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Interview With Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold; Rochester Car Crash Investigation; Deadly Plane Collision at Tokyo Airport. Aired 11-11:30a ET

Aired January 02, 2024 - 11:00   ET

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

[11:00:10]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN HOST: We are getting new details on the breaking news out of Japan. An investigation is under way after a Japan Airlines plane collided with a Japanese Coast Guard aircraft on the runway in Tokyo, and then it all burst into flames. You can see it happening right there as the passenger jet landed.

Five crew members on board the Coast Guard plane were killed, the captain severely injured. Now, they were preparing to fly to the west coast of Japan to help with earthquake relief. The preliminary reports are the pilots of the Japan Airlines flight did not spot any aircraft on the runway before landing.

At this point, it's unclear if the flight actually had been cleared to land at all. Nearly 400 passengers and crew had only 90 seconds to deplane. No one on the aircraft was seriously injured. Four people were taken to the hospital after saying they didn't feel well.

Here's some of the video of them as they are getting off.

CNN's Will Ripley has the latest.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

WILL RIPLEY, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: The Japanese prime minister is sending condolences to the families of those five Coast Guard crew members who lost their lives in this fiery runway collision right in the heart of Tokyo.

Take a look at this. This is at Haneda Airport shortly before 6:00 p.m. local time.

A massive fireball erupted right on the runway, right in the middle of this busy airport, when a crowded Japan Airlines jet with 367 passengers, including eight children under the age of 2 and 12 crew members on board, collided with a Coast Guard plane that was taking off to deliver relief supplies to parts of Central Japan on the western side that are desperately in need of aid right now because of the massive earthquake that struck just hours after the country rang in the new year and began 2024.

After that tragedy and all of the hustle and bustle of the holiday weekend coming to a close at this very busy airport, Haneda Airport, a hub that serves the Japanese capital, along with Narita Airport, two major airports in town, and now only one operational because Haneda operations had to shut down after this collision and all of the questions that are being raised about how it happened.

But the extraordinary part of this story is that everybody who was on that plane in a matter of seconds was safely evacuated, everybody on that passenger plane, including the parents with their young children, even as the black smoke was filling the cabin, even as passengers said they really thought they were going to die and they could see the fire spreading, even as passengers claimed that some of the exit doors were not operational and they all had to go out through the exits near the front of the aircraft.

They all made it out alive. And the half-a-dozen people on that Coast Guard plane, only one of them survived, in critical condition right now at the hospital.

Will Ripley, CNN, Tokyo.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BERMAN: Our thanks to Will Ripley for that.

RAHEL SOLOMON, CNN HOST: Let's continue the conversation and bring in CNN aviation correspondent Pete Muntean, who's here with us.

So, Pete, I mean, we have been learning a bit more throughout the morning. I'm just curious sort of what your reaction is as we get these preliminary reports that, apparently, the pilots on the Japan Airlines flight didn't see any other aircraft on the runway.

I mean, what are you thinking when you hear that?

PETE MUNTEAN, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: Well, there clearly was one airplane in the wrong place at the wrong time here, without question. That much is very apparent.

Now, the real question is, who was in the wrong place at the wrong time? And it's really a wakeup call to aviation around the world and Japan, which has an incredible safety culture, and especially here in the United States. We will get to that in a second.

You can see in the video of the flight coming into land on 34 Right, the runway there that goes north-south at Haneda, of the plane breaking into this big fireball. Of course, this image will be used heavily by investigators at the Japan Transport Safety Board. They are now in charge of this investigation.

We know Airbus, which made the A350 that Japan Airlines was flying, is now also going to be a part of this investigation. It is sending a team to help out. What is incredible here is that all of these people, these 379 people, including 12 crew, were able to make it out efficiently and quickly and safely from this Japan Airlines Flight 516 that is really pretty incredible, because you see, in evacuation after evacuation, passengers grabbing their bags and then leaving the plane. This happened so quickly, and they were able to do it so easily with

no major injuries, only a few people going to the hospital. We know that five people have died on that Japan Coast Guard flight. And was it that plane that was in the wrong place at the wrong time or was it the Japan Airlines flight that was in the wrong place at the wrong time?

[11:05:00]

And investigators will no doubt want to listen to the air traffic control audiotapes to see exactly what transpired. Was the Japan Airlines flight clear to land? We don't know that just yet. Was the Japan Coast Guard flight told to be on the runway or was it crossing or was it taxiing?

Why were they in the same place at the same time? That is a huge failure here of the safety culture in Japan. You can see the runways there at Haneda, 34 Right there and 34 Left. It's a very big and busy airport. There are runways also buttressing those runways on the northwest and southeast sides.

So this is a very complex problem on runways. And we have seen this happen over and over again in the United States, but just not end with such dramatic outcomes like we saw in this most recent incident. They're known officially as runway incursions.

And, in the U.S., they have been so serious that the NTSB here in the U.S. has investigated seven of them over the course of 2023. We thought it was a problem we were going to leave in the last year. Now it appears to be a problem worldwide that continues into this year, Rahel.

SOLOMON: And then, Pete, as you say, so quickly -- remarkable that everyone was able to get off of that passenger flight. Remarkable how quickly too, within 90 seconds.

And so what are some takeaways for passengers just in terms of how quickly they were able to evacuate and get to safety?

MUNTEAN: First and foremost, congratulations to the crew. All of the crew. Not just the pilots, but also the flight attendants. This is a wide body airliner with two aisles. It takes a long time to evacuate one of these airplanes, and it's incredibly complicated.

So you have to have some situational and spatial awareness as a passenger. But then the flight crew practices this over and over again not only in the airplane, but also in static mockups of the airplane and large buildings, where they run through these evacuation procedures. They deploy the emergency slides, like we saw in this incident.

Sometimes, those slides and those exits can be blocked, so you need to go to one that is different. I saw in some of the video that folks were using the R1 exit. So that's the door at the front-most nose of the airplane to get out on that slide, although it seems like some parts of the airplane were engulfed in fire. Of course, you want to go away from the flames. And this is the big takeaway. Listen to the instructions of the flight crew. Of course, they are there for your convenience. They are also there for your safety and seconds in an incident like this can be the difference between life and death. The rules in aviation are written in blood.

SOLOMON: Every second matters.

Pete Muntean live for us there in Washington.

Pete, thank you -- John.

BERMAN: Again, here's one more look at how it happened, as Japan Airlines Flight 516 approached the Haneda Airport onto runway 34 Right. You can see it approaching here. This is where it made contact, the fireball right there with the Coast Guard plane that was on the runway.

That's important to know. The Coast Guard plane was there. The Japan Airlines flight lands, collides with it, streaks down the runway in flames, which is remarkable, in and of itself, ends up at the other end of that runway in this fireball. This is where all the passengers manage to get out from, which, as Pete Muntean was saying there, is a story in and of itself.

With us now is CNN transportation analyst Mary Schiavo, former inspector general for the U.S. Department of Transportation.

And, Mary, as we said, one of the questions we still don't know the answer to is, was the Japan airways flight even cleared to land? What questions do you have this morning?

MARY SCHIAVO, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Well, questions I have are -- that's the first and foremost question.

And what was going on in the tower? In the United States, this has been on our radar screen, to use a bad pun, for a very long time. And as Pete said, these -- this is the one safety statistic that is on the rise in a bad way.

We have had more near-collisions in the United States and elsewhere in the past year, so many that the United States Senate had hearings. It was a bipartisan effort, had hearings on what we're going to do about this. So my questions are, what was going on in the tower? Who were the controllers? Did they have relief controllers?

Do they have supervisors in the tower? What was their rest schedule, their training? The same questions we have in the U.S. with our air traffic controller shortage. Now, there's no indication there's a shortage in Japan, but we have asked many of these questions of our own controllers.

And then, of course, we also can see from the videos, so many videos that passengers or people in the terminal have taken, you can see from some of the videos that the nose of the plane obviously hit something, and the pilot of the Coast Guard plane has now reported that it exploded.

So it looks like the fuel for the fire on the passenger plane came from the Coast Guard plane, which is very significant, because the wings, the fuel tanks, wings and fuel tanks stayed intact on the passenger plane.

And, of course, Airbus will want to look into that, because this is a kudo to Airbus that has stayed intact. And, finally, the other questions I have is, these people got out because they filed the instructions. Japan Airlines, I have flown them many times. They make you pay attention.

If you're knitting or watching a video and they're doing their security announcements, they say, hey, listen up. Well, they say it better than that. And they make you pay attention. And that's very important, because we have had very similar situations here, including planes that were engulfed in flames like this, and most people, in some cases, all people got off.

[11:10:17]

But some people stopped to collect baggage or put on their shoes, et cetera. Here, passengers have already reported nobody did. Everybody followed the instructions, left their stuff and jumped on the slides, miraculously lifesaving.

BERMAN: We do have some views of what it looked like inside the Japan Airlines flight as it was going down the runway there in flames.

And, as you said, you actually see out the window there before. The wings are still intact. The wing is still intact on the Japan Airlines flight, which indicates perhaps what you were saying before, that the flames themselves came from the fuel on the Coast Guard vessel. Then you saw people there still sitting inside the aircraft as it's going down the runway.

And then a little bit later, you see this. This is the moment just before the passengers get up to evacuate. You can see the smoke already there. One thing you do notice, as you pointed out, no one's going to the overhead bin to get their bags out of the overhead bin, which is the problem or can be a problem when you're talking about evacuations.

We do believe that all the evacuations happened toward the front of the plane. Passengers are reporting that the exits in the rear were not working. Is that a concern, or is that something that could just happen because of the collision and the fire?

SCHIAVO: I think that's something that happened because of the collision, fire. And then in other videos that people have posted, it was the back of the plane after everyone was off that was so involved that the tail then eventually fell off during the fire.

So, if the windows -- you look out the emergency exits and you see flames, you're instructed, don't open it. And had they done it and it was engulfed in flames and they tried to open it there might have been a very much worse result for these passengers if flames got in the cabin.

And so if your emergency exits are not working before you take off -- and you can do it legally -- you can have one or two that are not functional -- it has to be marked with tape, and it has to be marked with signs. There have to be big signs that say nonoperational before you ever take off.

And we don't see anything like that in the picture. But the report will indicate whether all the exits were working. I suspect that they were, and it was simply the flames and smoke at the back of the plane where people wisely did not open those exits and allow flames inside until people got off.

BERMAN: How long before there are answers here, Mary?

SCHIAVO: Oh, there's so many recordings. This is a very new Airbus. I think it's a 2000 -- 2021 Airbus. They will have the best recorders on the plane, every piece of communication with the tower, with each other, even somebody saying, oh, what's that on the runway or not saying it.

Every piece of communication with that Airbus, they will have on the cockpit voice recorder. The tower is recorded as well. We have to give kudos to the tower, because there's a fire phone, emergency phone in every tower. And you pick it up, and the emergency crews are there to respond. And, clearly, they did.

So all that will be recorded too. The only question is on a Dash 8, which is the Coast Guard plane. It could be -- it could be very old. It could have very -- not a lot of recording and make full recordings at all. So we will have to see. But everything's recorded in this accident.

BERMAN: Mary Schiavo, great to have you on. Thank you so much -- Rahel.

SCHIAVO: Thank you.

SOLOMON: All right, John, coming up: a deadly crash in Rochester outside a New Year's Eve concert. And while the FBI is investigating, what we just learned about the suspect who plowed into the crowd of concertgoers. We have the new details ahead.

Plus: A man is in custody after he stabbed South Korea's main opposition party leader in the neck. We have new details about this attack.

And when will former President Donald Trump appeal his removal from Colorado's primary ballot? This hour, we will speak with Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold.

We will be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:18:20] SOLOMON: Welcome back.

And, this morning, we are learning new details now about the driver who rammed into a group of concertgoers in Upstate New York. Police now believe that the suspect sped up before crashing into another car and then plowing into the crowd. The FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force is investigating what happened.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JEREMY BALL, FBI SPECIAL AGENT IN CHARGE: What I can tell you is, so far, we have uncovered no evidence of an ideology and no nexus to terrorism, either international or domestic.

The FBI and our Joint Terrorism Task Force will see this investigation through to its end with the RPD and our law enforcement partners. But, again, that's not abnormal. It's something we do in all cases such as this one.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SOLOMON: All right, let's bring in CNN's Brynn Gingras, who joins us now.

Brynn, you just finished listening to this press conference. Walk us through what else you learned.

BRYNN GINGRAS, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, so we learned a lot about this suspect.

The big question that still remains is, what was the intent here? He said right now there's no nexus. Obviously, they're still involved in this investigation, so we will see where it continues to go from here. But what we know about this driver of the car that plowed through this crowd of concertgoers is, he was 35-year-old Michael Avery. He has since died from his injuries from that collision at the hospital last night.

And we know that he's from the Syracuse area, actually drove down to -- or drove to Rochester on December 27, and then checked into a hotel. Two days later, authorities in that press conference said that he went around and bought several gas canisters and gas and rented an SUV.

And it was that rental SUV that he used to plow through this crowd of people. Obviously, this was what it appears to would be a very preplanned thing that he put into motion that day. What we have learned is that two people were killed when his SUV collided with another car, which was a rideshare car that was trying to get two people out of that concert.

[11:20:05]

So two people were killed in that car, so a lot of questions still unclear here as to the motive of what the intent of this Avery person was. Obviously, this investigation is still ongoing. We know that authorities, according to sources, have talked to his family members, trying to sort of pinpoint exactly what happened.

Our understanding is that his family was sort of hinting at the fact that he might have been suffering from bipolar disorder, though not diagnosed. So did that play a part in this? So, still a lot of questions here, but, at the end of the day, two people killed.

I do want to mention there were some heroes here. And the mayor did talk about that at the news conference. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MALIK EVANS (D), MAYOR OF ROCHESTER, NEW YORK: It should be noted that there were off-duty Rochester police officers that sprung into action to try to render aid to the individual that was responsible for this heinous act, not even thinking about their own safety.

Even in the midst of this despicable tragedy, there is a reminder that there still is goodness in this world.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GINGRAS: And we're talking about a concert that had 1,000 people trying to exit, and this happening not even an hour into the new year, some witnesses saying that the flames from that explosion with all those gas canisters went 15 feet.

So it's pretty incredible. Those heroes should be thanked. But, also, two people were killed at the end of the day here.

SOLOMON: Yes, this was supposed to be an event that people were celebrating the new year...

GINGRAS: Yes.

SOLOMON: ... only to end in fatalities.

Brynn Gingras, thank you.

GINGRAS: Right.

BERMAN: All right, with us now, CNN senior law enforcement analyst, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.

Andrew, they said no known nexus to domestic or foreign terror, no known political motivations one way or the other. What do you think the major questions to investigate right now still are?

ANDREW MCCABE, CNN SENIOR LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: So, John, that is FBI-speak for, we don't have any evidence that connects this actor to a terrorist group or to a terrorist motivation. So that's consistent with what we heard at the press conference earlier today.

But they will not give up the search to uncover -- to turn over every rock to see what they can uncover. And the reason for that is, the mission of the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force is to mitigate threats to national security. So, even though this individual is deceased, they want to know, was he working with anyone else?

Did someone else push him in this direction? Did someone support his efforts? Did someone send him money or materials in order to accomplish this attack? And they will look -- the questions they will ask are, what did he write? What did he say? What did he post on social media? What does his family know about him? Does he work somewhere? Let's talk to his co-workers.

They will just go out in every direction to try to find if they have any indicator of a nexus to terrorism.

BERMAN: They reported back during this news conference that, in the hotel room where he stayed, there was no note left behind. So that at least seems to be a dead end.

And then the fact that seems to jump out in this case, Andy, is that this suspect went to several locations to buy gas canisters. And then he got a rental car. He drove his own car to Rochester, but then got a rental car, bought all these gas canisters, presumably filled them up, and then drove to this concert location.

What do you think that tells investigators?

MCCABE: What you have just laid out there, John, is a very highly organized, structured, planned attack by this person for whatever reason, the travel to Rochester in one vehicle, the renting of a second vehicle, the purchase of gas cans, not just the purchase, but the deliberate dispersed purchase.

So he goes to multiple locations to buy cans in a way that wouldn't attract any attention. Then, of course, he arms the vehicle with those cans full of gas. So there's no question this was a series of intentional acts with the point of resulting in civilian casualties.

Only question for investigators at this point is, why did he do it and was anyone else involved?

BERMAN: But, again, the facts there, you can understand why they want to keep on investigating this so thoroughly.

Andrew McCabe, thank you very much. Happy new year.

MCCABE: Thanks, John.

SOLOMON: All right, today, Donald Trump's lawyers could appeal both Colorado and Maine's decision to remove him from their primary ballot.

Coming up, Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold joins us -- coming up next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:28:46]

BERMAN: New questions this morning after a man was arrested inside Colorado's Supreme Court building. Police say, just after 1:00 a.m. local time, the suspect fired into a

window then forced his way in. He then held a security guard at gunpoint and stole his keys. Multiple shots were then fired. No one was injured. At 3:00 a.m., police say the suspect called 911 to voluntarily surrender.

We are told the building now has significant damage. Last month, the Colorado Supreme Court voted to disqualify Donald Trump from being on their primary ballot, but there is no reporting right now on whether or not this incident was related to that at all.

Also today, lawyers for Donald Trump are expected to appeal the decisions in both Colorado and Maine to remove him from their primary ballots.

With me now is the Colorado secretary of state, Jena Griswold.

Thank you so much for being with us.

As we have said, we have got no reporting that the incident at the courthouse was in any way connected to the election business. Do you have any information or new reporting on what happened there?

JENA GRISWOLD (D), COLORADO SECRETARY OF STATE: Well, thanks for having me on.

And, at this point, no, we are under the impression it is unrelated, but we're going to continue to keep an eye on it.

BERMAN: And, obviously, it is of concern, because, just over the last few days, you have been saying that, since the Colorado Supreme Court case.