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Passenger Flight Crashes, 150 on Board; Exploring Atheism in America. 10:30-11a ET

Aired March 24, 2015 - 10:30   ET

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

[10:29:44] KARL PENHAUL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I've seen at least six or seven groups of people arriving speaking Spanish as they come through a set of automatic barriers and some of them hugging one another, others crying. None of them so far offering any comment and, of course, for respect of the families right now, we're not pushing anybody for comments.

In terms of anything new from the airline representatives, well, of course, it's being handled very thoroughly from the German end here in Spain at the Terminal 2 in Barcelona. Airline authorities offering these printed statements but certainly nothing new in those printed statements that we don't already know.

But as I say as minutes go by and more and more relatives are arriving here to find out firsthand of what has gone on. The Spanish authorities here trying to put medical and psychological teams together to try and deal with this crisis -- Carol.

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: The Germanwings people say there were probably about 67 German people on board the plane. Do you know anymore about the breakout of those aboard that plane?

PENHAUL: Yes, that is the number that we're hearing from the airline representatives there in Germany. They say initially the figures that they have are 67 German passengers onboard. They haven't given a breakdown of the other nationalities that were onboard but given that the people, the relatives that I've seen here arriving at terminal 2 in Barcelona to the crisis center have been Spanish speakers, then that would be indicative that, of course, there are Spanish passengers onboard as well.

We don't, of course, know what other nationalities may have been onboard because Barcelona is certainly a very cosmopolitan city. And so there could be other nationalities on board. But certainly we would expect an update on nationalities as the day goes on and also what Germanwings has said. Is that number 67 Germans on board, could change depending on what other information they glean from the registrations and the flight records as well, Carol.

COSTELLO: All right. Karl Penhaul reporting live from Barcelona this morning.

I'm going to take a break. I'll be back with much more in the NEWSROOM.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:35:53] COSTELLO: All right. Here's the latest on this morning's crash of an airliner. All 150 people on board the Germanwings airliner are believed dead. The Airbus A-320 crashed into the foothills of the French Alps this morning. We just learned moments ago there was no distress call from the pilots.

At the helm of the Barcelona-Dusseldorf flight was an experienced pilot. He'd flown for more than 10 years and had logged more than 6,000 flight hours on this particular model of plane.

CNN's Tom Foreman is in Washington now with a closer look at that doomed plane's flight path. Tell us more -- Tom.

TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi -- Carol.

If you think about this, here's what we know right now. Yes, an experience pilot onboard. A plane that wasn't particularly old by industry standards. A plane that had been checked out by Lufthansa engineers just the day before -- some of the best in the industry. And yet this extraordinary thing happened with this plane while it was in flight.

We'll look a little bit at the terrain because that's worth bearing in mind. If you fly into this portion of France and into the French Alps here, you can see as we angle here that they were flying at a very serious mountainous area here. The Alps are a bit shorter than the Rocky Mountains but still very substantial mountains out there.

And if we look at what happened in the course of this flight, you can see if this is the correct reading and the truth is there can be some anomalies in here so we'll have to find out more details. But we can see where the flight took off. Red is the air speed and blue is the altitude. You can see that the flight pattern looked really quite normal all the way up through here. There's nothing unusual around this as it reached somewhere around, you know, 37,000 -- 38,000 feet and then it began this precipitous decline. There's some fluctuation in the speed through here but not a huge fluctuation and then the speed remains somewhat constant down to here. So you're actually talking about somewhere around 500 miles an hour in this area and then you would be down to a little bit over or around 400 miles an hour here.

But important to bear in mind in all of this, once they passed this point, Carol, right across in here, that's when they were in the range of where the tops of the French Alps can be contacted there. They were basically flying through mountains in this part and the things we do know and hear -- here's what we don't know. Why the big decline here? Why no news from the cockpit about what was happening at this point and why did it wind up all of the way down here in the mountains and have this impact?

We don't know and, of course, we need confirmation on these lines. Is this just a readout that we get temporarily and we find later on that there was something more precipitous that happened here or will we get some information from the data and Voice recorders that tell us what happened there? If all the wreckage is accessible those answers won't be terribly long in coming -- Carol. But those are the things people really need to know now because so much else said this should have been a normal flight.

COSTELLO: Ok -- Tom. We're going to go to Rene Marsh in just a second. But I want to go to Les Abend for just a second so that we can sort of maybe give us some insight into what Tom just showed us.

LES ABEND, BOEING 777 PILOT: The altitude is one thing. It did start a descent. The descent to me did not seem radical until that one point that we've discussed a little bit earlier with reference to it being if it's at indeed 10,000 feet but that could have been the lack of data.

What's curious to me is the decrease in air speed. If Tom is indeed correct that that data decreased about 100 miles per hour from 500 to 400, that could be an engine failure which means the airplane obviously only has -- is on one engine which they're perfectly designed to but it means that they had to go slower because they only had the one engine.

COSTELLO: And if there was an engine failure, then you probably wouldn't have had time to issue any kind of distress call?

ABEND: Well, if its just a run of the mill engine failure, yes, there should have been some time especially at 38,000 feet, which makes me curious again. Remember, this is a lot of conflicting data from all sorts of sources so we don't really know.

[10:39:58] But, you know, it's hard to say at this point in time. Engine failure is something we train for all the time. However, you're not going to be able to maintain 38,000 feet with an engine failure. You're going to have to go down --

COSTELLO: So engine failure in a mountainous region is different from engine failure --

ABEND: Yes. And knowing that they have flown this route on numerous occasions, they're very situationally aware of the terrain beneath them and my particular airline has escape routes just for that very particular reason that if you do lose and you have an emergency situation that you have a particular route and a diversionary airport where you can go. And in fact if Marseilles was that close they may have been thinking of that direction already.

COSTELLO: Got you. All right. Let's head to Washington now and check in with Renee Marsh. I know the NTSB is standing by awaiting any word for help.

RENE MARSH, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: Absolutely, Carol. They are looking to find out more information about who was onboard simply because the NTSB has a stake in this investigation if there are U.S. citizens on Board. They also have a stake in this depending on if any of the parts of the plane are manufactured by a U.S. company.

So they are in touch with the French equivalent of the NTSB. We know that. We've also have gotten word from Airbus. I now know that their go team is preparing to launch to the crash site. Of course, the airline's go team will be there or headed that way as well. These people are going to be very critical because they understand how the aircraft systems work. They're going to be really essential in helping investigators piece this all together.

Carol -- as you know with the airbus and Les Abend can talk to this as well-- it operates by something called fly-by wire so when a pilot is navigating and using that joystick, that doesn't automatically go or the command does not automatically control the wing. It goes into a computer which interprets the pilot's input and then that information will then whether it's a turn or if it's a command to change the direction of the plane, that computer must first interpret the pilot's input. We do know that specialty as it relates to the Airbus A-320 -- Carol.

COSTELLO: All right. Rene Marsh -- many thanks to you. Rene Marsh live in Washington. As I go to break, I want to take you back out to Nice where a staging area has been set up. You can see the helicopters waiting to take off. These are the recovery teams trying to find probably no survivors but they're trying to recover bodies and debris from that plane crash. We'll tell you more after a break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:46:35] COSTELLO: We've been telling you about that terrible plane crash that happened earlier this morning. Germanwings Flight 9525 with 150 people onboard went down on a flight from Barcelona, Spain to Dusseldorf, Germany. It crashed somewhere in the French Alps. I showed you before the break pictures of a staging area in Seine France where recovery teams are at work.

Asa Soares is going to cover that part of the story for you now. So tell us more.

ACE AZORES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi -- Carol. Just before I go to the pictures, we have some news coming in from Germany. A German town basically fearing it's lost many of its students. They've told CNN that 16 students, that's 1-6, and two teachers of a local high school were booked on that Germanwings flight.

Authorities as I'm quoting here don't know yet if the group actually was on the flight. The high school is called Joseph (inaudible) and a crisis center has been established we're told at the city hall and this town is about 77 kilometers from Dusseldorf Airport -- that's about an hour's drive. So this is what we're getting from this German town fearing that 16 of its students Carol and two teachers from a local high school may have been on board that flight.

And just you were mentioning those we've got footage, we've been coming in to CNN of rescue operations really. We're seeing rescue team helicopters on the ground preparing to take off helping with recovery. We reported throughout in the early mornings of today that it's very a difficult terrain, very mountainous terrain -- very difficult to get to plus obviously very cold. This is a skiing area. A lot of off peak skiing in this area and with that lots of fresh snow and of course, fears of avalanche so highly risky. I was hearing from French media as well Carol that you know, by foot it takes about 2.5 hours climb to just go to the safest part of that mountain. But access to it is mostly done by helicopter.

So this is something the French authorities have been saying that this could take days to actually get to the site. Nevertheless we have heard from the French president Francois Hollande saying that he sent a team there to the ground. We've also heard from Spanish authorities saying they have put together a crisis center and also one of the members of the Spanish government traveling to the region as well as German Chancellor Angela Merkel expected to arrive there tomorrow -- Carol.

COSTELLO: Are they calling this a recovery effort or is it possible there may be survivors?

SOARES: It's too early to tell. But from what -- They are calling this a rescue team effort. We are seeing helicopters. They are not calling it recovery. We have heard from French President Francois Hollande and I'm going to quote you here. He said, "The conditions of the accident are not yet clear but lead us to believe there will be no survivors."

It was a tone that was also struck by King Phillip IV who was visiting France. He was on a state visit to France. He said the same thing. I'm going to quote him. There are no known survivors.

There is a high number of Spaniards, Germans and Turks and of course, we heard from Olivier Wagner, he's the CEO of Germanwings in the last half hour and he said there are 67 German nationals onboard -- Carol.

[10:50:06] COSTELLO: All right. Isa Soares -- thanks so much. I'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: Isa Soares, thank you so much. I'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: Exploring atheism in America. Some people are choosing a life without religion. Here's Kyra Phillips.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Is America, America without religion? Without God.

DAVID SILVERMAN, PRESIDENT OF THE AMERICAN ATHEIST: America is greater without God.

PHILLIPS: Why?

SILVERMAN: Think about all of the hatred that would go away. Think about all the bigotry that would go away.

PHILLIPS: But David God is a part of our culture, the traditions. I mean it's "In God We Trust". We're talking about our military and our money. God bless America. Everybody says that. God bless you.

SILVERMAN: Not everybody. "In God we trust" is a great example of how religion lies. We do not trust in God. You may trust in God. But we don't.

CHILDREN: One nation under god.

SILVERMAN: "One nation under God" is drilled into every student. This is the government pushing religion on everybody. It's disgusting. It's wrong. It's the exact opposite of what America stands for.

Children: And justice for all.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: All right. Kyra Phillips is here. Atheism is America.

PHILLIPS: Can I tell you, I have never received so many tweets, Facebook posts. I mean the debate, the conversation, it's fascinating to me. And I never realized this population of atheists how big it is and how many people have decided they are good without God. It was fascinating. Even Harvard University embraces the humanist hub.

Famous divinity school there at Harvard. Students are going there to study divinity to become godless chaplains.

COSTELLO: Wow. It was interesting because I just interviewed a group of young people, 21 years old, who said they are spiritual. They are not religious, they don't go to church. You know, something is up there but not necessarily God.

PHILLIPS: That's a great point because there are all these names out there -- atheist, nuns, humanist, skeptics, agnostics, free thinkers.

[10:55:08] Twenty percent of America says I don't believe in God, or I just don't feel and feel an affiliation to a church or to something. But I agree with you.

It's hard to deny something is out there but Mother Teresa even questioned her faith. Those letters were fascinating that we were able to see once she passed. The most spiritual person I ever thought existed.

COSTELLO: I'm telling you -- I cannot wait to watch your special.

PHILLIPS: Thank you. It's a great conversation.

COSTELLO: You can catch Kyra's special "ATHEIST, INSIDE THE WORLD OF NONBELIEVERS. That airs tonight at 9:00 p.m. Right here on CNN. Thanks for joining me today. I'm Carol Costello.

"AT THIS HOUR" with Berman and Bolduan after a break.

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