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AirAsia Flight 8501 Lost in the Stormy Java Sea; Police in Florida, Los Angeles Fired At

Aired December 29, 2014 - 15:30   ET

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


ANA CABRERA, CNN ANCHOR: Searchers will be looking between the islands of Borneo, Java and Sumatra. And we have just learned that Indonesia has formally asked the U.S. for help with the search, specifically with sonar technology. And although this is still being called a search-and-rescue mission, hope is fading fast for those families now in limbo.

One woman learning her brother was on that plane while watching TV.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): But my brother never flew with AirAsia. So I kept calm. Then someone told me that they saw his name on TV. Then I saw it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CABRERA: It's not fair.

And as the search for the AirAsia flight continues, another air mystery has probably come to mind for you. Malaysia airline flight 370 which vanished over Southeast Asia in early March. There is still no trace of that aircraft or the 239 people on board it. You can't help but wonder whether there are similarities between two ill fated flights.

CNN Jim Clancy has some answers.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JIM CLANCY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): There are some disconcerting similarities between the AirAsia flight and MH-370. But there are important differences as well.

Flight 370 vanished from civilian radar less than an hour after it took off from Kuala Lumpur. The AirAsia flight likewise disappeared from tracking screens less than an hour after departure from Surabaya. Neither plane sent a distress call. But in the case of the Malaysian jetliner it was a perfectly clear moonless night. The 162 passengers and crew of AirAsia 8501 were experiencing bad weather.

What sensationalized the case of the Malaysia jetliner disappearance was that the search was pressed in the south China sea for the better part of a week.

DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR, CNN TONIGHT: The breaking news here on CNN is the mystery of flight 370.

CLANCY: CNN broke the news barely 48 hours after the plane had gone missing that Malaysia's own military radar showed it was gone from that area within an hour of takeoff. The government had hesitated, critical information was withheld. Malaysia airlines didn't tell families flight 370 was even missing until the time it was supposed to be arriving in Beijing, many hours after it vanished.

Families felt deceived, many accused Malaysian authorities of a cover- up. Conspiracy theories exploded on the Internet even as officials were belatedly trying to set the record straight. Because weather couldn't be a factor for MH-370, many of those theories centered on terrorism. Although, no link to terrorism was ever uncovered, it was too late. And whatever information was released by Malaysian authorities seemed contradictory and meaningless.

Most passengers were Chinese nationals. And China took the unusual step of allowing their families to take to the streets in protest.

AirAsia appears to have learned lessons from the MH-370 tragedy and moved quickly to inform families. Indonesia's transport ministry also responded. A passenger manifest and load list were online within hours.

Critical questions remain. In the hours and days ahead radar records and search efforts may healed answers for the families of AirAsia flight 8501.

The final similarity, neither plane have the kind of GPS locator so many experts advocated after the disappearance of MH-370. Nearly ten months later that may be the lesson we haven't learned.

Jim Clancy, CNN.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CABRERA: Safe to say this investigation will be conduct ad little differently than the one after Malaysian airlines flight 370 went down. For one thing AirAsia has been at this point much quicker to ask for help from other countries in locating this missing plane. What other lessons have been learned from MH-370?

Joining me are Jeff Wise, science writer and author of "Extreme Fear" and Les Abend, contributing editor to "Flying Magazine" and a 777 captain.

Gentlemen, thanks so much, again, for offering your insight, your expertise to us.

Les, you made a really good comment during the break talking about and compare the two difficult to learn some lessons so that these families feel like they are getting answers and that their loves aren't gone in vain.

What do you think was the number one lesson learned from MH-370 that we can apply to this situation? LES ABEND, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Well, you know, the hole in the

system with regards to tracking airplanes, I mean, we haven't cross the north Atlantic in this particular part of the globe where we lost MH-370 where it disappeared and still searching for it, that isn't the case. And not every airline participates in this tracking system.

CABRERA: What do you think, Jeff? What is the biggest lesson learned?

JEFF WISE, SCIENCE WRITER: Well, for me the really, the big one and I hope in this case we don't see this kind of resistance on the part of the authorities to release information to be clear and transparent. You know, AirAsia is known as a very well managed airline and I think already as you pointed out we've seen steps to be transparent, to disclose information.

Already, you know, we're starting to grapple with, we saw what was apparently a leaked image of an air traffic control screen. I would love if the authorities would really show and share with us what happened. What were the weather patterns?

There's so much we still don't know about MH-370. There should one very brief preliminary report. Nothing else have been forthcoming. There's so much that could be cleared up. I mean, really, one of the major points that we don't have from MH-370 was the Indonesian primary radar track. Indonesia said we didn't detect it. That's all they said. We don't know which station were operational that evening. What their ranges were.

I mean, obviously, militaries are tend to keep their cards close to their chest. That's what they do. But in this case, so much of the world is looking at this case wanting to understand what happened and hopefully in this case, the Indonesian military will be much more forthcoming and letting us know what did they see.

CABRERA: But do you think we're getting more information this time around, Les?

ABEND: Well, because it's available. But remember, in any investigation, we're at the very preliminary stages. As a matter of fact, we are just -- the go team is assembling. They are looking at data more than likely. And this information is not going to be disseminated to the public until there is an absolute understanding of what they have and what they are looking at. And you got to hold back some of the cards initially.

You know, as much as Jeff refers at MH-370 and some of those issues, this is an overwhelming thing for any airline and for many people. So, MH-370 might have reacted a little bit to the right of center on that one. But at this point, we really need to allow the investigation process to start progressing.

CABRERA: And then, again, when you look at MH-370 one of the lessons learned was maybe they gave the wrong information out at times and then had to change course and say actually that's not what happened. This is what happened. So I guess, accuracy counts here, right? ABEND: It's true, but that is part of the process. Sometimes you go

on a theory or a basis for some assumption and it's proven wrong. This is part of the actual investigation process.

CABRERA: Jeff, what about the search response?

WISE: Well, you know, it seems like they were a little bit slow in getting the planes up in the air and the ships out. Weather was bad. You know, things don't often go as smoothly as we like in the abstract. That's fine.

You know, now two days have gone by. Tomorrow will be the third. Hopefully the weather will cooperate. But this should be a relatively easy area to search compared to MH-370, compared to Air France 447. We're not in the middle of an ocean. We are in a very small -- it's almost, you know, it is an area the size of the state of Mississippi. It is a large but finite space. It is ringed by islands. This is a heavily trafficked waterway. This is the fourth most populace country in the world. Many of those people make their living from the sea. People go the sea shore every day.

CABRERA: We know fishermen have joined in the search as well in this case.

WISE: Something should turn up. And hopefully this will go from being a missing airplane to being merely another tragedy that we can grapple with and won't be just a black hole like the last one.

CABRERA: You are right.

Gentlemen we have to end it. Thank you to you both. Jeff and Les, we appreciate it.

Tonight, CNN investigate the disappearance of Malaysia airlines flight 370, the other flight. Don't forget. And it vanished. That's the name of our series our special tonight at 9:00 p.m. eastern.

Next, we're learning more about the flight's pilot and you'll hear from his daughter who has a heartbreaking message for her father.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CABRERA: It has now been 45 hours since AirAsia flight 8501 disappeared shortly after the pilot requested a flight plan change due to bad weather. The search area is now expanding as is interest in the captain at the plane's controls during the final moments of this flight.

Let's bring in CNN Joe Johns in Washington.

Joe, I know you have been looking into the pilot of this missing flight. What have you learned?

JOE JOHNS, CNN CRIME AND JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Ana, he is said to be about 53 years old, a father, and as is common in Indonesia, he is Muslim, he's known by only one name, Irionto (ph). This pilot of the missing AirAsia plane being described in media reports as a former military pilot. He had a total of 20,537 flying hours of which 6100 hours were with AirAsia on the airbus 320, by comparison slightly more flying time than pilot Chesley Sullenberger who you remember executed that emergency water landing of U.S. air jack back in 2009 with 155 passengers and crew on board all survived. So at least in terms of experience Irionto would likely have developed a pretty good skill set by now.

CABRERA: And he's flown this particular plane before?

JOHNS: Absolutely. For well, 6100 hours, in fact. So that's a lot of flying time.

Now, as far as his family goes, I can tell you a little bit about that as well. We understand, according to some of the limited reporting so far, he has two kids. It's been widely reported that they recent lie experienced a loss, Irianto's father, told the BBC his son the captain's brother had recently died of diabetes and the last time they were together was at the funeral, in fact.

CABRERA: So sad. And then we have this heartbreaking tweet from the captain's daughter that I just want to put up for our viewers.

It reads dad, please come home, I still need you. Please return, dad. Dad, come home dad. You have to come home.

So it really puts into perspective the feelings that these families are feeling at the moment.

Joe Johns, we appreciate your reporting on family and on the captain, definitely good information for us all as we consider the situation.

We know flight 8501 was headed into some rough weather over the java sea. People on twitter are asking could the pilot have simply turned the plane around. Was that an option as he flew in that (INAUDIBLE) weather? That question and more when we return.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CABRERA: It could be days, weeks, possibly even months before we learn answers to essential questions about flight 8501 and some may never be answered at all. We're following the conversation on twitter. We're here to answer at least some of your questions with a couple of our guests who are experts here, contributing editor to "Flying Magazine," Les Abend and also with us Patrick Smith, commercial airline pilot and air travel columnist. He is also the author of "Cockpit Confidential, everything you need to know about air travel."

Les, welcome back. Patrick, thanks for joining us.

I'll start with you, Patrick. We have a question from Rodrigo who asked on twitter, why didn't the pilot just turn around and head back to the airport until the weather was clean?

PATRICK SMITH, COMMERCIAL AIRLINE PILOT: Well, it's very unusual for a crew and you say the pilot, and I just want to throw something in here. We hear this in the media over and over, about the pilot. It's the pilots. There are always at least two fully qualified pilots in the cockpit. I'm a co-pilot. And it doesn't make me an apprentice. I'm a fully fledge pilot. I means, we -- it's a team effort and a joint decision when these things are happening.

And it's pretty rare to simply turn around and go back or to be grounded out right because of bad weather. Normally, what happens is you deviate, you go above or around storm cells if necessary.

I can't imagine that this crew intentionally flew into a thunderstorm. As Les can attest, that's about the biggest no-no that exists in commercial aviation. You just do not fly into what would be a big red blob on their radar screen.

CABRERA: Right.

SMITH: Now, could they have found themselves inadvertently in that situation and the airplane suffered some structural failure? Maybe. It could turn out this has nothing to do with weather at all. We don't know yet.

Good point there is it's so soon after a major accident, the worst thing you can do is speculate too broadly, try to nail down a cause. You know, here we are a day afterwards. It takes months, sometimes years before we get to the bottom of things and sometimes like you mentioned at the outset, there might be a lot that we just never find out.

CABRERA: We just don't know.

Let's get to another question, Les. Tom tweets I'm confused with all the electronics available as to why they don't have a location pinpointed now within a few square miles.

ABEND: Well, that's a great question. And there is equipment on board the airplane that should have given trajectory tracking even primary radar.

CABRERA: But you think of all the passenger cell phones.

ABEND: Well, cell phone would not have worked at that altitude. But the problem is you are at such a high altitude. The airplane is still moving. If it did get upset by some form of turbulence at that, it's going to be -- it can be almost anywhere and it's a big area. Even though we say it's mauler than when Malaysia 370 disappear it's still a big area.

CABRERA: Here is another question. And Patrick, Phil wanted to know if we have satellites in space that can read license plates on cars, well then, why not use them to locate lost planes. Curious. I know it's not that simple.

SMITH: Yes. It's not that simple. I'm not sure exactly what the question is getting to as far as satellites.

CABRERA: Well, you think of Google earth.

SMITH: Why don't we have better tracking, you know. And I think there is room for improvement. There is no reason that commercial airplanes especially those assigned to oceanic routes can't have more advanced technology that allows for real-time, very location specific tracking.

Now, having said that the idea that we can upload tons and tons of data, you know, all the information that gets recorded on the flight data recorder, I'm asked all the time why can't that be streamed so we know where a plane is and what's happening. And the answer there is there are thousands of airplanes in the sky at one time and it would take a tremendous amount of bandwidth for lack of a better term to stream that much data constantly, you know, via satellite or however, is it really practical? I mean, there are how many commercial flights everyday around the world every day? 40,000 or so. And you know, over the past 25 years, how many airplanes have gone missing? You know, off hand, I can think of one. So there are practical questions --

CABRERA: And we did mention earlier, too, there have been a fewer actual number of crashes this year than we've seen since 1927. So it is important to keep the bigger picture perspective.

Let's ask another question of Les here. This is from John. And he asks, can pilots override traffic control amiss imminent danger?

ABEND: Absolutely. I mean, we -- the autopilot is a system that we work in conjunction with. So, in this particular circumstance, the pilots were deviating around whether more than likely they would have used a control called pending select on the mode control panel, which is a very small knob and it shows the heading that the pilot desires to turn to. And the captain or the co-pilot would have turned that heading knob in the appropriate direction to avoid, you know, the serious weather.

SMITH: Yes, The crew always reserves the right to do what it needs to do in the event of imminent danger or any sort of serious weather, regardless of what air traffic control says. In this case, the crew was denied an altitude change. That's not uncommon, but that doesn't meant that therefore, the crew is just going to go head longing to a storm.

ABEND: But I think the important clarification is that the air traffic control has no way of controlling the airplane other than issue clearances. There's no direct control they have to autopilot or our flying itself.

CABRERA: This particular airplane, we know, is lighter than some other models. Would that have played a role here, do you think?

SMITH: Conceivably to some extent in a very strong updraft. But I'm not inclined to think this airbus A320 is really, when this is all said and done, I don't think it's going to turn out that have much relevance to the accident. ABEND: It is a lighter airplane. And I think you will admit that it,

you know, it is 170,000 pound airplane compared to MH-370 which is a 150,000 pound airplane. Than on itself, we acts differently in turbulence. Every airplane in and of itself reacts differently, it has different characteristics and we enjoy an airplane for certain characteristics that it has. So you know, that is a little bit of the equation.

SMITH: A little bit.

ABEND: Doesn't mean it's dangerous.

SMITH: Yes. I wouldn't say that equates to this plane is therefore more likely to come tumbling out of the sky in a storm.

ABEND: That's right.

CABRERA: I'm going to summarize a couple of other questions here because there were a lot of questions that we've been getting from viewers on twitter asking about the whole tracking systems on airplanes and why isn't there better tracking.

We touched on this a little bit. But I know there's this ADSB system that is being implemented. And here in the U.S., there are going to be mandates for every airplane to have some capability by 2020. Would that make the need that we are discussing when it comes to this real time tracking? What do you think, Les?

ABEND: Well, it's already in use across the north Atlantic. My trips across to London, we use that -- it's a wonderful system. It's a satellite-based system that uses the ground stations also. Obviously, it wasn't utilized in the part of the world that we lost MH-370 in.

But, you know, all this thing is going to do is being able to track the airplane and maybe get a more precise location if we have another issue. You know, Patrick --

CABRERA: Is the infrastructure in place to be able to mandate that if governments were to choose to do so?

SMITH: Yes, I think so. And to clarify some mythology here, airplanes are attract, even planes that don't have this technology that you are talking about. Over the oceans, we don't have radar coverage that way we do over most land areas. But we're still in contact with air traffic control and we are still in contact with company staff on the ground. That's by regulation. We're always able to contact somebody. We're not simply flying blind across the ocean for hours at a time.

But over the oceans in certain areas, when you're transmitting data as to your position and then speed and altitude, it sometimes happens not, what the word, intermittently. It happens at particular wave point. It's not continuous. So maybe that's where some changes need to be made, at least for long-haul flying.

CABRERA: Alright, Patrick Smith and Led Abend, thank you so much both of you.

And up next, police already on edge as we've discussed in recent weeks and months. And of course, there was the execution-style killing of two officers in New York just a little over a week ago. Now we're hearing of officers coming under fire in other places and leading to a manhunt in Los Angeles. How that unfolded, ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CABRERA: Separate investigations are now under way after two sheriff's deputies in Pasco County, Florida, as well as two Los Angeles police officers were fired at yesterday. No one was hurt in either incident. But after a manhunt that lasted hours and involved some 100 police officers, one person is under arrest in Los Angeles. Another person still at large.

Our Sara Sidner is in Los Angeles where she joins us with the latest on this investigation.

I guess, Sara, the obvious question is, do police suspect any connection to the recent nationwide protests?

SARA SIDNER, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Quite a few folks wondering about that on social media as well as out here. And the answer to that, according to the Los Angeles police department detectives I spoke with, is plainly, no, they don't think so.

However, they do talk about the fact that this was completely unprovoked. The two people who officers say shot at them, they were not under arrested, they were not being sought after, they were not a part of any of the calls that the officers were going on. It just so happened that just on the street behind me and they have taken down the police say about an hour and a half ago, that they were shot out just randomly, unprovoked. And certainly, a scary situation for the officers and some of the residents in the neighborhood.

We did talk a little bit about the protests and the sentiment in the neighborhood towards the police department. And whether or not the police feel more under threat after what happened in New York and after all the protests that have happened across the country that are more anti-police brutality than anti-police. And here's what the detective had to say about that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I don't know that they necessarily feel that they're becoming targets because of what's going on around the nation, although you know, last week, we had two New York police officers that were killed. So it's undeniable that we're aware that there are a very small, small, small percentage of people out there that are so angry at the police that they're willing to hurt them.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SIDNER: And I also spoke to residents here in the neighborhood who talked a bit about that, the anger and the fear that exists. But the residents I spoke with said they never want to see a police officer hurt in the line of duty -- Ana.

CABRERA: One person in custody, another person still at large. Any more information on that second suspect?

SIDNER: All we can tell you is they've told the residents here they no longer have to shelter in place. They've taken down the police tape that was about a six-block area. And they are still looking for that second suspect in the neighborhood and around Los Angeles.

Certainly, there's concern that there's a person out there that may have been involved in trying to shoot two police officers. We do know that they did recover a firearm. We watched as they put that firearm into a white box and took that away. And so, we know that there was a firearm involved. We know that they are looking at in interviewing the officers.

No one hurt in this incident, but still, there is a person that is at- large at this time -- Ana

CABRERA: All right, Sara Sidner. Thanks to you.

And that does it for me. "The LEAD" with Jake Tapper starts right now.