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Germanwings Co-Pilot's Convinced Pilot to Step Out of Cockpit; Iran Nuclear Deal Deadline in 48 Hours; Indiana's Religious Freedom Bill; Battle for Yemen Escalating; Air Canada's Hard Landing. Aired 4- 5p ET

Aired March 29, 2015 - 16:00   ET

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

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): First, the airline industry has remarkable safety record despite high-profile disasters. Many believe on-board pilots remain the most reliable way to handle problems and retrofitting planes would cost billions of dollars.

[16:00:06] And, second, passengers may not be ready. Robert Goyer is with "Flying" magazine.

ROBERT GOYER, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, "FLYING" MAGAZINE: I start by asking myself that question, how would I feel getting into an airliner that didn't have airline pilots upfront? I wouldn't do it.

FOREMAN (on camera): One of the reasons is there's still questions about reliability in these systems, and there are unanswered questions. For example, if you want to make this plane safe by having a ground station control so terrorists can't take up over here, what if a terrorist takes over down here, now the plane is in their control and they don't even have to be on board.

One possible solution is you have more than one ground station, they have to work in tandem. That sort of defeats that problem, but it doesn't another question - what if you just have some sort of a hacker who interrupts the data stream and takes over the plane anyway? That's why this is a little more complicated than it seems.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: All right. That was Tom Foreman reporting. Thanks so much. We'll have much more straight in the "Newsroom," because it all starts right now.

Hello again, everyone. Thanks so much for joining me. I'm Fredricka Whitfield.

We begin with new developments on the last minutes of the Germanwings flight that crashed in the Alps last week, killing all onboard. The German tabloid magazine "Bild" is reporting that co-pilot Andreas Lubitz encouraged the plane's pilot to take a bathroom break.

When the pilot left, investigators say it was at that point that the co-pilot locked himself in the cockpit and then intentionally began the plane's descent into the mountainside. The French newspaper "Le Parisien" also has new details about Lubitz's medical history. The paper is reporting that he suffered from "generalized anxiety disorder." It also says that in 2009, Lubitz also suffered from severe depression symptoms. In 2010, he even received injections of an anti-psychotic medication.

As I mentioned the German tabloid magazine "Bild" is reporting more details of the timeline of what happened in the last minutes of the Germanwings flight. Will Ripley has been following the story for us and joins us now from Cologne, Germany.

So Will, what more in this report of the timeline?

WILL RIPLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: If this reporting is accurate, Fred, you can only imagine, and frankly we really can't imagine the pain that the families of everybody on board must be going through, to learn these details, to know that for perhaps eight minutes they knew that something was horribly wrong. They looked out their windows and watch the ground come closer.

It's horrific, to say the least, but these are details that investigators are looking at closely. So let's take you through it, minute by minute. Before the flight even took off from Barcelona to Dusseldorf, Germany, the pilot Patrick Sonnenheimer had mentioned to Andreas Lubitz that he hadn't gone to the bathroom. That's a key point, because this was only a two-hour flight. And a lot of times both pilots would stay in the cockpit during that entire time, a pilot wouldn't get up and leave, as what happened in this case.

So keep that in mind as we now take you to 10:27 a.m. when the plane reach its cruising altitude of 38,000 feet and the captain essentially asked the co-pilot to prepare for landing, this is all standard procedure. And then Lubitz told the captain, OK, you can go now, you can leave the cockpit. That's exactly what happened. In the recording, you can hear the seat moving backward and the captain telling Lubitz, you can take over.

At that point that we believe, he was then locked out of the cockpit. At 10:29, the flight radar monitors showed the plane was starting to descend. It's a rapid descent. People in the cabin would have noticed it. Certainly, the pilot would have noticed it as well because just three minutes later at 10:32, air traffic controllers, they started trying to contact the plane, there was no response and then the sink rate cockpit alarm went off. This is a very loud alarm. It would have been audible even outside the cockpit to some of the passengers in front of the aircraft.

That's when, in the recording, you start to hear this loud bang on the door, the captain screaming, "for god's sake, open the door." That's also, according to this newspaper, when passengers can be heard screaming in the background. Again, that was 10:32, the plane would be in the air for another eight minutes, 10:35 a.m., loud metallic bangs can be heard. This is what investigators think was the pilot trying to break his way into the cockpit, really a valiant effort by Sonnenheimer. But he was not successful. He wasn't able to get in there as the plane, now down to 22,000 feet. Another 90 seconds, the alarms continue. If you've ever been inside a cockpit, these are very loud. The steering controls will start to shake. People can hear this well outside of the cockpit, terrifying, as the captain continuing to screen "open the damned door." 10:38, the plane continues descending towards the French Alps. The co-pilot breathing normally throughout all of this, the plane goes down to 13,000 feet and then two minutes later, Fred, at 10:40, they believed the plane's right wing scraped the mountaintop.

You hear the passengers screaming. Yet again, they were looking at their windows, they were seeing the mountain come closer. And then the recording goes silent, Fred. It's just awful.

WHITFIELD: It is as riveting and just absolutely horrifying. It totally puts us all on the plane, just your description. Again, we believe this reporting is coming from the voice recorder. That box had been recovered. Still the flight data recorder has not been recovered, right?

RIPLEY: That's correct. So that's a key piece, because they need to look at the data recorder to see what exactly is happening at the controls. These flights are automated nearly the entire flight, only just a few seconds at takeoff and landing does the pilot actually assume control. So Lubitz would have had to manually entered into the autopilot to have the plane do such a rapid descent.

There is a chance, Fred, that tomorrow, investigators could be holding a press conference but we don't know for sure that's going to happen yet. But there have been so many leaks in this case. Again, this is a German tabloid that is reporting these details. At some point investigators may decide that it is time to come forward to either confirm some of this information or say, "no, this is not the case." Certainly the families hope that it was not a full eight minutes of horror, as this newspaper account indicates.

WHITFIELD: All right. Will Ripley, thank you so much.

All right. That transcription account of that underscores the intention of the demise of that flight because of the what the co- pilot had in mind.

So today's new details about the mental health of that co-pilot raising even more questions about how he was allowed to continue to fly. I want to bring in our panel. Dr. Mitchell Garber, a former NTSB medical officer and senior managing consultant for the engineering consulting firm, ESI, Alastair Rosenschein is a former pilot, aviation consult and Dr. Jacqueline Brunetti is a senior aviation medical examiner.

OK. So to all of you again, we have these reports, particularly from the French newspaper "Le Parisien" that this young man appears to have had a fairly long history of mental issues, including one time when he was given antipsychotic medication. So Alastair, you know, how is it? It's a real basic question that everyone is wondering, how is it that he would be allowed to still fly a plane if he had received this kind of very severe and very intricate treatment for mental illnesses?

ALASTAIR ROSENSCHEIN, AVIATION CONSULTANT: Well, there are certain requirements to pass an aeromedical. It's pretty clear that no one with these alleged illnesses could possibly have been allowed to fly. Certainly as a pilot, I would feel very much let down if I was flying with somebody with this sort of mental disorder and mental history.

One expects the aeromedical authorities and the regulatory authorities to manage this situation properly and to make sure that pilots are fit to fly. What we are hearing here is an individual - I don't know for sure this is the case in this pilot, but if this was - if this is true, then I don't think he should have been flying.

WHITFIELD: And so we know, especially in the states you got HIPAA laws which prevents, the medical community, your doctors from revealing any kind of personal, private medical information, but you wonder in a case like this, Dr. Garber, when you are talking about someone who is responsible for hundreds of peoples' lives on the plane, if there is sort of a minimum and a maximum, a threshold in which a certain medical diagnoses or treatment suddenly becomes information that an airline needs to know or perhaps the aviation medical authority needs to know. That didn't apply here, it seems. Should it apply in most cases?

DR. MITCHELL GARBER, FORMER NTSB MEDICAL OFFICER: Well, in many ways we're asking the same questions in this case that we would be in other similar cases of mass murder, mass killings where we're asking, if an individual who is mentally ill to the point where they are actually receiving treatment, being evaluated by the medical community. The medical community does have a responsibility to get that information when it becomes critically known to the authorities who can take action on it and there are requirements, regulations, and even allowances for that reporting to take place.

I think there's going to be a lot of questions as to why that didn't happen here.

WHITFIELD: And Dr. Brunetti, everybody wants to blame somebody. I mean, number one you blame this co-pilot, Andreas Lubitz, because he was at the controls. He made this decision about this rapid descent of this plane and to crash it, but then outside of that, there is this feeling of placing blame on someone or some entity, people who had knowledge of his condition and it seems that there's this feeling or this question of who else bears responsibility here.

DR. JACQUELINE BRUNETTI, SENIOR AVIATION MEDICAL EXAMINER: That's a very good question and I think a very difficult one to answer. Because I don't think we have all the facts here. We've got small pieces of information that keep coming out. I don't think that we know these dates with respect to his psychiatric diagnosis in comparison to his flight history, his pilot history.

I think certainly if what we're being given is accurate, those diagnoses are reasons for denial in the United States. In the United States we can only certify pilots who are diagnosed with only very mild depression and who are on acceptable single therapy treatments. WHITFIELD: And Alastair, when we hear from this "Le Parisian" newspaper, everything from generalized anxiety disorder, that he may have suffered severe depression in 2009 and then receiving injections of an antipsychotic medication in 2010, I think most people feel very frustrated when they're hearing this information, but as a pilot yourself does this scream, this kind of example, scream reform?

ROSENSCHEIN: Well, yes it does, indeed. This Hippocratic oath clearly doesn't apply in these cases. You have a duty of care, not just your patient but also to those that he might be affecting - whether it be his family or the workplace. This is a safety, a safety-related industry, aviation. Any doctor who knows that their patient it a pilot and suffers from any of these illnesses who clearly informed the regulatory authorities. There's a medical department of every aviation authority in every country. And that's what should have happened. It hasn't happened here. So, you know, it's quite wrong. The doctors should really be asking themselves, if this is true. Of course (INAUDIBLE) but if it's true, they should be asking themselves why they didn't take this further.

WHITFIELD: All right. Alastair Rosenschein, doctors, Jacqueline Brunetti and Mitchell Garber, thanks so much to all of you. Appreciate it.

BRUNETTI: Thank you, Fred.

WHITFIELD: All right. We're going to have much more straight ahead in the "Newsroom."

The deadline is a little more than 48 hours away now for that nuclear deal with Iran. Some are saying it can get done, but then others, not so sure. We'll go live to Switzerland.

And a rough ride in Canada. Next, what happens to this Air Canada jet and why the airline is calling it a hard landing.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WHITFIELD: At this hour, nothing is certain in the negotiations with Iran's nuclear program except for the fact that we are just two days away from the deadline. The Iranian foreign minister and his counterpart from France, China, Russia, Britain and Germany, along with the U.S., Secretary of State John Kerry are all in Lausanne, Switzerland and they're trying to hammer out an interim deal over Tehran's nuclear program before Tuesday's deadline.

CNN global affairs correspondent Elise Labbott is covering the talks there. So Elise, we are told that they are sticking to two points in particular, what exactly is holding up this deal right now?

ELISE LABBOTT, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Well, Fred, it's really rainy and gloomy here in Lausanne, but Iranian journalists here tell us that that's a sign of good luck. There are two sticking points as you mentioned though. And they centered around what we've been talking about for the past few days, these thorny issues of sanctions and the amount of research and development of advance nuclear technology that Iran could continue to do while the deal is in effect.

Now Iran wants these United Nation's Security Council sanctions lifted on day one. World powers here say Iran could see some economic benefits right away, there are some United States sanctions, European sanctions, but those U.N. sanctions are much more complicated and they're going to take some time.

Iran also wants to continue to develop advanced nuclear technology and research those programs while the deal is in effect. The international community wants to put tighter curbs on that and wait until this deal is supposed to be about 10 or 15 years. They want that in the later part of the deal. So Iran has been standing firm as we know in these negotiations, they really come to the wire.

All the foreign ministers are here now, and I think that negotiations are going to go well into tonight, and even until tomorrow night. Fred.

WHITFIELD: All right. All day, all night. All right. Thanks so much. Elise Labbott, appreciate that from Lausanne.

Straight ahead, more that 20 passengers and crew were injured after a rough landing early this morning.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFED MALE: When the plane hit initially, it bounced back up into the air.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WHITFIELD: Next, what investigators say happened to this Air Canada jet.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WHITFIELD: Terrifying moments for more than 130 passengers on an Air Canada flight. Early this morning the Airbus 320 skidded off the runway as it was landing at Halifax Stanfield International Airport in Nova Scotia and you can see the plane appears to have a smashed wing there and the nose is missing.

Well, according to Air Canada, 25 people suffered non-life threatening injuries.

Our Nick Valencia is bringing us up to date on the investigation. Where does it go from here?

NICK VALENCIA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, we're waiting to hear from the Canadian Transportation Safety Board. They have a press conference at 5:30. Officially right now the airline reluctant to say that this was a crash. Passengers say they know what they felt.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

VALENCIA (voice-over): Early Sunday morning on final approach from Toronto into a snowy Halifax, Air Canada flight 624 comes down hard.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We were coming in to land, we heard a really big bump, very hard. I hit my head, then we had another big bang, and then we just - everyone just started to say get out, get out.

VALENCIA: Airline and airport officials called it a hard landing.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What's the difference between a crash and a hard landing?

KLAUS GOERSCH, EXECUTIVE VP AND COO, AIR CANADA: Well, a crash is when an aircraft doesn't make it to the gate, like in this incident.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: So why isn't it a crash?

GOERSCH: Well, it is an incident at this point in time, the NTSB investigation will determine.

VALENCIA: Passengers say they know what they felt.

UNIDENTIFED MALE: It is not a hard landing, it is a crash. All the landing gears (INAUDIBLE), the engines are off of it.

This wasn't a hard landing.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: A bump. Yes, we -

UNIDENTIFED MALE: (INAUDIBLE) it's just a hard landing.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We read that on Facebook. They said, oh they had a little bump in Halifax. No, no, we crash landed, Air Canada 624 crash landed from Toronto.

VALENCIA: These dramatic photos taken just after the crash show significant damage to the plane's wing, engine and nose. TSB investigators will look into the extent to which heavy winter weather conditions played a role.

UNIDENTIFED MALE: We slid for a while and thankfully we're all alive.

VALENCIA: Of the 138 onboard, 25 were hospitalized, including the two pilots who were later released. There were no major injuries.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Can you talk about what you have around your neck? (INAUDIBLE).

UNIDENTIFED MALE: Just neck injuries and back injuries.

VALENIA: Halifax-Stanfield International Airport briefly suspended takeoffs and landings after the incident. As for the plane, an airport official would not give specifics about the damage.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We heard it completely lost a wing. Can you confirm that?

UNIDENTIFED MALE: No, I'm afraid I can't. VALENCIA: Passengers still processing the experience say things

certainly could have been much worse.

UNIDENTIFED MALE: Well, I was lucky and glad that we all made. Nobody was badly injured.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

VALENCIA: More details expected in the next hour from Canada's Transportation Safety Board. Meanwhile, Air Canada releasing a statement saying in part "they're relieved no one was critically injured and that their thoughts are with customers and employees that experienced this terrible incident."

WHITFIELD: That was a pretty scary close call.

VALENCIA: I can imagine.

WHITFIELD: Wow. All right. Thanks so much, Nick.

VALENCIA: Thanks, Fred.

Indiana Governor Mike Pence under fire for a new law in his state that opponents say lets businesses turn away gay, lesbian and transgender customers. But the governor refuses to clarify the law further. Our political panel weigh in on this, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WHITFIELD: Hello, again everyone and thanks so much for joining me. I'm Fredricka Whitfield.

A German tabloid has released what it said is a summary of the timeline of the Germanwings flight's final moments. "Bild," the newspaper said the captain can be heard in the cockpit flight recording, mentioned not getting to the bathroom and then co-pilot, Andreas Lubitz, twice encourages him to go. When the pilot left and minutes later, is heard screaming for the co-pilot to open the door to the cockpit. "Le Parisien" newspaper also reporting today that Lubitz suffered from generalized anxiety disorder, severe depression in the past and even received injections of antipsychotic medications back in 2010.

A French prosecutor said that at least 70 bodies from that ill-fated Germanwings Airline crash have now been identified and it's nearly half of the 150 people on board that flight.

Joining us now from a French town near that crash site, CNN's Karl Penhaul. So Karl, you spoke with family members who say they have to be there near the site of that crash.

KARL PENHAUL, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, absolutely, Fredricka. Hour by hour, families turn up to a small marble plaque that's been set up in a field about 2 1/2 miles away as the crow flies from the crash site, but the problem is that they can't go any further than that, because the terrain is so rugged, it's so dangerous, that even the recovery teams have to fly in by helicopter and get dropped down on a cable and on a winch.

[16:30:01] But the village mayor has been there, Francois Balique (ph) and he has been kind of trying to console them, help the families through the first steps on the way to finding some kind of peace. He says that every family has pushed and stressed to him the need to get right up to the crash site, so they can understand what is there. They ask him to describe the scene for them. So that's why he's ordered to digger into action, to carve a track out into the mountain sites, and he hopes that that should be ready in about a week. But we had a chance as we were standing there today to talk to the sister of an Iranian sports journalist who died in the crash. This is what she had to say about her big brother, Milad Eslami.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MAHSID ESLAMI, VICTIM'S SISTER: He was my everything. He was the only one in my childhood. You have a big brother, you always have some security, you can rely on him. He was he was so good. We had a good relationship, friendship, and I lost everything.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PENHAUL: She ended that interview by turning away, looking up at the snow-capped peaks and saying the only way I can comfort myself is thinking now that my brother is King of the Alps. Fredricka.

WHITFIELD: Oh, that's so sad. All right, Karl Penhaul, thank you so much. I appreciate that.

Keep tweeting us your questions about the German Wings plane, our aviation expert is standing by to answer them. Send your questions t to #germanwingsqs.

All right, nuclear talks between Iran and Western negotiators are intensifying as Tuesday deadline draws near. Diplomats who have been negotiating for four days now are still at odds over two core issues, limits on nuclear research and developments in the deal's final years and the pace of lifting sanctions. If no deal is reached, Iran could face even steeper sanctions. How Speaker John Boehner spoke to CNN State of the Union this morning.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: If there is no agreement, how quickly will you move to further sanctions against Iran in the house.

REP. JOHN BOEHNER (R-OH), HOUSE SPEAKER: Very.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Days? Minutes? Hours?

BOEHNER: Very quickly. The sanctions were working. They would have never ome to the table. In fact, we should have kept the sanctions in place, so that we could have gotten to a real agreement. The sanctions are going to come and they're going to come quick.

WHITFIELD: All right, joining me right now, Larry Sabato, director of University of Virginia's Center for Politics. Good to see you. And CNN senior political analyst Ron Brownstein. Good to see you as well. OK, so, gentlemen, if the talks fail, but if it were to fail, what would be the impact on Obama administration, Ron?

RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, I think they would see immediately, as you heard in the interview with the speaker, enormous pressure in congress to impose further sanctions on Iran. It's hard to be overly optimistic in something like this, but you would have to say that both sides have so much invested in this process that I would still put the needles pointing towards getting a deal off not getting a deal, but there's no question if a deal is not r50e67d, the administration will be facing immediate pressure from congress for harsh sanctions.

WHITFIELD: And so, Larry, at the same time, this administration has really stuck out its neck, on you know advocating diplomacy, diplomatic efforts for Iran, being one of the few administrations that were willing to have face-to-face talks with. There's a lot of stake for the legacy of this administration as well. They're thinking optimistically, but with just two days to go, if it doesn't go through, how much is lost by this administration, in your view?

LARRY SABATO, DIRECTOR OF UVA'S CENTER FOR POLITICS: Well, potentially quite a bit. Like Ron, I'm a little most optimistic than pessimistic. Most everybody thought it would come down to the time to the final days or even hours. That's the way these negotiations are often done. That's especially true with the Iranians. So I wouldn't close the door at all on this being a success, at least in the terms the administration had hoped for. Now, regardless of what is agreed to or whether it's agreed to at all, you can be guaranteed there's a partisan food fight. It's already set up. With the letter having being set by the 47 republican senators to the Iranian leaders with many democrats concerned about what the administration may agree to. We're far from finished with the controversy, even if there is some kind of agreement or framework for an agreement.

[16:35:05]

WHITFIELD: All right, so it's not necessarily an end point, even if an agreement is not made. It may still by a starting point for continued dialogue.

Hey, let's turn, if we could to Indiana, where state politics are making national headlines. Governor Mike Pence has signed that law that critics say lets businesses discrimination gets gay, lesbian and transgender customers. There's a lot of criticism particularly from some famous athletes, from Jason Collins to Charles Barkley, now to a company called Angie's List, which is head quartered in Indiana, saying it won't go through expansion plans with this law in place. So, Larry, you first, is this a protection of religion on you freedom issue or is this an issue of license to discriminate?

SABATO: Well, actually it's both. There's a conflict of rights here, but we'll leave that to the courts to adjudicate eventually, which they will probably have to. You have to say this, Fred, the governor of Indiana had a disastrous interview on another network this morning on a morning show, in which he could not answer a series of yes or no questions about this law.

(CROSSTALK)

WHITFIELD: Oh, stop right there. I think you are teeing up what we need to hear. I, too, lost counts of how many times tie George Stephanopoulos on this week asked the question and this is the kind of answer we got from the governor. So let's listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: So this is a yes or no question, is advance America right when they say a florist in Indiana can now refuse to serve a gay couple without fear of punishment?

MIKE PENCE, INDIANA GOVERNOR: Let me explain to you, the purpose of this bill is to empower and has been for more than 20 years, George, this is not speculative. This is not about

(CROSSTALK)

STEPHANOPOULOS: Let me try to pin you down on it, because your supporters say it wouldn't. So yes or no? If a florist refuses to serve a gay couple at their wedding, is that legal now in Indiana?

PENCE: George, this is -- this is where this debate has gone, with misinformation and...

STEPHANOPOULOS: It's just a question, sir, yes or no?

PENCE: There's been shame his rhetoric about my state and about this law and about its intention all over the internet.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WHITFIELD: OK, so, Larry, finish your thought. Because the governor says he wants to clarify what the law means, his position, and he never did that.

SABATO: That's because the correct answer was yes, and he didn't want to say it. Look, Indiana is headed for a disaster. It's a disaster that they can learn from Arizona about, because Arizona had a major boycott attached to it because of some of its positions on immigration. This is going to result inevitably unless it's cleared up quickly. It's going to result in a lot corporations perhaps moving out of Indiana or conferences being canceled.

(CROSSTALK)

WHITFIELD: Talk of the final four not happening there.

(CROSSTALK)

SABATO: Or it maybe the last Final Four Indianapolis sees for a long time.

WHITFIELD: All right, so, Ron, is there a way to reverse this? How can this governor clean it up or state legislature? What's next?

BROWNSTEIN: Well, first I would completely agree. I thought Governor Pence set the all-time land speed record for not answering a yes or no question today. If he could have said no, he would have said no to that question, but he did not want to. Look, in Arizona, of course, the legislature passed, in addition to all the immigration issues. They passed this. The governor vetoed it until enormous pressure from the business community. I think there is going to be a lot of push back, and we're going to see where that goes in Indiana. It doesn't end in Indiana. Jeb Bush was asked about this kind of statute the other day in Georgia, and though he's talked in other context about showing respect for all Americans, and though he has talked about in another context, showing respect for all Americans including you know same-sex couples, he expressed sympathy for this kind of law. There's a lot of pressure from the republican base, who is unhappy about some of the cultural changes that are associated with the recognition of same-sex marriage. That's not going to go away. It will likely extend into the 2016 presidential race, regardless of whether Indiana ultimately backs down.

WHITFIELD: Wow, all right. It has been an interesting road ahead to 2016 to say the very least. All right, Larry Sabato, Ron Brownstein, always good to see you. Thanks so much.

All right, coming up, Arab leaders are taking a stand against rebels in Yemen as Saudi tanks roll toward the Yemeni border. We'll get the latest from the region after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:44:25]

WHITFIELD: All right, the battle for control of Yemen is escalating at the Arab summit in Egypt. Leaders have agreed to form a unified military force in the region and demand Iranian-backed Houthi rebels to disarm and leave the capital city of Sanaa. In Saudi Arabi last night, trucks hauled tanks on a highway headed south toward Yemen, about 20 miles from the border. CNN's Becky Anderson is in the Red Sea resort city of Sharm el-Sheikh covering the Arab League Summit Four. Becky.

BECKY ANDERSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: As the Saudi-led offensive from the air continues to grind down the capabilities of Houthi rebels on the ground across Yemen, there is a very real chance that tens of thousands of Arab boots on the ground could be deployed within days to further degrade the Iran-backed militia. Now, Arab leaders and their delegations of thrashed out plans for an Arab military force ostensibly to counter threats of insurgency across the region going forward, concentrating in the first instance on Yemen. Now, the so-called Sharm el-Sheikh declaration allows for military action led by Houthis and urges Houthis to immediately withdraw from the capital Sanaa, from government institutions, and to surrender their weapons to, quote, legitimate authorities.

[16:45:43] ANDERSON: Now, I guess the implicit understanding then being if they

don't, there's a mechanism in place to ratchet up these Arab-allied efforts. President Hadi of Yemen, as we know last week, he turned up here at the Arab League Summit over the weekend to rally support for this Operation Decisive Storm. In his opening speech, he didn't mince his words, denouncing Houthi rebels, warning that they will be responsible for what happens next in the country. When he flew back to Riyadh late last night, I sat down, though, with the Yemeni foreign minister in the wee hours of this morning and I asked him what he believed the addition of ground troops would be and when.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RIAD YASSIN, YEMEN FOREIGN MINISTER: I think we would need the ground troops as soon as possible to keep things to hold it together.

ANDERSON: you are talking days?

YASSIN: It could be.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANDERSON: well, this is by no means unanimously supported, dissenting voices from Lebanon and Iraq, Baghdad for example going so far as to say that Riyadh's decision to launch on Yemen was hasty. They made it clear they are against military intervention. They called for political dialogue that includes all stakeholders. My sense is that the international community is also eager to promote further discussions, possibly hosted by longtime mediator Oman. So I guess what happens from now on in will inform the future for Yemen and the consequences of a possible all-out fight in for what for many years has a proxy war between Saudi and the regional rival Iran is what we should be watching out for. Becky Anderson, CNN, Sharm el-Sheikh.

WHITFIELD: All right. Thanks so much, Becky. All right, many of you are tweeting us questions about the German Wings plane. Our aviation expert answers them next. Send your questions to #germanwingsqs.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:58:15]

WHITFIELD: All right. Let's talk more now about the German Wings crash. You've been tweeting us questions, and we're going to answer some of them right now. Joining us right now from London, former commercial pilot and aviation consultant Alastair Rosenschein. All right, Alastair, first question from Jimmy tweeting this, new cars can stop themselves before a crash, why isn't there technology to prevent a plane from landing anywhere but the runway?

ROSENSCHEIN: OK. There are warning sounds, which are announced on the flight deck from GPWS, Ground Proximity Warning System. And that will notify the pilots in short order they're about to impact with the ground. So they can then take action to avoid it. There is no automatic system to prevent them from hitting the ground. When it comes to automatic landings, we can do that at certain airports with certain aircraft in certain conditions, but generally speaking, it's not -- there isn't the automatic system to take over an aircraft in the event of an accident. It still has to done by the human being on board.

WHITFIELD: And (Vigor) makes this point saying it should be possible to override the door from the ground if cabin crew reports a situation like this. What do you think about that?

ROSENSCHEIN: It's an interesting one. I assume it would have to be done through some sort of satellite link. Look, there are ways of dealing with this. One is on some aircraft, the pilots never have to leave the flight deck, and that's because the bunk area if it is a long flight, they can sleep -- is in the flight deck as is the bathroom. Now, on some of the shorter-haul aircraft, there are no bathrooms on the flight deck. But by moving the cockpit door back a little bit, many of these aircraft could in fact encompass one on the bathrooms on the flight deck, again, negating the need for pilots to leave the flight deck.

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WHITFIELD: All right, and then (Christine) asks why don't planes send a distress signal if they go into descent in the middle of a flight path?

ROSENSCHEIN: Well, you know, there are many reasons why an aircraft would be commanded to descend in the middle of a flight, a medical emergency, you have to divert, some technical problem on the aircraft, you divert. So air traffic controls knows the flight plan of the aircraft. If the aircraft departs from the flight plan, either by turning off-course or descending, that will set up alarm bells ringing in the head of the controller, and they start to take action first by contacting the aircraft or trying to then contact other aircrafts, and finally, the rescue authorities. So, you know, there's nothing that can be done on the ground to prevent an aircraft accident at the moment.

WHITFIELD: And it sounds like listening to these questions, that's what people want, that kind of safety net. Alastair Rosenschein, thank you for being with me all afternoon long. I appreciate it.

I'm Fredricka Whitfield. Next hour of the Newsroom starts right after this short break.

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