Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsroom

Officials Face Criticism; Pope and Obama Talk; Failure of Imagination; When a Boeing 777 is Out of Fuel; March Madness

Aired March 27, 2014 - 09:30   ET

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

ANA CABRERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: the land just ripped away. It certainly sparked a conversation, though, about whether homes should be allowed to be built in these landslide prone zones. Not only because of the risk of life, but also because of the many resources it takes to respond to a natural disaster like this.

Carol.

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Oh, yes, and I was wondering, would there be any way at all to prevent such a thing from happening?

CABRERA: I think it's hard to say. We're talking about an act of Mother Nature. But we do know the state has spent millions of dollars repairing those other damages caused by previous slides, trying to put in reinforcements, trying to reduce the risk of the landslide risk. So there have been efforts that have been taken over the last several years. But, clearly, it wasn't enough.

COSTELLO: Ana Cabrera reporting live from Arlington, Washington, this morning.

In President Obama's week of mixing with world leaders, his sit-down today may be more to boost approval numbers back home than any other, at least the president hopes so. He met for the first time with Pope Francis. Just the pictures alone may help the president's standing with U.S. Catholics.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The last time I came here to meet your predecessor, I was able to bring my wife and children, but this time they are in China.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: CNN's Michelle Kosinski is traveling with the president in Vatican City. It wasn't a long meet bug the two men exchanged gifts. I know that.

MICHELLE KOSINSKI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Carol.

Right, well, it was longer than many expected. The White House had budgeted 30 or 40 minutes and it lasted 52 minutes. So 12 minutes over the allotted or at least expected time. What did they talk about exactly in there? Did they get into their differences, as well as their -- what was I going to say, their similarities or their shared values? It's possible. We haven't had a formal read out yet from the White House.

But the president actually sort of spelled out what he wanted to talk about. And one step beyond that, you might say that in an interview he gave with an Italian newspaper, he almost laid out his policies and things that he's attempting to do in the U.S. in a way that he was saying it sort of aligned with the pope's values. Things like his efforts to raise the minimum wage. And he called the gap in incomes between the rich and the poor not only an economic issue but a moral issue. He also emphasized that he has been supporting human rights in situations around the world, including the situation currently in Ukraine and said that his emphasis on diplomacy also gels with the values that Pope Francis has really espoused to the world.

Whether that is a deliberate kind of, you know, let's align this trip and what I'm trying to do with what the pope feels, it's not really sure. And, remember, this was an interview given to an Italian newspaper. Not something that was in the U.S. Although, of course, we know these comments circulate immediately around the world.

And there was an exchange of gifts. Pope Francis gave President Obama a medallion. The president said that he will treasure it. He also gave him an encyclical of the pope's readings. And the president cracked a few jokes during this. He said, oh, this will be great. I can read this while I'm deeply frustrated, for example, in the Oval Office, saying that the pope's writings would give him strength and a sense of peace or calm. Turns out that encyclical contains something of a criticism of the free market system. And the president also made a joke saying that he thinks the pope is probably the only person in the world who has to put up with more protocol than he does.

And we certainly saw a lot of Vatican pomp and circumstance throughout this. Those rare pictures from inside the papal palace. A place, in fact, that this pope has declined to live in, saying it's just too ornate for his taste and goes against what he's been trying to really strengthen in the Catholic Church, what he says being poor among the poor.

Carol.

COSTELLO: Michelle Kosinski reporting live from the Vatican this morning.

And if you're wondering what the president gave to the pope, it was a big fancy box filled with seeds from Mrs. Obama's garden. Now you know.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, new photos giving search teams a new focus in the southern Indian Ocean, but could the investigation into Flight 370 be hindered by a failure of imagination? We'll have that conversation, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: Just minutes ago we learned the Japanese satellites have spotted more possible debris from Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. According to the Kyoto News Agency, there are about 10 objects and those objects are described as square shaped and up to 25 feet long. This news follows this morning's announcement from Thailand's government. It said satellite images from Monday show some 300 objects floating in the southern Indian Ocean. This latest satellite images and all of these pictures taken in the same general area, about 1,600 miles off the coast of Perth, Australia. Until crews recover the objects, investigators won't know if they're connected to that mission plane, of course. But now we have, what, five satellite images in all that show some kind of debris in roughly the same area in the southern Indian Ocean. So investigators say that's a positive sign.

Now some 20 days after Flight 370's disappearance, investigators have many, many theories, but they don't have a single theory that cannot be ruled out. Is it possible they're experiencing a failure of imagination? Bear with me. A failure of imagination was cited as a reason intelligence agencies failed to prevent 9/11. No one ever thought terrorists would use a jet as a weapon, but they did. And now we think of that scenario all the time. David Funk is a pilot and former international captain for Northwest Airlines. Tom Fuentes is a CNN law enforcement analyst and former FBI assistant director.

Welcome, gentlemen.

TOM FUENTES, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Good morning, Carol.

DAVID FUNK, PILOT: Hi.

COSTELLO: Good morning.

So, Tom, I know you've already poo-pooed the failure of imagination line of thought, but is it possible there's - I know you did - but is it possible there's something about this mystery investigators have not considered?

FUENTES: Carol, I have watched CNN for 19 straight days, morning, noon, night and the evening shows have covered that this was something from God, other supernatural causes, a black hole in space, aliens, they flew into the Bermuda Triangle or zombie pilots and passengers. Every --

COSTELLO: But, you know, I'm not talking about that stuff. I'm not talking about that kind of stuff, but there are --

FUENTES: Oh, well, the investigators are --

COSTELLO: Accident investigate scenarios that -

FUENTES: OK.

COSTELLO: That investigators haven't thought of.

FUENTES: And they have. And they have. The problem is that one theory then gets discounted by other alleged facts. So, for example, if the idea that the plane flew up, down and sideways, down to 12,000 feet, then it couldn't have gone as far as they believe it went in this south Indian Ocean. Other aspects of it, the radars, how good they are, the Inmarsat satellite system, all of - all of those indicators have often conflicted one day to the next. Until recently they've zeroed in on this south Indian Ocean.

But for the investigators who have two feet on the ground, from the first night they have looked at the pilots, the other crew members, the passengers, the cargo, everybody on the ground that touched that plane, including the catering service, the housekeeping service, the mechanics and engineers when the plane is serviced, people that put fuel in it, people that handle the luggage. They've looked at, did the pilots commit suicide? Then why didn't they crash it immediately? Why would they fly - because the imagination would be, there's not been a case where pilots flew on another seven or eight hours and then committed suicide.

So all of those possible theories, they have imagined and then worked through logically the evidence and what it would mean if that part of the investigation turned out to be true. The latest media reports that they've zeroed in on the pilots are just false. Are just flat out not true. They're not - the pilot - but it hasn't exonerated the pilots. They haven't ruled them out, but they haven't ruled them in and they're not zeroed in on them.

So, you know, when we talk about the anguish of the poor family members, the victims who have lost loved ones on that plane, when you think of the pilot and co-pilot's loved ones, like that poor son, what you're saying is, not only have you lost your father - oh, by the way, he might be a mass murderer.

COSTELLO: Right. And you're right, we -- there's nothing -- there's nothing suspicious about this captain. There just isn't that we know of anyway, right?

FUENTES: That's right, there's nothing yet has turned up.

COSTELLO: Nothing yet.

FUENTES: Nothing yet has turned up.

COSTELLO: OK. So, David, we know the 777 is one of the safest planes ever made, but is it possible there is something about that Boeing plane that we haven't considered?

FUNK: Well, it's possible. But, you know, this is an airplane with about 57,000 hours on it, 7,500 takeoffs and landings. It's about 60 percent of the way through its service life. So that's kind of the point where you start to see things, a little chafing in wires, a little wear and tear things that good maintenance, which Malaysia Airlines has, will catch and repair. But it doesn't mean these things don't happen. And we see trends in every fleets of aircraft. It doesn't matter if it's the DC-9, the 737 or the Boeing 777.

You know, the Asiana crash was probably going to come down to a lack of proficiency by the pilots and pilot error, not an airplane problem. I wouldn't be surprised at the end of the day, when the black boxes are recovered and we have enough pieces of this airplane to draw some logical and intelligent conclusions, that we find that it may be just a very simple event that led to a cascading series of problems that overwhelmed the crew's ability to deal with it in the time that they had with the resources they had.

COSTELLO: And that leads me to my next question.

FUNK: And, you know, it could still be a nefarious event.

COSTELLO: Right. But that leads me to my next question for Tom, the pilots, the crew, the passengers, the obvious suspects once you get past - once you get past investigating those obvious suspects, do you step back -- and you find nothing, I should have added that -- do you step back and say, maybe it's just something simple?

FUENTES: No, they have said - they - I mean they look at all of that aspects of it and it could be something simple. But in all of the previous crash investigations, when they draw various conclusions, it's at the end of the investigation or after a substantial part of the investigation which includes normally access to the flight recorders and the cockpit voice recorder and the pieces of the airplane. Like in the case of TWA-800, a million pieces of the airplane put back together where they finally find the frayed wires and the empty gas tank compartment that lit off the fumes and blew the plane up and they see the twisted metal the way it's bent, they see the - the residue of the smoke or whatever chemicals and they can tell whether it was an explosive or whether it was from some other cause.

So all of that could be revealed to be something extremely simple. But it's really, at this point, I think they've exhausted about every possible belief until they have evidence, which is going to mean find the debris. They'll get a little bit of information maybe from the debris, but the debris has to lead to the plane, and the plane then is when the investigation really becomes a crime scene. That's when the CSI work really can begin to put that -- the pieces back together and see what made them come apart.

COSTELLO: David, do you think that Boeing will ever stop trying to figure out what happened to this plane?

FUNK: Oh, we never will stop. You've got an airplane with a 20-year great safety record. Boeing builds terrific airplanes. Just, you know, all the little problems that we're - you know, that I had mentioned, those are kind of one-off problems. And I have -- in my gut feeling, I think we come back to something simple that overwhelmed the crew.

As Tom said, once we have the airplane, now a lot of the questions will be answered. Although the background work that we do on the passengers, the crew, the maintenance records, that's, you know, a normal portion of the investigation. Once you get the airplane, now you can get those little pieces that fit that whole mosaic together so we can actually determine what it is that caused the airplane to -- the loss of the airplane with a pretty high probability. We'll never know for sure, but we'll have a very good idea what happened and hopefully we'll learn enough from that to prevent this type of event from ever occurring again in the future. That's the ultimate goal.

COSTELLO: David Funk, Tom Fuentes, thanks so much. I appreciate it.

FUENTES: You're welcome.

COSTELLO: Still to come in the NEWSROOM, high in the air with no fuel. What happens to a Boeing 777 on auto pilot? We'll take you to our simulator, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: As the search in the Indian Ocean for Flight 370 waits to resume -- well, we've explored this issue before. And it's terrible. But what would happen if this Boeing 777 ran out of fuel over open water? Martin Savidge and pilot trainer Mitchell Casado shows us.

MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning Carol. We have had a lot of people ask us if it's possible to with this 777 simulator simulate running out of fuel and what that might look like. So Mitchell Casado here will begin. The first thing we do is because it's a simulator we can immediately just get rid of all of the fuel which he's done. And now we're out of gas just like that follow the screens in the center. What are we seeing here Mitchell?

MITCHELL CASADO, PILOT TRAINER, 777 COCKPIT SIMULATOR: Well you're seeing the engines roll back here. They're failing. And you've got the -- all the warnings here on the iCast. The fuel quantity, pumps and everything like that has failed. Complete air there's many pages to go through. But basically the engines are failing. Engine fail left and engine fail right the auto pilot --

SAVIDGE: We should point out yes the auto pilot we set at 5,000 feet for the purpose of this demonstration. It's believed the aircraft would have been higher. But now we're losing all electrical power. And the auto pilot is still engaged which means what?

CASADO: It's going to try to hold this altitude 5,000 feet. Our speed is going to decrease because we're -- we're not -- we don't have any forward thrust. Gravity is taking over and it's trying to gradually hold the airplane at that altitude and it's going to try to hold 5,000 feet until the speed drops so much that the airplane won't produce any lift and it will fall tail first into the ocean.

SAVIDGE: So essentially right now we're at wider and you can -- you hear the alarm that are going off but the engines have gone silent and the airplane is still trying to maintain the altitude which without any engines of course it's something it cannot do. Gravity will always win in the circumstance. And we're watching the speed bleed away. We're down to 170 knots, 160. And of course what you worry about here is stall.

CASADO: Yes absolutely.

SAVIDGE: And when we stall it's going to be our nose is pitched up.

CASADO: We can see our nose is pitching up past 10 degrees and we're going to stall in about two seconds here. And the nose is gradually getting higher and higher. There is the warning, stall warning. SAVIDGE: Now we're going to get the stick.

CASADO: That stick shaker would activate.

SAVIDGE: It's the violent telling us the plane is now no longer flying.

CASADO: No longer flying.

SAVIDGE: The nose is going to pitch up.

CASADO: There's 30 degrees, 20 degrees, there's 25 degrees, 30 degrees nose up. The speed is dropping ridiculously low.

SAVIDGE: Yes we're not flying anymore. We're falling.

CASADO: We're falling.

SAVIDGE: You're going to see instability here. The aircraft begins now to just plummet. The ocean is here. I think we'll stop it right there because the rest of it you get. And unfortunately it will not end well no matter how many times you run it in this simulator -- Carol.

COSTELLO: Ahead in the next hour of NEWSROOM, lessons learned from the disappearance of Flight 370.

Coming up, you'll hear from one aviation expert who says every accident affects the future of air travel.

Plus at least one big change already in the works for a U.S. airlines. We'll have the details for you coming up in the next hour of NEWSROOM.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ANDY SCHOLES, BLEACHER REPORT: I'm Andy Scholes. Well, the sweet 16 tips off tonight with four games on tap and a battle to see who is this year's true Cinderella team? The 11 seeded Dayton Flyers they're going to be taking on 10-seed Stanford. Now both of these teams pulled off two huge upsets to get to this point. Dayton they beat Ohio State and Syracuse, while Stanford beat New Mexico and Kansas.

This is the first sweet 16 appearance for the Flyers in 30 years. And Dayton and Stanford they're going to get the action started tonight. They tip off at 7:15 Eastern in Memphis on our sister network, TBS. You can watch Baylor take on Wisconsin. That game is followed by Arizona and San Diego State.

Now if you're planning on going to tomorrow night's east regional at Madison Square Garden, I hope you already got your tickets. Prices have skyrocketed over the past few days as Iowa State, Virginia, Michigan State and UConn fans all want to see their teams battle it out for a chance at the final four. Tickets on Stub Hub right now they range from about $700 to more than $3,000 that's more than double what it cost right now to go to the actual final four at AT&T Stadium in Arlington. All right did you check your bracket lately? We're entering the homestretch you can head over to CNN.com/brackets and checkout where you stand on the leader board. If you look at the old anchor leader board right now you'll see near the top, I'm trailing only the fabulous Kate Bolduan. Carol you can be more ready for baseball season. She's is certainly way down there in 18th place -- and NEWSROOM.

COSTELLO: It's because of Dayton.

SCHOLES: Yes they knocked out Ohio State early right.

COSTELLO: Oh yes.

SCHOLES: All right more NEWSROOM with Carol will continue after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)