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Putin: Russia was "Robbed"; Scrutiny Grows for Flight 370 Crew; Training Crews for In-Flight Emergencies; Crew, Passengers All under Scrutiny

Aired March 18, 2014 - 10:30   ET

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

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JOE BIDEN, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: It's a simple fact that Russia's political and economic isolation will only -- will only increase if it continues down its current path.

And it is -- and it will, in fact, see additional -- additional sanctions by the United States and the EU.

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CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: CNN's Ivan Watson, live in Kiev this morning. Tell us more, Ivan.

IVAN WATSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well here in Ukraine, people are looking at Moscow's latest moves at Putin's speech with some real concern. I mean we're hearing about Ukrainians donating money to their defense ministry to help protect Ukraine from potential threats from Russian which has built up troops and tanks along their Ukrainian border -- the Russian-Ukrainian border. We're hearing about people signing up to join to be recruited to the military to a new National Guard unit as well.

And I spoke with Ukraine's new Prime Minister yesterday. And he says that he feels a clear and present danger to his country right now. Take a listen to this an excerpt from this interview -- Carol.

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WATSON (on camera): Are you afraid of the possibility of a Russian military invasion?

ARSENY YATSENYUK, UKRAINIAN PRIME MINISTER: There is a strong possibility of Russian military invasion. And this is the duty of every citizen to protect and to defend its country. I still believe that there is only one solution of this crisis, a peaceful one. But we offer peace and Russia offers war.

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WATSON: So Carol, Vladimir Putin just gave a long, pretty aggressive speech. There were some contradictions there. He swore that he respected the territorial integrity of Ukraine. And yet, he said, I'm taking a piece of Ukraine, Crimea and I'm going to make it part of Russia. He said, "I mean no harm, no ill-will to the Ukrainian people. They are our brothers, our neighbors." And yet he insulted and refused to respect the legitimacy of the Ukrainian government.

So there are some big problems here and the Ukrainians are definitely feeling under threat and looking West for help against their Russian neighbor -- Carol.

COSTELLO: Ivan Watson, reporting live from Kiev. Thanks so much.

Just ahead in the NEWSROOM the latest on the search for missing Flight 370. A new report says the plane's computer was altered to change the flight. What could that mean? We'll dig deeper when we come back.

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COSTELLO: Major developments in the search for that vanished Flight 370. The Thai Air Force now says it detected an unknown radar signal the night the jetliner disappears and after the plane's transponders were shut off. Military officials say the signal never crossed into Thai air space and that the plane was heading back in the direction of Kuala Lumpur.

And otherwise, it made a turn. In the meantime, "The New York Times" is reported that someone preprogrammed the plane's computer system to turn away from Beijing, something that would have required a very high level of aviation knowledge.

Joining us now to discuss these new developments, CNN aviation correspondent, Richard Quest. Richard, let's start with the Thai Air Force saying that it spotted that flight, Flight 370. And then, suddenly, it disappeared and then it detected an unknown aircraft that was turned back toward Kuala Lumpur. Tell us more about it.

RICHARD QUEST, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: Well and my question would be, what did they do about it? And there seems to be a lot of people, the Malaysian Air Force, the Thai Air Force, the Vietnamese who didn't find it. A lot of people seem to have, quote, "spotted something odd" and then done nothing about it. This is a plane that either was under unlawful command or was in deep distress. And everybody seems to have spotted a blip on a radar and carried merrily, happily on. At least we haven't heard that did anything about it.

Did the Thais alert the Malaysians, did they scramble fighters, did they want to see what was going on? Everybody knew or should have known there was a certain amount of air traffic in the region, because it had filed a flight plan.

So to see something unusual like this raises the question, that -- we'll never know what it was all about but can know why didn't they do anything about it -- Carol.

COSTELLO: Very good question I mean, I'm just -- It didn't enter Thai air space, it didn't go over land in Thailand. Might that be a reason why they didn't react?

QUEST: Yes. That's probably the exact reason in the middle of the night, overnight air traffic controller sees a quote a blip in the sky and it's not heading in its way. And it's not going over Thailand. And it's not an immediate concern to them. But he never thinks, this is an airline in distress. Is there something going wrong?

I promise you this after this, anybody who sees anything odd on a radar will sound the alarm. There were too many people who saw this plane doing some odd things, flying on a route that wasn't supposed to be there, without transponder and they didn't do anything about it. And that to me so far is the biggest scandal.

COSTELLO: OK, so I'm coming at this from an American perspective. If someone in the United States noticed some strange plane flying around out there I would like to think that -- that the United States would react to that.

QUEST: I guarantee you that the United States would react to it. And that is why some of the more fanciful suggestions about how this plane may have gone so far north across India or Pakistan, across up towards Kazakhstan, they are just fanciful in some ways because there are enough radar systems there some of which are incidentally U.S. radar that somebody would have spotted it.

Now look it is -- it is just about believable, that one country doesn't spot it but that everybody doesn't spot it and nobody says "What's going on"? That's why the southern arc, the southern point down towards the south Indian Ocean starts to look more realistic, simply because it's not -- look I could be proved wrong in 20 minutes. But fundamentally, it doesn't seem as realistic that you could get so far in land and nobody would notice this aircraft.

COSTELLO: It's a pretty big plane.

Let's talk about "The New York Times" report that somebody had to preprogram the plane's computer system to make it turn away from Beijing. And that actually happened in the cockpit on board the plane. What does that say to you?

QUEST: Well it's -- and I'm going to pour a little bit of water on this. Because I don't think it -- I think we effectively knew this, we in fact we've known this for some days that the plane did a turn and it followed waypoints that had been programmed into a computer. That -- it is not -- this comes back to the Malaysian Minister and the Prime Minister words, this was a deliberate act.

But there are a variety of ways you can turn the plane. I'll give you some of them you can take hold of the joy stick and/or the yoke and you can easily turn it as you would be turning a car. It's not very smooth, it's not very elegant. And the passengers would certainly notice. If the plane is on autopilot, you just change the heading, it's a little knob on the dash you just change it to the heading you want to and very smoothly the autopilot is programmed, it will do a very, very gentle turn to the heading.

And finally, you can do the big guns, you cab change the flight and management system, the FMS, you can go right in there and you can reprogram the whole thing. That's going to take quite a lot of knowledge. That's going to take somebody who knows what they are doing because you've not only -- only got to know the right instructions you've got to know how to set it and you've got to know how to execute it.

So long and short of it is this plane did a turn. It did a calibrated turn. It was probably done either by the autopilot but certainly under the command of somebody who knew what they were doing. Whether that was nefarious or in distress, I keep coming back to this, Carol -- we don't know.

COSTELLO: Sadly, we don't. Richard Quest, thanks so much.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, in the event of an emergency, how are flight crews trained to react? A flight attendant will join me next with her perspective.

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COSTELLO: With the growing focus on the crew of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, questions surround the possible actions of the pilot and co-pilot. Did they purposely divert the plane from its flight path or did an emergency force take them on -- force them to take on unexpected measures. In other words, was it bad weather? Was it some kind of catastrophic event on board the plane that caused them to turn around?

And what about the crew? What about the flight attendants? We haven't heard much about them at all.

Veda Shook is a flight attendant with Alaska Airlines and the international president of the Association of Flight Attendants. Welcome, Veda.

VEDA SHOOK, INTERNATIONAL PRESIDENT, ASSOCIATION OF FLIGHT ATTENDANTS: Good morning.

COSTELLO: I was talking to Tom Fuentes, our FBI analyst and he said that investigators should be asking flight attendants on the ground who worked with these pilots about their habits. In your mind, what could you tell an investigator about pilots on board the plane?

SHOOK: Well, one of the things we are trained on is called crew resource management. And that's our ability to understand that we are part of an entire crew complement and that we have to have on going aspects and methods of being able to communicate with the flight deck because we can detect things on board inside the aircraft that might fall outside of the norm.

But that would also track to, you know, what is happening with the pilots and if we were to spot something outside the norm there as well.

COSTELLO: Right. And if you work with a pilot long enough, you would grow to know their habits. Like how many times they went to the restroom, per se, or left the cockpit during a flight. SHOOK: Sure, absolutely. And just generally you know, obviously, if they are flying 777s, those lend towards long layovers. So you might be going out to dinner, you might develop relationships. You will know these people over time.

COSTELLO: Why do you think we haven't heard much about the flight attendants because I find that strange?

SHOOK: I find the whole thing just so disturbingly strange, how little information is coming out and how much speculation is happening. That is what actually quite unnerving. Obviously, you know, they didn't search the pilot's home until very recently. And you know, it's just a lot of loose ends and a lot of unknowns.

So, you know, it's is surprising that, in fact, they haven't talked to fellow crew members, to our knowledge that they haven't talked to fellow crew members on aspects of not only the pilots but also the flight attendants.

COSTELLO: And I am just going to ask you a general question because obviously we don't know what happened on board that plane. But what kind of training do you undergo generally in the event of some kind of emergency?

SHOOK: Sure. Generally speaking, in round terms, because some of that is safety sensitive information, there is basically three different types of situations that could unfold. Before 9/11, we were trained on just standard hijacking. For example, if somebody wanted to commandeer a plane to take it to Cuba. That had happened quite a few times.

Then there would be the other kind where you would take hostages with the plane on the ground and how you would be trained in that. And that was all about, you know, following the instructions of the hijackers to prevent any loss of life. And then came 9/11 and obviously, that training was completely counter to what actually unfolded, because now today, it is all about insuring that nobody ever is able to penetrate the cockpit.

COSTELLO: Exactly. And on board that Malaysian jetliner, the cockpit door was locked. You had to type in a code to get inside. So let's say the flight crew noticed something was wrong, that the plane had turned around, was going -- you know, maybe had lost altitude, what would the flight crew be doing outside of that cockpit door?

SHOOK: I am just actually getting physical goose bumps when you are describing that because I can only imagine. Obviously we are trained for this to kick in right away. Obviously, you would be calling the flight deck. You would be ascertaining if there was anything unusual that would be happening in the cockpit. And then we would be trying to find a way to relay pertinent information if we needed to, if it was determined. Again so much of this is all speculative.

COSTELLO: Right. So last question, since you're flying -- you have flown thousands and thousands of times. What stands out to you about the situation? SHOOK: Honestly, what stands out to me is that government matters. And that in the case of the United States, we have the TSA, Homeland Security, FAA -- we have all of these layers of security that have since 9/11 prevented anything like this from happening. The fact that this government in Malaysia is so woefully behind in ascertaining what happened, that to me is what's standing out. It is just -- it's flat- out remarkable that these many days into it that we really have no idea where that plane is at.

And I would just add to that that, you know, I've seen Alaska Airline itself had a plane crash in 2000, Flight 261. And I vividly remember, you know, footage of the debris in the water. So the fact that there has been no debris found, means that plane is somewhere and that we haven't located it. It is just astounding.

COSTELLO: It is. Alaska Airlines flight attendant Veda Shook -- thank you so much for joining me. Really appreciate it.

SHOOK: Thank you Carol. And thank you for the reporting.

COSTELLO: Any time. Thanks so much.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, lots of questions but very few answers so what's next in the investigation into the disappearance of Flight 370?

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COSTELLO: Well, the new information, what little we get, slowly helps us to paint a better picture of the timeline for Malaysia Flight 370.

We know the flight left Kuala Lumpur, March 8 at 12:41 in the morning. About 25 minutes later, at 1:07, the onboard aircraft communications addressing and reporting system or ACARS, sent what would be it's last signal. At 1:19, the co-pilot makes that final call to air traffic controllers, "All right, good night." Two minutes later at 1:21 in the morning, the transponder is shut off.

Now at 1:28, the Thai military says it picked up an unknown signal on its radar traveling away from Flight 370s original path to Beijing. The Thai military then loses that signal when it travels over the Strait of Malacca. Nearly 45 minutes later, at 2:15 in the morning, the Malaysian military last detects what is believed is the missing plane. That plane is supposed to land in Beijing at 6:30.

The final electronic connection with that plane, a handshake with the satellite, is made at 8:11 in the morning. That timeline is really pretty much all we have at this point.

Tom Fuentes is a CNN law enforcement analyst and former assistant director of the FBI. Welcome back Tom.

TOM FUENTES, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Hi Carol.

COSTELLO: So not much to go on yet. It is 11 days into this. FUENTE: That's right. And now, you know, when the new reports come out, I don't know how helpful they really are or they raise more. You were just raising them in the last hour that Thailand just now figures out 10 or 11 days into this that their radar said something was unusual. You would think the first day this goes missing that every neighboring country in Asia would be looking at their radars to see and would know relatively quickly if they had something very unusual, either come into their radar space or into their air space for the country or nearby as in this case.

In other words this isn't just -- if it was an everyday matter and nothing had been reported anywhere in the world about a missing aircraft, OK, you see strange things on your radars all the time or unknown things on the periphery of the coverage. OK. But when you know that this disaster has happened, that day, to your neighboring country and then, what, you don't find out for ten days before you make it known. I think that's the part that mystifies me.

COSTELLO: Well, the other part that's mystifying -- so let's say the Thai Air Force notices this plane. It was Flight 370 on its regular path to Beijing. Then, it disappears and suddenly, minutes later, they see an unknown aircraft headed the other way back towards Kuala Lumpur roughly, and they don't do anything about it.

FUENTES: Exactly. I mean they don't do anything about it at the time. And then they don't say that they haven't done anything about it until ten days later. Oh yes, by the way, we saw something unusual. And I think that again, you would think every possible country in Asia would be looking at their radar all along this last 11 days but particularly their next-door neighbor, Thailand.

COSTELLO: I will ask you a silly question. How difficult does this make it for investigators?

FUENTES: All of this makes it difficult from the first day. I mean the very first day, the criminal investigators, without worrying about what to label it, immediately looked at the pilot, the crew, the passengers, the cargo, ground employees, the caterers, the house keepers, the mechanics, luggage handlers. That was all being done from the very first day -- has been done continuously.

But in attempting to fine tune and really, you know, zero in on a particular aspect of the investigation, the technical information keeps changing all the time right up until today, 11 days later. And that confuses or distracts the investigators into having to look in a different way, a different data that is not at all helpful. And I think that, you know, the idea -- every time we have new information over the last 11 days it's oh, now that narrows the search. Oh, really? To what -- a third of the globe.

COSTELLO: I know. And now the search has expanded to what -- almost 3 million square miles.

FUENTES: Exactly.

COSTELLO: It's crazy. So let's talk about the pilot and the co-pilot because investigators are investigating their background. But I must say they've not found very much. What are you hearing?

FUENTES: Well, the same thing. And I think that was also, you know, ongoing from early on in this thing. So, you know, often here in the United States in cases we hear of somebody that snapped and, you know, became a mass murderer and the neighbors say, oh, what a great person. We had that in the Boston Marathon bombing case everybody that knew the younger brother saying, all American kid, captain of the wrestling team, great guy. He would never do this. And then guess what? He did it.

That's not always going to happen -- that people know. Now, other times people say, that guy was weird, suspicious, I never did trust him. You hear the full range of descriptions from neighbors, relatives, even spouses. You have to look at all of that. But you don't know. And as I said earlier, it was a great interview with miss shook, the flight attendant, about, that is a key part of this.

And the authorities may have talked to every flight attendant that's been there in the last ten years. They are not going to tell you what the results of that are. I think this is something, if the media can find a former pilot like they just did, then find a former flight attendant that flew with them or the exact flight attendants that were on that flight where the young ladies are posing in the cockpit with the pilot of that plane and then you have the pilot of that flight who is not part of this. You have the co-pilot but not that pilot. So there are other people that have much more relevant information about the habits and mental stability or frame of mind of the two pilots that were in that cockpit that night.

COSTELLO: I do have a feeling that our reporters in Kuala Lumpur are looking for those very people. Tom Fuentes, thanks as always. I so appreciate your insight.

FUENTES: You're welcome, Carol.

COSTELLO: And thank you for joining me today. I'm Carol Costello. "@ THIS HOUR" with Berman and Michaela starts now.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN HOST: Did someone deliberately change the path of that missing jetliner using the cockpit flight computer? We will look at the new details from this new report.