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Don Lemon Tonight
One Pilot Locked Out of Cockpit of Germanwings Flight; Lufthansa CEO: Pilot Had 10 Years Experience with A320. Aired 10:00- 11p ET
Aired March 25, 2015 - 22:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[22:00:08] ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.
DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR: The breaking news is, evidence that one of the pilots on the doomed plane was locked out of the cockpit at the time of that crash.
This is CNN TONIGHT, I'm Don Lemon. Thank you so much for joining us.
Chilling developments to report to you in the mystery of Flight 9525. Here's what the "New York Times" is reporting this evening. An investigators found evidence on the plane's voice recorder that one of the pilots left the cockpit before the plane began to descend, but could not get back into that cockpit. The recording even captures the sound of that pilot desperately trying to smash down the door, but what was going on inside the cockpit? What happened to the pilot inside? And why did the plane descend to its doom?
Tonight, our aviation experts are here to try to make sense of the deepening mystery.
Let's begin right now with CNN's Richard Quest, an aviation expert for CNN, also forensic audio expert Paul Ginsberg joins us, as well as Matthew L. Wald, former "New York Times" aviation safety expert.
Let's talk about what the "New York Times" is reporting, Richard Quest, this evening that the pilot somehow got locked out of the cockpit. We don't know the circumstances.
We often talk about redundancy, right? If there is an issue one thing fails, there's another. Outside of the cockpit, shouldn't there be a way for someone to get back into that cockpit or get into the cockpit if it's not open from inside?
RICHARD QUEST, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: Well, there is, there is a mechanism, a procedure if you like, that allows in an emergency for -- excuse me, for senior staff to get back into the cockpit, but you don't do it just easily. There is a window in which you can alert the cockpit that you are about to open the door, and obviously, if the cockpit don't want you to, they can lock it. So it's not just like you can automatically open it. There's a 30-second window when you can basically say, I'm about to open the door from the outside, if -- obviously if the captain or the first officer --
LEMON: Doesn't respond. (CROSSTALK)
QUEST: Well, if they don't respond, then you open the door within the five-second window. If they don't -- and if something is wrong, they lock it, but there should have been two people in the cockpit. That's the real problem here, Don. Whatever was happening with locked doors or not locked doors, why wasn't there two people in the cockpit?
LEMON: Yes. That's the question. So here's what I've learned from doing research on this, and you tell me if I'm correct. Outside as we say there is a pad.
QUEST: Correct.
LEMON: That's supposed to let either whoever is out, the pilot or the co-pilot who's outside, of a flight attendant.
QUEST: Or the flight attendant. Yes.
LEMON: Or the purser, or whomever, if they punch in a code, they have 30 seconds before the door opens. But if they have 30 seconds, but the person inside can lock it, again, and they won't be able to get inside, correct? But also the person inside of the cockpit can lock the door for five-minute intervals where it is basically rendered you can't do anything on the outside.
QUEST: Correct. Well, I'm not sure on that part of it, but my understanding is that essentially once you've locked the door on the inside of the cockpit, that is it. The person on the outside is not getting in.
The dangerous part here is when that pilot came out, for best practice, ICAO practice, most airlines have a flight attendant going in, because what you don't want is exactly what's happened here.
LEMON: Right.
QUEST: Somebody trying to get in if the person inside has a heart attack and drops dead or something goes wrong.
LEMON: What exactly is on the tape according to "The New York Times"?
QUEST: We don't know. All we know -- well, we know what the "Times" is reporting. The "Times" is reporting that you'll hear a calm conversation between the two pilots. One of the pilots, we don't know whether it's the captain or the first officer leaves the cockpit, thereafter there's the sign of gentle knocking of somebody trying to get back in which is followed by fierce banging, which is followed by sounds of trying to smash the door down.
That would suggest somebody tried to get back in, the door was locked, and that was the way they did it.
LEMON: OK. It says, as you said, a senior military official involved in the investigation described very smooth, very cool conversation between the pilots during the early part of the flight from Barcelona and Dusseldorf, we know that's where it was heading. Then the audio indicated that one of the pilots left the cockpit, could not re-enter. Again this is directly from "The New York Times'" report. The guy outside is knocking lightly on the door. There is no answer, investigators said.
QUEST: Right.
LEMON: And then he hits the door stronger, no answer, there is never an answer.
QUEST: But what disturbs me about this is what we're not being told. We're not being told, could they hear on the cockpit voice recorder the sound of anybody breathing in there. We're not being told did they hear those -- defeat the 30-second warning that somebody was about to --
LEMON: There's a beeping at least -- 30 is right.
QUEST: Thirty seconds. Thirty seconds if somebody does the access.
LEMON: OK.
QUEST: Long of it all, we've been -- they've been selected in what they are telling -- I mean, not "The New York Times," but what's been released it's been selective, we don't know the reason why.
[22:05:00] LEMON: All right. That's where our forensic audio expert comes in. But quickly, what is the implication of that before I go to Paul.
QUEST: Huge. Huge.
LEMON: OK.
QUEST: It means either medical emergency which meant that they could not get back in, and again, that raises the question, why was the door locked and not -- they couldn't use an emergency override or secondly nefarious.
LEMON: OK. Now to you, explain to us what we might be hearing if this "New York Times'" report is correct. Explain those the CVR.
PAUL GINSBERG, FORENSIC AUDIO EXPERT: OK. I have examined a number of cockpit voice recordings on them. I can hear breathing, especially if there's an impending run off a runway or even worse situations happening. So you can hear breathing, you can hear the -- even measure the repetitive of the breathing. You might be able to hear the latch on the door, certainly you would hear any alerts or alarms attached to the door as well as stall and so on telling the pilot that the plane is in trouble.
And we have done experiments enhancing the cockpit area microphone signal to eliminate any of the noise to get through to those alarms.
LEMON: And so you would very clearly be able to hear all of this, right? GINSBERG: We should be with proper processing.
LEMON: All right. Stand by, I want to bring in Matthew Wald, an aviation expert. You have reported on this and have covered many accidents. Does this --
MATTHEW L. WALD, FORMER NEW YORK TIMES AVIATION SAFETY EXPERT: Reported on some similar things, yes. They will establish which pilot got up, which was still there because they're on two separate microphones and then there's the cockpit area mike in the middle.
This has eerie echoes after the EgyptAir 990 crash in this Halloween 1999 where the first officer is pretty clear decided he was going to kill everybody on board, put the plane into a dive. Various people said why don't we have cockpit video. If you think about it now there's video of everything on the street, why don't we have video on these cockpits. Well, the pilots don't like it, it violates their privacy in the workplace, but this may be the crash that leads people to really want to go ahead and do this.
LEMON: Matthew, so it reminds you of other things. Do you think -- when you -- you said that there -- this has huge implications, do you think that something -- that it could be nefarious, a pilot emergency that once a pilot -- maybe the pilot got up, maybe go to the restroom or do something --
WALD: I think --
LEMON: That simply there was an illness in the cockpit.
WALD: Richard is correct that a fuller accounting of the cockpit voice recorder is going to tell us a whole lot more. EgyptAir 1990 where the first officer who was at the controls was apparently being called home to be fired because he'd been caught literally pulling his pants down on a hotel in Manhattan, exposing himself to young women. EgyptAir 990, that plane descended much, much faster, it went from 36,000 feet to 19,000 feet in 37 seconds.
This plane was in a relatively more gentle dive. It probably hit the mountain intact. EgyptAir 1990 flew so fast it probably broke up in flight. And that's the difference between there could be a clue to that this was not nefarious. On the other hand the captains and first officers get thorough health exams at least once a year, some of it get it twice a year for exactly this reason. You don't want a person who's subject to incapacitation.
LEMON: OK. Go ahead, Richard.
QUEST: And Matthew, I've got a question for you in order to discuss this point.
WALD: Yes.
QUEST: I -- I was where you were, the early part of the evening I was sort of more medical emergency than nefarious, but the more I -- it was put to me this issue. To create a measured descent of, say, 3,000.
WALD: Right.
QUEST: So you fall on the side stick, without it changing the heading at the same time becomes quite difficult, doesn't it? I mean, how do you effect a medical situation that creates this measured descent?
WALD: You know, I wish there were video in the cockpit, but somebody loses consciousness, he's got his hand on the stick. The alternative is something like -- Richard, I don't know if you remember the PSA crash in 1987, the disgruntled mechanic walks into the cockpit, he says something to the effect of "I will get even with those management," blah, blah, blahs, shoots the captain and the first officer who slumped forward over the stick. That was an old airplanes with the stick.
And the airplane plunges into the ground. But that also was a much steeper descent profile than this. Also I should say this is likely to become clearer when we have the other black box and when we have something more than -- a very interesting, a leak of a comment from somebody who may or may not have actually heard the tape.
LEMON: And that leads perfectly -- because I want to say this is what Lufthansa -- they've released a statement this evening saying that -- the parent company, by the way of Germanwings, they said they do not information about the "New York Times" article. They're reporting that one of the pilots on board Germanwings flight that was locked out of the cockpit, but they said that they are looking into the report.
There is the statement from Germanwings CEO. He told reporters earlier this evening. So here's -- this is -- I want to bring in Karlene Petitt, she's a pilot, an international airline pilot. Also Dan Duke, a retired United Airlines Navy pilot as well.
[22:10:09] I'm not sure if you guys can see here but I want all of you to look at this. Let's put up some of the pictures from the cockpit -- inside the cockpit. Well, this is the button that's supposed -- that will lock-unlock the door, leave it on normal or what have you. Explain -- can you see this, Karlene?
KARLENE PETITT, INTERNATIONAL AIRLINE PILOT: I can't but I can walk out to a TV and see if I can.
LEMON: It's just -- it's on the instrument panel, it's the cockpit button. It says unlock, norm, and then lock.
PETITT: OK. I got it.
LEMON: Yes. Explain to us what happens here.
PETITT: OK. Any kind of cockpit, the pilots, as pilots, we can allow somebody to come into the cockpit, say, you know, every airline has their own procedure, but if we were sitting in our seat, and we needed somebody come up and help us and get in that door, we go to unlock that door and lock. OK. We operate it normally in normal. When it's in normal, and somebody needs to get in or tries to get in, you have a code on the outside.
They punch in the code, gives the alert, and if didn't approve it, and we didn't ask them to come and do that then we push -- we go to lock, and go lock them out.
LEMON: OK. And Dan Duke, there is, though, a backup, or should be, as Richard and I have been discussing, outside of the cockpit door, but it can be enabled from inside where you cannot use it.
DAN DUKE, RETIRED UNITED AIRLINES AND NAVY PILOT: Actually, it is a kind of a pass and fail system so that if the proper code is entered from the outside, the door will unlock unless the pilot reacts to that and locks it.
LEMON: I should say can be disabled outside. But yes.
DUKE: It can be disabled inside.
LEMON: Yes, go ahead.
DUKE: Enabled the door from the code, and then you can come in. If the pilot was incapacitated, he would be able to open the door. If he didn't want you to come in, as she said, you would lock it. And that lock switch is a spring loaded switch, so it goes back to the normal position after you momentarily put it in lock.
LEMON: So then what do you make of this report knowing what the procedures are, and what can and can't be done inside and outside of the cockpit, Dan?
DUKE: Well, I'm surprised, first of all, as Richard has been saying that the two-person rule isn't adhered to. There should have been another person in that cockpit when the pilot left. That's been our procedure, as far as I know it's everyone's procedure in the states, so either there were two people that were incapacitated which is probably unlikely or that was -- the procedure was ignored and that the poor guy had some sort of an emergency and was incapacitated.
What I don't understand is why the voice recorder who doesn't show the sounds, the buzzer sound, the things that would normally happen if the pilot tried in the normal way to get back into the cockpit.
LEMON: Go ahead, Paul.
GINSBERG: Yes. That's exactly what we're going to have to look at over time. We're going to look for that, no doubt the sound of the door lock solenoid on the door as a result of locking or unlocking may be detectable as well.
LEMON: Yes. Richard Quest, go ahead.
QUEST: Yes, I mean, that's the deficiency in "The New York Times," I mean, magnificent scoop, but in the selective leaking, in the selective leaking from this military official, that is the deficiency in the information that we don't know if also on that voice recorder you can hear that 30-second buzz as they try and do the manual over ride. We don't know. You know, that's what -- so we haven't been told that particular part of it. And I suspect because whoever leaked it, the selected military official, senior military official hasn't made that public.
LEMON: There's still a lot to learn, a lot to get to tonight, a lot to talk about, so stay with me, everybody. We'll be right back with more of tonight's breaking news reports that one of the pilots on that doomed plane was locked out of the cockpit before the crash.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:17:24] LEMON: We're back now with our breaking news tonight. Reports that one of the pilots of that doomed Germanwings jet was locked out of the cockpit as a plane crashed into the French Alps. That is according to the "New York Times."
Richard Quest is back with us. David Soucie is joining us. He's a CNN safety analyst and author of "Malaysia Airlines Flight 370." Tom Fuentes, CNN law enforcement analyst and FBI assistant director, who joins me via Skype.
Tom, before I bring you in here, I just want to give this to our viewers who just joined us. Again, this is according to the "New York Times," a senior military official involved in the investigation of Flight 9525 described a very smooth, very cool conversation between the pilots who said during the early part of the flight from Barcelona to Dusseldorf, and then he said that the audio indicated that one of the pilots left the cockpit and then could not re-enter the cockpit.
Here's the quote. "The guy outside, knocking lightly on the door, and then there is no answer," the investigator said. "And he hits the door stronger and no answer. There is never an answer." He said, "You can hear he is trying to smash the door down."
Presumably down, Tom, after 9/11 a lot of attention is focused on the cockpit and cockpit safety. What security measures are in place to protect the cockpit?
TOM FUENTES, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Well, I think the problem here, Don, is that the security measures worked too well, if it protected the cockpit to keep the bad guy in and the good guys out. And so that's always been a question of the fortified cockpit door from the beginning that if you had air marshals on board or just passengers themselves or another member of the crew, if something bad was happening in that cockpit, they wouldn't be able to get in to do anything about it.
LEMON: So the security measures, an Airbus door, no different in Europe, specifically Germany, than in America?
FUENTES: Well, I don't know. What I would like to see is, since we have plenty of reporters in Europe right now, is have one of them go to a Germanwings' airplane and ask them to show the cockpit lock mechanism and take a look at it. You know, they have to -- they have only so many of these Airbus 320s in their fleet, and you would see exactly how Lufthansa and the German Air Wing configure their door. Do they have the lock spring that reopens or unlocks after 30 seconds?
How does a code panel works? How exactly could this happen? And another thing about the leak itself is, do we have second voice in the cockpit, you know, as everyone's been saying, it's a requirement that a member of the -- one of the flight attendants come in and sit in the cockpit while one of the pilots is out, so that there's always two people inside. Is there a second person? Can they hear that?
[22:20:03] And one of the things that I'm a little worried about is that, you know, a year ago we were reporting nonstop for days on MH- 370. And there were so many reputable newspapers and media outlets reporting information that turned out to be completely fictitious, quoting sources that were wrong, and I was involved in several of the stories where I had information from various senior Malaysian police officials that the reporting was just flat-out false, and that's my worry in this case because this leak is so incomplete, I'll put it that way, that it makes me suspicious of the whole thing in the first place.
LEMON: And Richard Quest said the same thing. He said there's a lot to be -- to be had from the reporting that he wants to hear more of.
I also wanted -- before I go to the other panelists, Tom, I want to ask you about the FBI, I want to ask you about terrorism, because officials on the ground had said, they will leave no stone unturned, that they would look into everything that will include terrorism.
What do you make of that? Will the FBI get involved now that there were Americans on board?
FUENTES: Well, they were involved before that was even certain that there were Americans on board because, you know, the authorities in France, Spain and Germany, and then the other countries, would want to have the data bases checked as the flight manifest became published to law enforcement and the cockpit crew, and the rest of the crew that worked on that plane.
They would want to have all that information scrubbed through FBI databases, through Interpol database, so that was already happening from the first day. It wasn't something that just started occurring two or three days later.
LEMON: OK. Tom Fuentes, I want you to stand by because I want to bring in Patrick Smith, airline pilot and author of "Cockpit Confidential." Jim Tilmon is with us as well, retired American Airlines pilot. Matthew Wald is back with us and Karlene Petitt, an international airline pilot is back with us as well. Dan Duke, a retired United Airlines and Navy pilot, also with us as well. They join me by phone.
I want to go to Patrick first. You're an airline pilot. Talk to me about the precautions, should two people be in the cockpit at all times. Does it surprise you that possibly there was only one person in the cockpit?
PATRICK SMITH, AIRLINE PILOT AND AUTHOR OF "COCKPIT CONFIDENTIAL": Well, look, Don, I don't want to spoil the party here, but there is certain things, certain security protocols that I'm just not comfortable talking with -- talking about on camera. Matt made some good points a minute ago, Richard did as well. The most important of which are -- were that there's just so much of this we don't know yet. And we're dealing with leaks and secondhand reports and really just pure speculation.
We don't know what happened yet. I'm surprised so soon after this accident that we know as much as we do. You know, air crashes take weeks, months, sometimes years to sort out, and I know in this day and age everybody fast and complete answers, but you just can't have that with things like this. And we need to -- instead of having this conversation for which I'm a part, where we're overanalyzing and beating to death a topic, a situation that we know so little about, I think we ought to be backing off and just letting the investigators do their thing.
LEMON: Yes. Fair enough, but it is a discussion, and this is a reporting that "New York Times" is a legitimate news organization, if it turns out to be true, so be it. If it doesn't then again, this is "New York Times" reporting.
Let's talk about this reporting again because we don't know, it says, yet the reason why one of the guys went out, but what is sure is that at the very end of the flight the other pilot is alone and does not open the door. What does that tell you and what -- what does this tell you from this reporting?
QUEST: Until we know more, what does it tell me -- all right. If "The New York Times" is correct, let's just for the purpose of this question assume that "The New York Times'" article is correct, then it tells you that there was somebody in the cockpit that locked the door, so that any other mechanisms were not going to succeed. That's what it tells us.
LEMON: Yes. And so it is a good time to talk about safety and the procedures that go on inside of an airplane, correct?
DAVID SOUCIE, CNN SAFETY ANALYST: Yes.
LEMON: Where everybody flies. We see the flight attendant comes, they put the cart in front of the cockpit, where you can't get in. Some person -- sometimes someone will go in.
SOUCIE: Right.
LEMON: A flight attendant, and sometimes no one will go in and it'll just be one person in the cockpit. What is the protocol?
SOUCIE: The protocol of ICAO, which is the international standards and practices, now to enforce these standards in practices that happens at the state level, at the level of which the enforcement exists, so in Germany, for Lufthansa, their enforcement would be looking at this, but the procedure, the actual procedure for what's going on there is set by those procedures and protocols by ICAO. And their public information. I'm not talking about anything that is secret or hampered or anything like that.
(CROSSTALK)
[22:25:02] LEMON: We're talking about, you can go on the Internet and find it.
SOUCIE: Of course, of course.
LEMON: The particular button.
SOUCIE: Exactly. And it's probably -- it's part of the regulation.
LEMON: Right.
SOUCIE: It's actually published that way, so it's nothing that anyone couldn't look up and find out. So I'm not divulging any secrets as was imposed there. Yes. Go ahead.
QUEST: I'm just going to jump in because I've got -- I can see there the Twitter, the tweet world is --
LEMON: And no one care. We don't care about the tweet world.
QUEST: Yes.
LEMON: We're doing our jobs. Let Twitter react the way they're going to react.
SOUCIE: Right. Yes.
LEMON: I want to ask this to Matthew Wald.
Matthew Wald, in your years of reporting and covering this type of thing, why would -- this just a snippet like this be released so early on?
WALD: Because people you talk to, military officials don't want to be named, but they want to sound like they know what they're talking about, often they do know what they're talking about, often it's the blind man looking at the elephant. This person has a piece of the picture, not the whole picture, and sometimes they don't know what they're talking about. However, the first really good evidence here, one of the problems here is this destruction is so complete that we're not going to determine the pre-crash medical condition of the pilot in the cockpit.
One of the few concrete things they have is the cockpit voice recorder. It's not clear whether this military official heard it himself or whether there was a game of telephone here, and somebody said something to someone else who said something to him, and he repeated it to a reporter. There's -- in journalism and the world of crash investigation, there are conflicting ethos here, one of the things that's going on is big guys in government want to sound like they're in charge and they know what's happening.
And they are impatient to get something out, although more serious professional investigators say, give me a year or two, and then I'll really tell you what happened.
LEMON: As a pilot, Jim Tilmon, what's your reaction to this?
JIM TILMON, AMERICAN AIRLINES PILOT: I am very concerned about the kind of information we're putting out to the world. I mean, let's face it, part of our protection in that cockpit and the aviation industry is what people don't know. I'm not anxious to divulge anymore either because I have already seen things tonight that we're talking about in the open that I never thought would be in the open.
And what's my take on the whole situation? My take is, we don't know how many people were in the cockpit. We should keep talking about -- well, the person in there by themselves, we don't know that. And we don't know any details about how all of that took place.
I agree with the philosophy that you heard earlier tonight, we've got to be very responsible about what we say. It has a lot of impact across the aviation industry, and a lot of lives and a lot of money and everything else were at stake. So unless we are absolutely certain, we better label almost anything we say as pure speculation. It's just a matter of being fair to the people who are watching us.
LEMON: Go ahead, Richard.
QUEST: Let's scotch this once and for all, which is what I was trying to say a moment ago.
LEMON: Yes, go ahead.
QUEST: Let's scotch this nonsense that somehow that which is being discussed is some massive security breach, and we are endangering aviation. I guarantee you, sir, that hundreds of thousands, if not several million people are well aware of what we are talking about tonight. Every flight attendant who has ever flown previous and present knows about what we are talking about tonight. There are videos out there that are showing what we are talking about tonight.
And I find it somewhat -- I won't say offensive, but I find it slightly strong for you, gentlemen, to even suggest that we would have crossed that line in this discussion.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: My problem, Richard, is that --
LEMON: Stand by, everyone, we have much more ahead. I promise you I will let you respond. I've got to get to a break, though. We're going to get back to our breaking report of one pilot's desperate attempts to break into the locked cockpit of that doomed jet crashed.
[22:30:00] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)
LEMON: Welcome back, everyone. Interesting conversation going on, a Breaking News tonight, reports that one of the pilots of that doomed Germanwings jet was locked out of the cockpit as the plane crashed in as according to The New York Times. According to The New York Times, our senior international correspondent is Nic Robertson. He is live for us in the French Alps with the very latest on this. Nic, I know it is early where you are, but any reaction to this new reporting from The New York Times?
NIC ROBERTSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Nothing on the ground so far. It will be a couple of hours here before the air crews start their missions here and begin to drop the recovery -- recovery teams into the site. You know that's where, you know, the perhaps the rest of the truth of this is going to be discovered, when they can find that data recorder, the one that their President Francois Hollande had said that they had come out of the housing. And of course, a lot of the focus tomorrow and the coming hours as well, the families will begin arriving here, so close (ph) they too will be looking for answers, but at the moment, so far, no reaction here yet, Don.
LEMON: Looking ahead to tomorrow's search, do crews think that they will be able to recover any of the bodies? I know it is rough conditions, Nic?
ROBERTSON: Yes, certainly, there has been a report overnight, that some -- some of the victims' bodies have been recovered. What we had understood earlier today was that the process was going to be slowed, because the location of each of the bodies is, is discovered has to be recorded and also some -- there needs to be a medical certificate of some kind institute on the -- in the location. Again, the problem handled (ph) we thought about it a lot and anything we can over it besides that the difficult terrain, the steep nature of the particular valley here, so narrow that the helicopters can't get into to drop people off, it literally lower them by winch. Which of course, slows down the number of people you can put in, quickly, you can get then on the ground. And limit the amount of the equipment as well that they can take in, how quickly they can move around on the broken rock face now, where the -- where the aircraft impacted. But the expectation is now, now that they have begun to recover some of the bodies, maybe marking location of others, that process should begin to speed up within a few hours.
[22:35:19] LEMON: All right. Thank you very much, Nic Robertson. We appreciate that.
Back with me now, Patrick Smith, Jim Tilmon, David Soucie and Richard Quest, also Matthew Wald, and on the phone with us, Pilot Karlene Petitt, and Dan Duke. Before we get all of them to respond, the photographs of wreck is showing come from you and they have been edited (ph) and approved by airbus, correct?
DAVID SOUCIE, CNN SAFETY ANALYST: Absolutely.
LEMON: Yeah.
SOUCIE: And -- you know, I need, I need to address this a little bit here because, as a FAA inspector and being in-charge in the development of safety management system, we need to understand something about the secrecy idea that were divulging some kind of secrets. If our security is so weak, that we have to rely on secrets between the pilots and the secrets between the crews, then it's not effective. It doesn't work. Safety management systems provide mitigation for these types of events. You can't keep it a secret anymore, that's our chaotic (ph) thought to think that safety is controlled by these secrets, it's not. Safety is controlled by the mitigation efforts to prevent events from occurring and they are very strong, and they are public, anyone can look them up. There are some secrets, of course, there are some things as a federal agent, as a federal -- as an aviation safety inspector, for 17 years, we are trained very well on that Jim, you know that as well. So, thank you for letting me defend that.
LEMON: OK. Go ahead, Jim, I will let you respond.
JIM TILMON, AVIATION EXPERT: Well, I got to tell you, I apologize to anybody that may be bent out of shape over this, but the difference is where the information comes from. If it comes from the internet study or whatever else or your best buddy who has to be, happened to be in the loop -- that is one thing. But Don, put together an elite group of people whose word carries a lot of weight, the best minds he can find on the planet, he sticks on these panels. You can't the better panel than these. And when they speak, when Richard Quest says something, to me it's gossipable (ph). It is not a matter of hearsay or somebody found some information someplace, it carries weight, and that is what is significant about this. And that is why I say we, have to be very responsible. I'm not criticizing what anybody says or does, it's just something that was on my chest and I felt responsible to say it. We, above all, have to be careful, because we, are too far as the audience is concerned, the experts.
LEMON: Patrick Smith? Patrick Smith, your book is called Cockpit Confidential.
PATRICK SMITH, AUTHOR, COCKPIT CONFIDENTIAL: It is, and the -- you know, to back up a little bit on what I said earlier, you know, I'm not so concerned that we are giving away secrets to terrorists or that sort of thing, but what I am concerned which is that we are overanalyzing something that may or may not have anything to do with this accident in the first place. And I hate to say this, and don't hate me for saying it, but I think this whole conversation is symptomatic in a lot of ways, that the media's tendency to fixate rather intentionally nowadays on, on air crashes. I don't know if that is because of or in spite of the fact that major crashes despite the state (ph) that we have in past years. So, our so comparatively rare nowadays, and I think that's a loss on a lot of people. You go back to the 70's and the 80's, when we used to have 10, 12, 15 sometimes 20 major accidents worldwide every year, year after year...
LEMON: Yeah.
SMITH: And we don't have that anymore and so, when these accidents do occur, they hold our attention in a way that is very intense and I think unhealthy, because it encourages the people to over speculate, overanalyze, and it also gives people the idea that flying is becoming more dangerous...
LEMON: Right.
SMITH: Statistically, when you look at the big picture, it's actually become safer and safer. LEMON: I got to get to the other people like, quickly, Dan Duke first,
and then Karlene.
DAN DUKE, FORMER PILOT: Hello, first of all I want -- want to chime in I guess a little bit on the security issues, and I realize that we are not divulging information but I do want kind of shift the focus away from exact procedures and switches to more thinking about what's going to prevent the next recurrence of these kind of an accident. And I know that's what the investigators are trying to do, that a real job of the investigator is to prevent accidents that is what they are doing. These people present the news and it's a, a free flowing stream of conscious kind of thing, and it is interesting, and I -- I agree with Jim that we don't want to lend our expertise to speculation. As pilots, we want exactness, we want patience and we want real answers. But I think, everybody has a - has a part to do in here, and I think we are all doing it, and I respect everybody on this panel for their opinion and what they are doing it.
[22:39:59] LEMON: Karlene Petitt?
KARLENE PETITT, INTERNATIONAL PILOT: Hi, Don. You know, of course we want to present of the reoccurrence that before we can do that, we need to know what happen. And I know everybody is concerned with -- you know speculation. I think that we need to shift it to more brainstorming. Trying to figure out what happened, because it take a year, we are not going to be able to present the reoccurrence. So, you know, to trying to deduce what happened with what we do know is a very good thing, and what we do know in this case is that an airplane flew directly into the mountain that they are measure direct flight. 3,000 feet per minute is not excessive, it had to go there, you know whether or not he auto pilot is on, was the auto-pilot in shocked on. In fact, there was turned and that it went -- it descended. It had to pilot intervention. It had to give that airplane an altitude to descend to and tell it to go there, and somebody did this. And on the basis of the pilot getting locked out, you know, let's revisit what happened with jetBlue. You know, the problem the good guy lock, the bad guy out of the -- you know, I shouldn't say bad guy, because you know, he had mental health issues. But, we had the pilot who we wanted in the cockpit that was able to lock the other guy out. Very easy for two pilots that there, you don't know what's going on, if one can convince the other guy, all they were busy in the back, you know, in just a second we'll be fine, you know. I think that every pilot out there really needs to honor those security procedures and not get complacent for doubt (ph) it, even when with the fellow crew members. Because, you know, we are not trained to assess the mental health of our fellow crew members...
LEMON: OK.
PETITT: And not many pilots have the ability to do that. So, you know, stay on the seat, follow the procedures and -- you know, just try to keep the sky safe. And I am out there flying and my family and my grandkids then -- they are on your plane and they feel completely comfortable with them...
LEMON: OK. PETITT: It is safe.
LEMON: All right.
PETITT: It is very safe. But we have to keep it that way.
LEMON: Matthew Wald, I want to give you the last word, quickly, because I am up against the clock.
MATTHEW WALD, THE NEW YORK TIMES REPORTER: When toss it (ph) a completely different idea. We talked about the cockpit voice recorder tape. It's not a tape, its chips. The data recorder is also chips. There was an American airlines crash in Cali, Colombia, a few years ago, where the mechanics found the burned out chips, wired them back together and read the data off of them. These guys on the mountainside tomorrow morning, which is already over there, are going to be looking for computer chips, but they may come up lucky.
LEMON: That was interesting, to say the least. Thank you. Everyone said their piece, I appreciate it. Stand by everyone. Up next, our Breaking News, reports said one of the pilots of a doomed plane was locked out of the cockpit. We go to our reporters in the region.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:46:39] LEMON: Our chilling Breaking News tonight, one pilot was locked out of the cockpit of that doomed jet before it crashed, that is according to the New York Times. According to The New York Times which also reports that a senior military official says that you can hear on the cockpit voice recorder, the CVR that the sound of the pilot is trying to smash the door in down to get back into the cockpit, stunning news for the families of the victims. CNN's Fred Pleitgen is live for us in Haltern, Germany with the very latest. Fred, I want to ask the same question I ask in Nic Robertson. I know it is very early where you are, but are you getting any reaction about from - about this New York Times' reporting, we -- you know, you obtained the Lufthansa response to The New York Times, but any other reaction?
FRED PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: It was no reaction here on the ground in Haltern, but I did get another response from Lufthansa. Actually, I spoke to Lufthansa twice tonight. They called me back and the spokesperson is a man named Boris Podgorski who called back about an hour ago, he said, "We have no information from the bodies investigating the incident that would corroborate the report in The New York Times, we will not speculate on -- we will not participate in speculation, but we will follow up this the matter." So, it doesn't appear to be a clear denial of all of these days, simply say that at this point in time, the agencies that are investigating all of this and by that, they mean the French version of the NTSB, the BEA, and the German version of the NTSB, which is called the BFU, that they are investigating all of this have not given them any information that to them would corroborate what's written there in The New York Times.
They were also said that it is still a very early in this matter, and that they are investigating those reports. And here on the ground in Haltern, of course there has been any reaction so far, because this news did come very late, German time. (inaudible) I can tell you from having been here on the ground, of course there is a lot of sorrow, this is the town of course where 16 high school students were killed aboard that flight, but there is also of demand for information. People want to know more about what happened to their loved ones and certainly, of course, they are going to be reading this New York Times report when they wake up very shortly, a very, very, closely and will want to answers even more. And of course, today is also the day, we are already in -- on Thursday here in Germany, today is the day that many of relatives of the victims are set to fly out to the area where this happened, where the crash. So it is interesting to see how this new report will play into all that, Don.
LEMON: It is going to be interesting to see what information we get about the two pilots now, because it puts in an even bigger spotlight on them. What do we know about them, Fredrick?
[22:49:15] PLEITGEN: Yeah, well this isn't very much. And there was a press conference today by the CEO's of Lufthansa as well as of the Germanwings, and they really didn't say too much, they didn't give a little bit more information to have them before. They said that the captain was someone who had a lot of experience. They said that he had 10 years of experience flying the A-320. They also said he had about 6,000 flying hours. That is a considerable amount of experience on that airplane model. Didn't say the name of the pilot or the co-pilot, and when asked about the name of the co-pilot, the CEO of Germanwings said that both of the people flying the airplanes were pilots of Lufthansa. Which is quite an interesting statement doesn't seem much of the face of it. However, it is quite an interesting statement here in Europe, because one of the things that he is trying to say to us is he trying to rule out the speculation that this plane might have gone down, because this was a budget airlines. Instead, he is saying, both of these pilots were Lufthansa's pilot. They were trained by Lufthansa. They were said, they were employed by Lufthansa, even though they were flying a Germanwings plane...
LEMON: OK.
PLEITGEN: If you're a Lufthansa flight, you can choose whether you want to fly on Germanwings or Lufthansa, they are paid the same and they fly under same regulations, Don.
LEMON: Fred Pleitgen in Haltern, Germany. Thank you very much. Our aviation expert, a David Soucie is here, reaction from him, right after this break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
LEMON: We are back now with our Breaking News tonight and it is the shocking reports that one of the pilots of the doomed Germanwings jet was locked out the cockpit before the plane crashed, that was according to The New York Times. Lufthansa, owner of Germanwings tells CNN that has no information yet about that report. I'm back now with David Soucie. I also want to talk about another bit of information we got. We talked about the CVR and what -- that's where this report from The New York Times would have come. But also, the data recorders, there is a chip missing, the vital memory chip is -- which contains all the data is missing? Why is that?
[22:54:51] SOUCIE: It is the flight data recorder which records thousands of parameters that recorded as the aircraft flies to the sky. If the accident site, that the primary area of that device, in the picture you can see, that section the cockpit voice recorder right there, but the part that is smashed, those are just analog, the digital -- digital converters that take it from an analog sound like us talking and put it in the digital numbers. There's have been stored in the other device, that device is it reinforced, it stainless steel, and it has many, many layers of -- insulation inside of it to protect it from heat. That's the part that they are talking about on the flight data recorder that is missing. So that they have the shell, they have that outside casing, but that part where the memory chips are, that's the part they can't find which, does get separated in this type of an impact because, it is heavier than the rest of it, and it can be separated.
LEMON: We will know what happened in the cockpit or close to the cockpit, because of the CVR. But if that data recorder, that memory chip isn't found, that makes seems much more difficult, now that if there was mechanical failure or what have you.
SOUCIE: Exactly.
LEMON: Yeah.
SOUCIE: Exactly. That tells us what exactly happened.
LEMON: All right.
SOUCIE: What was moved what was tripped.
LEMON: David Soucie, thank you.
SOUCIE: Thank you.
LEMON: Our experts are still here, will be right back, don't go anywhere.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:59:47] LEMON: 11 p.m. on the East Coast, 4 a.m. in the French Alps, where investigators are scrambling to make sense of tonight's Breaking News. Evidence said one of the pilots on that doomed plane was locked out of the cockpit at the time of that crashed. That report is coming from The New York Times and we are live with the very latest developments on that.
