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Legal View with Ashleigh Banfield

Families Visit Crash Region; Germanwings Crash Mystery. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired March 26, 2015 - 12:00   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

ASHLEIGH BANFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, everyone, I'm Ashleigh Banfield and this is LEGAL VIEW.

[12:00:00] I can't say this any better than the Lufthansa CEO. The revelations from the cockpit voice recorder of Germanwings Flight 9525 leave us, quote, "speechless."

If you've been following CNN's breaking news coverage on the Germanwings mystery, you know the only remaining mystery is why. Why would the co-pilot of that Airbus that crashed in the southern French Alps on Tuesday ditch that plane intentionally, deliberately, as the French criminal prosecutor asserts. Why would he lock the pilot out of the cockpit? Today, it seems nothing points to a medical crisis or an inadvertent mistake.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BRICE ROBIN, MARSEILLE PUBLIC PROSECUTOR (through translator): The action on this high altitude selector can only be done deliberately. So moving the altitude control can only be done deliberately. We hear several requests from the pilot asking to have access to the cockpit using what is called a cockpit call system, which is a inter (ph) communication system. So he identifies himself. But there's no response from the co-pilot.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BANFIELD: Co-pilot. That would be this man. And the very first photograph that's emerged of Andreas Lubitz. He was a 28-year-old German national who'd flown for Lufthansa's Germanwings subsidiary for 18 months. The airline said he passed all of his training and that he cleared all of his screenings. But, get this, Lufthansa does not do psychological tests.

On the fringe of the crash site today, recovery teams were joined by hundreds of crash victims' relatives, flown in from Germany and Spain. The site itself is reachable only by helicopter into which specifically trained, equipped experts are lowered by cables and ropes. Despite all of that, some human remains have now been recovered and authorities say they are hopeful that they will also be able to find that much sought after flight data recorder. CNN is covering every angle of this story, as only CNN can. And first

up for us this hour, our senior international correspondent Nic Robertson, who's standing by live near the families and first responders in that staging area in France.

So, Nic, what is so remarkable is to hear these officials say that are speechless about these revelations that the co-pilot deliberately did this. They are not motionless, though. What steps are they now taking to figure out what happened and how to get to the bottom of this?

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, what they are trying to do is investigate further the background of the co- pilot. They hope to get that data recorder to perhaps pick up some more clues potentially about what he did. Potentially there may be information in there. But as this seems to be what we're told by the prosecutor, the action not of a suicide -- not as somebody bent on suicide, but somebody bent on -- bent on murdering 149 people, it does seem that the voice recorder is really the big piece of information here and that's now already in the hands of the prosecutors, the criminal investigators. This is a criminal investigation now as well as a -- as a crash investigation.

But we've been standing here, and behind me you can see the families of the victims. Seven large buses were brought in. And I'll just step out of the way so we can see the families here. They're gathered around a memorial. On that memorial are the names of all the people who were aboard the aircraft when it crashed. We've been able to see in amongst the medical professionals, the people that the French authorities have brought in here to help the psychological trauma and the process of grieving, we can -- we've been able to see the family members walk up individually to that memorial, perhaps read the name of their loved one. But really for them, this, we're told, is the closest that they will be able to get to the crash site. They -- from where they are right now, that will be able to look up and see the mountains and see the skyline and see the difficult terrain here. This, for them, is the closest that they're going to be able to get to their loved ones.

But we've also heard from the prosecutor that it will be quite some time, potentially weeks, before he can repatriate any of the remains. There's -- there will be DNA testing that needs to be done, he said. So the families, at the moment, while they're here in this tiny field dwarfed by the huge mountains and dwarfed by the sense of enormity of what's happened to them and the sense of loss that they are going through, they will know as well from the prosecutor all the details we're told of what happened. They will know that in the last moments before the crash that there were screams heard on that voice recorder. They will be aware of that.

[12:05:10] So for them here, they've been in the field for about an hour, this will be a moment that they will be taking as long as they can. And the French authorities seem to be allowing as much time as they need to stand here and absorb everything around them. But they will, by seeing the terrain, will now fully understand why it is so hard for the recovery teams, the investigation teams to get into the site. It is high in the mountains, in the craggy peaks of the mountains behind me that we've seen the helicopters fly into for the past couple of days, to winch down those recovery teams.

BANFIELD: It's just -- it's a remarkable picture you just showed us, Nic, behind you. I'm peaking over your shoulder and I'm seeing at the same time while they are at a memorial, they're also witnessing these responders. They're in the middle of the staging area. They can see these emergency vehicles. They can see the emergency workers, the helicopters, taking off and landing. And, understandably, they must know what is coming back on those helicopters.

Nic Robertson, excellent reporting for us this morning. Thank you for that.

You know, Lufthansa says that it doesn't have any clues as to why a promising young pilot with no known ties to crime or to terrorism would intentionally crash a commercial airliner. CNN's justice correspondent Pamela Brown joins me now with more about what we do know about this man, Andreas Lubitz.

I know you've been talking to a lot of your FBI contacts. Do we know anything at all about this man that might help us get some answers to why he would do this?

PAMELA BROWN, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Bottom line, no, Ashleigh. I mean it's still very puzzling right now and it's still very early -- in the early stages of the investigation. So we have a lot to learn about this man, Andreas Lubitz, the 28-year-old co-pilot who, the prosecutor says, deliberately crashed the plane into the Alps.

Here's what we can tell you. The CEO of Lufthansa said he passed all of the necessary qualifications, certifications. He passed his flight training, his medical screening. He says that he was 100 percent fit to fly and that he had no record of problems.

But the big looming question here, Ashleigh, is the fact that, was he psychologically fit? And we know that Lufthansa does not have psychological testing for their pilots according to the company. So I imagine that's going to be under some scrutiny.

The CEO did say that at one point, when he was going through training, before he became a full-time employee in 2013 for Germanwings, that he -- his training was interrupted for some reason. But then he did come back to complete the course. And as I mentioned, he passed all the necessary tests in order to become a full-time pilot. He had about a hundred hours of experience on the type of aircraft that he was flying. And apparently he's had a dream of becoming a pilot since a very young age according to a statement from a flying club he was a part of.

Now, we do know that the FBI has offered assistance in the investigation. We know from very early on FBI agents based in Europe were helping run names from the passenger manifest through databases. But, of course, investigators, and the French and Germans are really taking the lead here, they're going to want to look at his background, behavior analysis, that kind of thing, Ashleigh. A lot of work cut out for them on this. BANFIELD: And, Pamela, make no mistake, they were also requested. I mean the -- the request came from Europe for the FBI to jump on board. And I've also seen these pictures of, you know, vehicles of -- officials in Europe at this co-pilot's home. I can only imagine what they're doing and what they're starting to do. Here's the video I was just referring to in terms of the investigative process. Any tips from your FBI contacts on what they are looking for and what they may have already gotten their hands on?

BROWN: Well, I think, bottom line here, Ashleigh, they're really deferring to the French. You know, there's a whole process that goes into play with these international type of events. And we know three Americans were on board. But right now they're really letting the French and the Germans take the lead and let them come to the FBI and then ask for assistance. Right now they're just really in standby mode still, Ashleigh, to see what kind of assistance is needed. And that's really where things stand on the FBI's point of view.

BANFIELD: Yes. All right, Pamela Brown, stand by. Thank you for that.

It is hard to know where to begin at this point, but I have an expert panel who has a lot of information and can help us get towards some answers perhaps. CNN aviation correspondent Richard Quest joins me live.

RICHARD QUEST, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: Good afternoon.

BANFIELD: CNN's safety analyst, David Soucie, is here. Boeing 777 captain, Les Abend, is live with us in London. And also in Washington, D.C., CNN law enforcement analyst, retired FBI Assistant Director Tom Fuentes is with us as well.

Richard Quest, I want to begin with you. We have the cockpit voice recorder. Yes, it yields remarkable information. We do not have the flight data recorder. Is it at all premature to make these determinations that this is an intentional crash of a co-pilot?

[12:10:00] QUEST: Absolutely not. It's a -- it's a -- we didn't make it. The prosecutor did and the CEO did. Let me remind you what the CEO said. I am speechless that this aircraft was deliberately crashed by the co-pilot. I mean, you know, Carsten Spohr, who I've known for a while, doesn't make those sort of statements lightly. Now, we don't know why he did it, but he did it. And this is no longer speculation.

BANFIELD: And there is nothing that the data recorder can tell us different?

QUEST: The data recorder -- not really. I mean we're now going into the ifs and the whys and the -- what's the data recorder going to tell? It's going to show us the mechanisms by which it did it. It will tell (INAUDIBLE) -- it will tell us, was the cockpit door forcefully locked, in other words, with the lock mechanism? Was the override mechanism (INAUDIBLE). It will tell us bits and bobs. But it's -- we know that he turned the altimeter from 38,000 to 100 feet.

BANFIELD: And that I want to get you on, David Soucie. The investigative nature of this, they were so quick to come to this determination. Is it just that simple? You could hear him breathing and he took specific steps to make sure, a, the pilot couldn't get back in and, b, that plane was on the way down?

DAVID SOUCIE, CNN SAFETY ANALYST: Those are undeniable steps too. There takes a -- an effort. It wasn't bumped. It wasn't by mistake. It wasn't an error. This is a rate of descent button that you turn to set what altitude, what rate of descent you want to have. That rate of descent is finite. So that's going to go at that rate. There was no question that -- and, in fact, that information is sent via ADSB, the automatic dependent radar surveillance, that's sent during ADSB. That information of the intent. That's how we know it went to 100 feet is because that's transmitted as well. Not just where he is, but where he wants to go. That's -- we call that the fourth dimension in air traffic.

BANFIELD: Listen, we've got so many other questions. Presumably there could be changes afoot now for the systems in Europe in which a pilot can leave a co-pilot unattended inside a cockpit. But there are other questions as well. Most importantly, who was this co-pilot? What is on his computer? What conversations has he had? And what was his psychological state of mind and why was he never tested? All of those answers hopefully coming.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:15:42] BANFIELD: More about this terrifying air crash in the Alps. We're going to talk about that cockpit door. The door that was apparently locked from the inside by the co-pilot. Want you to listen to the CEO of the parent airline, Lufthansa. He talked a little bit earlier about how that door technically works and how someone in the cockpit can keep it locked.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CARSTEN SPOHR, LUFTHANSA CEO (through translator): If one of the pilots leaves the cockpit, then it's possible to ring at the outside and the pilot can have a look and see who wishes to enter the cockpit. If it's the colleague or another crew member, then there's a button and you can open the electronically secured door. We, of course, have procedures that in case a pilot has left the cockpit and another -- the pilot inside is unconscious, then you have a further code that can be used on the door. And this leads also to a ringing sound. And if this buzzing sound -- nobody opens the door after this buzzing sound, then electrically the door is automatically opened. But the pilot inside the cockpit can prevent this in order to keep the door shut.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BANFIELD: Back with me, Richard Quest, also David Soucie, airliner captain Les Abend and Tom Fuentes, our law enforcement analyst.

So, quickly, I just want to get to you, Richard Quest.

QUEST: Sure.

BANFIELD: Some breaking news.

QUEST: I'm just going to read it.

BANFIELD: The issue for so many people has been, how on earth can one co-pilot be alone inside a cockpit when in America that's not possible.

QUEST: Because countries in Europe do not have a standard rule like the FAA has here, that if one person leaves, a flight attendant has to go in. Some -- it's done airline by airline. Many airlines didn't do such a rule post. MH-370. Norwegian, which is, of course, an airline that now flies to the United States, a very large, low cost carrier in Europe and -- has just put out a statement. If I may just read you the (INAUDIBLE) part. Norwegian say, "in the light of this terrible accident, we are speeding up the process so that two people from the flight crew are always present in the cockpit. This means if one of the pilots leaves the cockpit, a crew member must replace him or her during this time." I will expect to receive many more such e-mails from airlines in the days (INAUDIBLE).

BANFIELD: Norwegian is the first and you expect that to be a domino.

QUEST: Absolutely.

BANFIELD: Les Abend, if I can bring you in on this as well. I think, for many of us, we assumed that a distress call could be made from outside the cockpit as well. That a flight attendant, who is terrified about something going on in a cockpit, could reach ground control to say, we're in crisis. This is not the case.

LES ABEND, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: It is not the case and most airlines don't have the satellite phones anymore available to the passengers. So it really is not the case. Perhaps by e-mail that could be done for some airplanes that have wi-fi on board. But, no, there's no provision that the aircraft manufacturer makes for it. It's strictly the way the distress call comes, is traditionally from the cockpit. This is -- this situation is extremely disturbing to me as an airline pilot. It just -- it hurts on many, many levels. The public trust has been betrayed. There's a lot of aspects to this that (INAUDIBLE) people.

BANFIELD: What about pilot's trust? You're a pilot. I hate to even think about your position if you were on the outside of that cockpit door trying to get back in. What kind of trust do you now have about every pilot with whom you fly?

ABEND: Ashleigh, this is not something that I would even conceive of considering with the people I -- I flew over to London today from New York with a gentleman that's basically an Air Force war hero. He's been under a lot of stress for various reasons. Had -- he refuels airplanes in flight. I -- the -- there's a lot of interesting backgrounds. This is not something I would ever conceive of any of my colleagues for the airline that I fly for.

[12:20:4] BANFIELD: And presumably, Les, you're a pilot of a 777. You know exactly what was going through the mind of that pilot as he may originally have quietly been trying to get back in that door. Maybe the passengers didn't know until much more towards the actual moment of impact. But that pilot knew, didn't he?

ABEND: Well, of course he knew. He probably tried by inner phone to get through to the -- to the co-pilot. But what -- you know, I'd like to back up a little bit. This was a short period of time at cruise altitude that this co-pilot had control of the airplane or even just at cruise altitude when the typical routine is, you've got the airplane, I'm going to leave, I'm going to go to the lavatory, I'm going to get a -- grab a cup of coffee. It was a very short period of time. So he took this opportunity very quickly to lock that captain out. But he would have called -- the captain would have called from the inner phone and the last thing in the world we would have expected would be to be denied entry back into our own cockpit.

BANFIELD: I can't imagine what he was -- what he was thinking.

Tom Fuentes, if I can get you back in on this. About that co-pilot denying entry and he had to have done it at least once and maybe twice in order to bridge those two five-minute locking periods. From a law enforcement perspective, now that the FBI has been formally requested in -- for their assistance in this investigation, what are they doing to comb through the life of this co-pilot?

TOM FUENTES, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Well, first of all, Ashleigh, that part of the investigation would be done by the locals. What the -- what the FBI would be doing and has been doing -- it isn't just today that they came in on this in spite of what the politicians say, they've been involved from the very beginning in trying to check the passenger manifest, the crew and the pilots against U.S. databases, against any information here. The U.S. intelligence community would also be involved. So the assistance to the French would have begun the second that plane hit the ground and they knew it had crashed. So the criminal investigation doesn't start at some later date when they think a criminal act happened. It happens immediately and runs parallel to the investigation of whether there was a mechanical problem or what the aircraft actually did.

BANFIELD: But, Tom, you know what I'm asking. Sure, they investigate the crew right away. But once you've narrowed this down to a co-pilot locking the pilot out and deliberately crashing, I'm guessing every single one of the friends and family members that are known possibly to investigators are being canvassed and that they have taken every single device that he's ever laid eyes on and touched, whether it's in an office, a home, a vacation home, a friend's home, and they are absolutely combing every single hard drive to find out what could have motivated this.

FUENTES: That's right. That's what the Germans would be doing and the French prosecutor directing whatever assistance they want from searching the pilot's home in Germany, to his computers, to his e-mail records, subpoenaing, you know, social media records. All of that would be done in Germany by the Germans. What the U.S. would be doing and the FBI would also be doing is the time that he spent in the U.S. What did he do, where did he go, what was he doing while he was here, who did he associate with, those kind of things.

But just because they've asked the FBI -- or immediately the FBI provided assistance doesn't mean the FBI is going to march into somebody's home in the middle of Germany or France or Spain and start, you know, combing the area and doing searches or any of that. None of that is happening. But the local police -- and actually the local magistrate runs the investigation in the European system. And the FBI and the police and intelligence community and Interpol all provide assistance in going through their databases and any other direct assistance they can provide.

BANFIELD: And the European officials, I'll remind our viewers, made it known today that while families are grieving, the pilot's families and the co-pilot's families are on an alternate path. This was sort of the language that was translation. They are not grieving alongside those passengers' families. They are being brought to a separate area. They are being kept separate. My guess is that perhaps the co-pilot's family even more so now that this new revelation has been made.

All of our guests, if you could stand by for a moment. We want to -- look, clearly, if you fly, you're as astounded by the developments as anybody who's been watching this story and you may have a lot of questions about this crash. We're inviting you to tweet those questions to the hash tag #germanwings-qs@cnn. Just have a look at your screen, #germanwingsqs -- pardon me, no dash, #germanwingsqs@cnn. We're going to try to answer some of your questions as we move along through this program.

[12:24:50] In the meantime, what about that mental stability we talked about a few moments ago? Pilots literally have our lives in their hands and they have to be certified physically fit before they can fly, but what about the mental health evaluations? Is enough being done to make sure that pilots are mentally stable?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CARSTEN SPOHR, LUFTHANSA CEO: If one person kills himself and also 149 people, another word should be used, not suicide.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BANFIELD: Whether it was suicide, whether it was murder, or whether it was a combination of both murder/suicide, it certainly raises a lot of questions about the co-pilot of this crash, his mental state. Joining me now to talk about mental health screenings for pilots is CNN's aviation correspondent Richard Quest, CNN safety analyst David Soucie, CNN aviation analyst Les Abend, and CNN law enforcement analyst Tom Fuentes.

Gentlemen, I'm glad you're still back with me.

For starters, Richard, I just want to clarify something with regard to Lufthansa's mental health policy.

QUEST: Sure.

BANFIELD: The CEO, Carsten Spohr, who you said you know well, has clarified that the pilots do not undergo regular or routine psychological testing once they begin flying. However, Lufthansa does consider an applicant's psychological state, along with other factors, when hiring pilots. That is Lufthansa. What about the rest of the carriers in America and around the world? What's the rule?

QUEST: In the terms of most carriers, it's similar to that. You -- you've got your applicants. You obviously test their technology knowledge, their engineering knowledge and the like and then you do a psychological evaluation of the person. Once they've got the job, no, there's no regular psychological -- unless there's a reason, a depression perhaps, or there's some other sort of stress determined.

[12:30:00] And airlines are very careful at one level to insure that they are monitoring potential stresses.