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Germanwings Plane Crash in French Alps; 150 Feared Dead in Crash; Spanish King to Return Home. Aired 8:30-9a ET

Aired March 24, 2015 - 08:30   ET

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

[08:30:00] MARY SCHIAVO, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: And we're not allowed to say what that is. That's secured information. But it -- if we learn what the code they were squawking was, then we might know what was going on. Emergency is a code word, yes, and so we need to wait for a little bit more information, but that is a code word that pilots do use. Some of the words I can't explain because there's security information and you're not allowed to say them publicly, but that's a code.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: They did not squawk 7700. What does 7700 mean? What does it mean that it wasn't mentioned?

SCHIAVO: Well, that's significant because some of the codes that they can squawk are hijack codes. And it appears that they did not squawk a hijack code. And that would be highly significant because if you're in a hijack situation, every pilot is trained to put that hijack code in. The pilots would know what that code is and they would squawk that. And so at least from the preliminary information, they did not squawk a hijack code is about all I'm allowed to say about that.

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: All right, I just want to do a quick little reset. Mary Schiavo, we'll ask you to stand by, as we will have Les Abend.

A reset for you. We do have breaking news here at CNN. A flight that originated in Barcelona around 10 a.m. local time, Germanwings Flight 9525, bound for Dusseldorf, said to be a two-hour flight, was lost and has gone down about a half hour into the flight in the French Alps. One hundred and forty-two passengers were on board, six crew members.

We understand Germanwings and Lufthansa, the parent company for the airline, have actually changed their logos on Twitter. I want to show you this. I think we have the images. Normally these are very, very colorful logos. You may be familiar with the Lufthansa logo, having seen it on the side of airplanes and in brochures many times, but apparently out of respect for those that have been lost and the memory of those on board, they have both changed their logos to reflect this.

Obviously going to be a great time of mourning in many countries. We understand this was a low cost carrier between -- in Europe. It was used by many, especially leading up to the April holidays and the Easter holidays.

Want to turn to our Jim Bittermann.

We also learned, Jim, 45 people have been confirmed to have been from Spain. We understand there's been communications now between Francois Hollande, the president of France, and with the Spanish king. What can you tell us?

JIM BITTERMANN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Absolutely, Michaela. In fact, the Spanish king just coincidentally happened to be in Paris today on an official state visit with his wife. And just a few minutes ago, we saw some video coming out of the Elysee Palace as the Spanish king walking across the courtyard, what would normally have been the pomp and circumstance of a president and king visiting each other and I think it was much more muted when the -- when the royal couple from Spain greeted the president. There was a long moment which they seemed to be talking about rather very serious things. And, of course, this is a very serious thing. We understand 45 of the victims may be of Spanish descent. So the two of them have a lot to talk about.

When they went inside the Elysee Palace, we understand that the prime minister, who had been heading this crisis cell (ph), taking care of things from a distance here in Paris, the prime minister went from the interior ministry, which is right across the street from the presidential palace, walked over and gave the Spanish king the latest reports that they were getting from the scene. So there's some pretty direct communication going on here, Michaela.

PEREIRA: Jim, also, any more -- further idea of anybody else on board the plane? We understand, obviously, this is a European flight. A lot of people traveling this time of year with their families. It might very well have involved business travelers as well. I know that people are trying to get ahold of this flight manifest to understand the nationalities of the other passengers and even the crew aboard. Have you learned anything there?

BITTERMANN: Nothing at all. In fact, we're -- the best we've got is what came from out of Spain, that 45 of the passengers may be Spanish. The fact is that you're right, I mean, this is a very busy time of year. There's a lot of school vacations right now and a lot of things happening across Europe. Barcelona, of course, a very popular destination for Germans and for French. This it says -- it seemed, because it's a link between Germany and Spain, it doesn't seem too likely that there will be any French citizens on board, but we're checking with the foreign ministry. And as soon as they give us some kind of word of what they're hearing, and whether there's anybody from France on board.

It's a -- it's kind of a difficult one because I think it will require that the manifest from Lufthansa comes out and then they'll have to identify what all these -- what nationalities all these people were. And then, of course, they'll want to identify their countries first before they provide information to the press.

So it's a very somber scene here and we understand that the Spanish king may cut his visit short. The head of the government in Spain was on television just a minute ago and he's basically saying that he's taking leave of all his other duties today and he's going to concentrate on this crisis situation. So I think it's a kind of pan- European tragedy, Michaela.

[08:35:10] PEREIRA: Right. Of course it is. And, of course, we see the moment that you were just referring to, Francois Hollande greeting the Spanish king there. A moment that was meant to have a certain amount of pomp and circumstance, a celebration, even as he arrives there in France for a separate meeting, but coincidentally he is there when a great tragedy is besetting his country.

All right, Jim Bittermann, stand by. We'll be checking back in with you frequently.

Alisyn.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: OK, we want to bring in now David Soucie and Mary Schiavo, both of our CNN aviation analysts.

David, I understand you have some new developments to share.

DAVID SOUCIE, CNN SAFETY ANALYST: There is. We talked about the squawk 7700 and the fact that it wasn't squawked. Now, there's some confusion as to what that actually means. But what -- let's clarify is that if, in this aircraft, it most likely had what we call a smart transponder. A smart transponder automatically squawks 7700 if there's an engine power failure. That engine power failure would have been squawked this 7700. So it's actually a very important clue because as you look at the information about the aircraft, the charts that we looked at earlier, the fact that it maintained altitude for a certain point and then started descending, but the air speed itself continued to stay constant. So what that tells us is that it was a controlled descent that the aircraft was in, a controlled manner. The pilot had control of the aircraft during this descent.

But it's also important with -- by knowing that the 7700 squawk did not happen automatically, as it probably should have, then that tells us that the engines were producing power. So that gives us some great clues as to what may have happened in the air.

CAMEROTA: OK. We do want to show now our viewers, these are live pictures of French President Francois Hollande meeting with the Spanish king. Again, they were -- they were together for something completely unrelated. The Spanish king was there for a visit and this tragic news came to them. And you can see that what was supposed to be a meeting with, as Michaela said, lots of pomp and circumstance, is now an extremely somber moment. This is a live shot of them together in front of the press there.

Mary, I want to go back to you right now because there seems to be some confusion about the distress call. Let me just read to you what the French interior minister has said. According to him, a spokesperson in his office at least, a distress call associated with the Germanwings plane that crashed in France was sent at 10:45 a.m. local time. Now, 10:45 a.m. local time is a different timeline than what we believe happened based on these online flight trackers. That's after some of the other reports that we had heard of the plane already having gone down at 6,500 feet in the mountains there. Now of course it's possible that the French interior minister's office

is just not precise in terms of the 10:45 distress call. But can a plane send out its own distress call without a pilot having to trigger that?

SCHIAVO: Oh, yes, it certainly can, particularly if the airline was subscribing to the service. There's a service that you can subscribe to, and we talked about this when we were following MH-370. And the plane itself is capable of sending out messages and giving system -- what's called system status updates on the aircraft. And the aircraft will do that back to the airline. It usually goes back to the airline, back to the airline maintenance. And it can do that if it subscribes to the service.

And the squawk code that David was talking about is one of those things, one of those pieces of information. And so we -- that's interesting to know that we don't have that squawk code because the aircraft itself can send out things about its speed, the conditions of its systems on board. When Air France 447 went down, those were the only clues that we had for about two years because the plane itself said it was losing air speed, it had gone into a stall, it had gone into a dive and we knew that from this system.

And, by the way, one important thing, as, you know, we talked about the word emergency that the pilot used, that's not the code, the spoken code for hijack. So we -- you know, we don't have a hijack code and we don't have the spoken words for hijack. So it does look like something mechanical.

And I did just get some information on both air speed and altitude. Apparently some French news source has put out -- they were able to get some radar tracings. And it does look like the dive was under control for about 10,000 to 15,000 feet and then it was lost from radar. So it was a controlled dive or descent we should call it. We shouldn't call it a dive. It was descent. And then it fell from radar. It looks like kind of at the bottom of the dive or descent.

CAMEROTA: That's interesting, Mary, because I know that you and David, you both have been involved in the investigations of far too many airplane crashes and you both find two different things compelling about what you see from the data of this flight. Mary, you -- that descent is most compelling to you and you've been studying how fast it happened.

SCHIAVO: Right.

[08:40:05] CAMEROTA: And, David, I know that you had looked at the speed that the airline -- with which the airline was traveling and you found anomalies in that as well.

SOUCIE: Well, yes, the speed is actually -- the anomaly is, it's not really an anomaly. What it's saying is that the speed of the aircraft maintained constant as the descent was going down. So what that tells us is, again, complementing what Mary had said, that the aircraft was under control. But one more thing is the fact that it maintained a straight heading as well. so that's also significant. CAMEROTA: Yes, no, I meant that what you had flagged about the speed

having declined -- decreased rapidly 15 minutes prior to where we think the trouble began.

SOUCIE: Right. Yes, which would just indicate that something had occurred at that point, whether it was actually the power being pulled back on the -- as the aircraft was in full power mode trying to take off with full takeoff power, the aircraft apparently had pulled back power and then put it back up again. So that was indicative to me.

But now I'm focusing more on the fact that the aircraft maintained a straight path. Chad Myers has pointed out to me via Twitter just now that the aircraft did continue a straight path. So what that indicates to me is that possibly one or two things, and probably Les Abend, our pilot on board here, could explain this better. But basically at that point they've already identified where they're going to make impact. So there was evidently an area that was a potentially landing strip for the aircraft or at least the best they could find and that they had narrowed in on that point and maintained the 26 degree heading.

CAMEROTA: And, David, you know that because of a distress call or what makes you think that they had zeroed in on a place that they could find?

SOUCIE: Because of the fact that the heading maintained constant -- we get this from ADSB data, the same data that's telling us about the air speed and the altitude also gives us heading information. So we can also get the heading and know that the aircraft didn't make a dramatic turn to come back around the other direction as we had in MH-370 or the Harrison Ford accident when they're trying to come back around to the airport or something like that. That didn't occur. It continued to maintain a straight heading. And I'm still checking to see if that is in line with the Grenoble Airport, which was fairly proximate to this accident.

CUOMO: Twenty-six degrees northeast was the heading according to the data on board as it was being tracked online from Flight Aware. And Chad does seem right, because as the numbers go from 38,000, 37,600, 37,400, the heading does stay consistent once it reaches 26 degrees northeast.

There's a lot of data now that we have. There's a lot of information about this plane. Tom Foreman is down in Washington, D.C. We're going to get to him because he's going to go to the 3-D room for us eventually and we're going to lay all this out for us.

But right now is Les Abend still on the phone with us? All right, so we don't have him right now.

You were referring to him, David, because he is a pilot.

But, Mary, in looking at all these situations, yes, they are northeast 26 degrees, but that is taking them right into the Alps essentially. So is that necessarily an indication of what they wanted to happen there or just the best they could do? SCHIAVO: Well, to me it says it's the best that they could do because

they are descending. And David's right, you have -- he's looking at the air speed. And we were looking at two different things, but they come together rather well to paint a picture because they have to descend to maintain that air speed if they have a problem with engines or if they have a problem maintaining air speed at straight and level flight because if you don't put the nose down, you're going to -- air speed's going to deteriorate. And then you're in a stall situation.

So you're in the Alps. You've got a problem, but you have a problem immediately if you don't put the nose down, if you've got to keep up the air speed. That's basic flying we learned literally the first day of flight school. So, again, it still points back to something's going wrong, but the pilots were still able to fly the plane. And putting the nose down in the Alps is dangerous, but if you have to do that to keep your air speed, you have no choice. You have to do it.

CUOMO: And we do know that at 24,000 feet, that is when the plane was lost off radar.

SCHIAVO: Right.

CUOMO: We've heard from French authorities that a helicopter pilot spotted debris of Germanwings Flight 9525 in the French Alps at approximately 6,500 feet, very high. Not in an area obviously of any chance of a safe landing there.

SCHIAVO: Right.

CUOMO: We also are hearing reports that the Spanish king, understandably, is cutting his trip short and going back home, obviously, to deal with the situation of 45 different souls on board this plane being Spanish. He was in France for other business and this wind up being the obvious and dominant event.

Let's go to Rene Marsh right now because although we have no reports of any American lives on board yet, we do hear, Rene, that the NTSB here is going to be involved in the investigation. What do we know?

[08:45:00] RENE MARSH, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: Well, they're at this point not saying they're going to be involved in the investigation, but they are saying they are paying very close attention to what is happening at this hour.

I just got off the phone with the NTSB. They are very aware of the situation. They plan on being in contact with the BEA, which is essentially the French equivalent of the NTSB here in the United States. NTSB also saying if they are asked, they will be more than happy to offer support, but usually they don't get involved in this sort of crash investigation because, No. 1, this plane we do know is manufactured -- it's a French manufactured plane.

However, if we do find out that other parts on this plane are linked to the United States, perhaps even if there is a passenger on board or more than one passenger on board linked to the United States, of course that changes the equation. But, still, we don't have that information at this point. So NTSB is kind of in a wait and see posture at this point.

CUOMO: Right.

MARSH: Waiting to get more definitive information.

CUOMO: All right, so that's a down the road situation, Rene.

MARSH: Yes.

CUOMO: We'll see what happens there. Let us know.

We are hearing reports that the passengers aboard -- 148 passengers, 142 passengers, 6 crew -- but 148 lives in the balance here, and they're expected to be all German, Spanish or Turkish right now. So it's not about the American connection but that these lives may have well been lost.

Tom Foreman is with us in Washington, D.C. right now. He's in the room to show us. There's so much data; there's so much information and reporting. It's unusual in these situations, Tom, but we also have to make sense of it. How can we do that?

TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: There is an awful lot of data. They have to go hashing through that information because they still have to answer the key question, what actually happened to this plane?

Most popular plane that Airbus sells in the area there. You talk about the seating in there. Chris, if you look at this, basically this plane was full. This is the layout of the seats. One center aisle on it, twin engines.

The big question of course is going to be this idea of what happened with altitude and speed? And I want you to look very carefully at the comparison here. The red line here is speed. And we've been talking about how this plane, at some point, some time before the crash, had this slight reduction in speed right in here that happened for some unknown reason. And it seemed to start regaining its speed. It's important to node that regaining its speed, the blue line is altitude. It had been climbing and climbing, and it was going down here. Mary mentioned a minute ago this idea of sometimes you put a plane aim down to get your speed back. So were they having some kind of a speed issue that made them have to descend this way?

Now here's another point to note in this. This is 9:35 in the morning and you seem right in this aream our altitude over here, 10,000 feet, 20,000 feet. What that means is that right about here they would have crossed the threshold of the tallest of the Alps. So we're at 9:37:30, 9:38. The last few minutes they were in the range of being low enough that they would have at least been below the highest peaks of the Alps. So they're actually flying among the mountains here.

Speed important to note again here. Right back here they're probably doing somewhere around 500 plus miles per hour, Chris. By the time they stopped down here, they're still at about 400 miles per hour. So it's not like they lost a tremendous amount of speed, but this is where they disappear down here. So this is the intersection of the height of the mountains and their altitude right in this area. How they got there, we don't know.

One last thing I want to mention, Chris. We've talked about the pitot tubes today and whether or not that was an issue. The pitot tubes were an issue in the Air France crash over the Atlantic. This is the cockpit of a plane up here obviously. Down here, you've probably seen them when you fly, this is a pitot tube. That's sort of what it looks like. Air comes in the front here and basically what it is measuring is what static air pressure is against the pressure of the movement of the plane. That's how they determine how fast a plane is going. This is the thing that tells you how fast a plane is going because in the cockpit you obviously can't tell. 500 miles an hour, 300 miles an hour, it doesn't look different when you're way up in the air like that. And this is where they have had issues in the past of icing. This is heated to keep it from icing over, but it doesn't always work. There have been problems. So if you have icing in here, you lose track of how fast a plane is going and that changes the whole equation. Chris.

CUOMO: The frustration is we have a whole lot of data, but it's raising just as many questions as it's answering. Because one of the variables I want you to put in there, Tom, for us is we know the rate of descent was about 3,400 feet per minute and that would be a rapid rate of descent but not a stall. You know, not like it was falling out of the sky. And we also know that if they're in some kind of control, the pilot still, you say they make it over the highest points of the peaks, but they are amid the mountains, among the mountains.

[08:50:02] So they're not near Grenoble Airport, although it is in the area, and the heading is Northeast 26 degrees. Now what does that mean to you in terms of trajectory here?

FOREMAN: I don't know what it means, Chris. I really don't. Because they're more or less on course at the time, but they're clearly -- again, they're in trouble. As soon as they hit this area right about in here -- remember, the Alps are a little bit shorter than the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. You know what that would be like. Their impact point in here, right in this area, this is going to be a little bit higher than Denver, Colorado. So basically, you know, we have to find out something about why this descent was happening.

And you point out a very good thing there, Chris. Look at this descent right here. This is very, very uniform. There's really nothing unusual happening here. And yes, they're losing some speed here, but, again, you aren't seeing wild spikes here. You actually see much wilder spikes here during the climb, which is pretty routine. We've all been through a climb in a routine. You see a lot of variations back here but this is all pretty smooth except for that little dip right here in speed, which we were talking about earlier. It's all pretty smooth, and the big change up here when they start descending.

So what it all means, Chris, that's what the investigators are going to have to sort out.

CUOMO: All right, Tom, as we get more data here we'll come back to you so that we can keep showing people what we understand. Thank you. Thank you for being with us.

And unfortunately, the Germanwings Airline just came out and changed one critical fact. It's not 148 souls on board. They're now saying it was 144 passengers and 6 crew members, which would make 150 souls on board this Flight 9525. And all of them right now, by French authorities, Alisyn, feared lost.

CAMEROTA: Of course, this is breaking news so the numbers do shift and change as we report it. And one of the things that is shifting around or at least still needs to be answered is the time line.

We know a couple of details. Here they are for you. The plane took off at 10:01 a.m. local time from Barcelona. That was about 30 minutes late, not that that tells you anything. Flights are so often delayed. And then here's the curious part that happens in the middle. According to the French Interior Minister's office, at 10:45 a.m. a distress call is sent and received. We heard from Tom Foreman that that's after the time the crash is said to have happened. That something catastrophic is believed to have happened at 37 minutes after the hour when the plane loses all communications with the tower. But we did hear from Mary Schiavo that a plane itself can send out a distress call, possibly even post-crash. The pilot doesn't need to do that.

So in any event at 10:45, according to the French minister, that's when a distress call is sent. The flight was supposed to arrive at its destination at 11:45 a.m. local time. And sadly now, victims' families are arriving at the airport. We have seen some images of their stricken faces coming to the airport just trying to get any information they can about the fate of their loved ones and what happened to this flight.

PEREIRA: We understand, pardon me, that Germanwings has set up a hotline for family members and they're going to be calling. So you can imagine that, as this news was breaking, some of them were probably leaving their homes to go pick up their loved ones and their family members at their airport. It is a devastating thing to see and it's very important to remember, in the course of this, that 150 souls are missing and not accounted for at this point.

Let's turn to Jim Bittermann who is in London. A lot has been happening. Or rather in France -- he's in Paris. I wanted to see if you'd gotten any more updates, Jim, for us, at this hour. We understand King Felipe of Spain has been there in France but is now going to cut his previously scheduled trip short and return to his homeland, where 45 families are now -- or 45 passengers at least -- hail from. What more can you tell us?

BITTERMANN: Well, I think it was kind of a shock for the king this morning when he heard the news because the fact is he was supposed to -- this was supposed to be a visit of great pomp and circumstance. And you may or may not be able to see behind me, but all along the avenue Champs-Elysees, there are Spanish flags out. This was a state visit that -- the kind of which we see four or five times a year here, but not that often. And the king walked into the Elysee Palace, presidential palace, to

meet President Hollande. And as he walked across the courtyard, it was a very solemn kind of walk. And then the two gentlemen took a real long moment to converse in a very serious way, it appeared from the body language. The king and queen then went in to talk to Hollande to get the latest information. They came out later.

[08:55:00] And when they came out later, the king said that there were Spanish, German, and Turkish passengers on board, and he extended his deepest condolences to the families of the victims and condolences to the German and Turkish authorities as well. And he talked about -- he was praising the emergency services and the way France had been handling things. He was going to get a first-hand look of that just a little while later this afternoon. He's going to go over to the Interior Ministry to see the crisis sail (ph) and crisis deliberations that are going on handling the disaster.

And then he announced that he was, in fact, going to be spending his visit and head back to Spain, and that they'll try to schedule -- reschedule a meeting for some other time. Alisyn?

CUOMO: All right, so Jim, we just saw pictures there of President Hollande, King Felipe and his wife, Letizia. This was supposed to be a great day for them to come together and obviously it has become the opposite.

From early on, President Hollande was reporting that no survivors were expected. And the more we've learned about where the plane was when it went down, the more sense that is starting to make. We're told that debris is sighted 6,500 up in the French Alps. We're told that the terrain is what it sounds like, very difficult to reach, remote. It will take a long time, they're reporting, for rescuers to get there.

We're now getting photos off Twitter of the staging area which is nearby that is always going to have to be populated, they say, by helicopters. That's what you see here. That you can't get there by foot. You can't get there by any other kind of vehicle because of the obvious problem of the altitude that you're dealing with. So this is a staging area where they're going to go. There have been helicopters in the area; they've been the ones returning the reports of debris and worse that they're seeing in this area in the Alps.

PEREIRA: A great benefit because this is a ski resort area said to be very near a ski resort. And they often have those search and rescue helicopters. Apparently, Fred Pleitgen is telling us, every town has their own helicopter for such search and rescue. It is going to be so vital, those choppers in the sky, will be such a vital resource for them.

CAMEROTA: Though French President Hollande did just announce in that meeting, that press conference that we just aww him hold with the Spanish king, he said, quote, it will take hours for the emergency services to reach the crash site. It's that remote and rugged.

We want to go back to David Soucie and Mary Schiavo, bring them back in. David, what new information can you share?

SOUCIE: Well, I was just chatting with Chad Myers. And he and I were noting that the Mersailles Airport, from the time the data stopped coming, is only 32 miles from where this event occurred. Now, the aircraft continued to fly for 102 miles from the time that it got its information. So the fact that the aircraft was heading 26 degrees and would have had to change its path, of course, to get back to Mersailles, but that would have been only 32 miles, whereas the aircraft flew for 102 miles.

So what that tells me is that the aircraft -- the pilots made the decision or choice to say I don't think it's serious enough at this point to turn around and go back to this alternate airport, which would have been possible at that time. By the time that they realized they were in dire straits, that they really had to have an emergency landing spot, they chose instead to maintain their heading at 26 degrees, which is something that you do when you know you have an engine failure but you don't want to waste that energy by turning the aircraft in another direction. You want to use the energy you have to continue in a straight line forward so that you have a good landing and best probability of flaring and landing the aircraft in a successful manner, even if it is just in a field or something like that.

PEREIRA: All right, Mary, quickly before we run out of time here, nearing the top of the hour. We obviously know that right now the key is the search and rescue. They're always going to hold out hope that there may be a miraculous survivor or more on the ground. It sounds like the challenge is getting there. But we also know there's a lot of work going on behind the scenes in terms of aircraft, the authorities that managed the European traffic control. Give us a brief minute of that. Tell us how that works.

SCHIAVO: Well, I've actually been in this area of the country before and the reporters who have talked about the search and rescue there, they're absolutely right. There's just so much intensive skiing and there's so much outdoor activity that they will be muscling all their rescue abilities that they have, the helicopters, the ski patrol, the on foot patrol. They have vehicles that they are capable of doing that with.

But I think it's probably hope against hope given the terrain and given the precipitous fall from radar, from contact. I think David is probably right. They passed up an airport, or rather they didn't turn back to an airport. And once they had that precipitous drop in amongst the mountainous terrain, whatever happened rendered them unable to climb back up again. So I think they were on a straight heading.

[09:10:03] CUOMO: Mary, you please, and David, and you, our viewers in the U.S. and around the world, stay with CNN. There is new information about Germanwings Flight 9525, 150 souls on board feared lost after it crashed into the French Alps.