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Early Start with John Berman and Zoraida Sambolin

Vanished: Still No Sign of EgyptAir Plane. Aired 4-4:30a ET

Aired May 20, 2016 - 04:00   ET

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

NATALIE ALLEN, CNN INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: You've been watching CNN live from Atlanta. I'm Natalie Allen.

GEORGE HOWELL, CNN INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: And I'm George Howell. Our breaking news coverage continues right now with Boris Sanchez and Christine Romans live in New York.

[04:00:28] BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN ANCHOR: Breaking news now: investigators working to unravel the mystery of what happened to EgyptAir Flight 804 and the 66 people on board, the plane vanishing from the sky more than 24 hours ago. Our live team coverage begins right now.

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Christine Romans. It is Friday, May 20th. It is 4:00 a.m. in the East. We welcome all of our viewers in the U.S. and around the world.

Our breaking news this hour: the search for the missing Egyptian jet intensifies. EgyptAir Flight 804 vanished more than 24 hours ago, 66 passengers and crew on board on its way from Paris to Cairo. The plane disappeared off radar about 175 miles off the coast of Egypt. Right now, crews from five countries are combing the Eastern Mediterranean for any sign of wreckage.

Now, so far, none has been found. Earlier reports of plane debris proved wrong, and U.S. officials say they have found no indication of an explosion.

That said, their working theory is that the plane was downed by a bomb and a terror investigation is under way. Now, at this point, there has been no claim of responsibility.

We are covering the story the way only CNN can.

I want to start in Egypt with CNN's Becky Anderson, live at Cairo International Airport -- Becky.

BECKY ANDERSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: And Christine, the Egyptians have said that it is more likely that this plane was downed by a terrorism act than it was by a technical fault. Of course at present, this is still a missing plane. But a search and rescue operation significant in its scope is still ongoing. And it is still officially search and rescue. Albeit, with a little less help from Greek authorities that which the Egyptians had yesterday, and this search and rescue is being run by the Egyptians. The Greek authorities this morning, just in the past couple of hours,

have said that they have pulled the frigate out of this search and rescue operation, that it had been involved over the past 20, 24 hours. And they have also said that the zone where this search and rescue is going on is too far away for Greek coast guard to be involved. This is something like 230 kilometers southeast of Crete Island. However, the Greeks have said there is a C-130 aircraft involved and other aircraft stationed in Greece can help out.

You're right to point out that others are involved as well, the British, the French. We've just got it confirmed that three French investigators have arrived here at Cairo airport this morning, and a technical investigator from Airbus, which of course is the company that made the plane.

A lot of confusion, though, and still more questions than answers. We know at this stage, that EgyptAir 804 disappeared on route from Charles de Gaulle to Cairo Thursday with 66 people on board.

As you point out, the early theory of U.S. government officials, this was terrorism, that this plane was taken by a bomb. But, frankly, authorities have no evidence to substantiate that. And just a point perhaps significantly on how quickly the Egyptian authorities have been prepared to say that they also believe this is terrorism. That might be an effort to avoid the sort of accusations of a lack of transparency that were levied at the Egyptians, you'll remember, after the downing of the Russian MetroJet that took off from Sharm el- Sheikh, which is a beach resort in Egypt, bound for Russia back in November.

It was six months or so, really, before the investigation was completed and about four months before the Egyptians were prepared to talk about terrorism. So a much, much quicker suggestion this time, perhaps in an effort to show transparency. What we know is the Egyptian President Sisi demand the search intensified and he's pulled in assets from the civil aviation here, from the military and from the navy. That's it so far as the story from here is concerned. As I say, many more questions still than answers.

Back to you.

SANCHEZ: All on hands on deck for what will certainly be a herculean investigation. Becky Anderson reporting live from Cairo -- thank you.

Investigators in France are doing their part to figure out what brought down EgyptAir 804. They likely will start interviewing ground crews, aircrews, and anyone else who had access to the plane at the airport.

[04:05:03] For the latest on that airport security angle, let's bring in CNN international correspondent Max Foster. He's live at Charles de Gaulle International in Paris.

Now, Max, there have been specific security concerns at that airport with personnel before, right? MAX FOSTER, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: There have been. After

the terror attacks in November last year in Paris, 70 employees at the airport had their passes taken away that allowed them to go airside. They weren't allowed to go airside anymore.

But really what the French government is saying today is because of that terror attack and the one earlier in the year, also the Brussels terror attack, each time they have these big European terror attacks, security levels here at Charles de Gaulle have been ramped up even further. Arguably one of the safest airports in the world right now, which is why so many people find it extraordinary that people are talking about a possible device being slipped on the aircraft on the tarmac here.

Here's what the French foreign minister had to say just a couple of hours ago.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JEAN-MARC AYRAULT, FRENCH MINISTER OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS (through translator): I think we must be careful at this stage. Twice I spoke to my counterpart, yes, they did say that we have to speak in complete transparency to react. There's a total cooperation between Egypt and France.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOSTER: So they're not ruling out terror, it's just one of the lines of investigation. But we'd expect them if they were following these lines of investigation, Christine, to be quiet about it, to follow up the leads, and not report too much to the media anyway. So it's too early to say. We're just awaiting official announcements from here.

ROMANS: At the very beginning stages of this investigation, thanks so much for that.

Right now, teams from Egypt, France, Greece, Britain, and the U.S. combing the eastern Mediterranean, 130 nautical miles south southeast of the Greek island of Karpathos, hoping to find some sign of EgyptAir Flight 804.

Joining us now with the latest on the search, journalist Elinda Labropoulou standing by in Parga, Greece.

What can you tell us about the search at this point, Linda?

ELINDA LABROPOULOU, JOURNALIST (via telephone): The search and rescue operations continue in the Mediterranean. It's an increasingly larger international team that's taking part in these operations. The Greek air force told us the weather conditions are good and that military aircraft are scanning the greater area where the last signal from the EgyptAir plane has been traced.

But in many ways and despite the great effort, right now, we know less than we thought we did about what happened when initially debris was reported to have been located south of the island of Greece. Greek experts have since said that the detected floating objects were not from the EgyptAir Airbus, and the Egyptian authorities have seconded that.

So, now we're kind of back to square one and with Greece very much at the center of this investigation. The Greek air traffic controllers were the last people to talk to the pilot. And at the time, he reported no problems of any kind while he was in Greek airspace. And then the Greeks were also the last ones to try to contact the pilot as the plane was leaving Greece airspace and therefore alert the Egyptian authorities.

Since then, the Greek minister has said that Athens radars saw the plane swerving in mid-air before plunging very quickly from 37,000 feet and vanishing to under 10,000 feet where the radar lost signal. And this is really all the last information that we have on this. Greece has asked other countries to continue in this effort to contribute with any satellite information and have said that it will continue with these operations for as long as necessary.

ROMANS: All right. Elinda, thank you so much for that.

SANCHEZ: So what's involved in such a huge search? It's a massive area and weather may play a role.

Joining us with more, meteorologist Derek Van Dam is live in the CNN Weather Center.

Derek, how is the weather there now?

DEREK VAN DAM, AMS METEOROLOGIST: At the moment, clear conditions across the area. But, Boris and Christine, just take a look at this extremely busy marine traffic across the general search region. Here's Crete, here's Karpathos, roughly 650 vessels at the moment, scouring that area. Not every one of them in the official capacity for searching the region, but regardless, several authoritative boats out there combing this area, if there is a vessel on the bottom of the sea floor, roughly 8,000 to 11,000 feet below the sea surface.

Now, we do know the satellite, when we had last contact with the airplane, was clear.

[04:10:02] But look what's starting to move in from the central Mediterranean. We have a disturbance that has the potential to pick up the waves on the ocean and the potential to bring in precipitation as well as increase the winds.

So that is going to hinder the search and recovery efforts that are ongoing throughout the region. There is a cold front that's pressing through, it's not particularly strong, but nonetheless, any weather at this moment in time is only going to make things more difficult.

We'll anticipate the winds to really start to pick up 25 to 45 miles per hour come Saturday morning local time. That's something they're going to consider as they continue to scour this region. Of course, the one thing they're going to be honing in on is that black box.

Christine, Boris, back to you.

ROMANS: All right, Derek. Thank you for that, Derek Van Dam.

SANCHEZ: Of course, there's still no sign of EgyptAir Flight 804. So, what could have happened to the missing plane? We're breaking down all the leading scenarios, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[04:15:06] SANCHEZ: We continue to follow the disappearance of EgyptAir 804. Here's where things stand right now. There's still no sign of debris from the missing jetliner more than 24 hours after it vanished from radar heading from Paris to Cairo. At least four possible scenarios are being investigation. Was it a bomb that was smuggled on board? Perhaps an insider threat, someone working at the airport and may have sabotaged this flight? Did a catastrophic, technical malfunction take place? Or could it have been misconduct on the part of a pilot or crew member?

Let's bring in CNN aviation analyst Les Abend.

Les, good morning to you. Thank you so much for joining us this early.

American officials are saying that they are suspicious that this could be terrorism. They say there's no smoking gun, but the conditions, the circumstances behind what have happened have led them there. You're kind of hesitant to go that far?

LES ABEND, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Well, you know, my gut feeling when I saw this whole situation unfold was that something catastrophic happened for this airplane to just fall out of the sky, like all of us did.

But at the end of the day, accident investigation is about finding evidence. It's a forensic process. So I'm saying, let's not be sold on this bomb theory. There are other things involved. We all got involved with the discussion of Germanwings. That was an awful scenario. We never in a million years would have thought of going in that direction.

I'm not saying it's the same thing that Andre Lubitz did by any means. But I'm saying that was a direction nobody wanted to go, and here we are now. So, I was looking at different -- let's go back to the technical part until we have evidence that proves otherwise.

ROMANS: The issue is, we don't have evidence. That's the reason why authorities are leaning toward terrorism as their top concern at the moment, is because of airport security. It's because of the heightened intensity with which terrorists do want to attack airlines, aircraft in particular, and because this flight was cruising at 37,000 feet, the part of the flight that is statistically least likely for something to happen. But there's no evidence yet.

ABEND: Correct. And I wrote an op-ed piece in CNN.com today that just said, let's slow down, let's think about this. Now, one of the theories that I threw out was a potential hypoxic

situation. Normally that's something you react to in a very different kind of way, and the radar evidence may not necessarily prove it. But we have almost a 40-minute span between the last communication and when there was another attempt and then all of a sudden the airplane just disappeared out of the sky.

So, if we had an insidious situation where oxygen was slowly, or the pressurization was slowly leaking out of the cabin, hypoxic people react very strangely. They can't even do simple math. You can get euphoric in a hypoxic situation.

Did they react to a situation that was unfolding mechanically that was, you know, a check list, emergency check list item and didn't do it appropriately, and then they lost control of the airplane because of that? Might be kind of far-fetched, but let's think along those directions.

Or was there inattention? Did the airspeed gets so low that airplane, the aerodynamics stall and they attempted to recover ala Air France 441 and the discussion we've had in the past.

ROMANS: You say far-fetched, but whatever happened is far-fetched, because these planes are made to have multiple redundancies so this doesn't happen.

ABEND: Correct. And the Airbus corrects itself for some pilot inputs. An example is for a bank situation, the airplane will stop the pilot from banking the plane over 35 degrees. So, in addition to preventing it from doing a stall -- so if the automation is on, all these things are available.

SANCHEZ: I specifically wanted to ask you about that, if the airbus doesn't allow you to bank more than 35 degrees, then what do we make of these indications that the plane was swerving 90 degrees and then 360 degrees? What does that tell you?

ABEND: And that's a great question. What it tells me is that at that point, the airplane may not have been in control of the crew, and the automation had shut down. Something catastrophic occurred, could have been an explosive device on board and that maybe what we were seeing on radar is the airplane in process of breaking up and that's the -- but we don't know where that data came from.

ROMANS: And we have to assume that data is correct. We're making assumptions that all the early data is correct. And as we've seen in other air emergencies or air tragedies, sometimes some of the early reads are not exactly right.

ABEND: Correct. Absolutely correct.

ROMANS: From this point forward here, where do you think this investigation needs to focus? I mean, they need to find the wreckage, first and foremost here.

[04:20:02] ABEND: Yes, and this airplane is a composite airplane. Basically in simple terms, it's a lot of construction and sort of plastic. A lot of different materials go in the composite and it makes it lighter and more efficient to fly. But that causes a problem, some of these pieces may float.

But there isn't a lot. We might find the tail floating, the wings, with the engines attached to them. So, as the time progresses, this stuff is going to start sinking and we're not going to find that evidence to determine, was there an explosive device on board.

SANCHEZ: It is a race against time.

Les, thank you so much for your expertise. We'll check in shortly.

ROMANS: All right. The disappearance of EgyptAir flight 804 is Egypt's third flight disaster in the past year. In past tragedies officials have been less than forth coming. What can we expect this time? What lessons have been learned? We're live next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[04:25:22] ROMANS: The disappearance is Egypt's third aviation disaster in less than a year following the hijacking of a plane to Cyprus and the bombing of a jet departing Sharm el-sheikh last November. Took Egyptians months to admit that the Russian jet liner in that case was downed by an ISIS bomb.

So, can the Egyptians be relied on to conduct a thorough, transparent, candid investigation?

Joining us is CNN's Ben Wedeman. He has covered air disasters since 1999.

Good morning, Ben.

BEN WEDEMAN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRSPONDENT: Good morning, Christine.

Egyptian investigators on a technical level can be trusted. They're fairly competent. Many of them were trained in the United States.

It's really at the political level where things become complicated. I remember in 1999 when we covered the crash of Egyptian Flight 990 which left 217 people dead, Egyptian officials for months were fighting the suggestion or the notion that the plane might have been brought down by pilot error.

Of course, when the flight voice and data recorders were recovered, it became clear that in fact, the co-pilot Gamil El-Batouty took down the plane, crashed it into the sea, in a case of suicide. And to this day, Egyptian officials still are fighting at that, basically that was the conclusion of the NTSB report.

But what we're seeing is that after these three disasters, the MetroJet liner, the hijacking of that airplane is now EgyptAir Flight 804, that Egyptian officials do seem to be much more flexible. Maybe they've learned the lesson that denying the case to basically ad nauseam that terrorism is involved isn't helping the situation.

And you have to realize, of course, is one of their primary concerns is the impact these disasters have on tourism. At this point, tourism is barely breathing and there's the case of national pride. Egyptians, of course, with their multi-thousand-year history are very sensitive to the suggestion that their country is somehow lacking when it comes to technical matters like investigating an air crash or running an airline for that matter -- Christine.

ROMANS: Very interesting, the distinction you made between the technical ability and the political ability and how maybe those two need to come together here in this case.

Thank you so much for that, Ben Wedeman, for us this morning in Rome.

SANCHEZ: The search continues to intensify as investigators try to unravel the mystery of what happened to EgyptAir Flight 804. We have live team coverage from around the globe, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)