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Search for AirAsia; 2014 Air Crash Numbers; Ferry Fire Kills Eight

Aired December 29, 2014 - 14:00   ET

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


ANA CABRERA, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, I'm Ana Cabrera. Thanks so much for being here.

Developing right now, in just a few hours, search crews will be back on the hunt for AirAsia Flight 8501. But instead of shrinking, the search area is actually growing from seven zones to 11 between the islands of Borneo, Java and Sumatra. Now, it has been almost 44 hours since the AirBus A-320 bound for Singapore vanished from radar with no mayday call, very few clues about what may have happened in those final minutes.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TONY FERNANDES, CEO, AIRASIA: The weather conditions were not good, but further than that we don't really want to speculate anything more. Obviously there was storm clouds and the pilot had made a request to change altitude. That's as far as we know. We don't want to speculate as to whether weather was a contribution or not. We really don't know. Let's find the aircraft and then we will do the proper investigation.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CABRERA: So a lot of unknowns, but as you heard mentioned, what we do know is that weather was bad enough for the pilot to radio in asking permission to climb in elevation. But that request was denied. Instead, he was told to go left.

But a leaked screen grab, which you see here, said to be from Indonesian air traffic control, appears to show the plane was climbing but was losing speed. Some suggesting this could have caused a stall. Of course, without the wreckage and without a black box, it's impossible to know for sure what happened. Although the head of the Indonesian search team says early conjecture puts the plane and its 162 passengers, including the crew, on the bottom of the sea.

Joining me now, CNN's David Molko (ph), who is at the Indonesia's Surabaya Airport.

And, David, we know the search will resume at daybreak, but instead of shrinking, as we mentioned, it is expanding. So what are you hearing?

DAVID MOLKO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Ana.

You're just on top of it there where it's just about 2:00 in the morning here, Tuesday morning. Just over three hours from daybreak. And followed by that, we'll see the search begin to resume.

It's an aerial search and a surface search. We know from Indonesia's vice president that there were about 15 ships and some 30 aircraft searching on Monday, the first full day of the search. Now we're moving into the second full day.

The next few hours are really, really critical once we get daylight. You know, we've been told this is still a search-and-rescue operation. They are looking for signs of wreckage. They are looking for survivors.

But as we move through this day, the second full day of the search, and as you mentioned, it will become almost 48 hours from the time the plain vanished from radar, the chance of finding survivors and having rescues will diminish and will move more into a recovery mode. Now, officials aren't ready to move there quite yet, but there's certainly some optimism that they may find something at daybreak when the search resumes again.

CABRERA: We just saw a heartbreaking tweet from the captain of the plane's daughter. And her tweet reads, "dad, please come home. I still need you. Please return, dad. Dad, come home. Dad, you have to come home." And you can just feel the desperation in those words.

David, we know, as you mentioned, this is still being classified as a search-and-rescue mission. The emphasis there on rescue. But at the same time, families have also been asked to provide close up pictures of family members who are smiling, presumably for dental identification. So is there a feeling of despair among the families there or are they still holding out some hope?

MOLKO: Ana, I think there is hope, but I think the hope is beginning to fade. You know, we've seen family members come by just behind me here at the crisis center inside Surabaya International Airport. This is where they've been getting updates from airline officials and from airport officials about the most current search efforts being updated on a regular basis.

There's also a passenger manifest posted behind me and you see people coming up and looking at it. And what struck me is, when you go down the list you see families, two, three, four, five, even six people from the same family on that passenger manifest who were on that plane. We had, you know, a local producer who's with us, he spoke to one -- one young lady, 18-year-old Pearl Arasandi (ph). She's a student here. Her fiance was on that flight to Singapore, along with six members of his family. They were going to celebrate the new year.

So, again, there is hope. It is fading. When the sun comes up in a few hours and search teams head out there again, we'll see what they find. But at this moment, you know, about two days after the flight disappeared from radar, no trace of wreckage or the plane to be found.

Ana.

CABRERA: Hard to imagine what it's like to be in their shoes. David Molko, thanks for the update there. And as we mentioned, the search so far has been hampered by bad weather. The same kind of weather that is believed to have been at least a factor, if not the primary cause, in Flight 8501's disappearance. But there are a lot of other factors to consider here. So let's talk more about them with Jeff Wise (ph), science writer and author of "Extreme Fear." Also with us, Christine Dennison, logistics specialist at her own company Mad Dog Expeditions.

And, Jeff, I want to start with you and the flight itself. No mayday call reported. I want you to pull back the curtain for us, if you can, on what it's like to be a pilot in an emergency situation and what are the steps you have to go through, you know, kind of from first priority to the last, and that might explain why we didn't have a mayday call here.

JEFF WISE, SCIENCE WRITER & AUTHOR, "EXTREME FEAR": Well, exactly. I mean if you're flying into an area of intense thunderstorms and the thunderstorms in this part of the world can become intense, reaching over 50,000 feet high, this is something you can't fly over, can you try to fly around it, but if they're everywhere, your options are really limited. And you're going to face a really high workload. You're going to have a lot to do. You're going to, you know, really be focusing on flying the plane, trying to get through trouble. And, you know, the saying in that pilots have is, first you aviate, then you navigate, then you communicate.

CABRERA: But the third line of -

WISE: Meaning that it's the third -

CABRERA: Of Priority.

WISE: The third most important. Right. So you've got to fly the plane. You've got to fly the plane. And it's very often that planes crash without the pilot or the co-pilot issuing a mayday or a pan pan call because they are just too busy taking care of busy and -

CABRERA: Just not enough time.

WISE: There's not enough time.

CABRERA: And we don't really know what happened here but we do know, as we mentioned, that weather was an issue. The pilot had, about 10 minutes before the plane completely disappeared from radar, had asked to increase altitude and he was denied access to go up.

WISE: Right.

CABRERA: Why might that have happened and what would there have been as far as alternative?

WISE: Well, the explanations I've heard is that there was other traffic in the area and the air traffic controller saw a potential conflict, a potential, you know, possibility of a collision if the aircraft changes altitude. Now, the thing to remember, the pilot is the person responsible for

the airplane. The pilot is the person who's on the scene, who has the best situational knowledge of what's going on. If a pilot sees a thunder cloud looming and knows that it's going to be dangerous to go, he can go around it, even if he does not have permission from air traffic control. It is - so the pilot -- if the air traffic controller tells you to do something that you feel is unsafe, you say "unable" and you tell them what you're going to do.

CABRERA: And we also saw some imagery, it looked like the plane was ascending after all.

WISE: You know, something that we saw in the case of MH-370 is that in the early days after the incident occurred, there was a lot of information that was coming out that later turned out not to be true. So we don't -- for instance, in the case of MH-370, there was a lot of reports based on military radar that had to do with the plane changing altitude.

CABRERA: Yes.

WISE: A lot of that subsequently turned out not to really hold water.

CABRERA: You're right, we still need to get a lot of information.

Christine, let's talk a little bit about the search right now. Weather we know is a factor in looking for the plane. Still very rough seas. And there are issues with aerial surveying. Is it possible that if the plane had crashed in the water, that perhaps it landed on the water, and that the passengers have survived and they're just waiting for somebody to find them, but because of the limited search area, no one's seen them yet?

CHRISTINE DENNISON, EXPEDITION LOGISTICS SPECIALIST: You know, Ana, I think that's a wonderful idea to be able to hold out hope for that. I personally don't think so. I think what evidence we have or what little evidence we have at the moment is that this plane did in fact come down. I think from that altitude, as Jeff was saying, they may have been flying a little lower, they may have been trying to get around the clouds. But I think it is very unlikely at this -- the scenario that they're somehow just sort of floating. And I hate to say that, but I personally don't think it's a very likely scenario.

CABRERA: It's one of those situations that sounds like, expect the worst, hope for the best maybe. We know the search is now expanding to four new zones instead of contracting as time goes on.

DENNISON: Correct.

CABRERA: Why would it be expanding? Do that have to do with drift or shifts (ph)?

DENNISON: Well, it has -- all these factors are very important. They do have weather patterns that are moving in. You know, it seems like every hour there's a change there. It was a little better earlier and now it's bad weather again. So they really - either they're not telling us the whole story and they have found some debris or something that they want to follow and trace and it's just expanding the search area, but keeping in mind that every hour that ticks away, if there was impact, there are currents. There is wind. There are factors that are going to push this area or this debris field or this site of impact, it's going to just get larger and larger with every hour. They are going to have to expand it.

CABRERA: And especially if the weather is inclement and you would assume that the water is very turbulent.

DENNISON: Exactly.

WISE: And, of course, they'll be ruling out areas too as they go.

DENNISON: They will, yes, as they go.

WISE: So if they rule out this area, then they'll move on to the next one.

CABRERA: Check that off.

DENNISON: Right.

WISE: So, but, you know, most airplanes come down, except (ph) for loss of control, most of them come down within 20 miles of their last known location.

DENNISON: Correct.

WISE: So the fact that they're expanding, it means that this is already kind of an unusual case.

CABRERA: So, Jeff, when it comes to investigating a crash like this or assuming it's a crash, we don't know where the plane is, so we don't have all the answers in terms of the plane itself, the physical plane. But what other information, clues, might investigators be taking a look at or considering at this point in the investigation?

WISE: Well, you know, in the case of MH-370, it turned out that there was a whole other set of data that turned up, meaning primary military returns, then later these satellite communications pings. Now, this plane did not have satellite communication systems, so that's not going to help us. It also was not using an ACAR (ph) system, so that's not going to help us.

I think in this case we really have a much smaller set of potential data to look at. We're going to just have to go out and find the wreckage. Now, this is not a huge area. It's not the middle of the Atlantic or the middle of the Indian Ocean, like some other recent cases have been. It shouldn't be that hard. And we've heard recently that some people were speculating that it was on, quote/unquote, the bottom of the ocean.

CABRERA: Right. Yes.

WISE: There's no reason to think that this plane landed in one piece and is sitting intact on the bottom of the ocean. I don't really know why they said that. Usually if a plane hits the ocean, it breaks up. Some parts float. Some parts sink. There should be something to see.

CABRERA: All right, Jeff Wise and Christine Dennison, more to talk about, so we'll be checking back in with you here throughout the next couple of hours. Thanks for the expertise.

DENNISON: Thank you.

CABRERA: Up next, it has been the deadliest year in aviation in nearly a decade, but the number of crashes is actually down, tremendously. What's the reason?

Plus, someone leaks a screen grab of the air traffic controller's radar? Here why experts are saying this image could show something very disturbing about the jet's speed.

This is CNN's special live coverage. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CABRERA: The headlines may not indicate it, but when it comes to the number of air crashes, 2014 is turning out to be an exceptionally good year according to the Bureau of Aircraft Accidents Archive. Also, 2014 is going to end with just 111 crashes. That includes AirAsia Flight 8501. Now, the last time there were that few air crashes was 1927.

So, the number of crashes is down, but the number of people killed, a much different story. Depending on the fate of those on Flight 8501, this could become the deadliest year in aviation since 2005, so almost a decade, with more than 1,300 deaths.

Let me turn to Seth Kaplan, managing partner of "Airline Weekly."

And, Seth, fewer crashes, but more deadly. Any explanation?

SETH KAPLAN, MANAGING PARTNER, "AIRLINE WEEKLY": Well, partly, you know, statistically speaking, it would be more of an anomaly if every year was just like every other year. I mean that's, Ana, where averages come from. And, unfortunately, sometimes you have those higher numbers to compensate for the lower numbers that we thankfully have in other years.

You know, if you step back, and look at this in historical terms, just a couple of decades ago, you always had 1,000 or so fatalities per year despite far fewer people flying back then. So, in historical terms, still far safer, even this year. You know, less of a chance of any one individual being impacted than happened in the past, but obviously worse certainly than other recent years in those terms.

CABRERA: As you mentioned, there are more people probably flying today than a decade ago, especially, you know, almost eight decades ago when we talk about the year 1927. I'm wondering, though, how airlines have evolved over the past several years to address safety concerns specifically, and if that might be one reason why we're seeing fewer crashes? KAPLAN: Well, they have. You know, every crash, as absolutely awful of

an experience it is, is a learning experience. And recommendations come out of every investigation. The other thing that makes this year a bit different, though, is that we're talking partly, not just about safety, but security. This year, in some ways really reminiscent of 2001, a year where you had a whole lot of fatalities, of course because of 9/11, but those were security breaches, you know, not, let's say, a mechanical failure or a crew error. So this year, even counting these 162, what we can only now call presumed deaths, although, you know, still some faint hope, you know, those two other Malaysia Airlines crashes, one certainly, the second in the Ukraine, and the first very likely the result of some kind of foul play, not something else going wrong. So there are a lot of ways to slice and dice, you know, what year is worse than another. But, obviously, for the families, no comfort from the cause.

CABRERA: And this region has been hit particularly hard. Malaysia now being linked to three high-profile incidents, including that Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, still missing, and now this new AirAsia Flight 8501. Is it just bad luck or does it maybe signal lapses in regulations or pilot training or something else?

KAPLAN: Yes. And, again, you know, the temptation and, gosh, it's only human nature, is to say, you know, how can we connect dots. And sometimes you can and other times, again, it's just one of those things where statistically it would be more unusual if everything were always just kind of evenly distributed. You know these are incidents very different in nature from what we know so far with this one anyway, seems perhaps weather related, not looking likely to have been foul play. The other two, both perhaps foul play, one certainly, the other less certainly, but likely, and yet those two were also very different kinds. You know, one perhaps somebody getting into the cockpit of an aircraft. The other obviously a missile shooting it down. So, yes, more than likely just coincidence, although tragic, of course, for Malaysia. In this case, by the way, technically the parent company of an Indonesian airline. But, you're right, a company that certainly, you know, in most respects, does control the airline here.

CABRERA: Seth, one last question for you. You know, with the idea that knowledge may be power, would it help to have real-time tracking on all of these planes? Would that impact the fate of planes in general?

KAPLAN: Ana, it would impact certainly the investigation, you know, if not the fate. You know, even in the case of MH-370, which is clearly the bigger mystery still even after all these months, you know, would real-time tracking have helped those people? Hard to say. Probably not. But certainly, you know, we'd have a better idea of where that aircraft ended up, you know, where in the sea in all likelihood.

So, you know, more of a help for investigation. But certainly, no question, every bit of data, you know when you're dealing with seconds, would be helpful. And, yes, it's just something that's taking frustratingly long to get to that point, you know, for all the reasons that there are, some of them legitimate why it can't happen more quickly. Obviously something everybody would love to have.

CABRERA: All right, Seth Kaplan, thank you for joining us.

Just ahead, the search for the missing plane will be expanding. Where officials are pinpointing right now and what the flight path could tell us about where the plane might be.

Plus, forced to choose between frigid water or a ship on fire? Ferry passengers desperately waited to be rescued. What we know about the victims and the survivors, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CABRERA: Eight people are dead after a fire broke out aboard a ferry in the Adriatic Sea. Now, some 427 passengers have been rescued. Strong winds, choppy seas, thick smoke, all making it very challenging to get everyone off that ship. The Norman Atlantic was traveling between Greece and Italy when this fire broke out on Sunday. And joining us now on the phone live from Italy is CNN correspondent Nima Elbagir.

And, Nima, any word on what caused this fire?

NIMA ELBAGIR, CNN CORRESPONDENT (via telephone): Well, Italian investigators are -- have begun looking into that, Ana. But I have some breaking news for you. The prosecutor's office in (INAUDIBLE) here, in southern Italy, has now issued an order for the seizure (ph) of the ship. They say their investigation will focus on charges of manslaughter and shipwreck. No one has of yet been charged, but they are concerned that how this fire started and whether there was any potential for foul play. There are also some concerns arising about disparity in the number of the missing between Greek and Italian authorities. Italian deaths still currently stand at eight, but Greek authorities tell us, Ana, that they fear that that number could be higher.

CABRERA: It took almost two days to rescue some of these passengers. What are you hearing from some of those who were rescued?

ELBAGIR: It just sounds absolutely extraordinary. One woman we spoke to today told me, it felt so unreal and then the horror, the nightmare of it, was having to look around and remind myself that this was real and that this could be my final reality. She said just the sense of the icicles of the rain drilling into your skin and the cold and she was describing the scene and the constant explosions below deck, ricocheting up through her feet into her body and knowing that there was nowhere to go. And every time these helicopters came down, this was such a dangerous and difficult rescue, Ana, that they were never sure whether the helicopter would have to go back empty handed.

And watching Ulsa (ph), the lady's name, was a German lady, told me that sometimes they were worried whether the helicopter pilots themselves would make it out alive. There are so many questions here both from the survivors and from the families that have lost those that they love in this incident and the hope is that the Italian authorities can move so quickly to begin this investigation, can begin putting some of those concerns to rest.

Ana.

CABRERA: It just sounds so scary. And you mentioned that there were a lot of challenges given the conditions to make these rescues. Is that why people weren't getting on lifeboats to get off this ferry? Was it too dangerous to get into the water?

ELBAGIR: The lifeboats, and I've heard this from a number of survivors, the drifted away. The water was so choppy that they described going down - having the lifeboats released into the water and then just watching them float away and having that horrible moment of feeling like with it went all hope and all optimism that they would get out of this alive. So it sounds like the lifeboats were almost (INAUDIBLE), in fact, unusable. Even the larger merchant ships and the tugboats that tried to come closer so that the helicopter pilots could pick up survivors and then drop them on to the tug boats, they found it very difficult to maintain the necessary distance. It just sounds like an unusually horrifying choppy weather. And even in just the day that we've been here, Ana, we've seen hail, gale force winds, rain, sunshine. It is just really, really difficult conditions that people have been working in out here.

CABRERA: How interesting.

Nima Elbagir, thank you for that great reporting. Again, eight people dead in that ferry fire. More than 400 rescued. And now prosecutors ordering a siege of the ship. Charges may be coming.

Up next, the search for another missing plane near Indonesia. And we're breaking down the search area. We'll show you the so-called thunder cloud.

Plus, we're digging into the theory that this plane might have stalled. It's the theory inspired by the leaked image of the air traffic controllers radar screen. We're back in 60 seconds.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CABRERA: Just a quick reminder, if you are at home counting down to the new year, don't forget to catch Anderson Cooper and Kathy Griffin live in Times Square New Year's Eve. Always entertaining. And on this show Wednesday, we're running the best of 2014 special counting down the top 10 moments in every walk of life and that's Wednesday 3:00 p.m. Eastern right here.

We're back in 90 seconds.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)