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Reports: Flight from Barcelona to Dusseldorf Crashes. Aired 7- 7:30a ET

Aired March 24, 2015 - 07:00   ET

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

FRED PLEITGEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: And it's interesting, as you said, that they apparently -- this was in the apparently in the middle of their flight path. They were going from Dusseldorf to Barcelona, which is still quite a ways away.

[07:00:00] And the big question there, of course, is whether or not they might have had some sort of in-flight incident that might have caused them to maybe -- to decrease altitude.

But I do want to talk about this airline itself, because it's actually one, Chris, that I've flown a lot in the past. Because of course, as you know, I usually live in Germany.

It's a direct subsidiary of Lufthansa. And when I say that, Lufthansa in the past, I would say, year or so has outsourced pretty much of all of its medium- and short-haul flights from Lufthansa itself into this company, Germanwings. And Germanwings has been operating for a while, but has gotten very, very big over the past year or so, because due to a cost-cutting restructuring program, Lufthansa has put most of their flights into Germanwings.

They have a very, very good reputation in Germany. And the reason for that is -- is that all of the planes from Germanwings are serviced by Lufthansa Technik, by the technical wing of Lufthansa. So from the same place. A lot of the planes that Germanwings flies are former Lufthansa planes that got a new paint job and are now flying under the name of Germanwings.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Right. What we're hearing...

PLEITGEN: I heard you were saying before...

CUOMO: Are you hearing the same information that we are? If this plane went down where they're siting it right now, in Provence, somewhere in the Alps region, they have -- we're getting reports. I wonder if you're hearing the same thing, that there has been some debris that's been sighted. If it's in the mountains there, this is going to be a tricky recovery, yes?

PLEITGEN: Going to be a tricky recovery. But it also depends on where in the mountains this happened. We're getting reports that this was found near a village, whether or not they might have tried to land somewhere. Whether there might have been some sort of strip there that they tried to get to and maybe fell short; whether or not it's a populated area. One of the things that we also have to know about the French Alps

in particular is that, even though this is mountainous terrain, it is still a place that's pretty densely populated.

And of course, the folks that live there in the south of France, they have a lot of experience in dealing with this mountainous terrain with recovery efforts there also, due to the fact that you'll have a lot of helicopters there, for instance, that help skiers that get in trouble there all the time. So usually there is a pretty good net of rescue and recovery of people -- of helping people and of getting to the crash site as fast as possible, Chris.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Fred, stand by for us if you would. We were just showing the flight path there on the screen. We'll pull it up for you. This shows that the flight, this Germanwings flight left from Barcelona. It was heading to Dusseldorf, and then you can see that something happens around that southern France region, where you see the mountainous Alps depicted there on the map.

If you're just joining us and you're just waking up, we are sad to report to you that there has been a plane crash here in the south of France; 142 people were on board. We are getting reports that some first debris has been found.

We want to bring in our aviation -- our CNN aviation analyst Mary Schiavo.

MARY SCHIAVO, CNN AVIATION ANALYST (via phone): I'm here. I'm still here.

CAMEROTA: She joins us on the phone. Mary, what are you hearing?

SCHIAVO: Pretty much the same thing. Obviously, I'm in London, and the BBC is breaking the same news that you are. And they haven't talked about the debris yet over here. But you probably have more updated news.

But if they're finding debris, then there isn't much -- there isn't much chance that they were -- you know, maybe they were attempting a landing. But there isn't much chance that they had made a landing any place.

There -- it's not as mountainous as what people think of the Alps. This part of the Alps isn't, you know, what you typically think of as really craggy, high things. But if you're trying to land and you can't land somewhere, it's going to be fatal. But I'm wondering if you have any reports from Flight Aware or elsewhere for what altitude they were at it. That would give us a pretty good indication if they were trying to land somewhere.

CUOMO: Well, there is -- there is an airport in the area that that path tracks, that we're showing of the flight, Mary. And it's the Grenoble-Isere Airport. So there is an airport in that area. Obviously, it wasn't the scheduled destination of the flight. But what does did mean to you? SCHIAVO: Well, the Grenoble Airport -- I've (ph) been in there,

and it's a good, decent airport. No, that's a for-real airport. This plane could land at that airport. I mean, it's a very large plane, obviously; it's an Airbus 320. But yes, that's an airport that could handle it. So that would have, that would give an indication that if they were trying to land there, that they had some problems they were aware of and trying to get in.

So it wouldn't be an issue in terms of landing, the runway not being long enough or not being able to do that. Because the Grenoble Airport, I'm old enough to remember, I mean, years ago they actually had Olympics there. So it's -- it's one that could handle this plane.

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: Do we have David Soucie still with us. If so -- David, are you there?

DAVID SOUCIE, CNN SAFETY ANALYST AND FORMER FAA SAFETY INSPECTOR: Yes, I am.

PEREIRA: So David, let's talk about the airplane, the model itself, the A-320. So many of us that fly here in the United States are familiar with this aircraft. Tell us about its reputation, its safety record, what we know, especially there in Europe.

[07:05:00] SOUCIE: Well, it's the backbone of what's going on over in Europe right now. It's manufactured just maybe 150 miles from where it's allegedly crashed. So I've been to Toulouse and watched the factory and how it's put together. It's an amazing aircraft, put together with advanced technology. It's been around for years and continues to keep up with any new modern technology that's available.

So it's not something that, that I would suspect is something from a mechanical failure or anything like that, because this aircraft is one of the most reliable in the industry.

PEREIRA: And David, we're just learning that the aircraft was delivered to the company in 1991. It's 24 years old, which for an airplane, you've taught us, that's not terrifically old.

SOUCIE: No, it's really not, and the structure is what's interesting about that. Over the last 24 years, the FAA has focused a lot of its energy on making sure that structures are maintained properly. That they've used radar to make sure that the fuselage is intact at all times. And so it's not something that -- it's not an aircraft that would be susceptible to this type of mid-flight failure. It's like we've been saying, it's 95 percent of all failures of aircraft accidents are within takeoff or the landing. So to have -- find something in the middle of the flight, it's very curious. It's totally anomalous.

CAMEROTA: Mary, we know a little about what was going on behind the scenes with this airline, Germanwings. They were embroiled in a long-standing dispute with their pilots' union about retirement plans. And in fact, Lufthansa, which owns this airline, had announced just in January of this year that Germanwings would be going away and would be sort of subsumed by Eurowings. We were just talking to David Soucie about whether or not

financial problems at an airline sometimes translate to safety problems. What are your thoughts?

SCHIAVO: Well, and it does. And David was absolutely right. When I was in the Department of Transportation, the Federal Aviation Administration had put several carriers under what they called special watches.

When they're -- when they're falling short on cash, you can't skimp on things that the public sees. So often the place will skimp on things behind the scenes: you know, maintenance, safety issues, those kinds of things. And so that's why the FAA puts airlines under financial crash -- or under financial crunch under special watch.

But you know, that has happened to airlines, you know, from the small -- you might remember the old ValuJet, to very large airlines have been under special watch. Alaska Airlines was under a special watch. Way back in the early '90s, U.S. Air was under special watch, because they had five crashes in five years. It turned out they weren't related to things but -- to each other, I mean.

But it's an issue when you have financial trouble, but since it was the pilots' union, and of course, other unions could certainly be in support. But there's actually a shortage of pilots. So the airline needs to watch out for the fact that, if they start cutting pilots, they might have problems regrouping. And this is worldwide. There's such a high demand for pilots, especially in, you know, China and other places, the Pacific Rim area that I don't know, I mean, pilots are in hot demand right now.

CUOMO: Mary, let's just remind everybody what we're talking about here, to our viewers in the U.S. and around the world.

Germanwings Flight 9525, according to FlightAware.com. That is the flight that is now believed to have gone down in France. The flight was headed from Barcelona, as you see. This is the flight path from Barcelona in Spain; was headed to Dusseldorf in Germany. But apparently has gone down in the French Alps in the region of Provence as you see there.

We just heard from the French President Hollande, who says the circumstances surrounding this crash lead him to believe that no survivors will be found. Now, that is obviously speculation by the president, but because of the information they have right now, which is that, according to Flight Aware, this flight had reached an altitude of 35,000 feet. But it was last tracked at 25,000 feet, descending obviously, as it went into the Alps. Debris has been found there.

And Alisyn and Michaela and I have been covering this morning. They've found debris. They know that the plane was going down. It went into the Alps, which is going to be tricky. There are villages and the Grenoble Airport nearby. But the French president saying no survivors expected. PEREIRA: Also interesting. Apparently, the plane had

disappeared from the Lyons Airport radar before, and the -- the authorities were informed by another transport body, as the accident was about to happen.

So this, so there was tracking there, and that's what I wanted to ask Mary about, if you could help us understand. Because we know that we have our systems here over -- the American air space in terms of how traffic is -- air traffic is traced and the communication between the airplanes and the -- the flight towers.

[07:10:07] How does it work in the -- overseas, in Europe, especially in this area that we're working? What is the chain of command? What is the communication process?

SCHIAVO: Well, actually, it's coordinated throughout the E.U., and the system is very much like -- like ours. Worldwide, with air traffic control systems are very, very similar. They do hand off between air traffic control to air traffic control. But throughout the E.U., they're completely coordinated. And of course, they have open skies, so the handoff wouldn't be difficult.

I think the biggest clue that I just heard is that they saw that it disappeared from radar before it actually crashed, which would to me suggest that they were below altitude. And of course, in the Alps, in any mountains, a tree could do it, as well. But if you're below altitude and if you're below where you're supposed to be in the sky, that's always a danger and it certainly suggests that something's wrong. Competent pilots stay right at the altitude that they stay at, particularly in mountainous regions. So it suggests that they were having a problem, most likely a mechanical problem.

CAMEROTA: In fact, Mary, we are just hearing that a distress call was picked up from this flight, from this A-320 Airbus. We don't, obviously, know yet what they said. But that -- that sort of fits into the narrative that you're following. That if they were below altitude they knew something was wrong.

CUOMO: Some of the facts, Mary, is that it went from 38,000 feet to 24,000 feet in seven minutes.

SCHIAVO: Wow.

CUOMO: It was reported that it was descending at a rate of 3,440 feet per minute. What do those numbers mean to you?

SCHIAVO: Well, that's a fast rate of descent. You know, it's not one that would cause the plane to come apart. But that's a pretty fast rate of descent. It makes me think that they had a problem. They were trying to descend, perhaps to get to the airport. That's not a descent where you're falling from sky. So they didn't stall. They didn't have an explosion that had blown them out of the sky. You know, that's a descent. It sounds like it's a controlled descent at 3,000 feet per minute. But that's a very fast descent. The passengers would have certainly felt it. It's not a rate of falling. That's not a stall descent. But of

course, it's kind of early to tell. The radar tracings might have only picked up just a certain amount of that. They could have been in that sort of a situation. And the radar didn't get the full, you know, descent. But it sounds like a mechanical, and they might have been trying to get in to an airport.

PEREIRA: Such key -- such key moments from aviation authorities to look into and figure out what went wrong with this flight, as they try to get to it, to the scene of that crash.

Want to turn to Fred Pleitgen, our correspondent who we know is based in Germany. And I know, Fred, that you have taken this exact route a number of times. In fact, I believe you've just flown it recently. What can you tell about it -- tell us about it? How long is that flight to begin with?

PLEITGEN: Well, actually, I've actually taken it with Germanwings a couple of times. And the flight is a little bit over two hours. And it's interesting, because I actually just flew into London from Berlin this morning with a Germanwings A-320.

And I can tell you about the airline. There's absolutely no qualms in Germany about taking this airline. It is one that is known to have a very good safety track record. And one of the reasons for that is that that it's directly owned by Lufthansa. And it's known that the planes of this airline are directly serviced by Lufthansa Technik, which is based in Frankfurt.

The airline itself, actually, interestingly enough, is based right outside of Dusseldorf, between the towns of Cologne and Dusseldorf. So it's going to a place where they would have a lot of flights originating, where they would have a lot of technology, as well.

But this is a completely regular flight on their most common aircraft, as well. The Germanwings fleet is one that completely consists of the family of A-320 aircraft which of course, encompasses the A-320, the A-319. I think they might also have a few A-321, as well. But they do have a full Airbus fleet, all of them fairly small aircraft, but they do have a lot of them.

They are one of the premiere, low-cost carriers in Europe. And again, one that is known to have a very good safety track record. So this would have been an absolutely normal flight.

And the interesting thing, flying over Europe today as I did, is that there didn't seem to be much in the way of adverse weather over the continent today. I wonder if we'll get other reports, whether weather might have played a role. But certainly, flying over Europe today, I can tell you and listening to what my pilot, on my flight, Germanwings flight this morning said, there didn't seem to be any sort of weather conditions that might have made things difficult in any way, shape or form.

PEREIRA: Yes. That's always one of the concerns, is was weather a factor? Was it a mechanical factor? Was there some other reason that that plane descended from 38,000 feet to 24,000 feet in a matter of seven minutes.

We're just getting word that the president of France, Francois Hollande, has said this: "The conditions of the accident are not yet clear but lead us to believe there will be no survivors."

We know, Fred, again -- and maybe can you talk to us a little bit more about that area, because you've spent a lot of time in and around there.

[07:15:05] Midway through the route between Barcelona and Dusseldorf, in that two-hour flight, it's believed that it crashed somewhere in the French Alps. That terrain is going to be challenging. It's going to be challenging to get to, to begin with. But we understand that some debris has been spotted?

PLEITGEN: Well, that's what they're saying, is that apparently, the debris or some of it was spotted outside of a village there in the French Alps. And they said that the area, as you say, is a very mountainous area; however, also one that is fairly well-developed. So there are villages in the area.

And again, in those areas -- and I think this is very important -- the mountain rescue crews there are on standby all the time, because this is a skiing area. It's a hiking area. There's a lot of people doing outdoor sports there. You'll have helicopters in almost every village that has a skiing resort close to it who are on stand-by all the time, because they do a lot, especially in the winter months.

And, of course, we have Easter coming up here, as well. And that means there's a lot of tourists going into those ski resort areas, as well.

So certainly, you will have a good sort of saturation, if you will, of people who could rescue them. But of course, just simply the fact that this plane went down in mountainous terrain is something that -- and the French president has confirmed would make it very, very...

CUOMO: That's what I'm talking about. I'm saying...

PLEITGEN: Yes.

CUOMO: You were referring to -- that there were a lot of, you know, birds in the area to get up and help rescue people in those Alps. There is a pilot in a chopper who is saying it is in difficult terrain, what he's sighting from the air in terms of the debris field below.

So let's bring in Mary Schiavo. So from a rescue and recovery standpoint here, Mary, if the pilot is saying that from this helicopter, this is a tough area, but what Fred just said, this is an active area of sporting, and there is a lot of development in these mountain villages around there. What happens in terms of how you get to this airplane and how you mobilize efforts to find it? SCHIAVO: Well, a lot of the rescue personnel in the (INAUDIBLE),

of course, are to rescue tourists, people who are skiing, so it wouldn't be the same kind of thing that you would need for aircraft. But they can get there in a hurry. If there was a chance, if there was any chance that someone could survive, if they were at all in any kind of a controlled descent.

Now, an uncontrolled descent, there would be no survivors. But if for some reason when they got near the ground, the wings were still level, and that's what I mean by a controlled descent. But if they still had level wings and were able to put it down anywhere, even on the side of a mountain, there is a quick response team that could get in there and rescue, and if they did, would be able to help. That's certainly -- again, there's those kind of folks can't do much to get the plane and the wreckage. And so they it isn't the kind of place that you could set down a helicopter easily.

But if there's any chance of any survivors, that's exactly the kind of people you want in there, people used to rescuing skiers.

CAMEROTA: And Mary, we do have some more details about that descent and how quickly it happened. This is from an online flight tracker that tracks the altitude of flights, and at 5:29 a.m., the flight was at 38,000 feet. Six minutes later at 5:35 a.m., it was at 24,000 feet. So that's a drop of 14,000 feet in six minutes. What does that tell you?

SCHIAVO: Still controlled. That's not -- that's not a stall, falling out of the sky. If it fell from altitude, it would be on the ground in three minutes or less. So that was not a stall. It wasn't out of control and fluttering to the earth like a leaf.

If it's losing altitude, the question is, is it losing altitude because the pilot tried to find an emergency place to set it down or because it couldn't maintain altitude and had lost one or two engines. If it lost its engines, it would be set up in a glide. Unfortunately, you set up in a glide in the mountains, there's not a lot of -- there aren't a lot of wide fields to set down in. But it says to me, it was still under control. But not powered.

CUOMO: Hey, Mary, we're putting up this flight track again that shows where the plane actually went. And it does seem do go out east over the Iberian Peninsula there into the water. Is that -- I know you don't, you probably don't know this flight route intimately. But should it have gone over the water to go from Barcelona to Dusseldorf, Germany? Or is that something that's unexpected or a detour?

SCHIAVO: Well, no, you know, most places, and certainly in Europe, they still follow what's called the old highways in the sky. You know, of course now with the GPS and direct flight path management, you can take a plane in the most direct route. And that's, of course, where worldwide aviation is going. But a lot of places, you still fly the old highways through the sky.

And so one marker or step in that. So it's not unusual that they would go out over water, for a particular routing, particularly since when you look at the route, you look where they were, they would have been on a straight in to Dusseldorf. So that doesn't concern me. I don't think that that was necessarily an indication that they had strayed from their flight path.

[07:20:12] PEREIRA: All right. We're just -- Mary, we're getting a statement here now from Airbus, the makers of the A-320 that was involved in this crash. We know that the aircraft, the specific one, was 24 years old.

But the statement from Airbus, which is based in southwestern France near Toulouse, as David Soucie was telling us, the quote is, "We are aware of the media reports. All efforts are going towards assessing the situation."

And you've been talking about the fact that this airline has a good safety record. Airbus, what is the safety record of Airbus? What can you tell us?

SCHIAVO: Well, it's good. I mean, typically speaking, if you look for, you know, recent crash specifics, obviously, the crash that we've heard a lot about have been more Airbus than Boeing, so to speak. But statistically, there's not a huge difference.

I think, depending on the aircraft model and the flight model, some models of Boeing have a better track record than Airbus models. But it's not statistically significant. You couldn't just say that Airbus is a lot worse than Boeing, although for some models, because of recent accidents, their statistics are a little bit off.

But no, the Airbus has been flown everywhere. They're all over the United States. You couldn't avoid them if you wanted to. They're -- they're well-established and a safe plane.

PEREIRA: You know, we were talking about the fact that it has been confirmed that a distress call was, indeed, received. We've been on the air talking about flights that were lost where a distress call was not issued. They did not have a chance to do that. How does that help you paint a picture of what happened here, Mary, as an investigator?

SCHIAVO: It's tremendously helpful. It's tremendously helpful. Because you know they most likely had a mechanical, something was wrong with the plane. As soon as they release the distress call, if they got anything off other than mayday or asked for emergency landing clearance, they would have had to ask to change their flight levels if they were -- if they were descending intentionally. If they were just declaring an emergency, then the air traffic control could clear the route for them.

But usually you say what it is. You say you had -- you know, you've lost the power in your engines, or you've got a -- you know, lost the control or you can't get the flight services working, et cetera.

But it sounds to me, since they were able to declare an emergency, I think as soon as they release that, we'll have a clue what was going on. And given a descent in mountainous area, one has to suspect that it was a loss of power for some reason. Because otherwise, unless you're heading into an airport, and you've got a fix on the airport, you wouldn't be descending in the mountains.

CUOMO: To remind people, Mary, just go through the numbers with us again, the information we're getting that it had reached an altitude of 38,000 feet and then, in a period of seven minutes, went to 24,000 feet. The rate being 3,440 feet per minute. Just describe to people what would be ordinary and what that suggests.

SCHIAVO: Well, that's a pretty fast rate of descent, but it's not a rate of descent that would cause damage to the plane. The plane can take it, although that's near its outer limits. I mean, that would be -- that would be somebody descending in a hurry. Theoretically, it can do 3,500 feet without, you know, causing a plane to come apart.

The recommended descent at that flight level would be much less. You would descend much more slowly, because when you're at that altitude it's more difficult to make dramatic climbs or descents. You take it a little slower when you're up that high.

But that certainly does not suggest that the plane would come apart. But it does suggest whatever was happening, they needed to get down in a hurry. That suggests the pilot had great urgency.

CAMEROTA: Yes. Mary, we just want to, for people who are just joining us, we just want to say again this is breaking news: 142 passengers on board this A-320 Airbus called Germanwings, is the airline, and we believe there were six crew.

The president of France, Francois Hollande, has just sent out this tweet. He said, "I want to express to the families of victims of the air crash my solidarity. This is a mourning, a tragedy."

PEREIRA: And it really truly is, and it seems as though we've had far too many of them. And we have an incredible group of aviation experts as part of our family here we've gotten to know.

Joining us, in fact, from Havana right now, Richard Quest is on the phone. It seems a little too often that we're having to talk to you, Richard, about these kind of aviation disasters.

In terms of history, give us -- give us a brief understanding. Has airline travel been mostly safe in Europe in the last decade or so?

RICHARD QUEST, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT (via phone): I think there's absolutely no question that the safety record in Europe has been absolutely exemplary, if you look at the sheer amount of aviation that takes place.

[07:25:06] What is interesting and worrying about this particular incident that we're seeing overnight, is the airline involved is Germanwings, which is a first world airline, part of the Lufthansa group. Secondly, it is -- the accident happened at altitude. It

happened at 38,000 feet, certainly well into the safest part of the flight.

And the third thing of course is people will point out, it's an A-320, which is the same aircraft that was involved in the Air Asia, 8501.

Now these are random points. These are random incidents, or random facts. But it will certainly call into question why two aircraft could have should have had this -- should have fallen out of the sky in what is traditionally, if you look at the last month's safety numbers from Rialta (ph), the cruise part of the flight is by far the safest part.

So you're looking at -- and I'm just going to throw them out there, you're looking at structural failure. You're looking at something traumatic happening to the aircraft. You're looking at pilots' flying of the aircraft. All those sorts of incidents that could be involved.

CUOMO: Well, Richard, we do understand that the French authorities must be getting information about what happened on this, because they have confirmed that there was a distress call from this Germanwings Flight 9525 that was headed from Barcelona to Dusseldorf. It apparently did go down in France, the Provence, the Alps region there, which would be the midpoint. As you just pointed out, 95 percent of crashes are on either takeoff or landing.

French authorities also saying fairly early on, Richard, that -- this coming from the French president, Hollande -- he did not expect survivors among the 142 passengers, including six crew on board. Early on they said they saw debris. This area is mountainous.

There's also the Grenoble Airport in that area. But when you hear early on that they don't expect survivors, they must know what they heard from that cockpit and translate it now into that reality, yes?

QUEST: Well, I think now we know that there was a distress call you can start to understand what might have happened. You could be talking about major, obviously, disastrous malfunction of the aircraft. And for example, a catastrophic collapse of part of the aircraft.

You could be talking about an in-flight fire. They have been, of course, extremely deadly. There are all sorts of reasons why an aircraft could find itself in extremes in that particular case. But it's a very rare situation.

Now, you will have a distress call. You will have the cockpit voice recorder. You'll have the flight data recorder. I'm guessing from what you're telling me that pretty -- in pretty short order, there will be information as to what happened and why.

CAMEROTA: Richard, speaking about this happening mid-flight, that it does lead you to believe that something must have happened structurally or electrically, this plane, we understand, was 24 years old. Give us context. In airline years, what is that?

QUEST: In airline years, it's sort of middle-aged but not getting elderly. It's -- it's a robust aircraft, the A-320. It is a work horse of European aviation.

And what I think you're looking at -- of course, the core point here is in terms of the aircraft, it's not how old it is. It's how it's been maintained. Now in Germanwings' case, part of the Lufthansa group. In fact, Germanwings is its point-to-point subsidiary that it flies across Europe. It's been recently restructured as part of Lufthansa.

So 24 years old, I'm not concerned. I'm not really concerned about the age of the aircraft, that particular point. For example, Lufthansa Technik, which is Lufthansa's maintenance arm, is one of the leading aircraft maintenance companies in the world and is subcontracted to many, many other airlines. So Lufthansa Technik, Lufthansa itself, Germanwings, they will all have been involved in maintaining this aircraft.

PEREIRA: It's interesting, because we've -- we've seen the tweet, Richard, from Airbus. And they were sort of saying that they hadn't received official confirmation but that they were working to find out details. And according to the BBC, Germanwings has also said they're aware of the reports but can't confirm them as of yet. The information-sharing between the manufacturers and the airlines, is that pretty good and pretty open in Europe?

QUEST: It's not even month to month, week to week; it's day to day. The airlines and the manufacturers...