were not getting enough information, accurate information from the airline. But it seems like at this early stage, a different story for the families of AirAsia's disappearance. What is being done for them?

RIPLEY: Well, there is the remarkable difference that we're seeing is the way that the families are being treated, the way they're being handled, the fact that they were kept away from the media in Surabaya, and the fact that they were been taken to the airport hotel. They have -- they have support staff, they are helping them. And if they choose to come out and speak with reporters they certainly have that opportunity.

But what I saw which was just awful to see in Kuala Lumpur in the initial days, what was happening here in Beijing is that often times these grieving family members, because they felt like that they were getting no information, they were desperate as the days and weeks went on. So they went out in front of the news cameras. We saw people wailing. It was horrible experience for them. It was horrible for us as reporters covering it. And it made the situation more emotionally charged. The fact that they had -- had to wait nine weeks for a five page

report that probably could have been released on week one that didn't reveal a lot of information. It just fuelled more pain and more speculation.

And so you're seeing now support set up for them. Staff that are in there making sure that their needs are taken care of. And we keep, you know stressing, they need to hear this information first as this search resumes throughout the coming hours.

HARLOW: Yes.

RIPLEY: If there is debris spotted, the families need to know before the reporters do. We can wait. The families are the ones that need the greatest amount of support right now.

HARLOW: Absolutely.

No question about it they need to hear directly from the airline not from us in the media.

Will Ripley live for us in Beijing. He'll be with us throughout the evening. Thank you very much.

And before I get to our next guest, I want to point to you what you're looking at your screen. That is live footage right now, coming through us from Routers. It is of the customer support center of AirAsia in Singapore. That is where the flight was bound, where these 162 people both passengers and crews were going many of them to celebrate New Year.

Let me go straight now to talk more about this search and this airline and the safety record for this -- for this airline with our Richard Quest, he joins me now. He has flown on AirAsia. So you're very familiar with this airline, Richard also with the CEO. What can you tell us about the safety record?

RICHARD QUEST, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: The safety record of AirAsia is pretty exemplary. And besides minor instance it's only have one full scale incidents of its history. It has 170 of these A320 aircraft. And although even though this was an Indonesian subsidiary, AirAsia Indonesia, it's still effectively run by the main line carrier and by Tony Fernandes.

It's branded AirAsia. It's got the look and feel of AirAsia and of course it has same culture of that. And I think what you're seeing -- excuse me -- I think what you're seeing very clearly for judging what Will were saying, what Paula Hancocks was saying, is you're seeing leadership from the front.

Tony Fernandes has come out as you have expect others I've known for many years and his come out and basically saying, "I'm the CEO. The buck stops with me and I'm going to be here to see this through."

And I'm not stop and just saying, you know something nice and something to rouse the troops in a moment of crisis. Every airlines CEO knows, Poppy, that the day may come when they have to face this incidents. If there was a nightmare but they have to prepare themselves for it.

HARLOW: Richard, when you look at the fact that as far as we know, there was no Mayday call, no distress call made, does that surprise you at all?

QUEST: Yes and no. You're going to have time to do a Mayday. I mean, yes, if you're go want to click the button on the joystick and in terms of --- in terms of 320 it's on the side stick as you going have to kick the button and say Mayday - Mayday. But whatever happened here, first of all the aircraft was at altitude. They're probably climbing from 32,000 to 38,000 feet. It was about 36,000 feet. It will have happened very fast. This plane would have gotten into trouble exceptionally quickly.

And then, like with Air France 447 there is no time for the Mayday. It sounds so silly to say that. A Mayday is when something happens and you've got time to deal with it. And say Mayday-Mayday while you're doing something.

But on this case, what may have happened and we can only speculate and that I am not prepared to do would have been so dramatically fast that air clearly they just didn't have the time. They were either overwhelmed or unable to do what was necessary.

HARLOW: I want to ask you about the experience, Richard, of the captain. We know he had 20,000 plus hours experienced, some 6,100 hours on this specific AirAsia 8320 aircraft, the first officer 2,000 plus hours. Where does that put them in terms of experience and dealing with various severe thunderstorms like this?

QUEST: Well, the captain is interesting. Because --- and you say had 21,000, the AirAsia statements that he had 6,000 total out of 6,000 and so I assume not to be total of 6,000 but if you're now telling me it's a total of 6,000 on type.

HARLOW: Right.

QUEST: With a total and captain say over the total air wave he has experienced of 20,000.

Let us put the upper ends of experience. He is clearly, but you have to know when those of those of the 14,000 hours were, whether on props, whether on turboprop and what so too. Aircraft where there on seven three's before the 320. It needs to know quite a bit more.

But in terms of -- you know, if you like seat miles, how many hours that you actually be you got, clearly he is very experienced. And 6,000 hours for AirAsia in those conditions, remember, they are very familiar with those sort of weather, those tropical weather, the Inter tropical zone, the storms that you get pretty much year round as you get near the Equator. So they will have been experienced at seeing that sort of weather.

HARLOW: Right. QUEST: Now, did they get themselves into a position where they

couldn't get out of it very fast, we'll have to wait and see. But yes, it is not 20,000 it's on the upper end of experienced.

HARLOW: Richard Quest, thank you for the expertise. We appreciate it. We'll get back to you more tonight throughout our special coverage.

Quick break. We'll be back on the other side.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HARLOW: It has been about 22 hours since AirAsia Flight 8501 lost contact with Indonesian Air Traffic Control. This is the second missing plane crisis in Southeast Asia in less than one year. Nearly ten months ago Malaysia airlines 370 vanished from radar over the South China Sea.

Let me bring back in our Will Ripley who joins us again from Beijing. Also with us now Jim Tilmon, a former commercial airline pilot with many years of experienced, who joins us from Phoenix, Arizona.

Let me go first to you, Will. When you covered the MH 370, that disappearance very, very closely for months on end, how does this disappearance differ from the early hours after MH 370?

RIPLEY: Well, in a lot of ways, we talked earlier about how the families are being treated in and it clearly that is a big difference that we're seeing from outrage and confusion. Where it is seems at least, well, they still don't have the answer about where this Flight is, where Flight 8501 is. The families are you know being taken care of.

But in many ways the mystery still remains. There are still a lot of questions about exactly what happened. Was it -- was it this weather situation. We know it is monsoon season. But storms are really common on that flight route. And anybody who is flying on that Flight route is going to encounter turbulence.

So I spoke with CNN colleague who any early morning hours was on a flight from Sydney to the Middle East. And passed right close to that AirAsia route and said they had extremely heavy turbulence for hours and hours. It's something that air travelers are used to dealing with.

So what happened? And that is -- that is the unanswered question, the question that won't be resolved until the plane is located, until the flight data recorders are analyze, perhaps, you know, if there were any survivors that they could be talked to, and that's what the families are hoping for right now. But with each hour that passes it becomes more and more critical for all of them.

HARLOW: Yes. And absolutely agonizing not to have many answers at all at this point.

Will Ripley thank you. We'll get back to you later this evening. Jim, let me go to U.S. As an experienced pilot, we don't want to make

any assumptions. There are some who have been saying this could be -- could be similar to the tragedy that we saw with Air France Flight 447, flying from Brazil to Paris. It's also an airbus plane and this is a plane that was flying through a very tough thunderstorm. And it is a plane that basically lost the ability to now -- for the pilots to know how fast it was going to fast or too slow.

Any similarities that you believe may be able to be drowning in these two cases?

JIM TILMON, RETIRED AMERICAN AIRLINES PILOT: I think you've mentioned to all of the similarities. I think they are whole host of things that are not similar at all. After all, you know right now the thing that we are aiming at and saying, OK this is going be a real factor here is the weather. I think it may have had some computing evidence that we'll be able to find for that.

But I am really not sure that I want to zero in on that quite yet. We have so many questions and so little information. I must tell you, too, I have heard criticism about the crew deciding to climb into that thinner air when they are getting close to their ceiling for their air flight. I was then a cockpit. And I'm not going to make that judgment. I wouldn't want to know a whole lot more and get a lot more questions to answer.

HARLOW: You know, and it's a really good point. Because we don't know if they indeed climb higher, they requested to climb up to 38,000 feet and the "New York Times" is reporting air traffic control denied that request because of traffic.

As a pilot flying through situations like this, can you talk about the difference especially when flying A320. Some have said, some aviation experts this is a bit of a lighter plane and it has a bit of a tougher time in turbulence. Is that the case?

TILMON: Well, I would want to make that blanket statement because it has tougher time in turbulence. I will say this. There are some characteristics of the airbus that can work with you or against you if you're right on top of it. And just to add exactly what's going on. And we're just start getting into what we call a very close to the "caught in corner". The caught in corner is when your air speed is so critical that if you're going a little bit too fast, you're going to be over speeding. As you go on a little bit slower, you're going to be stalling. So it's a very quite tight envelope.

And I think in turbulence, particularly, that becomes much more critical but there again there's so much we still don't know.

HARLOW: So many questions only 22 hours after this plane disappeared.

Jim Tilmon, thank you for your expertise and for joining us this evening. We appreciate it.

Quick break. We'll be right back with our special coverage.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HARLOW: Welcome back everyone. I'm Poppy Harlow with our special coverage this evening of the disappear -- the airline that disappeared AirAsia Flight 8501. It is a dark night over East Asia and it is breaking towards dawn at this hour. Searchers are gearing up to resume their desperate hunt for this missing AirAsia jet liner.

For the loved ones of the 162 passengers aboard AirAsia Flight 8501, the night has been an agonizing wait. At this hour, there are so many questions and so few answers. As AirAsia CEO Tony Fernandes Tweeted quote, "This is my worst nightmare." The plane was flying from Surabaya, Indonesia to Singapore when it suddenly disappeared at 7:24 a.m. Sunday local time over the Java Sea.

The airline said the pilot had just asked permission to fly higher because of weather. But it's not clear if that was a factor in the plane's disappearance or not. A full day of searching on Sunday failed to locate the plane. Those search and rescue crews remain on the water over night. Searched plane are set to resume flight at first light that is less than hour from now.

There were thunderstorms, there was heavy rain battering the area at the time that this plane disappeared and the forecast for Monday while it is improving it is bound to be a big challenge for the search and rescue crews.

Let's go straight to Tom Sater, he's our meteorologist tracking all of these for us throughout the evening.

It was really, really bad when this happened and it doesn't look like as much better now for the search and rescue crews.

TOM SATER, CNN METEOROLOGIST: No. But in the next couple of hours, Poppy, and we're going have daylight, in fact for the next 15 minutes, and hopefully, most of the thunderstorms, the larger once will stay over land masses.

To give you an idea of what we're talking about, all right. This is part of Indonesia. We've got part of Malaysia to the north. This is called Palmerston. Then you have Sulu East Sea that's part of Indonesia. Then you have East and Central Java. And of course this is Sumatra.

Now this is real time flights starting to pick up a little bit. You can barely see of faint line across the screen, this is daylight. It's coming in of course from the right part of your screen. We are now in twilight this is our area of concern. As the crow flies, pretty much from take off in Surabaya to where we believed contact could be about 300 miles or for international viewer about 490 kilometers. The distance between the little island here and the short little distance across the channel over the Kalimantan is about 150.

We're going see now daylight approach quickly. We're going to find that there are some thunderstorms in the region but not nearly strong but we had 24 hours ago. This is water vapor imagery, it's a great tool. Watch the size of the thunderstorm blossom, noticed the symmetry and the size that's tremendous amount of rainfall in this but more importantly how fast it washes out. That means there's an incredible amount of force coming down on the earth surface at an incredible rate of speed.

We don't -- when we talk about thunderstorms many time three or four inches is a lot of rainfall, we have been seeing rainfall totals, get this two feet, three feet every two to three days. This is the wet season. This is the wettest month. They are getting monthly totals in two to three days and this is been continuing for a while. This is the thunderstorm that concern as you can see the flight path and where we lost contact. May be some of these clear areas do give us an indication that there could be downdrafts.

Now we're losing data here but more importantly, look at the satellite picture. This is real time and we are starting to see breaks in the cloud cover. Heavier thunderstorms staying over land masses. Let's hope this remains the case as seas remain light and visibility good as we're getting now in the daylight, Poppy.

HARLOW: Yes, absolutely. As good as they can get for those crews looking for this missing jet liner.

Thank you very much, Tom. We appreciate it.

Adding to the mystery of AirAsia 8501, the pilots didn't issue a Mayday or any sort of distress call before the plane vanished.

Joining me now to talk about it from New York with me on set here, 777 pilot Les Abend and also Mary Schiavo. She joins us from Charleston, South Carolina. She's also a CNN aviation analyst and a former inspector general for the U.S. Department of Transportation.

To you first, Mary, is it odd to you at all that no distress call was made whatsoever?

SCHIAVO: Well, it's odd because people would think you've got two pilots and you would have time to let someone on the ground, let air traffic control, let your airline know what's going on. In fact, I've worked several crashes where the plane has fallen from cruise altitude. Most notably West Caribbean 708 and Air Trans 447 and in those cases they did not have time for Mayday call. Because what happened is that the performance of the aircraft deteriorated so quickly and so dramatically. And I thought the Captain Tilmon was going to tell us there is actually a part of a performance chart on the aircraft on most aircraft that we call "caught in corner" (ph).

And that's where you climb so high and put so much, you know, work on your engine or you have got a bad situation with weather where your engines is ingesting lots of water, et cetera. That the plane, you know, develops a problem quickly. There is no time for a call.

HARLOW: But Mary, there are different kinds of calls. So let's bring in Les to talk about that as well with us because there was a Mayday call and there is also what is deemed a pan-pan call.

ABEND: Correct. HARLOW: Would one be easier to do than the other?

ABEND: No. I mean they both take the same amount of time.

HARLOW: Right.

ABEND: But the bottom line is and I think Mary will agree with me on the situation to tease the investigators who have been a part of is that our axiom is aviate, navigate, communicate. And if we're in the process of trying to control of this airplane because of the situation, we don't know what it was. It may very well have been turbulence with the airplane, you know that they were trying to control manually without the autopilot we don't know.

But the bottom line is we're busy with that. Nobody is going to help us on the ground except those of us who of us as crew members.

HARLOW: Yes. You know, let me bring for our viewers this news just in to our CNN as we continue our special coverage and this conversation. The search and rescue operation has begun once again. That is very good news. They had to suspend it overnight because of the dark and also the bad weather. According to local media, we can tell you that search and rescue for Air Asia 8501 has began again.

Mary, let me ask you this. You brought up less turbulence, Mary, we always hold us we fly very frequently especially, turbulence doesn't bring planes down. However, some of the reporting, initial reporting and this is been if the wind gas were so heavy or in a certain direction then it could possibly shut one of the engines down.

SCHIAVO: That's right. You could have an engine flame out or basically the engines are -- you know, they are turbines and you have to turn. You have to have the dwindling to them and they are procedures to do a restart and Les can tell you more about that than me. But I have a couple accidents where they had dual engine flame out and they could not restart. And some, one was caused by weather. Another was caused by climbing too quickly and the radar climb will exceeded the aircrafts design. And the -- and in both of the cases it was difficult then to get the aircraft and to control the aircraft after that since I worked accidents, obviously there was accidents after that.

HARLOW: You know, but Les, in A320 can fly for up to three hours on one engine.

ABEND: Well, it can. I don't know the fuel capacity of the --- I don't know if it's exactly three hours but of course it can. And then actually it's design to fly without any engines. With some limited amount of electrical and hydraulic power. So you know as far as turbulence causing a flame out, yes it's possible. But more than likely if there was a flame out of that degree, it would have to leave some really intense precipitation.

HARLOW: Right.

ABEND: Which a thunderstorm could produce. HARLOW: Again this is an area that has so many of these severe

thunderstorms.

ABEND: It's true.

HARLOW: And these pilots are experienced daily at flying through. A lot of questions and very view answers.

Les, appreciate it. Mary, thank you. We appreciate it again.

Local media reporting search and rescue has began as daybreak right over the Java Sea there. We're going to talk more about it throughout the evening here the disappearance of the AirAsia Flight.

It is being compared to a plane crash five years ago that claimed hundreds of lives. We're talking about Air France 447. We will explain next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HARLOW: AirAsia is a discount or a budget airline is very popular with passengers, a lot of route to flies but hundred different routes but in a wake of this tragedy, people often question the safety of these budget airlines. And sometimes those questions are frankly misinformed. So let's bring in Alan Diehl he's a former NTSB former FAA investigator to talk about this.

And now I do want to set the record straight because AirAsia does have a pretty exemplary safety record as our Richard Quest who's reporting earlier on the program. When you look at these budget airlines is anything different in terms of safety than the big maybe more expensive carriers?

ALAN DIEHL, FORMER ACCIDENT INVESTIGATOR, FAA U.S. AIR FORCE (via phone): Well the sure answers it shouldn't be but whenever a new upstart airline appear, you always wonder, I haven't -- like Richard Quest I haven't seen anything to suggest that AirAsia is cutting corners. You know, their equipment is new. He pointed out they have an exemplary perfect safety record as far as I know. And so nothing -- no flags on my radar, but Poppy, there is some issues about flying around the weather and flying through the weather.

I'm sure there's been a lot discussion by other guest about that and that is $64 question right now. Should they have tried to navigate through that line of thunderstorms?

HARLOW: And that's what a lot of people are asking us on Twitter. They're sending us their questions thing, why take off in this weather? We know the plane disappeared about 40 minutes in to the Flight. But this is a corridor that is full of severe thunderstorms over and over again.

These pilots are experienced that is. Again when it comes to budget airlines like this, they all have to meet the same safety standards regulations by their local regulators, correct?

DIEHL: Correct.