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The Lead with Jake Tapper

Plane Crash Caught on Tape; New York Train Crash; Flight Clips Bridge, Plunges Into River; Jordan Vows to Avenge Pilot's Death

Aired February 04, 2015 - 16:00   ET

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

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: A rare and unreal video with all too real consequences.

I'm Jake Tapper. This is THE LEAD.

The world lead. You see it out of the corner of your eye, you don't believe it's actually happening until it's too late, a plane in Taiwan careening into a bridge. And now at least 31 people are dead. As investigators go back through the frame-by-frame video, will they see anything that explains why this happened?

And ISIS put the Jordanian pilot in a cage and they watched him burn. The terrorists still have an American aid worker in their hands. What does the terrorist group have planned for her?

And the national lead. A Metro North train ride transformed into a desperate rush to escape an inferno, but there were four high-profile accidents on Metro North rail in 2013. Could anything have been done to stop this one?

Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to THE LEAD. I'm Jake Tapper.

We begin with our world lead. It's a sight we almost never get to see. Usually, we only witness the grim aftermath of a plane crash, but this time, incredible, if upsetting dash-cam video capturing an airplane going down. It's a rare opportunity for investigators to piece together specifically what led to this tragedy to try to make sure it never happens again.

The death toll climbing from this plane crash in Taiwan. We now know 31 lives at least were lost when the wing of this TransAsia flight clipped a taxicab on a bridge and then plunged into a river; 15 others survived; 12 are still missing. Another view shows that cab's front end ripped apart, but the two people inside thankfully barely hurt.

Also incredibly and thankfully, many on the plane managed to escape. You can even see a young child among those rescued, pulled to safety on lifeboats. It's almost 5:30 in the morning now in Taiwan. It's almost going to be. We have seen crews combing through this scene ever since the crash.

The big question here, why was the pilot flying so low? Was he trying to pull off some sort of landing like Sully's 2009 miracle on the Hudson because something went so wrong with the plane?

Let's bring in CNN's Joe Johns.

Joe, what are you learning about the crash? What happened?

JOE JOHNS, CNN SENIOR CORRESPONDENT: Well, you said it there. This is something for the investigators to try to get to the bottom of, Jake.

But what's clear from the cockpit recordings we have already heard is that the pilot knew that plane was in trouble and there was at least enough time to make a mayday call. This suggests to some of the experts there was enough time to at least try to control the descent of the plane.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOHNS (voice-over): The video is astonishing, recorded by dashboard cameras in two different cars on a freeway in Taiwan. The TransAsia Airways ATR-72 propeller plane less than a year old with 58 people on board -- at least 31 people on board died, but, amazingly, there were survivors.

The dramatic rescue effort found a toddler still alive, taken to the shore in a boat. Responders in rescue boats pulled more survivors from the mangled plane and the water, carrying them up the embankment on to dry land. The passenger and driver of the taxi were injured, but survived.

The plane had just taken off from Taipei Airport in Taiwan, en route to Kinmen. Shortly after the flight took off, at about 1,500 feet, the cockpit radioed for help.

MARY SCHIAVO, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: It looks like the left propeller, which would be the left engine, was the source of the problem and that it wasn't turning, so I do think it looks like they were having some sort of left engine problem.

JOHNS: The investigation is still in the early stages, but it is the latest problem for TransAsia. Records show it is the fifth crash for the airline since 1995, the latest coming in July, where 44 of the 54 passengers on board were killed.

SCHIAVO: Statistically speaking, just an outrageous, outrageously bad safety record.

JOHNS: The latest accident in Taiwan is reminiscent of a January 1982 plane crash in Washington, D.C. Air Florida Flight 90 hit a bridge across the Potomac River before going into the icy water. Five survived, 69 died. Passersby tried to save them.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I took my coat off and my boots and dove in.

JOHNS: Data show the odds of surviving a plane crash depend on how high the plane was flying, whether there's a fire, and how quickly rescuers can get there.

(END VIDEOTAPE) JOHNS: TransAsia has about 20 planes and reports out of Taiwan suggest it was planning on doubling its fleet size over the next five years, but that safety record is an issue, Jake.

TAPPER: All right, Joe Johns, thank you so much.

We want to give you another perspective of that dramatic plane crash in Taiwan, the crash captured on at least two dash-cams. The cameras are not really all that uncommon in that part of the country. You can hear the shock from a woman who saw the plane literally fall from the sky.

It appears the pilot had a daunting landscape to maneuver after taking off from the airport in Taipei, even before anything went wrong.

CNN's Tom Foreman joins me now, as he tracks the plane's path. Also joining me, CNN safety analyst David Soucie.

But, Tom, let me start with you on the plane's navigation. What can you show us?

TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, we know, Jake, that this was taking off over a very busy area. Think a little bit about this aircraft as we stop it right here. From this wingtip to this wingtip is about 88 feet. At takeoff, maximum weight is around 50,000 pounds.

This plane took off at about 135 miles an hour. It could have been up to 150,000 -- or about 150 miles an hour, instead of 135 miles an hour, if it were taking off at the proper speed. Seemed like they were fine there. But in less than two minutes, this thing got up in the air, suddenly had this tremendous loss of power and then came down here.

By the time it hit this road down in this area, it was going about 100 miles an hour. That's fast, but it's not fast for an aircraft, when it made this impact here, and then it went over the edge. Here are a couple other things to note. You mentioned just a minute ago, Jake, this question of the props here.

If you look at the one over here on the right side of the plane, where it's believed perhaps the engine was operating properly, you can see a lot of motion blur here. It's really hard to make out the props. Over here on the other side, you can see many of the props fairly clearly. Again, analysts all day have been saying this may suggest that this engine wasn't turning at this point.

But important to note as we play this one out and you see this go all the way through, look at the other video coming in here, a couple of things worth noting. One is, when the plane initially comes into sight over here, this plane is more or less level here. This was the second turn to the left.

Early on, when they seemed to have a decrease in speed as they were climbing, very early, you saw the plane suddenly bank hard to the left. This final turn which occurs here, you see, it's coming in level and then very dramatically and very suddenly, there's that hard bank right before it gets to the bridge.

That was a dramatic change near the end there, Jake. So this wasn't the first turn. So if it was based on the engine making it turn, that would seem to be more associated with when it first lost power there, Jake.

TAPPER: Yes. Tom, the pilot having to navigate around all those buildings, we know the plane clipped a car on the bridge. How close did it seem to be to hitting other buildings or other cars?

FOREMAN: Very close. By the time this thing came in, it was maybe 200 feet off the ground or something so these are the buildings that it came in over. It would have just barely cleared these, as you can see in that video. This is from the perspective of what the pilot would have seen coming this way vs. the ground level.

He's up higher. But here's another thing that's interesting to note in all this. We keep seeing this bridge all day. This is that bridge. That bridge is actually about six stories in the air. So he was way down close to the ground at this point, but, still, he possibly had some air to work with at some point, but he had a lot of buildings and he had a lot of potential people who could be hurt in there if he had augured into one of those buildings and the same when he reached this bridge.

He simply had a lot of obstacles in front of him the minute he started not climbing, Jake, and that was a huge challenge that perhaps would be different if you are out in the countryside with an airport that had a lot of open space around it.

TAPPER: Right. Thank you so much.

David Soucie, let me bring you in. You used to investigate plane crashes for the FAA. What can you tell by looking at these dash-cam videos?

DAVID SOUCIE, CNN SAFETY ANALYST: I have gone through each of them frame by frame. As you can see in those frames, the propellers get out of synch. In other words, like Tom pointed out, you can see the propellers on the left side, not so much on the right side.

Individual frames can capture it differently. However, if you go frame by frame, you can see that they went out of synch, meaning that that left propeller lost power, as Tom had said. Now, also, those propellers are designed to go into a feather mode so that it doesn't just sit out there like a piece of board of wood, stopping that left side.

So when it goes into feather mode, there shouldn't be a lot of restriction on the left side, which would tell me if the autofeather was working, that this movement to the left was intentional by the pilot to avoid the buildings as Tom said and to make an attempt to reduce fatalities by trying to get it on to the water and miss the obstructed bridge.

TAPPER: David, obviously, it's very early, but does it appear to you because you are experienced in looking at plane crashes that the pilot was trying to hit the water, the plane, in other words, out of control and he was trying for the softest landing he could do?

SOUCIE: There is only two reasons it would have made that second turn. There's two turns there. The first turn to me could have been from the loss of power while the engines were failing. The second turn looks intentional to me, like he was trying to get on to the water to reduce fatalities. Yes, I firmly believe that at this point.

(CROSSTALK)

TAPPER: And what about Taipei? What about the difficulty of taking off and landing? Is there anything particularly tough about that airport?

SOUCIE: There is.

I have done surveillance on airlines that fly into Taipei and taken off out of that airport myself before. And the difficulty there is, if you lose an engine in that critical phase of flight, you are trained to just continue straight, just continue straight. It's the best lift and the engine will allow you to continue to travel.

He made the decision obviously at that point he didn't have enough power to continue to climb. He knew he was going down. You don't have a lot of choices. You are either going to run into a lot of apartment buildings and kill a lot of people on the ground and have very low chance of survival, or you are going to make that turn hard left into the river, which is what, again, I think he did make that conscious decision to do that.

TAPPER: All right, David Soucie and Tom Foreman, thank you both.

Looking at that unbelievable video, it's truly a miracle that anyone survived the crash, but there were more than a dozen survivors plucked out of the water, including a toddler you saw in the video. Now the big question, did the pilot, as David said, intentionally try to crash the plane into the water in order to save lives? We are going to talk about that and much more next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TAPPER: Welcome back to THE LEAD. I'm Jake Tapper.

Another look at this terrifying dash cam video. A TransAsia flight just moments after takeoff in Taiwan, clipping a bridge and ending up in the river below. At least 31 people were killed in this crash. Amazingly, 15 others survived.

CNN's David Molko joins me now from China.

David, thanks for joining us.

A toddler was among those who escaped. What else are you learning about those who managed to survive, thankfully? DAVID MOLKO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Jake, when you see that video, it is

absolutely harrowing and incredible that anybody was able to survive or even walk away. You know, 15 injuries, 15 survivors, as you mentioned.

One story we picked up from Taiwan's official news agency is that of a father who was on board with his wife and a 1-year-old toddler. We are told they were all injured. The father, very slightly, but they became separated at some point. The wife and toddler were taken to separate hospitals and we are told the father was so desperate trying to find where they were that he picked up a bike and rode that bike injured to the hospital to try to find his wife and his toddler.

Jake, one of the other things, more than 30 of those on board were tourists traveling from mainland China, including several children, according to Taiwanese authorities. They are going to help facilitate to bring them over, those families, over to hopefully hope for the best, hopefully be reunited with their relatives. Of course, 12 people remain unaccounted for at this point. With the lunar new year here, big holiday, time for families to get together across greater China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and beyond. Certainly many hoping for the best at this point and just our prayers are with them as well.

TAPPER: All right. David Molko in China, thank you so much. Appreciate it.

So, how can a crash like this claim so many lives while other passengers walk away with just scratches or even less? Does it depend on where the passengers were sitting or how they braced themselves for the impact of the crash? What makes the difference between life and death?

I'm joined by CNN aviation analyst Mary Schiavo.

Mary, thanks so much for joining us.

What's the biggest factor that determines the survivability in a crash like this?

MARY SCHIAVO, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Well, it's not a factor here but in most accidents, it's fire, in most crashes. If there's a fire, the key is being able to get out, being near an exit door, being near a break in the plane, the plane often breaks at the nose, breaks at the tail. Those are typical places. So, that's often the determining factor.

We've -- in the last year, of course, we have seen three planes fall from 35,000 feet. They are simply not survivable and you won't see that there. And in planes such as go off the end of the runway, et cetera, some of that is the training and structures in the plane. Seats now, they used to be 6G, now they are 10G seats, they stay attached and don't collapse on each other, or they're supposed to.

And the brace position, there has even been some change in that. Now they say you put your feet behind your knees, not put them out in front of you so your own knees don't injure you. There's a lot of studies going on on survivability.

TAPPER: Is there a better place to sit on a plane, the back versus the front, for example, that helps to increase one's chance of survival? I know every crash is different but on average?

SCHIAVO: Yes. Where there's a fire involved, being near the greatest concentration of exit doors has proved to be life-saving. If you can get out where there's smoke and fire, you have a much better chance and usually that's closest to a door or exit window.

TAPPER: What about the way the plane came down? Do you think -- I mean, it's all conjecture but do you think the pilot did that on purpose as David Soucie, formerly an FAA investigator, he believes? And do you think that maneuver may have saved the lives of those who survived?

SCHIAVO: I do and he was pretty close, or she, the pilot, were very close to actually saving many more. In so many accidents where they are coming down short of the runway or they have an emergency and the pilots are able to get that plane down close to the ground and control it almost all the way down, here they probably would have made it, at least many more would have survived if that wing hadn't dropped and they hadn't scraped the wing. So many accidents where the pilots are able to control it most of the way down but then it clips a wing, Sioux City, this one, the one of the Ethiopian carrier, they were so close to actually having made it but just at the last minute, a wing catches and then the plane tumbles or catapults.

So, here, you know, a second more, just -- you know, a hundred feet more of altitude and maybe they all would have survived.

TAPPER: Heartbreaking. Mary Schiavo, thank you so much. Appreciate it.

Coming up next, Jordan's king vowing revenge while ISIS supporters cheer as they watch that sick propaganda video of the Jordanian pilot being burned alive. How involved will the United States be in avenging his death?

Plus, a packed commuter train slamming into an SUV sitting on the tracks in New York. Ahead, new video from inside the train just seconds after the crash. Was the train going too fast to stop?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TAPPER: Welcome back to THE LEAD. I'm Jake Tapper.

ISIS took its barbaric shot and now, Jordan's king says the terrorist group will get payback in spades. A U.S. senator tells me that yesterday, in a meeting with U.S. congressional leaders, King Abdullah quoted Clint Eastwood from the movie "Unforgiven" to describe how his country would respond after ISIS burned a Jordanian pilot alive.

The quote comes from the end of the climax of the film, after Eastwood has shot the main bad guy.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CLINT EASTWOOD, "UNFORGIVEN": Any man I see you out there, I'm going to kill him. He (EXPLETIVE DELETED) takes a shot at me, not only am I going to kill him, I'm going to kill his wife, all his friends, burn his (EXPLETIVE DELETED) house down.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: The warning from King Abdullah to ISIS.

Today, more details about what that sentiment might actually mean for the terrorists who slaughtered Jordan's native son. Earlier this afternoon a U.S. official telling CNN that the Jordanians want to play a larger role in the coalition air campaign against is, to do more of the actual bombing.

Let's go right to CNN's Barbara Starr. She's live at the Pentagon.

Barbara, what can you tell us?

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Jake, we know the Jordanians already are in the process of stepping up, increasing their participation in the coalition air strikes over Syria. But the question is will any of the air strikes really change the balance of power in those ISIS strongholds.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

STARR (voice-over): As people march across Jordan, King Abdullah vowing a severe response to the murder of Jordanian pilot Muath al Kaseasbeh. Jordanian troops ling up to pay their respects to the pilot's family.

But in Raqqa, Syria, cheering as video of the pilot's execution was shown on big screens. All of this raising more concern about remaining hostages, including a British journalist and a female American aid worker.

And new questions about the dangers of the air war. The United Arab Emirates stopped its air strikes, worried if one of its pilots went down, whether U.S. V-22s are close enough to even attempt a rescue -- a nightmare scenario for every country.

(on camera): Is this administration prepared for the possibility that an American pilot could go down over Iraq or Syria?

CHUCK HAGEL, OUTGOING DEFENSE SECRETARY: Barbara, any time you introduce American military power anywhere in the region, there is always risk, absolutely there's risk where people who are conducting strikes in Syria.

STARR (voice-over): Jordan wants to increase its air strikes but it may not be so easy.

COL. CEDRIC LEIGHTON (RET.), FORMER AIR FORCE INTELLIGENCE OFFICER: They will have a difficult time doing that on their own. They need a bit of help when it comes to planning a modern campaign against moving targets like this.

STARR: U.S. officials insist no change in military strategy is being contemplated.

But in his confirmation hearing to become the next secretary of defense, Ash Carter suggested time could be running out.

ASHTON CARTER, DEFENSE SECRETARY NOMINEE: You don't want them to settle in and you don't want the population to settle in to having ISIL rule them in their barbaric way.

STARR: Raising real doubts about whether the coalition is winning the war.

LEIGHTON: ISIS still controls large amounts of territory. It has not been rolled back by the air campaign. It has not been rolled back by any of the other actions.

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R), ARIZONA: We are not winning and that is the opinion of outside military experts, literally every one of them I know.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

STARR: And Jordan now is also asking the U.S. to speed up the sale of key military items, including precision bombs and other military gear that could help it in these new rounds of airstrikes -- Jake.

TAPPER: Barbara Starr at the Pentagon, thanks so much.