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Boeing Jet Fire at Ft. Lauderdale-Hollywood Airport; Where Do GOP Candidates Go Following Debate; Jeb Bush Stumps in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Aired 1:30-2p ET

Aired October 29, 2015 - 13:30   ET

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


[13:30:00] KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Let's bring in CNN aviation analyst, Miles O'Brien, as well as Richard Quest, who has always been my go-to for all things when it comes to airlines and aviation.

Richard, first, what do you see when you're looking at this? Les Abend described it as an absolute mess sitting there on that taxi way.

RICHARD QUEST, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: What you're looking at is an extremely serious fuel-fed fire. You've only got to look at the state of the engine. But you can just look at how the flames went back. Not just the scorching on the rear of the aircraft. But the shear heat, which has shredded the rear of the plane, the spoilers and the flats, which were probably already deployed for takeoff. So you have a situation here. And it's not unusual where it is another aircraft, a following aircraft that will see the leak, will see the fire, will alert the one on fire and the tower that there is an emergency.

But for the seriousness of this, one can't overstate it because you've only got tow go to the mid-1990s when there was a very similar incident in the U.K. A British Air Corp 737 was set on fire. I think that was on the runway. And there were 55 dead in that particular case. Because it's all about getting the passengers off as fast as possible. What you look at here, you can see the slides have been deployed from the first two doors. And the rear door on the non- active side has always been deployed. Because the goal is, you've got to get everybody off the plane within 90 seconds. That's what the regulations require. 90 seconds with half the doors being unusable. I'm guessing that the injuries were hearing about were people who have had fractures or scrapes as they went down the slides.

BOLDUAN: Miles, to you. I found it surprising, but that's no surprise, folks, because I'm not following aviation as much as you guys, that it was another flight that actually saw the fuel leak. It does make you beyond, pilots, the crew, they do walk-around inspections. They do all these safety checks before they leave the gate. In your mind, what's the scope, the range of possibility of what could have happened from going through these inspections, pulling back from the gate, then having this -- substantial fuel leak, you have to assume, before this engine went up in flames.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Yes, that walk-around is an important part of any preflight check list, Kate. You've seen the captain -- usually, actually, the first officer, the co-pilot, does it, do those walk-arounds. You can only check so many parts. It's not like they have time to remove the cowling on the engine and make sure the fuel lines are properly attached. One of the questions they'll be asking on this relatively new airline, only about five years old with five 767s, is what sort of maintenance and was what kind of maintenance was being performed and was the maintenance performed correctly. A fuel leak, you wouldn't necessarily notice in the cockpit until the gages start going down. It would take a little while before that becomes evident. A fire you would notice. You would get some alarm. So you can see why somebody seeing the fuel being expelled could raise an alarm.

One thing that troubles me looking at this is the fact that the left forward slide was deployed. That is not what is supposed to happen. If you have a fire on the left side, you should evacuate from the right side. There's a lot of confusion in these events obviously. Crew coordination is a big deal. The captain is supposed to be the person who initiates an investigation and will say evacuate right or left or both. And perhaps in this case the cabin crew took it upon themselves to deploy that side. You don't want to go down the slide on the side where the engine is burning.

BOLDUAN: Absolutely not. Gentlemen, stick with me. We're going to continue to watch this.

Just to wrap it up for all of our viewers as we're waiting for more information to come in, and it will, this is Dynamic International Airways flight 405. The engine caught fire at 12:45 p.m. at Hollywood-Ft. Lauderdale International Airport. The extent of the injuries we do not know. A lot more to come. It doesn't do it justice by saying this but an absolute mess and a dangerous situation right now in Ft. Lauderdale. We're going to continue to watch that.

We're going to make a very big turn though and talk about the other big story of the day, the politics. The third Republican presidential debate, it is now in the books. And it is now up to the candidates and their campaigns to reassess the landscape they're all looking at today and also see where they go from here.

Joining me now to discuss the debate last night and where things go is one of those presidential candidates, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul.

Senator, it's great to see you. Thank you very much.

Sorry for the delay because of the breaking news.

I do want to get your take and your assessment. What did you think of last night?

[13:35:04] SEN. RAND PAUL, (R), KENTUCKY & PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I thought it went OK from my perspective. I thought it was very important that people across America know that I'm a fiscal conservative, willing to fly back immediately after the debate and filibuster against I think a terrible debt ceiling deal that gives unlimited power to the president to borrow and also increases spending for both military spending and domestic spending. And think this is what's wrong with Washington is what I call the unholy alliance between the right and the left, neither of which really seem to be too concerned with the deficit.

BOLDUAN: I do want to talk to you, Senator, about that budget deal. There's some important questions about that. First, if we can stick on the debate last night. One of the most talked about moments really was a moment between Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio on Marco Rubio's Senate voting record. Take a listen just for our viewers to remind you of that moment.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JEB BUSH, (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE & FORMER FLORIDA GOVERNOR: He's a gifted politician.

But Marco, when you signed up for this, this was a six-year term. You should be showing up to work. I mean, literally, the Senate, what is it, like a French workweek, you get like three days where you have to show up?

SEN. MARCO RUBIO, (R), FLORIDA & PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: You know how many days John McCain missed when he was carrying out that furious comeback that you're now modeling under?

BUSH: No, I don't --

RUBIO: Jeb, I don't remember -- Well, let me tell you, I don't you remember you ever complaining about John McCain's vote record.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: That was just a few moments of in the debate. You told Jake Tapper yesterday you're very proud of your near-perfect voting record in the Senate. I see you standing in the rotunda now. Do you think voting record is fair game?

PAUL: Yeah, I think so. We do get paid to do a job. Taxpayers of Kentucky pay me to represent them. I tried hard to do that. I've been here 99 percent of the time. It's a lot of work. I think if you're going to hold an office, you ought to represent the people who pay you. And if you're going to accept pay, you ought to show up for work.

BOLDUAN: What do you think of what Marco Rubio said? The way -- he kind of won that battle in how he took down Jeb Bush. But what do you think of his defense of it?

PAUL: I guess I look at it just from my perspective. Each Senator has to express whether or not they think it's important that they show up. For me, it's important. I can only tell you how I feel. I try to represent the people of Kentucky by showing up and making sure I have a good voting record.

BOLDUAN: All right. Senator, let's talk about this budget deal. As you were mentioning, that was one thing you spoke about quite a bit last night, this budget compromise. You've called it -- I believe you've called it a "steaming pile of legislation," and you said you will filibuster it. We don't want to get into the procedural mess. But in layman's terms, Mitch McConnell, he's already started pushing the process forward. So you can't really stop it with a filibuster.

(CROSSTALK)

BOLDUAN: Did you think you can at this point?

PAUL: Actually, that's incorrect. We're in the middle of a filibuster right now. There will be a test vote at 1:00 in the morning. If 40 Senators join me, if 41 Senators vote not to stop debate, then the filibuster goes on. The only way a filibuster ends is when 60 people vote to shut it down. So that's a real question. We're going to put everybody on the record. For many Republicans, this will be difficult. Because this will be Republicans giving the president extraordinary power to borrow unlimited amounts of money. I haven't met a Republican anywhere outside of Washington who's for this deal. So the Republicans will be put on record tonight. And it's because I'm forcing the issue and filibustering that at 1:00 in the morning, we'll be here voting on whether or not they want to give the president unlimited power to borrow money and whether they want to bust the budget caps. The real question is whether Republicans really are conservative or not or whether the problem is Washington is actually both parties. I tend to think the right and left are both part of the problem.

BOLDUAN: Real quick, Senator, have other Republicans told you they're going to sign on? Meeting a 60-vote threshold is not necessarily -- it's not necessarily filibustering --

(CROSSTALK)

PAUL: We, actually, it is --

BOLDUAN: That's kind of the way the process works in the Senate now, you have to get 60 to do everything.

(CROSSTALK)

PAUL: Not really. It is a filibuster. It is absolutely without doubt a filibuster. I know, I'm here doing it. So a filibuster is when --

(CROSSTALK)

BOLDUAN: Right, but not in the physical sense --

(CROSSTALK)

PAUL: A filibuster is a debate and it's shut down by getting 60 votes. It is a fairly common occurrence. But this is a big deal. I don't think anybody should make light of the deal that we are busting the budget caps, we are increasing the debt, we are doing something every Republican when they go home to their state says they're opposed to. In the House, twice as many Republicans voted against this as voted for it. So this is an important thing, particularly for Republicans, but for the country. We're borrowing a million dollars a minute. I think we're going to destroy the country. That's why I'm standing up and making a strong stand on this. BOLDUAN: You're making that statement. You will with your vote when

that vote happens.

Senator, thank you very much. We'll see you on the trail.

PAUL: Thank you.

BOLDUAN: Thank you very much.

I think, right now, correct me if I'm wrong, we're going to head over to Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Jeb Bush, another presidential candidate, is speaking right now. Let's listen in.

[13:40:14] BUSH: -- make people look bad. I know for a fact we can solve these problems. The end of the story, after she taught me, I became governor of the state of Florida. And in that process, literally in the first week, a federal judge summoned me to his courthouse down in Miami and said, we're going to take over this program because the legislature hasn't funded it and the government before didn't care. I said, I do care. I've learned about it. In fact, I probably know more about the programs for the developmentally disabled than any person because I took the time to listen. Give me the chance to reshape these programs. And that's exactly what we did. Fast forward four months later, five months later, we funded these programs. Over the next year and a half, 31,000 families got the care they deserved. They didn't have to worry for the first time about whether they would outlive their loved one.

That's what leadership is about. It's about fixing problems. It's about solving problems. It's about bringing people together, rather than tearing them apart. It's not about the big personalities on the stage. It's not about performance. It's about leadership. And the leader today in this country needs to be a unifier, needs to have a servant's heart. I don't believe Washington should be our master. I do not believe that. I hope you don't want that either.

(APPLAUSE)

BUSH: They should be our servant. And when I'm elected president of the United States, we'll reform our tax code to lift people up. We'll deal with the mind-numbing regulations that exist, whether it's Obamacare or Dodd/Frank or the EPA run amok, to lift people up. We will make sure entitlement programs are preserved and protected for those that have them but reformed in a way that doesn't create deficits as far as the eye can see and to re-craft them in a way that allows the next generation to be able to have a chance to take advantage of them. We will restore a degree of civility in Washington, D.C., where no one is pushed down to make someone look better.

(APPLAUSE)

BUSH: And we'll also restore America's presence and leadership in the world. I don't know about you, but this idea that somehow we're not an exceptional nation, that we're not unique and extraordinary, that our leadership is no different than any our countries, I reject out of hand. I hope you do as well. America, when it leads, does it in a noble way. America, when it leads, creates safety and security for ourselves, but also for the rest of the world. But for us, who? Who is there to take care of the persecuted Christian in the Middle East or Muslims just acting on their faith but haven't embraced a radical ideology or anybody that just believes in living their life with purpose? The United States has to lead for us to be safe and secure, which means we need to rebuild our military in a 21st century way. It means we need to have the counterintelligence and intelligence capability second to none. It means the next president of the United States should talk less but act more. Where our word is our bond and that people know that we'll act on our values and on our national security interests. That's how you create security. Our friends need to know we have their back. Our enemies need to fear us again. If we can restore that security in the world, then we can go about the business of creating high sustained economic growth, where people can be lifted out of poverty and the great middle of our country will get a pay raise for the first time in 15 years. That is my mission. It has nothing to do with the personalities on the stage. It has everything to do to act with a servant's heart to lead this country to a better place.

I ask for your support and your vote. New Hampshire elects presidents.

(APPLAUSE)

[13:44:03] BOLDUAN: All right. You're listening right there to Republican presidential candidate, Jeb Bush, speaking in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, standing next to him is the former Senator of New Hampshire, Judd Gregg, saying there in one place and others, it's not about performance, it's about leadership. And that is his pitch the day after the very wild Republican presidential debate. We'll have more on that.

Coming up next, we'll have much more on our breaking news. We've learn several people were injured after a Boeing 767 caught fire while taxiing for departure at Ft. Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport. The airport is closed while crews continue to clean up the mess and investigate what happened. We'll have much more on this breaking news after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BOLDUAN: Back to our breaking news out of Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. Ft. Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport is closed at this moment after this flight, this plane, Dynamic Airline, Dynamic Airways, flight 405, caught fire at 12:45. You can see in this video, you can see people sliding down the emergency slides. You can see the smoke billowing out. This is a video that was sent in just moments ago showing how this all played out in real time. Just terrifying when you see all of that smoke. And you look at this video, because I think this is probably one the best things we have seen showing how this happened.

Let me bring back in Miles O'Brien; as well as Peter Goelz, former NTSB managing director, also CNN aviation analyst. Miles, one thing you said when we last spoke, which I felt was very

important, is the time we're talking about, and how critical it is for this -- for the pilots to act, for the crew to, there is this fuel leak, once this engine goes up in flame, how much time are we talking about that they have to safely get passengers out of this plane?

[13:50:17] O'BRIEN: About a minute and a half is what you aim for. When you have a wide-bodied aircraft with upwards of 290 people on board, we have to move quickly. I was looking to see if anybody was bringing their carry on luggage. You recall during the recent fire in Las Vegas, people were carrying bags down. Looking at this picture, I'm wondering if it was a great idea to send people down the left side. That slide was deployed. Doesn't look so great on the left side there. It's easy to second guess these things. The trade off is if you don't evacuate on both sides, you slow down the evacuation. So these are decisions made in split seconds and it's easy to second guess them.

BOLDUAN: Peter, from your perspective with your background, they would love to see this video for one, but also what's the first thing they do when they get on site now?

PETER GOELZ, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: These kinds of near-catastrophic events really get the attention of the NTSB and FAA. If they can get in and determine what the cause was, they can really make a difference in safety. In this case, they are going to look very carefully at the maintenance of this aircraft and particularly of the engine. Was work being done it on? Had all the work that supposed to have been done on this aircraft and this engine been completed? And they are going to look, for instance, they will look at the aircraft if there are cameras on the tarmac to see whether the flight crew did perform their walk around, whether the fuel spill was visible and whether they should have caught it. And the FAA is going to look very carefully at the structure of this airline. Who really has the operational control? Who is responsible for safety?

BOLDUAN: I'm just looking now, just coming into my e-mail. They have written a bit of log of the air traffic control that audio that we always listen to whenever we can get it. We have a rough log of what was said. To remind our viewers, how this all played out is a flight that was taxiing behind this it Dynamic Airways jet is the one that called it in that saw the fuel leaking. That's not necessarily unusual in how that works because it's difficult to see on their own jet. In the log, it says, Dynamics, "The left engine looks like it's leaking a lot of fuel. There's fuel leaking out of the left engine." Then there's a lot of technical language back and forth.

It does make me wonder how a lot of feel can be leaking just after they are leaving the gate, Miles.

O'BRIEN: Well, it depends on when it was started up. Typically, what happens as you taxi with one engine and make your way to the runway and get your clearance and fire up the next engine, it could have happened subsequent to starting the engine up. Everything changes in an engine. The temperatures, pressures, everything goes up. If there's a weakness, it would be exposed at that occasion or could be exposed to that occasion. It was possible it was in conjunction with the start up of the engine.

BOLDUAN: We don't know the extent of the injuries. We do know there have been several injuries reported from the county sheriff there, Peter. Where do you think the juries come from? Is this injury from trying to get out of the plane? Trying to get down the emergency slides or do you think there's some kind of injury. It doesn't look like the fire made it into the cavity of the plane, but I could be wrong.

GOELZ: I think Miles mentioned it earlier. The injuries on this kind of evacuation almost always occur on the slides. The people jump awkwardly and there are broken ankles, sprained ankles, bumps and scrapes, almost always in the evacuation. The 767 is a wide-bodied plane that's pretty high off the ground so you're going down the slide at a high rate of speed.

BOLDUAN: Also getting an e-mail, one of the medical centers there, saying they are expecting six to 10 patients coming from this airplane from this flight. We still don't know exactly how many people were on this plane.

Peter and Miles, are you guys familiar with this airline?

(CROSSTALK)

O'BRIEN: I didn't know much about them. Dynamic Air is about a 5- year-old airline. And Peter brought up a very important point. Operational control in the world of the FAA is a key point. A lot of these start-up airlines -- this one has a fleet of only five aircraft -- there's a lot of outsourcing that goes on. It does become a question as to who is really in charge here, who is really responsible for the maintenance. This goes back and became a huge issue in the wake of the Value Jet crash in the Everglades not too far from where we're looking at pictures now. I'm forgetting the exact time frame, but at least 15 years ago now. In that case, a lot of the work was subcontracted out and there was issues of cargo that was on board. The airline wasn't certain what was in the cargo. And the issue of operational control was a big deal on that one.

[13:55:48] BOLDUAN: Amazing to continue to watch these really terrifying pictures coming in. The situation is more under control at the moment, but in no way over. The airport is still closed. Still a huge number of questions on how this happened and a huge number of questions coming towards this airline.

Miles, Peter, thank you both so much for helping us out as we follow this breaking news.

That's it for us this hour. We're not getting very far the story at all. More on the breaking news right after this quick break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:00:12] BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Here we go. Top of the hour. Breaking news. I'm Brooke Baldwin.