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Malaysia Releases First Report On Flight 370; New: Cargo And Passenger Manifests; Maryland Dam Opens Gates In Emergency; NBA Starts Process To Force Owner Donald Sterling To Sell Clippers

Aired May 01, 2014 - 10:00   ET

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

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning. I'm Carol Costello. Thank you so much for joining me. We begin this morning with breaking news. A new transparency in the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. Malaysia's government finally makes public its first report on the plane's last known moments.

Two biggest headlines for you, the plane had vanished for a full 17 minutes before anybody, any official, actually took notice. And yet it took a remarkable four hours -- four hours -- before an official rescue operation was launched. It's the government's most thorough accounting yet of what investigators know or suspect.

CNN's Will Ripley has been sifting through this report all morning long. He joins us from Malaysia's capital, Kuala Lumpur. Tell us more, Will.

WILL RIPLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Carol, this five-page report, you said it, it points out a lot of embarrassing facts about the initial response on the part of the Malaysian government, Malaysian air traffic control. You mentioned those four hours. And this right here, this is actually a description of what was happening literally every half hour or so.

There was a period of time, Carol, for an hour and a half where the only thing that was happening was the question was being asked, have you heard anything new? And they waited 30 minutes. Have you heard anything else new? At one point, the air traffic control in Malaysia was telling people that MH370 was somewhere in Cambodia, which they didn't really have in any proof that it was. They just thought that's where the plane might have gone.

So what happened was, there was a lot of confusion. There was a lot of time wasted. And as you mentioned, it wasn't until 6:14 a.m. That search and rescue was activated. At that point, this plane with 239 people on board was already far away from where it was supposed to be. Nobody had been looking for it in the air for four hours. We know that there was a satellite that was exchanging hourly pings with it.

But imagine what could have happened had things come together a bit more smoothly. Perhaps planes had gone up a bit sooner. That's the question that a lot of families are going to be asking after reading the contents of this report and the attached documents and one other thing that I want to point out. You've been mentioning in the last hour about this. This is the passenger seating chart.

It's one thing, we knew the names, we knew the ages of this people, but to go through here and look at where they were seated on the plane and how old they are and their gender and all of these things. You start to paint a picture in your head of what it must have looked like on board. And it makes it really real.

And one thing that really stands out to me on this, Carol, in the very back of the plane, there were two 2-year-olds sitting there. One of them from the United States. You think about these children with their parents on this flight and for four hours, there was no one looking for them while they were flying radically off course.

COSTELLO: It's just so sad. Will Ripley, thank you so much. Let's talk more about this now. Let's bring in CNN aviation correspondent, Richard Quest and CNN aviation analyst, Michael Kay.

RICHARD QUEST, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: Forgive me.

COSTELLO: No, go ahead.

QUEST: There is so much to go through from what we've learned this morning.

COSTELLO: I know. And kudos to you because you sat down with the prime minister and kind of forced his hand. Malaysian authorities had to release this preliminary report, and kudos to you, Richard Quest.

QUEST: And it was the prime minister, I'm told, they were just going to -- I'm going to be blunt -- they were just going to release this five-page report. It was the prime minister who in the last 24 hours said no, you're not. I've given a promise of transparency and you are going to release my information is there are many in Malaysia who are very unhappy at some of the information that's been handed out.

COSTELLO: And basically that's because the military is embarrassed by this report.

QUEST: Everybody's embarrassed by it. Michael Kay and I have just been going through this. There are -- let's look at this one page of gaps, plus 16, plus 37, plus 29, plus 44. These are minute gaps between one person doing something and the next person doing something. Hours went past, and nobody seemed to do anything.

MICHAEL KAY, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Yes. I mean, Carol, according to the FAA, an aircraft is considered to be overdue when it's not reported into its next position, and the time frame is 30 minutes. And what that's supposed to do is alert the authorities, after 30 minutes, if Malaysia 370 hasn't checked in on Ho Chi Minh frequency 120.9, that's supposed to catalyze after 30 minutes a chain of emergency protocol events that allows people to start wondering where 370 is. Now, 30 minutes versus --

COSTELLO: Four hours?

KAY: Over four hours. COSTELLO: Four hours.

KAY: Before the rescue coordination center was alerted is a huge amount of time.

COSTELLO: But it makes you wonder, is this standard operating procedure in Malaysia?

QUEST: It's not. No. This is not just Malaysia. This is not a Malaysia issue. Let's get that right out of the way.

COSTELLO: That's disturbing. Tell me more.

QUEST: This is not a Malaysia issue. This is an air traffic control issue. You pointed out to me after 447 --

KAY: I mean, and Richard's absolutely spot on here. This is an international issue. The head of the Aeronautical search and rescue for the French Civil Aviation Authority captures lessons identified after Air France 447. And one of those key lessons, Carol, and I quote, the apparent unwillingness of ATC units to accept responsibility for the declaration of an emergency. That was captured succinctly. It was projected in a document by a French civil aviation authority.

COSTELLO: But there were supposed to be changes implemented after Air Farce, right? So apparently there weren't changes or they didn't follow them long enough? I mean, what happened?

QUEST: I'm going to allow -- I'm going to be charitable and say you can have 45 minutes to an hour where frankly one person doesn't know what the person is doing. But at 2:18, that's 45 minutes after the plane disappeared off radar, Ho Chi Minh confirmed earlier information, radar contact was lost, a bit odd, and radio contact never -- radio contact. That's a red flag.

And I'm sorry. I'm going to come out and say 2-year-old Yang Zang, (ph) 26-year-old Hito Wang, (ph) all these people on board, Ging, (ph) age 62, they had a right to expect that somebody was watching better to actually find out what was happening to their whereabouts.

COSTELLO: There's no doubt about that. I want to examine what was on the plane, if there's anything in this report that sheds any light on this mystery. So we know what was in the cargo hold. And apparently there were a lot of lithium batteries. Can you go through that for us again because there was some confusion at the top of the 9:00 Eastern hour about that?

QUEST: Right. We have the lithium batteries. There are 100 -- nearly 200 pieces. Nearly 200 pieces of lithium batteries weighing a total of 250,000 it looks like kilograms. So 250,000 kilograms of lithium batteries that we are going back to Beijing.

COSTELLO: Is that an unusual amount?

KAY: I can't say whether that load is unusual or not, Carol. But what is unusual for me is if we go back to the time line. When we talk about lithium batteries, we're talking about a consequence that might involve a fire or something that would bring the aircraft down mechanically. If you look at the time line at 2:35, we get an indication from Malaysian airlines operations center that informed Kuala Lumpur ATC that MH370 was, quote, "in normal condition based on signal download," and it gives a coordinate.

Now we've not assessed what that coordinate is yet, but that to me is quite striking. The fact that Malaysian operations in some way, for some reason, over one hour after the aircraft dropped off secondary surveillance radar thinks that 370 was in a normal condition.

QUEST: One thing to say on these lithium batteries, the way bill makes it quite clear. The package contains lithium batteries. The package must be handled with clear, and that a flammability risk exists. So everybody knows this and I have it on the highest authority of the airline, they knew that they had lithium ions. They were packed properly. They were at the back of the aircraft. I think it's --

COSTELLO: OK, so you're sort of dismissing that, but you're sort of bringing up this somebody did something deliberately kind of thing by what you told me previously.

KAY: Carol, I think it's nothing new that there are just so many inconsistencies from the radar data that we've been given by the Malaysians, the altitudes, what the Malaysian military saw or didn't see. To Richard's point, the fact that there's a complete piece here missing from -- we're talking about those overdue procedures and civilian air traffic. Where were the conversations between the civilian air traffic and the military during this big gap that Richard points out?

Because that should have occurred. If you had an aircraft drop off primary radar in the position that it did and you haven't managed to ascertain it through what's called the distresser, what they do is, if it drops off a scope or radar, they go to a distresser. And they've got all sorts of communications.

They'll have a radio and cell phone and they'll try to establish communications with MH380. If they can't, then they'll try to communicate and they'll have a separate of about 10 minutes. There's a graduated response here.

QUEST: And what's interesting here, attempts on many frequencies and aircraft in the vicinity received no response. There were so many red flags following on from Air France 447 that this --

COSTELLO: Now I'm thinking they should investigate the military, but we'll hold that thought.

QUEST: This is air traffic control globally.

COSTELLO: OK, globally. Let's hold that thought because I've got to take a break and we'll continue the conversation after the break. I'll be right back. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: All right, we have breaking news this morning in the search for Flight 370. Malaysia has finally released its preliminary report and inside are some disturbing new details. The plane was off radar for 17 minutes before anybody noticed. Four hours went by before search operations even began. And there's no word on what exactly happened during that gap. That's a lot of time.

I want to bring back our panel, CNN aviation analyst, Michael Kay, and CNN aviation correspondent, Richard Quest. Now, inside this preliminary report, there is also one recommendation to make sure this never, ever happens again. What is that, Richard?

QUEST: It's a recommendation, and I'm going to read it, if I may, I know time is a bit tight. It's a safety recommendation that ICAO, the U.N. body on international aviation, ICAO examined the safety benefits of introducing a standard for real-time tracking of commercial aircraft. And it tells us why. There have now been two occasions during the last five years when large commercial air transport aircraft have gone missing in their last position. The last one being Air France 447.

COSTELLO: So that recommendation's been out there before, Michael, right?

KAY: It has. And just to give a bit of context on that, the ACARS has usually provided that facility. Not real-time. The ACARS can be programmed to transmit whenever it wants. For example, one airline might program the ACARS when it gets airborne and the wheels are traveling to give a little ping to the operations center to say we're airborne. This is the coordinate. Everything's looking good on the engine and air frame and everything else or you could program it to give geographic coordinates, you know, a little bit more at a higher frequency.

So you can program the ACARS, but the problem with ACARS is you can obviously turn it off. There are new systems in place where a lot of operators are operating with that already. But there is an in and out function called NextGen, which allows aircraft to talk to each other through it. The bottom line, Carol, is that that new technology which would give you real-time still goes through an aspect of the transponder. It's called the mode-s. As we all know, the transponder can still be turned off.

COSTELLO: That's right.

KAY: So there has to be some sort of solution which looks at the single point of failure which is the transponder. I don't think it's a difficult one to be honest.

QUEST: The airlines are well aware of the need to do this and it's not per se a question of cost. It's weight, it's cost, it's the whole regulation. You've got to get it approved and all these sort of things. But I don't know if you're a betting woman or a betting man, but I'll bet you as a result of this one, ICAO when it meets in May next month starts the process to actually do this. Because if they don't, then --

COSTELLO: If you really think about this, if everyone had been doing their job, that plane wouldn't be missing, right? If someone had noticed it disappearing from the radar and actually investigated right away, perhaps we'd already know what happened to that plane. Tracking system or not.

QUEST: It might not have made a jot of difference to the final result, but you've nailed it. If the radar operator from the military, if the ATC --

KAY: Let's just balance this out a little bit, though. We've heard recently about the Russian aircraft coming across the Northern Cape, intrusions into U.K. and Dutch airspace. We heard about that a couple of weeks ago. We know this happens all the time off the coast of Alaska in the air defense zone there. And we know about 9/11. So we are, by virtue of the cold war and by virtue of the fact of 9/11, we are heightened.

Our integrated air defense systems are heightened because of our experience. It's not the same in Malaysia. There has been no cold war threat in Malaysia, and there has been no 9/11 direct threat. So we shouldn't be marking their homework by our standards. It's not right. But it's not the same.

COSTELLO: I don't know. I mean, this has never happened before in the history of aviation.

QUEST: Which is a good reason for saying how could it -- that's arguing against yourself because the moment you start saying this has never happened before, you're left with the conclusion, well, it's happened now. Let's learn from it. They couldn't have known it was going to happen then.

KAY: I think transparency irrespective of what happened the issue is transparency.

COSTELLO: We got a little bit of that in this preliminary report. Hopefully we'll have more. Richard Quest, Michael Kay, thanks so much.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, the damage is widespread across the gulf coast, and it's all because it just keeps raining and raining and raining. We'll talk about major flooding in much of the country when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: Heavy rain and flooding hammer much of the east coast in places like Baltimore are getting hit hard. Take a look at this. A giant sinkhole. It consumed an entire street. At least five cars were swallowed. Nineteen families told to leave their homes and a nearby rail line is also affected. That's right in the middle of the city. That's incredible.

Just south of Baltimore, Laurel, Maryland, massive flooding is the big problem. Yesterday a dam started leaking forcing officials to open up seven gates to lower the water level. The result is this. Flooded streets and cars submerged. Several hundred people forced to evacuate their homes. Those residents have been allowed to return, but there is still a danger.

Let's head further south to Pensacola, Florida. The problem there, rain and rain and more rain. Flooding and a possible gas explosion. We're getting new video into CNN in the moments right after that blast. Two inmates were killed as a result, 155 people were injured. As you can see, inmates and prison guards were taken away on stretchers. More of them have been treated and released. The county jail suffered heavy damage from the recent flooding in the hours before that gas explosion.

The flooding not just limited to the county jail. High water levels could be found all across the gulf coast, and the damage is quite widespread. The cleanup now under way. Chad Myers is in Pensacola this morning. Good morning, Chad.

CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Good morning, Carol. I'm afraid cleanup from this could take years and I don't mean just the road crews and the road fixes. This is the asphalt that we're on right now. It's about that thick. Maybe an inch and a half thick. But this road was just fixed a couple of weeks ago, and now it's completely washed out again. Sinkholes will be everywhere here, I think probably for the next year or two.

So once we get this hole fixed, another hole will open up. When you get 25 inches running through this sand, running through above sandstone, you wash away the above layer. You don't even know that until you drive on it. When you drive on it, all of a sudden, the road goes down. Your house might go down. Take a look at this. This is the guy's driveway right here in the same area. All these guys working putting this stuff back together. They said yes, let's not go on that driveway. That's not safe. There's nothing under there. It's all completely washed away.

And this could be happening anywhere in this -- I don't know, probably 50 square mile area that picked up so much rain. That 20 inches of rain sinking down, washing things away. You may not know it and probably the gas leak from the jail could have been caused by shifting sands below the building, shifting sands right where the gas line may have been.

And that's where the leak was. We saw a lot of leaks yesterday over when we were talking with Governor Scott. There were natural gas leaks everywhere in that neighborhood -- Carol.

COSTELLO: So is the rain -- I mean, is it over?

MYERS: Yes, it's cool. I mean, I'm wearing a jacket today and this is great news because if you look at the sky here, we're not seeing the puffy clouds. It's gray, but it's not humid here today. The front, the cold front has pushed well down to the Gulf of Mexico. And so it took the humidity with it. And so the rain is over for now. I mean, it's going to rain here for the entire season. My gosh, if we could get a tropical system over this, that would even make it worse.

COSTELLO: Stop it! Stop it!

MYERS: Now we're turning it into a tropical storm system.

COSTELLO: Well, let's not go there today. We're just thankful the rain is over for now. Chad Myers, thank you so much.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, the NBA begins its move to strip Donald Sterling of the Clippers. We have new reaction from LeBron James next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: The NBA is moving ahead with plans to force Donald Sterling to sell the L.A. Clippers. A committee of ten owners meeting today to talk about next steps. Rachel Nichols, host CNN's "UNGUARDED" joins me now. Don't you wish you could be in that room?

RACHEL NICHOLS, HOST, CNN'S "UNGUARDED": Don't forget the players are watching every step of the way. They were thinking about boycotting the games on Tuesday night. That's how serious they were about wanting this to be a firm decision and this is the playoffs so boycotting is a very serious financial business and serious to all the fans. They made it clear they want to see this through. So the first step is this phone call today. And listen to LeBron James as he explains just how important this is in the eagle eyes they're going to be keeping.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LEBRON JAMES, MIAMI HEAT: We need to get him out of there whoever is associated with him. He doesn't belong in our league. You know, like I said, the next step is for the owners to vote and get him to sell the franchise. Obviously, it's not going to be as night and day. You know, it's not going to be like that. And we wake up tomorrow and it's some someone else's hands, but we need to get the next step going. It can't be something that we just drag on.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

NICHOLS: And this is expected to happen quickly. There is a schedule laid out in the bylaws in the constitution. And of course, because it's all expected to happen quickly, there's new ownership lining up. It seems like everybody wants to buy the Clippers. I don't know if you're interested in buying the Clippers.

COSTELLO: Heck, yes. Christine Romans and I were just talking about that. We make a bid, right?

NICHOLS: But if you guys do, you have stiff competition because among the group of Magic Johnson and Floyd Mayweather and all the other people, you have what is looking like a super group of David Geffen, Larry Ellison and Oprah, three of the richest people in America. I think they could, like, sift through the loose change in their pockets, right, to make up this bid and you expect them to be, you know, certainly serious if this comes to pass.