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Weather Slows Down Search for Flight 8501 Wreckage; Search for the Black Boxes; New Search Area is the Size of Delaware; Search Highlights Extend of Ocean Garbage

Aired January 02, 2015 - 09:00   ET

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

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, I'm Carol Costello. Thank you so much for joining me. We begin this hour with the race to find the wreckage of AirAsia Flight 8501and all the souls who perished on board.

(BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)

COSTELLO (voice-over): More debris found floating, including an apparent window panel. Here's a closer look. Experts say it almost certainly is from an aircraft. It'll take more scrutiny to confirm that it's from the doomed airliner, though.

Crews are battling foul weather but have managed to pull 30 bodies from the Java Sea. Technicians on land have successfully identified four of those victims and the search for the main wreckage now narrows to just over 2,000 square miles. That's roughly the size of Delaware.

Let's get the latest from Surabaya, Indonesia now where the flight originated and where many of the families are still gathered.

Gary Tuchman is there. Hi, Gary.

GARY TUCHMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hello, Carol, this is the Surabaya Police Headquarters where we're standing. This tent has been specifically set up for families who are still waiting for any word whatsoever.

Thirty bodies have been recovered but that means there are 132 people who are still missing.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

TUCHMAN (voice-over): Breaking overnight, Malaysian officials aiding in the search tell CNN this is the most probable location of AirAsia Flight 8501, an area just over 2,000 square miles.

Keeping a close eye on the weather that has hampered efforts for days, crews have yet to discover the crucial black boxes needed to solve the mystery of the crash. And the clock is ticking in the race to find them. The battery powering the acoustics pingers used to locate the black boxes have about 24 days until they expire. At least three ships using underwater pinger locator devices are set to comb the area. And new this morning, Indonesian authorities have identified the

bodies of three more victims, bringing the total number of people identified to four. The journey back home for the first identified victim of the crash came Thursday. The body of a woman, a teacher, was laid to rest in a tearful ceremony, her grieving family struggling to cope as her body was lowered into the ground.

In the early morning hours off the coast of Indonesia, search teams making another painful trip back to shore, carrying the remains of more victims from the AirAsia flight and pieces of debris from the wreckage. Also aiding in the search, the American USS Sampson, recovering two bodies from the Java Sea yesterday.

At the hospital in Surabaya, the race to identify other victims is of most importance for relatives. It is here where they will undergo autopsies before heading back to their families.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

TUCHMAN: This crash happened nearly six days ago. The weather has been crummy every day since, but it's supposed to. It's forecast to improve this weekend particularly on Sunday -- Carol.

COSTELLO: All right, Gary Tuchman reporting live from Indonesia this morning.

So let's talk more about the latest developments this morning with sea operations specialist Tim Taylor. He's also the president of Tiburon Subsea Research, a company that specializes in ROVs and AUVs and underwater imagery. We're also joined by CNN safety analyst David Soucie. He's the author of the new book "Malaysia Airlines Flight 370: Why It Disappeared."

Welcome to both of you. Thanks so much for being here.

Well, we still don't have much to go on this morning but there is the picture of this panel from the plane, at least we suppose it is from the plane, David. Just by looking at that, can you really tell anything?

DAVID SOUCIE, CNN SAFETY ANALYST: Not a lot really. There's two parts to evidence and that is what it is and where it is, and we don't know where it is or where it was after the accident. This will just be something that they use, the investigators will use to put another piece into the puzzle.

COSTELLO: Yes, I mean, I was just reading things into it and certainly not an expert in any way, but didn't look like any kind of explosion or anything. Can you tell anything?

SOUCIE: Yes. There's not really a lot of physical damage to it. See, it's broken around the top but that's where it's attached so it just was broken loose. Not really much we can tell with this as it sits.

COSTELLO: Got you. Also supposedly according to local reports parts of the tail have been

identified and found and an oil slick by where parts of the tail were found?

So, Timothy, does that tell you anything?

TIM TAYLOR, SEA OPERATION AND SUBMERSIBLE SPECIALIST: By all means, yes. If it's an oil slick and it's continuing to just appear and maintain itself, then they could have -- be close to the area where the main part of that plane hits. I mean, there are wrecks that we dive that are from World War II that are oil is still seeping out of and leaving a slick. I was on one this summer off of North Carolina.

COSTELLO: And it is also in the tail is where the black boxes are, right? So --

SOUCIE: Correct. They're not exactly in the back of the back tail like they are in the 777. There's one that's a little bit more forward than that. But that's where you would expect to find those in the tail section.

COSTELLO: Yes. And yesterday you were talking about this black suitcase type thing that was found.

SOUCIE: The blue one. Yes.

COSTELLO: Or blue. OK.

SOUCIE: Right.

COSTELLO: So why is that important?

SOUCIE: Well, what's important that is it indicates to me that -- and it was undamaged by the way. So it's stored in the at cargo department. Right next to the right door. And so if it's undamaged then that makes me encouraged that the structure at that point wasn't severely damaged so I would suspect that the black boxes are going to be intact and fairly easy to find.

COSTELLO: I hope so. So they'll be sending out these pings, right? So why can't they just drop something in the water right now near where those pieces of tail were found, Tim, and just be done with it?

TAYLOR: Yes. I'm sure they're doing that in shallow water. It is -- it tends to be a lot noisier so hearing these pings, it can have background, a lot of background noises and shallow water from rain on the water, other boats, propellers and noise, waves crashing, even biological things, crabs and fish make noise underwater, and that makes a big background static but the pings should be steady and regular and I would imagine they are doing that. So let's hope that --

COSTELLO: So once they detect regular pings, how long will it take to pinpoint exactly where those black boxes are to get them out?

TAYLOR: Search areas narrow to where they are and they're hearing pings. It shouldn't take them a few days. Good weather and good weather. OK. So if not even sooner. So the weather is a big factor.

COSTELLO: Sunday is supposed to get fairly nice so --

SOUCIE: And the good thing about that is we'll also be able to get satellite images. Remember 370 we got those great, or excuse me, on the 17 we got those great satellite images that aided the researchers and the investigators as to where the bodies were located. We haven't been able to get that from all source or (INAUDIBLE) there because it's just been too cloudy. But if it clears up on Sunday we'll get some very good pictures of that.

COSTELLO: And the last question, a grizzly question, so two passengers, according to local reports, were found together in seats and they had their seat belts on. Thirty bodies in all have been recovered. Those bodies are coming from somewhere, that these people in their seats were found. What does that say, anything?

SOUCIE: There's a couple of things it could say, but what it doesn't say is the answer that we're kind of looking for now, is did it break up in flight or did it break up when it hit the water. So either one of those investigators will see that they'll find bodies in that condition, in either of those scenarios. So it really doesn't tell us a lot about what happened to the aircraft, other than it does tell us that they weren't exiting the aircraft, like there wasn't an egress attempt like we had suspected earlier.

COSTELLO: Right. Could it also tell us that because of the weather that the plane under the water is coming apart and the bodies are getting out?

TAYLOR: I would not say that. I would say, and David can back me up here on this but it's probably this happened on the initial wreckage of the plane, breaking apart and floating up is very difficult. It's very heavy down there, it's very hard to do that. Now the oil for another, that could be fuel, can be coming out of the plane and -- since it was not -- it was only an hour into its flight. Fuel can be sweeping out of the areas of the plane, hydraulic fluids, that type of thing. So that's a tell.

COSTELLO: You were going to --

SOUCIE: Yes. The coming up after words -- people think of the debris as being on top of the ocean or on the bottom and that's not the case. A lot of it is in between because they're connected together, there's pieces that connect together, especially in this aircraft that has a lot of honeycomb structure which is -- which is buoyant, it's very buoyant and if it's attached to some metal you could find a lot of debris that's between the two, making the search incredibly difficult.

However, it does give you more clues because that is not affected by wind. So now you can do a better analysis to say where did it come from, from that information than you can from what's on top. So hopefully we're just kind of peeling off the layers of the onion and getting more information. I'm confident we're going to find this aircraft.

COSTELLO: And by Sunday when the weather clears up hopefully they'll be able to accomplish a lot more. Yes.

Timothy Taylor, David Soucie, thank you so much.

Search crews believe that a shadowy image resting on the floor of the Java Sea is likely the bulk of the Asia airliner, but to be sure, divers have to reach the presumed wreckage. Monsoon season has whipped up the season, made it too dangerous for them to spend any significant amount of time in the water.

CNN's Paula Hancocks has more from you.

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PAULA HANCOCKS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: We're down in Kumai Port just on the west coast of Borneo and, as you can see, preparations are under way for one of the search vessels to head out to the search location and try and locate some of those bodies and also some of the debris.

Now this is a police boat. It's also going to have search-and-rescue on board. Some of the divers are going to be on board as well. They've already been out a couple of times but many of them say they couldn't get into the water, it was simply too dangerous.

Today they know they have waves of four meters or 13 feet high and it's simply too dangerous for them to get in. One diver said he would basically be giving up his life if he tried to do that.

They're very frustrated. Sometimes they just have to sit and wait and hope for a break in the weather so that they can try and bring back more bodies and bring some closure to those distraught families.

Paula Hancocks, CNN, Kumai Port, Indonesia.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COSTELLO: Still to come in the NEWSROOM, the search for Flight 8501's black boxes turns critical as the batteries start losing power.

Look at why those black boxes -- well, we know why they're so important, we'll talk about how soon they can bring them up next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: The mystery of what happened to Flight 8501 may be found in the plane's black boxes if they are recovered. The black boxes are in the tail of the Airbus 320-200. The boxes consist of the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder. Batteries pouring the recorder's pingers have now about 24 days of power left.

CNN's Rachel Crane has more for you.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

RACHEL CRANE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Following a plane crash, the search for survivors always comes first, but just as important is the search for answers. The why and the how. Often those answers are found in the black box.

Since the '60s, all commercial airplanes have been required to have one onboard. Now the name is a little misleading because they are actually orange, and when we're talking about a black box, we are talking about two different boxes. One being the cockpit voice recorder, the other being the flight data recorder. Together, they weigh anywhere between 20 to 30 pounds, and they have to be crash proof.

Black boxes can survive just about anything. Temperatures up to 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit for an hour, forces that are 3400 Gs. Now that's 3400 times the force of gravity. They are waterproof and they can save recorded data for two years and it`s a lot of data.

The cockpit voice recorder records the crew's conversation and background noise. By listening to the ambient sounds in the cockpit before a crash, experts can determine if a stall took place, the RPMs of the engine, and the speed at which the plane was traveling. When these sounds are cross-referenced with ground control conversations, they can even help searchers locate a crash site.

Then, there's the flight data recorder. It gathers 25 hours of technical data from airplane sensors, recording several thousand discreet pieces of information. Data about the air speed, altitude, pitch, acceleration, roll fuel, and the list goes on and on. But to make sense of the data, first you have to find it. Not an easy thing to do when a plane crashes into the ocean.

Both black box components are outfitted with underwater locator beacons, which self-activate the moment they come into contact with water. They send pings once per second to signal their location. And can transmit data from as deep as 20,000 feet for up to 30 days. When their batteries then run out. But on land, there's no such pinging to help guide the search. Investigators have to sift through the wreckage until they find it.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COSTELLO: Rachel Crane.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM: will rough wind and rocky waves finally let up so divers can comb through those waters? We'll check in with Chad next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: As the search intensifies for Flight 8501, so does frustration with the uncontrollable -- the weather. For days now, the search has been hampered by rough winds and rocky waters. Earlier today, divers faced waves up to 13 feet high, making it extremely difficult to conduct the underwater search.

So, what can crews expect over the next several days?

Let's bring in meteorologist Chad Myers to find out. Hi, Chad.

CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Hi, Carol.

It does get a lot better, and it gets a lot better on Sunday. That's still probably 36 to 48 hours before we can say the storms will be gone, the skies will be clearing and the wind will be dropping off, because right now, the winds are still 30 to 40 miles per hour over that site. Blowing some of the top debris down of course, but also like they were saying, anything under the ground, under the water, not blowing around, there's no turbulence down there.

So, there's the storms from overnight just like we expected. They pop up and go away and if you're in the wrong place at the wrong time, it's even dangerous for some of the ships to be out here because waves and winds 13, 15 feet, winds 50 miles per hour, that finally all does go away though by Sunday morning. They will see decent weather.

Scattered showers on and off, I get. It's not going to be a perfect scenario. This isn't going to be finding something in a bathtub. There will still be storms, an inch or two of rain in the next 48 hours but the big story is the wind.

Right now, we're about 20 miles per hour. For tonight and tomorrow, we could get 20 to 30 miles per hour at times. But notice how the yellow begins to go away. Here we go to Sunday afternoon, we start to see the wind completely gone.

So, 5 to 10 miles per hour, that would really be nice, because something like a general breeze you get waves about two to three feet. And they can deal with that. Fresh breeze, around -- maybe almost 25 miles per hour, that's a 9-foot sea. And I've been diving in the water with the boats up and down at 13 feet out in the Florida Keys right on the reef and it is a mess.

Now, as soon as you get underwater you don't feel the up and down but the people up on top of the surface there in those boats, in those support groups, they do feel that.

It's the ITCZ, it's Intertropical Convergence Zone. We expect the storms to be here. Right now, right over this area. In a few months, it will drift one way or the other, and then, all of a sudden, it will be perfect. But for now, we're still in it.

At least we get a big window of opportunity Sunday into Monday, Carol.

COSTELLO: All right. We'll look forward to that. Chad Myers, thanks so much.

MYERS: You're welcome.

COSTELLO: The search area for the wreckage from Flight 8501 narrowed to roughly 2,000 square miles, taking part in the search five planes, eight helicopters and 30 ships, including the USS Sampson. Thirty bodies have now been recovered, four of them positively identified, and as search crews struggle with the brutal weather, the question of how the plane went down remains as much a mystery as where.

I'm joined now by Boeing 777 captain and CNN aviation analyst, Les Abend.

Thanks for coming back. I appreciate it.

So, a lot of people are wondering, if this plane did go into that steep ascent and it stalled, is it possible that the pilot could have regained some control of the plane after that?

LES ABEND, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Our reaction would have been -- the airplane itself has automatic controls, where it's supposed to stop that from ever happening, in what we call a normal mode on an A320, but if he disconnected the autopilot he would control the plane on his own. We're not necessarily certain that this is a stalled situation anyhow. I mean, we've got a lot of conflicting data, as we've been discussion.

So, it's possible we had a dual engine flame out. I -- that's one of the scenarios where the captain was trying to control the airplane in a situation that involves severe turbulence.

COSTELLO: But could he fly the plane down?

ABEND: Absolutely. The airplane is designed -- any airplane, whether it has a motor or not, flies and this airplane is designed to fly on no engines. So, he indeed could do that. However, I'm troubled by the fact a mayday call never came out. And he would have at least had an opportunity from that altitude to say something, so it seems to me that something more troubling occurred.

COSTELLO: There's some sort of emergency transmitter on the plane, isn't there, so if it hit the water, it would automatically go off?

ABEND: There's at least two emergency locator transmitters. It's very often, they're located in the life vests themselves. So, if they became immersed in water, they're not going to transmit.

Now, if they were on the land, the impact would have set them off.

COSTELLO: Ever since the miracle on the Hudson happened, everybody has this idea that pilots can land on the water and it's a cinch. But it's not. Right?

ABEND: No, it's a challenge. It's a difficult challenge, special which with the sea state you saw with Chad Myers was talking, nine foot seas at its best. That's a tough situation. There's a technique to do it. We don't necessarily practice doing that, because it's a circumstance that is very unusual, but we have read on the appropriate way to do it and it's indeed possible.

COSTELLO: So, what is your best hope as a pilot if you're trying to do this?

ABEND: Your best hope is to land parallel to the waves and try to mitigate the damage that could occur. The airplane is going to break up, that's the bottom line. You can't -- we've talked about this before, you can't have the Hudson River scenario especially out in the middle of the ocean. It's kind of implausible. COSTELLO: People keep talking about it, I wanted to you shoot that

theory down because --

ABEND: Yes. Listen, anything is possible, if it's done correctly and you've got the timing down, absolutely, but it does not seem like this was the circumstance that occurred. It seems that airplane broke up into fragments at some point, maybe on impact, possibly prior to that, it's hard to say.

COSTELLO: Les, thanks for being here. I appreciate it.

Before Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 went missing, ocean garbage was not a global headliner. During the search, crews found a startling amount of trash in the sea. It's an issue being highlighted by this most recent tragedy.

CNN's Stephanie Elam has more for you.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ANNA CUMMINS, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, 5 GYRES INSTITUTE: Our oceans are littered in trash. And it's unfortunate it's taken this human tragedy to highlight it.

STEPHANIE ELAM, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): For aviation, 2014 was scarred by the disappearance of two planes over open water. The hunt for AirAsia Flight 8501 in the Java Sea and Malaysia Air Flight 370 in the Indian Ocean has given the world a good look at the trash conditions of our oceans.

During the search for any sign of the aircraft, objects floating in the water turned out to be junk. Discarded nets and old buoys among a myriad of items.

CUMMINS: These are examples of the kind of plastic pollution that we find out in our oceans.

ELAM: Anna Cummins is the executive director of the 5 Gyres Institute.

CUMMINS: The biggest offender is plastic pollution. Roughly 80 percent to 90 percent of the debris in our oceans is plastic, and the worst of it is that people don't realize that this is not just unsightly. This plastic pollution is actually getting into the food chain, and may ultimately be affecting our health.

ELAM (on camera): And it's affecting the animals.

CUMMINS: Absolutely. Roughly 660 species today and that is a conservative estimate are affected by plastic. They either get tangled in it or they ingest it. It's a lot of single use disposables and packaging. And what's really insidious about it is plastic in the oceans doesn't disappear. It acts like a sponge for contaminants.

ELAM (voice-over): In the Pacific Ocean alone, NOAA says massive patches of garbage swirl about between California and Hawaii. (on camera): There are international laws that prohibit dumping

plastics in the ocean. The problem is enforcement. Countries need to do a better job of cracking down on pollution and then there's another issue -- the vast ocean water are just very difficult to police.

CUMMINS: All over the world, people are realizing we can't afford the convenience of single use plastics, and companies need to take responsibility for what happens to their products after they leave the consumers hand.

ELAM (voice-over): As for the AirAsia jet and MH370, what impact will they have on these bodies of water? Cummins says as ocean pollution goes, the debris from the planes are just drops in the bucket.

CUMMINS: The bigger problem is what starts here on land. Roughly 80 percent of the plastic pollution we find out in our oceans starts on land. It's as simple as the debris we see here in the sand, the cigarette butts, the straws, the forks, the bottles, the bags.

ELAM: Some common items that may help daily life but pose a threat to our oceans.

Stephanie Elam, CNN.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COSTELLO: Still to come in the NEWSROOM: from a boy in Queens to the forefront of the Democratic Party, Mario Cuomo left his mark on the nation.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

THEN-GOVERNOR MARIO CUOMO (D), NEW YORK: We proclaim as loudly as we can, the utter insanity of nuclear proliferation and the need for a nuclear freeze if only to affirm the simple truth that peace is better than war, because life is better than death.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: We'll take a look back at the life and legacy of the former New York Governor Mario Cuomo, next.

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