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At This Hour

Flight 8501 Search Hampered by Weather; New Questions About Flight; Girl Walks for Help After KY Plane Crash; Psychology of Child Survivors

Aired January 05, 2015 - 11:00   ET

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

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JOHN BERMAN, CNN CO-ANCHOR: Crews battle huge waves, muddy waters, zero visibility as they search for AirAsia Flight 8501, this as new questions emerge about just who declared the weather was safe enough to fly.

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN CO-ANCHOR: This seven-year-old girl crawls from the wreckage of a deadly plane crash, finds help in the dark and freezing woods of Kentucky. Ahead, you'll hear her amazing story of survival.

BERMAN: On trial, the man accused of the Boston marathon bombings, three dead, more than 250 injured, the legal complications as jury selection begins today and word this morning that a plea deal fell apart. We'll tell you why.

All that and so much more ahead at this hour. Happy Monday, everyone. I'm John Berman.

PEREIRA: And happy new year, John. Nice to see you.

I'm Michaela Pereira.

We start with the search for AirAsia Flight 8501, setbacks in the search now. Today's operations had to be called off because of storms. Officials say divers who were able to make it to the bottom of the sea encountered muddy waters leaving zero visibility.

A large piece of wreckage initially believed to be part of the plane, well, it turned out to be from a sunken ship.

BERMAN: Search teams did recover three more bodies today, bringing the total number recovered to 37. Each victim is returned to Surabaya in Indonesia. That is where the flight originated.

Our David Molko is there. And, David, we now know one of the large objects searchers spotted -- they were very hopeful -- it turned out to be from part of a ship wreck, not the jet at all.

But there were other objects they found. What do we know about those?

DAVID MOLKO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right, John and Michaela. A lot of news coming in from the search zone on Monday but just not the news that search officials wanted.

Really what's running the show here, what is deciding the pace of this search, is the weather. We've been talking about the weather for more than a week now and everyday we're talking about it again.

The reason, even though forecasters say things are getting better, maybe less thunderstorms or better visibility, we're in monsoon season here. That means things can change in the blink of an eye. You had divers in the water on Monday, trying to take a closer look at those five objects you mentioned, the largest one about 60 feet long. That's roughly the length of one of the wings of an Airbus 320.

The problem again for a second day in a row, zero visibility, searching in pitch black. So no news, no confirmation on whether or not they have found the wreckage of the flight.

PEREIRA: David, another setback is that there are no pings being detected from those flight data recorders. That's such a vital piece of the puzzle here.

Bring us up to speed on that and also the fact that the U.S. Has their assets there aiding in the search as well as other nations.

MOLKO: Absolutely, John and Michaela, a very important part of the search and the investigation as well.

Tomorrow's going to be Tuesday, in just a few hours, actually. It will be day ten of the search-and-rescue effort, ten days since the plane went down. The batteries on the black boxes, the cockpit recorder and flight data recorder, the batteries on the pingers only register to last for about a month, so that's about 20 days left.

It's not yet a race against the clock to listen for them. We know from search-and-rescue officials that they have been sending ships with equipment, underwater microphones, to listen for the sounds.

What we haven't heard from them, though, is that they've actually deployed those, that the equipment is actually in the water, and at this point, not sure if that is because of the weather conditions or just because the equipment isn't yet in place. We'll see what happens in the next 24 hours.

John and Michaela?

PEREIRA: Our thanks to you, David Molko.

Let's dig a little further now. We have with us retired Lieutenant Colonel Ken Christensen. He's an aviation consultant. He worked with air force search and rescue. Also our aviation analyst and PBS science correspondent Miles O'Brien.

Good to have both of you here starting out the new year. We're on almost, as David told us, day ten.

Ken, I want to first get to this update we've been getting about a theory from Indonesian meteorologists. They're saying they think that icing, some sort of icing of the engines or within the engines, could have brought the plane down.

What do you make of that?

LT. COL. KEN CHRISTENSEN (RET.), PRESIDENT, INTEGRATED AVIATIONS SOLUTIONS: Well, again, I hear it's a theory, and we need to keep in the that box of a theory, because until aircraft wreckage gets detected, gets taken out of the water and looked at, we really don't know what took this airplane down.

Ice is one thing at altitude. The other thing that is associated with thunderstorms is turbulence. And turbulence could be a large player in why this aircraft went down, not ice.

If there is icing conditions, hail can damage aircraft, can shatter windows, can mess up the leading edge of the aircraft, and it can also be ingested in the engines, so that type of icing could damage the airplane, but more associated with turbulence for what I think we'll be looking for with this accident.

BERMAN: Miles, I want to ask you about this icing report that was first in the "Wall Street Journal" because I know you have some concerns about it.

Does it make sense to you that as the "Wall Street Journal" reported first on Friday that the engine could have experienced somehow icing at high altitude? Is that what would bring down an A-320?

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Not in and of itself in the way we have seen it happen, John. That was a simplistic take on what was a very complicated dynamic situation.

When you go into a thunderstorm, any pilot worth his salt, the first thing they do is they put on continuous ignition. In other words, it's like turning the car key on your car consistently in case it stalls. This is to avoid just what we're talking about, a flameout of the engines.

Yes, icing I'm certain was probably in the mix here somehow, but it's what Colonel Christensen was saying. There was probably some hail. There might have been icing that covered over the sensor which measure air speed that might have been on the aerodynamic surfaces.

To say simply it shut down the engines and caused this I think is not right because the plane could have glided for about 100 miles, they could have turned toward land, and certainly crew would have gotten off some communication to air traffic control if it was simply engine flameout.

PEREIRA: Colonel, also another piece of news coming out that AirAsia apparently was not permitted to fly the route that they flew the day that Flight 8501 vanished.

We understand that they were allowed to fly four days of the week. In terms of what this means and how significant is this, what are your thoughts? CHRISTENSEN: We're just talking about a saturated airspace and a

scheduling issue. Sunday is not a reason -- it's not causal for bringing an aircraft down, so I think we can discount that readily.

And, again, the pilot in command has the authority to deviate the airplane around weather to save that aircraft for flight safety reasons. And, again, the air traffic controllers have to deal with that. They have to -- they don't necessarily have to get permission to deviate for weather.

So this scheduling issue sounds like posturing. It has nothing to do with what would be causal.

BERMAN: Miles, I want to shift to the black boxes right now, the two of them and, in fact, the lack of any kind of contact, no hearing of the so-called pings from the black box.

Nearly ten days into the search, they've recovered 37 bodies so far, pieces of what they think might be wreckage. To me, at least, you would think they have a general enough idea to have the sonar in the water, the detectors, the listening devices to hear the pings, yet no pings.

Does this call into question the general effectiveness of these black boxes and their communication abilities?

O'BRIEN: To say the least, John. We've been to this movie way too many times now.

How many times do we have to go through this before we as passengers demand that the airlines and regulators get into the 21st century. It's crazy, absolutely crazy, that we're sticking microphones in the water hoping to hear a ping from something a hundred or maybe several thousand feet below.

here are ways to solve this problem and, yes, it's going to cost a little bit of money to have that capability but think of the anguish of these families as they try to find out what happened to their loved ones, think of an industry that relies on safety and needs to know what happened to this aircraft not tomorrow but yesterday.

So it's high time we got beyond the black box with these pingers and moved into some capability to put data in the cloud when something is happening on these aircraft that is not good.

BERMAN: We'll have to see if there's any action taken because I think now is too late as you say, Miles.

Miles O'Brien, Lieutenant Colonel Ken Christensen.

Miles, you're not off the hook yet, so stick around with us. We're going to bring you back in a little bit to ask you some more questions.

Ahead for us, CNN has a crew on board a ship searching for AirAsia Flight 8501.

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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We are within the area where some bodies and debris have been found, but you can see how challenging it is, the fact that as soon as you see something in the distance it disappears behind a wave and then it's very difficult to try and spot it again.

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BERMAN: Look at those waves. We will take you inside the search zone.

PEREIRA: Also ahead, she survived a plane crash and then walked nearly a mile for help. How a seven-year-old beat the odds not once but twice.

BERMAN: Plus, a sea of blue creating waves in New York, police officers turn their backs on Mayor de Blasio again after their boss, the police commissioner, asked them not to.

So is this a sign of tension not just in New York City but across the nation?

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PEREIRA: A seven-year-old little girl is back home with what remains of her family, back home in Illinois after surviving a plane crash that killed both of her parents, her sister, and her cousin.

This is such a tragic story, but it also is an amazing story of survival. The family was flying back from a vacation in Key West to their home in Illinois when the twin-engine plane they were in crashed in the woods of Kentucky.

BERMAN: The little girl, Sailor Gutzler crawled out of the plane. The plane was upside down. All she was dressed in was shorts from the trip, no shoes.

She walked three quarters of a mile barefoot through the woods in near freezing weather to get help. She walked up to a house, knocked on the door, seven years old.

Earlier I spoke with the man, Larry Wilkins, who answered that door.

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LARRY WILKINS, HELPED SEVEN-YEAR-OLD PLANE CRASH SURVIVOR: How many times would you open a door and see a seven-year-old girl barefoot in short pants and bleeding, busted nose, tears in her eyes, and lips trembling, and needed help? Once in a lifetime for me.

She was amazingly composed for a seven-year-old girl who had just got out of a plane crash and just lost her parents. It's amazing.

BERMAN: I have a couple seven-year-old boys, and I know how they talk, and even in good times they don't always necessary make a huge amount of sense.

Explain to me what she said to you. How did she explain this to you?

WILKINS: She just said that -- she said my mom and dad are dead, we just had a plane crash, and the plane was upside down.

It's kind of unbelievable, you know, that a little girl would come out and -- you have to bear in mind how rough the terrain is through that woods, a lot of briar bushes. Her little legs were just cut up from the bottom of her shorts to the tip of her toes and it was about 35, 36 degrees and barefooted and had a -- wasn't raining, just drizzling, you know, so she was a little bit wet, but not soaking wet, but a little bit wet. I imagine them little feet were pretty daggon cold.

BERMAN: And you brought her inside, put her feet up, got her warm. You had about ten minutes, you say, before the EMTs, before emergency officials finally were able to get on the scene. Thankfully, they were close. What did you talk about during those ten minutes? What went on inside the house?

WILKINS: Well, I tried to get all the information out of her I could, but a little seven-year-old girl, lips trembling, crying and trying to talk, couldn't understand very much of what she said. In fact, I probably asked her name three or four times and I never did get it right. But when the state policeman came, he would write it down and hold it up to her and say is this the way you spell it? You know, and he finally got her name.

BERMAN: Talk to me about the area around your house. You said there was a creek bed, briars, a difficult walk for anybody, let alone a seven-year-old girl at night.

WILKINS: We had an ice storm here in 2008 and this woods is -- well, they told us last night that it was about 1,400 acres total, but now -- here I'm probably two blocks from a minor high way. To know that the good Lord was with her, if she walked the other direction, you probably wouldn't have found her for a week because she'd be walking into more woods. But the ice storm knocked all these trees down, so I'd say probably - 20, 30 percent of those trees are knocked down, so everywhere she walked she had a detour. It's probably as the crow flies, maybe a quarter of a mile from where that plane crashed. But you couldn't walk it in a straight line. I'd say she walk three quarters of a mile because she had a creek bed to go through, briar bushes to go around, fallen trees to walk around. I've said many times, I don't like to walk in that woods in the daylight, much less dark with no lights.

I didn't do anything that you wouldn't do or anybody you know probably wouldn't do if a small child comes to your door in that kind of condition. I've got two little dachshund dogs and they helped her a lot. Her granddad told me she had a dachshund. But these little dogs love everybody, you know, and they took to her just immediately. I think that helped calm her down quite a bit.

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PEREIRA: Oh, my goodness.

BERMAN: What an amazing man. He said he did just what anyone would have done, but you know what, he did the right thing, he brought her in, he calmed her down. He called authorities right away. And those two dogs, not insignificant.

PEREIRA: It's an amazing, amazing story. The fact that they were there, the knock was so quiet, the dogs were the ones that alerted him, otherwise he might not have known she was there.

BERMAN: Right. We're going to talk much more about this. So interesting. We have a lot of questions. How does a seven-year-old go through this? Survive a plane crash, have the presence of mind to walk for help, have the coherence to be able to explain what happened? We'll speak with Kelly Wallace and a child psychologist next.

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LT. BRENT WHITE, KENTUCKY STATE POLICE: Her family on board was unresponsive. She utilized her non-injured arm and hand to free herself from the aircraft.

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BERMAN: Such an amazing story of survival. A seven-year-old girl pulls herself from a crash in the woods of Kentucky, walks in the darkness through rough wilderness and cold for help, all the while she has blood all over her legs, her arm was injured, bones broken, her parents, sister, and cousin were killed in this plane crash. She had the presence of mind to walk through the woods and go knock on a man's door and get help.

PEREIRA: Joining us now is our digital correspondent, Kelly Wallace. Psychologist Wendy Walsh also joins us.

Ladies, we have to talk about this story because it's so remarkable, the presence of mind, Kelly. We talk about the fact she has just survived a traumatizing experience for an airplane that she was in to crash to the earth killing the people she loves more than anyone else in the world. She witnesses that and yet she gets out and makes her way through underbrush that I think I'm terrified to walk through.

KELLY WALLACE, CNN DIGITAL CORRESPONDENT: Me, too. That's why we're using the words amazing, miraculous, because those words really apply.

PEREIRA: It's not hyperbole.

WALLACE: No, any parent is thinking -- I know you mentioned this, John -- I have a seven-year-old and an eight and a half-year-old, you're thinking -- Could my girls -- I hope they could, but my god, I don't know if they could. Now there are -- I know people on social media have been talking and wondering, did she learn survival skills from her father, from her family? I think one pastor in the community was saying yes, in fact, he did teach her what to do if the plane ever went down and she got lost in the woods, but we're talking resiliency, we're talking determination, drive, and focus that clearly saved her life. I just don't know that every seven-year-old would have that sense of mind to do what she did on that night.

BERMAN: Yeah, my extensive firsthand research, I'm not so sure, either. Wendy, though, is it not training, is it not that maybe she wasn't survival, but is this just basic human instinct that even a seven-year-old has in this kind of situation? You know, it's fight or flight, it's survive at all costs?

WENDY WALSH, PSYCHOLOGIST: You know, I would actually err more on that side, that it is an instinctive survival mechanism. Let's face it, she was in shock. If I'm scared in the dark I can barely find the right key to put in a lock when I'm frightened or overthinking something, so imagine at this point she's totally in shock and her body is really on automatic function and from that point, the instincts kick in. Find a light, walk to the light, think about warmth, just stay alive. And also the idea, perhaps, that maybe her parents aren't dead if she can get them help.

PEREIRA: Wendy, I keep thinking about what awaits this is little one because, of course, her parents have died, one of her siblings has died, a cousin has died in this accident. I understand there's another sibling that may be out there. Grandparents are said to be caring for her now. How do you begin to help a child deal with this kind of trauma? Not just having lost people, but been in the very accident that took their lives?

WALSH: Well, here's what I want people to understand. So often I will hear lay people say, well thank God she was young, you know, she won't barely remember. And actually the opposite happens. The earlier the trauma in life, the more it is stored in the bones as feelings, if you will. Secondly, I want people to understand that, you know, part of life is the bumps and knocks and awful things and good things that happen to us. The other part is a biological predisposition. Some people come into the world being more resilient, being more optimistic, having better psychological survival skills, if you will. Now we don't know what she's armed with yet. We don't know what the long term will be. I would say because of my area of interest and expertise is attachment, that this kind of traumatic attachment event will certainly hurt all of her relationships. But it can be healed. Again, early intervention, lots of professional help, that's the important thing.

BERMAN: We know she is tough, I will say that. And Kelly, I spoke to Larry Wilkins a little earlier today, the man who took her in. I just keep thinking how lucky she was that she found this man. And again, talking to a seven-year-old in any circumstance isn't always easy if you want to find out something coherent, but he was able to understand somehow what she was saying. She was able to convey it. I mean, that's got to be a skill that he had.

WALLACE: Absolutely. No question about it. I think -- you mention how lucky that he was there, that the dogs were barking, and that he was kind and caring and warm and loving, really, at that moment that she needed it. But you know, she had that sense about her. She knew what had happened, as I think Wendy said, she was obviously in tremendous shock and still is. And I think the other issue that we're going to have to deal with with her is being that sole survivor of a plane crash. CNN, obviously, has aired a documentary. I mean, there is a tremendous survivor's guilt. Why was I the one that survived? What about my sister? What about my parents? And that's something that she's going to have to face in the years to come, no question.

PEREIRA: Kelly, Wendy, I'm so glad we could discuss all of this with you. We certainly all send our collective love and thoughts and prayers to that little one. She has quite a road ahead of her. But it sounds like there's a great amount of support. In fact, we know that a memorial fund has been set up already. If you would like to help out, you can go to our website, CNN.com/impact. We understand the money will go towards her emotional, physical, and educational support in those years to come.

BERMAN: Ahead for us @THISHOUR, it has been more than a week and the clock is ticking. Where is AirAsia Flight 8501 and how is the weather getting in this way of this recovery mission?

PEREIRA: Then he's accused of killing three people, injuring more than 250, terrorizing the city of Boston, and arguably our whole nation. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the man accused of plotting and carrying out the 2013 marathon bombing is now on trial. We're live outside the courthouse next.

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