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Don Lemon Tonight

Co-Pilot Deliberately Crashed Plane; Families Travel to Village Near Crash; Lufthansa Screens for Potential Psychological Issues in Pilots; Remembering EgyptAir and SilkAir. Aired 10-11pm ET

Aired March 26, 2015 - 22:00   ET

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

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

[22:00:12] DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR: And this is CNN Tonight, I'm Don Lemon.

The news is unthinkable. A copilot deliberately smashes a plane into a mountain, killing himself and everyone else onboard -- men, women, children, the youngest a 7-month-old boy.

Unthinkable, really, but that's exactly what French prosecutors say Andreas Lubitz did. Why? Was it terror? Cold-blooded mass murder? Something else?

We're going to bring you up to date on what we know right now. Tonight, German Police, though, are searching his apartment for clues to what was going on in his mind. And we have a brand new photo of the co-pilot showing him running a half marathon. This was back in 2013.

Now we're learning that the plane's autopilot was reprogrammed from 38,000 feet to 100 feet. More evidence that this was no accident.

CNN reporters are live all over the world bringing us the very latest information. Nic Robertson is in the French Alps for us. Diana Magnay is in Montabaur, the German hometown of the co-pilot. Sara Sidner is in Phoenix, Arizona, where he trained. Stephanie Elam in Victorville, California, at the airport where maintenance work is done on the Airbus. Richard Quest here with me in New York.

Richard, I'm going to start with you. Twenty-four hours ago, you and I were sitting here with this bit of information, that the pilot may have been locked out of the cabin, now we know that he was. Authorities believe that he deliberately brought this plane down.

Why are investigators and authorities so sure about this?

RICHARD QUEST, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: Because they have listened to the voice recorder, and the voice recorder is clear. They can hear the captain leaving the cockpit after a conversation. They can then hear him banging to get back in again. They can hear the cockpit -- the co-pilot doing nothing.

The word we heard again and again today, Don, was he was silent. No words, nothing was said, just quiet breathing. So he ignored all the banging. We then hear the screams. We've heard from the cockpit voice recorder about the air traffic controls, but then there's another piece of the jigsaw that we heard today from the ATSB transponder. We know that the autopilot was selected to go from 38,000 feet to 100 feet. That was the command, that was, in the words of the French prosecutor, that was the dialed in descent. Put that together, and there are very, very few options that it would be.

LEMON: This is no longer a leak from a source, speculation. This is coming from the airline and from prosecutors?

QUEST: This came -- it hasn't come from the investigator, it's come from another source as good if not better. The prosecutor, the man who's got the job of investigating the question of voluntary or involuntary manslaughter.

LEMON: All right, Richard, I want you to stand by, because I want to bring in now CNN's Nic Robertson who's live in the French Alps for us tonight where this morning -- very early in the morning in France, Nic. What's the latest from the French investigator?

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, they've managed to retrieve some of the victims, some of the remains of the victims. They've managed to retrieve some parts of the aircraft itself. We saw today one of the helicopters pulling off from the steep mountainside below where slung what appeared to be a piece of the aircraft, and that recovery effort has begun, but we understand it is going to be very slow.

The access is difficult and the prosecutor has also said that the recovery of the victims will be a difficult process, that it will take -- they will have to collect piece by piece from the hillside. This is what he's been saying. And it could be several weeks before the bodies are able to be repatriated with their families -- Don.

LEMON: And the families have arrived, Nic. What are they doing? What are they seeing now?

ROBERTSON: The French authorities, and I've really tried to get them as close as they can to where the crash took place so they were taken to a field which was about two or three miles away from the steep ravine where the helicopters were over flying them at times to get in and drop the recovery teams.

So that the families were able to see the terrain, see the rugged mountains, see the high peaks, but there was also a memorial service for them, a memorial plaque was there. We understand the names of all the people in the aircraft were marked on that plaque and we could see the families going in ones and twos and small groups to -- to the plaque and perhaps read the name of their loved one. There was also a church service as well later on in the afternoon for them.

[22:10:02] It's been very somber and very solemn, and the French authorities really want to give the families as much dignity and as much help as they can for this very difficult time for them -- Don.

LEMON: All right. Nic Robertson, stand by. I want to bring in our panel of experts now. I want to go to Dan Duke, he's a retired United Airlines and Navy pilot, David Soucie is a CNN safety analyst and author of "Malaysia Airlines Flight 370."

I want to begin with you, David. Let's take a closer look at what exactly this co-pilot is accused of doing. As Richard and I have been discussing, from 38,000 feet to 100 feet programming that -- into the plane and then the flight deck security procedures prevented the pilot from re-entering. It had to be a plan in advance or is this something that you come up with on the flight? Was this a planned event?

DAVID SOUCIE, CNN SAFETY ANALYST: It's hard to say because these are things that he does every day. These are things he knows about. So the plan in advance, it's not like he brought some tool or something that needed to be there to execute it. The only question comes up is, why did the pilot leave at that time? It's fairly routine to have a pilot get up, that's the best time during the flight to do this. He's halfway through.

So I don't -- I don't really see that it had to be preplanned, although I'm certain that it had gone through his mind hundreds of times before he did this to have gone for eight or nine minutes and just waited for that --

LEMON: Why are you so certain?

SOUCIE: Waited for that. Because of the fact that it had to have -- it's not something that is off the whim, and then you have all nine minutes to second guess it, and to realize there's that many lives behind you, and you have all that minutes where you could retract that thought, but he didn't. So clearly he was determined. Clearly he had a desire to crash that airplane.

LEMON: I want to look now at a photo. This is a photo showing the passenger's perspective if the pilot is pounding on this door? Right? Well, the passengers able to see this pilot pounding on the door because we heard screams, we were told, right at the end just before it crashed upon impact. Were they able to see it.

Is Dan there? Is Dan Duke there?

DAN DUKE, RETIRED UNITED AIRLINES AND NAVY PILOT: Yes, I am, Don.

LEMON: Yes.

DUKE: I would assume that they could see it. There wouldn't be anything blocking their view up the aisle, it's right at the end of the aisle, and they could also be looking at the airplane. They're getting closer and closer to the mountains. I understand the visibility was pretty good. Just a terrible tragedy that they had no power, nobody in the airplane had any ability to overcome.

LEMON: And then you see those mountains rising up pretty close to you and then --

SOUCIE: In fact where it landed the mountains would have been above you at one point before you had impact. LEMON: The question is, and there's resistance, we have been talking

about this a lot, from pilots, from people in the airline industry to have -- to have video or streaming video on a plane. It seems like we're coming to a point where that is needed, no?

SOUCIE: Yes, I think we are. At least it's time to re-examine it. The whole culture has changed from the last time it was really seriously considered. Now we've got technology that's more apt for it. Compression from the video can be streamed. There's a lot more things now.

QUEST: Don't be under any -- not that you are, but don't be in any illusion that video in the cockpit would have prevented this.

(CROSSTALK)

SOUCIE: No. No.

LEMON: Yes, but we wouldn't be sitting here trying to figure out exactly what happened, you would know if it was training.

SOUCIE: All of these things are just simply accident investigation tools.

QUEST: Yes.

SOUCIE: They're not -- they're not prevention, they're deterrents and they are facts of the investigation.

(CROSSTALK)

QUEST: Videoing the cockpit is not a deterrent.

SOUCIE: No less than it would be to have a second person in there. If you want to stop speeding on a highway, you put a cop car there.

QUEST: No, no --

SOUCIE: And they'll slow down. Right?

DUKE: You have to write them tickets.

QUEST: In the case of a second person, you've got a physical barrier perhaps to you doing it in the case of a video. If you were going to -- God forbid -- take the aircraft into the ground, you're going to do it whether regardless of who may be watching back at base recording it.

SOUCIE: And that's a prevention method. I'm talking about the deterrent methods. Something that may -- someone who's going to think it, you know, you put a lock, you put a padlock on your house or on your shed because you're going to keep the honest people honest. If the criminal wants to get in there, they're going to get in there.

LEMON: Dan? DUKE: I have mixed, mixed feelings about it. I don't think that if

he's intent on crashing the airplane, having a video on or off has any bearing at all on what he does. It may be a good accident investigation tool, but so is the voice recorder, so is the flight data recorder.

We're going to know everything that we need to know without having a video of unfortunately looking at the mountains getting bigger in the windshield.

LEMON: OK. I want everyone to stand by. And I want everyone to take a look at this because this is the CEO of Lufthansa, the parent company of Germanwings. He spoke to CNN's Frederik Pleitgen in a worldwide exclusive. I want you to listen to what he says about the co-pilot and his state of mind.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CARSTEN SPOHR, CEO, LUFTHANSA: The pilot has passed all his tests, all his medical exams. We have at Lufthansa the reporting system where crew can report without being punished their own problems or they can report about problems of others without any kind of punishment. That hasn't been used in either of this case, so all the safety nets, all the safety nets we are so proud of here have not worked in this case.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[22:10:10] LEMON: The interview for you tonight and when we come right back, unanswered questions including this. Now that we have evidence that the unthinkable can happen, what about the mystery of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370? We want to know what you think. Make sure you tweet us using the #germanwingsqs. We've got an expert team standing by to answer all of your questions.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: Investigators are digging into the background of co-pilot Andreas Lubitz. They searched his apartment in Dusseldorf looking for clues about him and they left carrying boxes and they descended on his parents' home in Montabaur, Germany. That's where CNN's Diana Magnay is tonight.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DIANA MAGNAY, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The house where Andreas Lubitz's parents live in the German town of Montabaur shattered and guarded by police. Investigators the only ones granted access.

We were told that the grandparents lived in this nearby house, but they are unwilling to speak about the man French prosecutors believe may have deliberately crashed Flight 9525. I asked if they are relatives.

"No, thank god, we're not," they say, getting into a police car. "We're just trying to get away."

[22:15:01] But gliding was clearly a passion for the young Lubitz.

(On camera): Between the ages of 12 and 14, Lubitz was a regular fixture at this gliding club in the outskirts of Montabaur where a senior member described him as a regular kind of teenager, one who was committed to following his dream.

(Voice-over): "A very normal young person full of energy," he says. "What can I say? He had a bright future. He made his hobby into his job. What more can you hope to achieve?"

Germanwings said Lubitz had 630 hours of flight time behind him, that he trained at the Lufthansa Academy in Bremen. But Lufthansa CEO told journalists there had clearly been some kind of a break.

SPOHR (Through Translator): There was an interruption with regard to the training and after then the candidate managed to go through, he continued his training. He then also passed all medical tests, all flight examinations and all checks.

MAGNAY: Whether that break holds the key to this horror, we don't know. The clues from the black box Mr. Lubitz's psychological state as the plane went down simply that he was silent but breathing, as the pilot knocked desperately on the cockpit door.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LEMON: CNN's Diana Magnay reporting. Diana, thank you.

Andreas Lubitz did some of his flight training here in the United States, in Goodyear, Arizona.

CNN's Sara Sidner is there for us live now.

So, Sara, tell us what you know about his training there in Arizona.

SARA SIDNER, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Don, you know, the CEO and the spokesperson for Lufthansa did confirm to us that indeed the Germanwings' co-pilot did train here in Arizona. We were asking for how long and according to the spokesperson about six months because that's what's required for him to get his license.

You can see that this is the Lufthansa Training Center, the wings and the tail of the plane have insignia on them. We also noticed that there are flags flying at half-staff here. A Lufthansa flag, a German flag and a KLM flag, all flying at half staff, obviously in deference to those who lost their lives. And you might wonder why Arizona, I mean, someone who's in Germany, why would they come here?

There are lots and lots of people from around the world who train their pilots here and partly that's because of the amazing weather that you can basically train all yearlong here so you don't have to take a day off or so because of, you know, bad or inclement weather, there's a lot of space here. And there are training school, a lot of schools here that are available for pilots to train. There is another issue and that is at some point the co-pilot did stop

his training. That is a question that is being looked into by authorities. Why did he stop his training? What was it that stopped him? And then he came back according to the CEO and finished his training, passed all of his steps and was, as the CEO put it, 100 percent ready to be a pilot.

So there are still a lot of questions as to why that might explain what happen and what investigators say he did with this plane crashing it into the alps, but he certainly came here to America, he was here for at least six months to be able to get that license -- Don.

LEMON: All right. Thank you very much. You will continue to dig, Sara Sidner, reporting for us in Arizona where he received his training.

I want to bring in now Jim Brokaw. He lost his father and his stepmother when EgyptAir Flight 990 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean -- was back in 1999. U.S. officials concluded that the co-pilot crashed that plane. He joins us this evening by phone. '

Thank you, sir. How are you?

TOM BROKAW, LOST FATHER, STEPMOTHER IN EGYPTAIR 990 CRASH: I'm just fine this evening.

LEMON: Yes.

BROKAW: Glad to be with you.

LEMON: It's almost unthinkable that a pilot would intentionally crash a plane, but as you know, you know this all too well that this has happened before. What are your thoughts on this?

BROKAW: Well, first of all, the very experience of losing somebody in an air disaster is by itself unspeakable. There just aren't any words to convey the total disorientation and loss of your bearings that happens. And then to have the -- this horrific event be the result of someone's conscious decision is just beyond, truly beyond comprehension. I really couldn't accept it until I looked carefully at the information that came from the NTSB that that synchronized the flight data recorder with the cockpit voice recorder in our case.

And that brings me to another what I think is crucial here. We only have the cockpit voice recorder, and from what I understand the memory card from the flight data recorder is still missing.

[22:15:02] LEMON: Correct.

BROKAW: So until we have that huge corpus of evidence, I think it's -- it may be a bit premature to draw any firm conclusions as to what happened. I concur the evidence that we have seems quite damning.

LEMON: Yes. Because I want to talk to you a little bit about this and I'm going to bring in David and Richard in here because when it comes to EgyptAir Flight 990, there were two investigations, one concluded that it was a pilot, right, and a suicide effort.

BROKAW: Yes. The other --

(CROSSTALK)

BROKAW: Kind of a romp.

LEMON: Right. The other said it was a mechanical failure. So --

BROKAW: Well, yes.

LEMON: What do I think? What do you think --

BROKAW: Well, I -- what do I think? Well, I'm firmly convinced and further more I firmly convinced that the Egyptians understand that it was a -- that it was a deliberate act by the first officer. I don't -- I just don't think there's any real doubt about that.

LEMON: Richard?

QUEST: Jim, when you saw today as you may have seen the families, they went to France, the French put on a moving service, they got as close as they could because you were unable to get, you know, the water at such meant it was more difficult for you, in a similar way perhaps you couldn't get --

(CROSSTALK)

BROKAW: Well, in a similar way, indeed, because our situation was 60 nautical miles off Nantucket in the North Atlantic, and it was many months before sea conditions even allowed the NTSB and others to get ships capable of recovering remains from the ocean bottom out there. And it was -- even when he had the -- when we had the one-year memorial, it was not practical to -- many people wanted to go out there and be in the place where their loved ones were taken, but it was really, really quite remote.

LEMON: Hey, Jim. Did you --

BROKAW: But I can tell you --

LEMON: Did you ever get any explanation as to what would have -- might drive a pilot to do something this? Because the FAA is calling this aircraft assisted pilot suicide.

BROKAW: You're speaking of the Germanwings?

LEMON: When something like this happens, yes.

BROKAW: Yes. In our case there was -- the guy, well, in our case, the first officer was really a fairly flaky individual close to retirement and what is believed to have happened is that the chief pilot -- well, and was apparently accused of some really flagrant improprieties in New York, and the chief pilot for EgyptAir was unexpectedly aboard the airplane, we know that. And it surmised that the two had a confrontation. And that the first officer was told that he would face the music,

meaning he would be fired on return to Cairo at the age of 60 just before receiving his pension and so forth. I could not believe it when I heard it, I mean, why would you threaten --

LEMON: Why would they let him -- yes.

BROKAW: Why would you put somebody back in a position of responsibility.

LEMON: Right.

BROKAW: However, I did speak with the woman who was the brother of the chief pilot who said that's the way things work at EgyptAir.

LEMON: It is interesting. And surprising it is, David, that they would put someone back into this, and he's talking about the -- you know, the pilot here, the first officer.

Might we find more out of the -- about the background of this co- pilot, and is it likely that we're going to find something that gives us a clue as to why he did this?

SOUCIE: I think there's no doubt we're going to find something about this person, this personality that's going to confirm that there was some problems going on. He was obviously very good, very good at hiding his feelings. He was an intelligent person, he was very successful. He sat there calmly as this went ahead.

He was controlled. He knew what was happening. He's very good at hiding his true self. But they will find it.

LEMON: Jim, thank you.

BROKAW: If I could --

LEMON: Yes. Quickly, Jim, go ahead.

BROKAW: If I could I'd like to just say a brief word about what the families are facing at this point.

LEMON: Please.

BROKAW: Because it is not, it is not simply the emotional turmoil which as I say is literally unspeakable, but there are severe economic dislocations as well. In our situation there were people who had to sell their parents' houses, the houses they had grown up in within weeks of the crash in order to raise taxes for -- raise money for estate taxes. There were people who had to relocate from places like Scottsdale, Arizona to Cairo.

[22:50:08] These were people who are Egyptians who had lost their husband -- their husbands and all of this because the airline was not able or willing to make substantial immediate cash advances to people. I don't know what is going on in this case, but I'd be immensely grateful to you if you could simply find out how exactly the airline is treating its passengers.

LEMON: Yes. And Richard Quest is here.

QUEST: I can be very brief on this, Jim. Lufthansa today has made it quite clear substantial interim payments will be made. They've made clear. Accommodations are being prepared or those and in the case of someone those like Venezuelan relatives who have not got the money to go to France, they've made it clear that their -- their flights, obviously, their accommodations will be paid as well. So, yes, Carsten Spohr, the CEO, has said payments are already in the works.

LEMON: Right. Jim --

(CROSSTALK)

BROKAW: Well, that is immensely gratifying to hear, and the other thing that I do want to say is that I am gratified, I'm very gratified to have this sense that this event will not be politicized the way ours was. The most distressing thing about the EgyptAir disaster was the total inability of the Egyptian state and many of its citizens to accept the only conclusion to reasonably with be drawn from the evidence.

LEMON: Yes. All right. Jim, thank you. That's going to have to be the last word but we appreciate you joining us here on CNN.

BROKAW: It's my great pleasure.

LEMON: Thank you.

BROKAW: Good night.

LEMON: Up next, inside the mind of the co-pilot. Did Lufthansa miss something crucial about Andreas Lubitz? I'm going to ask an aviation psychologist.

Plus, as what we have learned about this crash shed any new life on the mystery of MH-370. Still missing.

[22:30:00] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: Lufthansa says it screens pilots for potential psychological issues during the hiring process, but is that enough? Let's talk about it now, Alan Diehl, an aviation psychologist, former NTSB accident investigator and author of Air Safety Investigator. Matthew L. Wald, former New York Times aviation safety expert. Juliette Kayyem, CNN national security analyst and former Homeland security assistant secretary and back with me are Dan Duke, David Soucie and of course, Richard Quest. Matthew to you first, how common it is that a pilot deliberately crash a plane, causing their own death as well as mass murder of others.

MATTHEW L. WALD, FORMER NEW YORK TIMES AVIATION SAFETY EXPERT: It's very uncommon, it's going to be hard to get inside in the head of a dead person. It's important to remember -- there is a reason people do this that mentally ill. It's hard to predict mental illness. Other agencies worked hard in doing it, don't do very well. Look at the Pentagon, look at the efforts to figure out which service members are going to kill themselves, they are miserable at it.

LEMON: Does this answer that make what happened with MH-370, I think it was you who brought that up last night. Does it make it look any different in hindsight? There were concerns about the pilot's actions in that case as well.

WALD: There is a similarity in these two crashes which is, it appears that in the last moments of flight, both of those airplanes were controlled by the autopilot. Meaning, in MH-370 somebody programmed in wave points the airplane flew the wave points specific there dimensional imaginary places in space that are meaning only to the aviators and then it sailed off into the sunset, so to speak. In that case, it looks like the auto pilot was programmed to dump the airplane way off where nobody was going to find it. In this case, the airplane descended wings level at the controlled rate of speed into the ground on autopilot. That's the kind of thing you could do and you can be living while it happened or dead while it happened.

LEMON: Yeah, geez. Dan, I want to task you something. Lufthansa does not have any, does not have any standard protocol for a psychological testing as should say, for pilots once they are hired. You are a pilot, what kind of screening if any were you given or did you have in your career?

DAN DUKE, RETIRED UNITED AIRLINES CAPTAIN & NAVY PILOT: Well, I have had a couple of careers, but before I got hired by United, we had an intensive of intensive evaluations, I guess. But, your, your psychological ability to be a pilot is -- is accumulation, an accumulation of the experience. You build on that experience year after year after year, and I think similarly to the kid who picks up a gun and goes into the school to shoot people, it's an unpredictable event that you are talking about right now. The experiences that we've had tell us when something is going wrong with the partner, with the teammate...

LEMON: Yeah.

DUKE: We can -- you now, it is a pretty intimate environment. Your task oriented and your goal oriented all of the time, and there long periods of time where you sit and you converse and you get to know the person, and you can tell, at least I feel like I could tell, if somebody was having a problem. And there are systems, and measures and things that we can do to get help for that person if they really needed it.

LEMON: Juliette Kayyem, I can see you are shaking your head, why is that?

JULIETTE KAYYEM, FORMER HOMELAND SECURITY ASSISTANT SECRETARY: Well, it just sounds very similar to -- the military, the dilemma they had and as Matthew was saying -- that the capability of predicting violent behavior, suicidal behavior is very hard for big institutions. Whether there the military or their big airlines -- the irony for example of military suicides is most suicides are of men who have not deployed. That the stresses they are under or just manifested, but not because of the wars, and I think, I think for us trying to figure out what was there a triggering moment that the airline or that another co-pilot could have pick up on is very, very difficult. Institutions are bad at it --

LEMON: But, but when you're, you're responsible for so many people, it is a huge responsibility...

KAYYEM: Right.

[22:34:58] LEMON: My question, Alan, I mean, is it, is it really the best way to do it? Relying on self monitoring when it comes to tracking mental health?

ALAN DIEHL, AVIATION PSYCHOLOGIST: Well, of course -- when you -- are hired here, you're screen and you go through an extensive interview process, and I happened to have gone through that the school there in Phoenix. It was back in 1975, and I was impressed by several things. First of all, the selection ratio, they told me that there were over 100 applicants for every Lufthansa pilot they -- student pilot they accepted. And I can remember walking in the halls, and just for example a student pilot started speaking German and the instructor said you do not speak German here. They are trying to teach him to converse only in English, because it is the international aviation language. And I asked, do you have problems with the students, and he said, yes, we -- we had to discipline a couple of students, they have airline passes. They go back to Germany and one of these students back then had taken his girlfriends. So, they -- they are very regimented there in Phoenix, at least there were about when I watched him, I suspect that this key of him dropping out maybe -- may have been a warning sign that wasn't picked up.

Obviously, I'm just speculating they have been -- have some kind about medical issue, but it does happen. And one of the things I would say Don is, you know I came from the NTSB, went to work for the FAA medical office and when I arrived, the psychiatrist there handed me what he called the suicide file, and I said, what are you talking about? Because you know, I've never, I've never personally investigated a suicide, and he said, well, they are mainly general aviation pilots that couple or airlines, but that the last 30 years of data on all suicides that had been occurring in this country. So, they do happen. They are extremely rare. Normally, it's a general aviation pilot. Airline pilot suicides as we all know are extremely rare and for an airline pilot to take a group of people with him, this maliciously, is almost unheard of --

LEMON: Yes.

DIEHL: It happens once every five years or so.

LEMON: But it is disturbing that there is an actual file for it. I want to bring in -- we are very grateful to have Jim Hall as a former NTSB chair with us to bring us some perspective and it is invaluable. You are listening to our experts here, there is a file for people who are having issues that possibly suicide issues within -- with the NTSB? JIM HALL, FORMER CHAIRMAN, NTSB: Well, regrettably, there is no black

box for what is going on in someone's head. And I would prefer to focus on the things that we do know. We have had some five to eight incidents like this since the EgyptAir accident. You know, most of them have occurred when the individual was left alone in the cockpit. And we spent a great deal of time and effort after 9/11 focusing on threats outside the cockpit, the cockpit door being one of them. I think now we need to focus particularly in memory of these 149 people who have lost their lives on threats inside of the cockpit, and what we can do to ensure that to the best that we can do, something like this doesn't occur again.

LEMON: Yeah. Let's bring into the table here. And Matthew anyway, if you guys want to weigh in as well, I see you guys shaking your head in agreement here, what is going on?

KAYYEM: Go ahead.

RICHARD QUEST, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: Well, I agree with what Jim who has huge experience in this area has said. We need to focus but, what do you do about it? I mean, you got the second person in the cockpit, and that is one particular regime that you can introduce, but fundamentally, you have a contradiction of sources when you are trying to stop when your policy is to stop people getting in, and now you got to worry about the person who is on the other side of the door. So, Jim, what do you actually do about it?

LEMON: Quick answer Jim, and then we will pick it up after the break, but go ahead.

HALL: Well, of course, my answer and response on that has been cameras in the cockpit. I think that would be a deterrent. We are talking about right now...

LEMON: He just agrees.

HALL: Putting cameras on our police officers. And so --

LEMON: Why are people in the industry Jim...

HALL: It's just great.

LEMON: Why are people in the industry are so opposed to cameras in the cockpit which seems like complete makes -- complete sense to most people?

HALL: I think it is a union issue for the pilots. I think there are a lot of pilots that who would agree with the issue.

QUEST: I don't see it as a deterrent.

LEMON: OK.

DAVID SOUCIE, CNN SAFETY ANALYST: It's not a -- it is a deterrent -- to fix. LEMON: Standby and we will continue. We're going to - let's continue this conversation on the other side of the break. Don't go anywhere. We will be right back.

[20:39:58] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: Come back now with my panel. We are talking about cameras in the cockpit, and that is -- that is a food fight --

KAYYEM: It should be...

LEMON: Waiting to happen, it should be --

KAYYEM: It really should be and should it must be the most obvious thing in the world. We put our trust in pilots, everyone -- every person I know of significant, who has significant responsibility is often on camera. It's a union issue. It's ridiculous. It will not deter everyone and everything, but we owe it to every passenger who is on an airplane that we know what is going on in the cockpit.

LEMON: OK. So I want to do this now, and I want all of you to weigh in, I want to bring Stephanie Elam, she is at Southern California logistics airport to demonstrate a cockpit door. She's got a Retired United Airlines Captain Ross Aimer with her. So Steph, give us a quick, if you can, just a demonstration, because you're in -- it similar to the one that Germanwings, right? And then we let everyone weigh in on what she is talking about. What are you showing us?

STEPHANIE ELAM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Right, exactly Don. Let's take a look at this door here. Obviously, you can see they were inside the cockpit, so this is the advantage point that a pilot would have. The door, pretty slim, has a peephole through it, so that you can see who is on the other side, but when you open the door, you can see just how fit this door is. I'm going to walk out here and meet up with Captain Aimer here, and -- just tell us, Captain Aimer, how fortified is this door.

[20:45:04] CAPTAIN ROSS AIMER, RETIRED UNITED AIRLINES CAPTAIN: This is pretty fortified. It was tested with a grenade and didn't open.

ELAM: And it still didn't open.

AIMER: Still didn't.

ELAM: And I can feel, when I do this, I'm going to move this way, because we have cameras here but, when I - when you this, you can feel that it is actually pretty heavy.

AIMER: Absolutely.

ELAM: And tell me about this deadbolt up here, why is this important?

AIMER: That deadbolt basically, once it's gone in, there is no way you can open this door from the outside.

ELAM: No matter what? AIMER: No matter what.

ELAM: So if someone -- if the pilot is inside, and he's used this or she's operated this deadbolt, how will you get in here?

AIMER: You probably have to land and break the windows to get in, because that deadbolt closes that key, if anybody has the key, but we no longer have the keys. Pilots --

ELAM: No one has the keys --

AIMER: Pilots do not carry the key anymore.

ELAM: And so when you look on the outside of the door, there is really no way to compromise it, but there is this little key pad over here, tell me about that?

AIMER: Well, the pilots are issued a code which changes from time to time, I can't tell you how far, and the pilot will put the code in and he has 30 seconds to enter the cockpit. If that 30 seconds lapses, he no longer can get in. Since then, that door is closed completely.

LEMON: Standby. Matthew L. Wald --

ELAM: So --

LEMON: Hold on Steph.

ELAM: With that code.

LEMON: Stephanie, standby.

ELAM: Well, let me tell you one thing -- Don. Let me tell you this one last thing about the door.

LEMON: OK.

ELAM: This door, as far as you are concerned, it worked the way it is supposed to.

AIMER: It did. Exactly the way it was designed except this time -- it kept the good guy out.

LEMON: All right.

ELAM: What we know about the door, that's the key thing there, Don.

LEMON: All right, standby, Steph. OK. Matthew L. Wald, what would you say? You know a way that they can improve this you believe?

WALD: It won't fix. And that apparently cause the problem here. There is a different technical fix that they could consider, which is the airplane has GPS on it. The airplane has a database of all of the mountains in the world. You could set it up. It is already set up so, if you program it to fly into the mountain, it alerts you. If you program it to get too low, and the system knows there is no airport nearby, it alerts you. You could set it up to forbid the airplane from flying into a mountain, this always this balance, Airbus does it one way, Boeing does it a little different. How much do you want to trust the machine? How much you want to trust the people at the controls.

LEMON: OK.

WALD: You could lean towards trust in the machine more, and simply refuse permission to fly into the mountain.

LEMON: OK. All right, Captain Aimer, what do you think of that?

AIMER: They have thought about that, they've actually worked on that, there is certain criterion in the more modern airplane, like the latest triple 7 and the 787 that somewhat similar to what you are saying, it does it. But they don't want to take -- they don't want to take the control from the pilot that is Boeing's way. Airbus thinks differently, they trust the machine more, right.

LEMON: Yeah. It seems like, it seems that the thing -- the preventative procedures that were in place worked too well.

QUEST: Well, it is interest the Boeing versus the Airbus argument. Boeing, you know, if it ain't to Boeing, I ain't going.

(LAUGHTER)

QUEST: It does the best.

(CROSSTALK)

LEMON: I want to ask, I want to ask Captain Aimer this, what if -- as a pilot, what would you like to see done, how do you think it could be improve? We have heard what Matthew Wald said, but how do you think it could be improved?

AIMER: You know, there's a lot to talk about these low-cost carriers that are sprouting up all over the world, especially in Europe. And I keep hearing Lufthansa, this airline has really nothing to do with the Lufthansa, it's an alter ego, of Lufthansa. They hire their own pilots, they have their own procedures, their own -- they have their own management, and they hire very low-time pilots like this young fellow, that was not vetted.

LEMON: Yeah.

AIMER: We don't do that in United Airlines.

LEMON: But my question was, when it comes to the cockpit door and safety precautions within, within the plane, and I have just 30 seconds here, you can tell me what do you think? How it can be improved.

AIMER: Well, if you make it easy to get in, then you are defeating the purpose that it was designed. There is a reason for all of this security with this door that no one from the outside can open it if there's no reason for them to do so. LEMON: Yeah.

AIMER: It is a very thin balance. I don't really know what the answer is...

LEMON: That's it, we have --

AIMER: But the -- perhaps, the engineers will come up with something.

LEMON: That is the point...

KAYYEM: I --

LEMON: And let me thank -- Stephanie Elam, thank you very good. Stephanie best reporting of the evening here, we appreciate your demonstration, that was really helpful for the viewer and Captain Aimer as well, thank you guys.

KAYYEM: I just -- I want to the put it in perspective, it is a tragedy.

LEMON: Right.

KAYYEM: It is a rare tragedy. Since 9/11 when we secured the cockpit door, there has been no instance in which a passenger has gotten into the cockpit.

LEMON: Yeah.

KAYYEM: That is great news. We certainly know from the world we live in there are probably a lot of people who have thought about it...

LEMON: Yeah.

[20:49:59] KAYYEM: But they are deterred by it. So we're just going to have to balance this. There are things we can do to the cockpit or the things we can do on the psychology of the pilots, but the idea that this instance is going to -- should change the way we think about aviation security. I'm just not sure we're there yet.

LEMON: OK, standby, everyone. Again, thanks to Stephanie and to Captain Aimer, they will be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: Back now with my panel, where we are talking about improving the technology and improving the cockpit door. Who can and who cannot get out, but Richard Quest has some business for us. What do want to say?

QUEST: The Germanwings, the last comment about Germanwings, we do this to clarify. Germanwings is absolutely a fundamental part of Lufthansa, and not only it is a fundamental part, it is a major part of the strategy. So their strategy is some sort of an offshoot. At the moment, Germanwings is could not be more part of Lufthansa. LEMON: So Dan, we heard from the pilot, there where Stephanie Elam, we

heard from some of the members of the panel about improving the door, who can and who can't get out and the procedure. What do you -- how do think it can be improved?

DUKE: Well, well, if you, if you ask Don, first of all, I think the cockpit door did exactly what it is supposed to do. It was designed to prevent entry into the cockpit, unauthorized. And I don't think since we've have it, we've had a hijacking, it was caused by unauthorized entry into the cockpit. So, you shouldn't improve the cockpit door, it works very well. If you want to solve the problem, find out what the problem was and I think the problem is an experience problem. You -- we haven't had experienced or that, that first officer didn't have particular experience or not enough experience in that airline, for people to get to know him.

LEMON: Yeah.

DUKE: For him to have a sound basis for solving his stress problems. I think that's a --

LEMON: But Jim --

DUKE: A good way to solve the problem.

LEMON: But Jim, the captain did have, he was authorized to enter and he couldn't. Jim Hall?

[20:55:00] HALL: Oh well, let me say first of all, that the conversation about suicide, if the facts are correct. This is the deliberate murder of 149 people. And that's why I think any evidence and particularly the evidence from having a camera is important. Cameras would have helped us on the 9/11. They would have helped us on EgyptAir. They would have helped us on SilkAir. They would help us on the accident in Nambia -- Namibia, and the -- so, I haven't seen on the evidence that a camera would not be a deterrent, and having two people required to be in the cockpit appears to be a deterrent. So -- but, in terms of this investigation, this is now a criminal investigation. I am sure the French will complete as we have, in similar circumstances, their responsibilities.

LEMON: And that has going to to be the last...

HALL: But -- people make mistake, this is a murder of 149 people.

LEMON: Thank you, Jim. Thank you, Jim Hall. Thanks, everyone. I want you to standby, out team was going to standby to answer all of your questions about flight 952. Make sure to tweet us using the #germanqs, germanqs -- germanwingsqs. We're going to right back, there is a lot more to come right here on CNN. Don't go anywhere.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)