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Search and Recovery Mission for AirAsia Flight 8501 Continues

Aired January 01, 2015 - 15:30   ET

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

ANA CABRERA, CNN HOST: Hello again I'm Ana Cabrera. Welcome back. And thanks for being here.

Rescue teams have now recovered a total of nine bodies including a woman whose identity has been brought forward. She is the teacher from Surabaya, we have learned, in the Indonesian town where this plane departed less than hour before vanished. But the collection of more bodies more victims more wreckage is prevented by more awful weather in this area. This is monsoon season in this part of the world. A reality compound by the knowledge that locaters on the plane's black boxes are losing battery power with each other that passes just 25 days left until those batteries go dead.

Now, the mayor of the Indonesian city that this flight departed from, flight 8501 is now holding out hope for a possible miracle. And I want to you listen to those comments from earlier today.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MAYOR TRI RISMAHARINI, SURABAYA, INDONESIA (THROUGH TRANSLATOR): Yes. I'm hoping we can fine all the bodies first. I'm very concerned and worried if they don't find bodies and I have to be strong because they may still think they are still alive. I need to explain to them that they need to continue hoping because everything is up to God. You never know. A miracle may happen.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CABRERA: A miracle may happen she says. With me to discuss this, aviation analyst and 777 captain, Les Abend, along with aviation safety analyst David Soucie, also an author.

Now, Les, what's your reaction to what we just heard from the mayor, the message she's putting out there, keep hoping for a miracle?

LES ABEND, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: I think it's a great message. I mean, I think that we're all realistic about what the unfortunate outcome is. But, you know, I applaud her for it.

CABRERA: The optimism.

ABEND: The optimism, yes.

CABRERA: And we've discussed, I mean, despite the fact that there's always a possibility that that plane could have come down and maybe not completely been destroyed and people had survived. But it is still such turbulent weather out there it doesn't look very good for those families, unfortunately.

Let's turn to some viewer comments and questions real fast. Let me start with you, David Soucie. Jerry S. tweets this. Those escape slides from 8501 had not been inflated so planned ditching likely ruled out.

But David, we don't know whether they had been inflated, do we?

DAVID SOUCIE, CNN SAFETY ANALYST: No, we don't know that yet. But what I would be looking for on that is that they are held in with a strap before they are deployed. So if it had come out as due to a break up or anything else or in flight it would not have inflated and it would have come out. And so, I would be looking at those straps to see if they are intact. If they were intact that means they didn't inflate. If they are not intact, it means they did inflate and subsequently deflated. So that would give us a lot of information.

The reason I think it did inflate, though, is because that bottle that was with it and the hose that was attached, that's the bottle that fills that escape area, the escape slide. So the fact that that came out with it indicates to me that it was probably inflated or at least an attempt was made to inflate it.

CABRERA: And Les we discussed earlier that there's a possibility that there was a ditching that was trying to occur.

ABEND: Yes. David and I were discussing that during the break with that possibility, maybe, a portion. You know, the airplane not an impact had some survivors that attempted to get out of the airplane and might have between rough seas that was their demise, unfortunately, you know, before they could get rescue efforts to them.

And you know, listen, anything, once again is pure speculation. But you know, according to --

SOUCIE: But there's reason to hold out hope as she was saying. It could be.

ABEND: Yes, absolutely.

SOUCIE: I've done accidents that I thought were completely un- survivable and actually a pilot came up behind me and started talking to me and said he was on the airplane that I was doing the investigation on. I would never dream someone would have survived it, but they did and it happens all the time. It really does.

CABRERA: You just never know. And the more we learn about this flight, the more, you know, theories are out there. And in fact, there's a theory here I want to read to you from Miles O'Brien who, of course, is another one of our aviation great minds that joins us often. He says was it a strong updraft of much warmer air that AirAsia 8501 uncontrollable, one possible scenario, he says.

Les, how would a warmer updraft affect a flight?

ABEND: Well, you know, an updraft is an updraft. I mean, it depends upon how what would the intensity of that updraft is. Obviously, the airplane is going to go up. It is how the pilot reacts to that on drafted. If the auto pilot is connected, if it's serious enough, you know, the auto pilot is going to attempt to kind of a more drastic and not so subtle correction.

More than likely, if it's not subtle, the pilot is already on the control wheel as we've talked about before and disconnecting the auto pilot and attempting to control the airplane manually.

CABRERA: All right. Gentlemen, thank you so much. Of course, there are these two mysteries that remain what happened in the air and what happened on the surface of the sea. So hopefully we'll get more answers in the coming days and minutes.

Up next he's the pilot that land ad U.S. airways plane on the Hudson River, saving everyone on board. Up next we'll hear from Chesley Sullenberger about what he thinks may have happened to the AirAsia flight and whether he thinks the plane should have flown in the first place.

Plus, more turbulent weather over the crash site right now and over in the next few hours see what crews are facing next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CABRERA: The search for AirAsia flight 8501 hasn't made a lot of headway because of the dangerous weather that's still pounding that area. It's monsoon season in the java sea. Search-and-rescue crews and the aircraft just can't safely fly much in those Gail less force winds much see what's in the water when it's dark and pounding rain.

So joining me now to discuss more CNN meteorologist Tom Sater.

Tom, you keep talking about those high waves which have also made it hard for the ships in that area. Do we know if these searchers are going to catch a break any time soon?

TOM SATER, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Yes. It looks like, Ana, for the next 48 hours at least, it is going to be the waves that will be the big problem. We're starting to find winds now, the mid-level winds and surface winds are blowing in the same direction instead of creating any kind of crisscross pattern.

When they are in the same direction, they mix down to the surface. It's a wave problem. We had nine aircraft yesterday, four helicopters five fixed wings intermittent flights, of course. Now, it is not just the search area that we're concerned about. You got a broad area and in one position or one city where there's a staging ground such as in this case, (INAUDIBLE). It's going to cause problems, a domino effect.

When we look at the region of Indonesia, there are differences in the rainfall this time of the year from south even up to the north. Typically across the region it's December. That is the worst month.

But let's go to the south now. Let's go to Surabaya. Notice December, alright? Pretty good amount of rainfall. But it gets worse in January, February and March. The dry season isn't until July. If we go the north, get closer to the equator, closer to our search zone area. But because on it's on the equator they get a little more rainfall and it is not any better.

Unfortunately, the best weather we have is at night. Now, if you give the scale of one to ten, let's say for the weather in the past week, ten being the best weather we can have, the worst was the day we lost that aircraft.

Two days ago, I would give it a two. It is pretty bad. We are not going to have any nines or tens. At night, however, things clear up. Now, we had some rough weather yesterday with some heavy rainfall but mainly it was about the winds kicking up the seas.

Look where we are looking at now. It's -- well, I can't say delightful, but it's clear. It is calm. We have massive activity, though, just to the south of our search zone. It does look like it wants to push up into the region. But it's so erratic.

Yesterday in the last 24 to 48 hours they have been coming from the south, they have been coming in from the west, the southwest. There's no rhyme or reason in following these tropical thunderstorms. Once they develop then we can track them better. It is still looks to be like the heaviest rain for the next 48 hours now, it's now sunrise is two hours away on Friday morning. But most of the rainfall should be the heaviest confined just down the south which is good news. But again, it is the winds that are kicking up and pretty much coming in from the northwest and that's at that problem.

Notice our rain, yes, heavier to the south, but still in our search zone. And again, when we look at the winds, again, as they are parallel, this is going to give fits to those dive crews. It's the safety of getting them, Ana, in to the water and out of the water.

Once they are down a good 30 or 40 feet the water is a little calmer. It's a not problem. But it is a problem for the vessels that may want to tow the pinger locators or some sonars. They are going to have to mainly do that at night.

Still concerned about a tropical storm, it is not a tropical storm any more but this took over 50 lives in the Philippines. Instead of heading towards Vietnam or up towards southern China, it's going to come down along the northern coast of Borneo here and as it spins it could intensify the rainfall which is already quite intense. This is four or five days away -- Ana.

CABRERA: Tom, just quickly, you know, with all that happening on the surface there from these storms, does it affect the currents too in terms of, maybe moving nor debris around that may be lower?

SATER: Well, not so much below let's say 10 feet, 20 feet. Anything that's on the surface of the java sea is not going moving. There's a lot of sediment. So it kind of act as stabilized. So I'm sure the aircraft is not moving at all. Generally, the last five days, the currents have been almost due east but earlier, our Andrew Stevens said the authorities have now talked to local fishermen to take a look at this coastline in their fishing areas along the southeastern coast of Borneo. So hopefully, maybe they will come up with something as well.

CABRERA: All right, Tom Sater, thank you.

Now, one theory that has been floated by one aviation expert that the captain and the co-pilot of AirAsia flight 8501 could have been trying to land on water of the java sea. Many of you probably remember when Captain Chesley Sullenberger landed that U.S. airways flight, this is 1549 happened back in 2009 here on the Hudson River. He was a guest on "the SITUATION ROOM" yesterday and he talked with CNN's Brianna Keilar about how difficult such a landing would be.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CHELSEY SULLENBERGER, FORMER U.S. AIRWAYS CAPTAIN: That's an interesting problem too. It's been done. It's more challenging, obviously, in the open ocean than in inland waterway. But at least in the United States in our flight simulators, it's not possible to practice a water landing. But for our water landing, the only training we had gotten for a water landing was a theoretical classroom discussion. Of course, there was a checklist. There was protocol. But we had never done it. So again, we had one chance to get right something we never anticipated or never specifically trained for and being in the open ocean would be a much more challenging situation.

But over water in general, its featureless terrain where depth perception is inherently difficult. You're ascending without engine thrust, much stiffer, much more rapidly than for a normal approach when landing on the runway where you have thrust and make it a more a gradual approach. It would be a very challenging thing to do, but it's possible. It's theoretically possible.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: I went back to your audio from 2009, the U.S. airways audio. And one of the things that struck me was that you were in constant contact with air traffic control from the time that you hit the flock of birds and determined that you lost thrust in both engines until really just, I think seconds before you landed in the Hudson River. The pilots of flight 8501 did not make any distress calls. We know the general rule is aviate, navigate, communicate. Communication does come last. But let's play out that audio from your landing on the Hudson in 2009.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Cactus 1529, turn right 2-8-0. You can land runway (INAUDIBLE).

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We can't do it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK. Which runway would you like at (INAUDIBLE)?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We are going to be (INAUDIBLE).

KEILAR: That was just moments before you landed the plane in water, on water. We didn't hear a distress call from 8501. Why not? SULLENBERGER: It's possible that they couldn't. It's possible that

they were too busy trying to fly the airplane and saw whatever problems that they were facing. Again, they may have been true to their priorities and communication as you said was one of the last ones. In reality except starting a search-and-rescue effort there wouldn't be a lot of help air traffic control could give you at that point. So I wouldn't read too much into that. It's too early to tell.

We had the luxury of being in direct communication with our air traffic control immediately after takeoff. But still, first we had to fly the airplane. Begin to taking the first remedial steps. It was about 25 seconds before I made that mayday call.

First, we had to sort of I think was in the cockpit establish roles and responsibilities and begin following our protocol and then get to communications. That was not the first thing that we did.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CABRERA: Well, from parts of the planes to pieces of the engine search teams are scouring the java sea for anything.

Tom Foreman explains how they are doing it.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: There are really three layers to the physical search right now. The one we've been talking about the most right now is on the surface of the water. We know where the plane took off, we know where it disappeared, we know where they have found debris in the search area, we know that the water here is very rough at times.

The surface matters because the surface is where you get your first clues most often. Things floating on top of the water may or may not tell you a lot about the cause of the accidents, but they are indicators. Because when you move to the second layer which is the water column beneath them and you start reverse engineering their position against all the competing currents below you can get an estimate on where they came from and that can lead to you the third layer down here which is the heavy bits on the bottom because those are the ones you really have to get.

What are we talking about? We're talking about big parts of the plane, parts of the wings and parts of the tail and parts of the landing gear, the electronics, the flight data record, the voice recorder, the engines which are each about 9,000 pounds. All of these are critical because you collect enough of them as they did with TWA 800 which is also in about 100 feet of water off the coast of Long Island, you can reassemble the plane in effect and when you do that you can look at all these pieces and figure out what went wrong. Was there a fire? Was there an explosion? Did it tear apart? Indict think it water intact and then sink? All of those can be critical clues to understanding what happened.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CABRERA: Thanks, Tom.

Now once the plane is found the whole area will have to be treated like a crime scene. Everything have to be documented. And there is something very important that investigators must do before they attempt to bring that plane up.

And later we hear from the family members of the passengers aboard the flight in their own words.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CABRERA: While the search continues for more victims from AirAsia flight 8501, investigators keep stressing that the answers may be on the bottom of the java sea in terms of what happened to the plane. That's where the plane is believed to be. But so far, the aircraft has not been located. And when it is, bringing it to the surface will not be easy.

More now from CNN senior Washington correspondent Joe Johns.

Hey, Joe. How difficult is this going to be?

JOE JOHNS, CNN CRIME AND JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, it's going to be very difficult, Ana. First they have to essentially map out where all the debris is or where it's thought to be. After that the heavy lifting begins.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOHNS (voice-over): How do you pull a plane up from the bottom of the ocean?

PETER GOELZ, FORMER NTSB MANAGING DIRECTOR: What you want to do first is to really map the entire accident scene.

JOHNS: We spoke with Peter Goelz, a former investigator with NTSB who worked on recovery and rebuilding of TWA flight 800 that crashed after takeoff from New York City.

GOELZ: You document everything until you really get the information off the data recorder and voice recorder.

JOHNS: He said the site needs to be treated like a crime scene. And mapping the debris field before removing objects could be key to finding out what happened. Then, come the process of pulling up giant pieces of debris from the bottom of the sea.

GOELZ: You have a number of lifting cranes, and you would have teams of divers. And the divers, of course, even working 100-foot depth, you will have to decompression chambers.

JOHNS: A potentially slow process because divers can only remain at depth for short periods due to health concerns. But does Indonesia have the knowhow to carry off a recovery like this? There are still questions about the location of all the debris.

DAVID GALLO, CNN ANALYST: It seems like a fairly small body of water. But when you're out there it's huge.

JOHNS: David Gallo with Woods Hole Oceanographic.

GALLO: Usually you're extremely careful not to say that you found something until you ground through it.

JOHNS: Woods Hole participated in the recovery effort in the crash of Air France flight 447 off Brazil's northeastern coast whose black boxes took almost two years to recover foot noting what a painstaking process this can be.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CABRERA: A painstaking process indeed.

Joe, the U.S. military we know is planning to get involved in the search and recovery mission. What do you know about that?

JOHNS: Well, the U.S. Forth Worth is now the second ships which may be deploy to this region two assist in the search. U.S. combat ship had originally been sent to Singapore for a 16 month deployment.

Now, apparently being repurposed if necessary for the search and recovery mission, Ft. Worth is one of the Navy's newest vessels essentially on its first mission. It has side scan sonar which could be useful in the search, Ana.

CABRERA: Yes, that will be important for trying to locate the wreckage if it is indeed under the water.

Joe Johns, thank you for that.

And up next, you'll hear from families waiting for answers in their own words including the pilot's wife and the couple who lost seven members of their family.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CABRERA: A gray suitcase, scraps of metal, two black bags, just some of the items recovered from AirAsia flight 8501, this debris along with another body. And that is still on a ship being brought in for identification. This is a process that began with the positive identification of one woman, a teacher according to local media.

Now, searchers have also recovered eight other people but the rest in the waves as high as 10 to 13 feet are once again hampering the efforts to recover more victims and those all important black boxes.

Finally on the first day of the new year, a moment to remember that 2015 will be the first full year without the grandmother, father, sister, uncle, fiance, for many of these families with love ones onboard flight 8501, hear now the journey of those who are grieving, living through uncertainty and trying to cope with unspeakable heart break.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): The children still need a father. I still need guidance from my husband. He's a good husband in my eyes and he's a faithful husband.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): All the families here are keeping each other strong. We're supporting each other so we'll have the strength to face this problem.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): I ask God why he is testing us this way by taking them away without giving us the chance to say good-bye.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): When they explained that not only did they find debris but also found bodies floating in the water, everyone became hysterical, especially the mothers. One mother even blacked out.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I physically regret all the time I was supposed to spend time with her. Now I can't do it anymore.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): Deep down in my heart, all I can do is accept the situation and give this to God. I know this is a big tragedy, but why did this happen to my daughter. I know everyone dies when it's time. But I believe in an afterlife. So my way to cope with my loss is I will pray more often and give this to god.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): When we heard the information, firstly, of course, we hoped our family members were safe. We thought of nothing. Until yesterday morning and afternoon, we still hoped we would get a miracle, that our families are still alive, because my mother, my sister, we were very close.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CABRERA: Again, nine victims' bodies have been recovered with another 153 people who need to be found. Those search crews are up against incredibly tough weather conditions right now because it is monsoon season there in Indonesia and along the java sea. Ten to 13 foot waves are hampering the search. We know there are now 90 vessels and aircraft from numerous countries involved in the search, Singapore, Malaysia, South Korea and the U.S. are all involved.

Also a note that we just learned, a Singaporean ship with enhanced under water detection as well as that U.S. ship that Joe Johns was talking about are expected to reach the search and rescue area today. And of course, it's Friday there in Indonesia and in this region. And as daybreak is expected to arrive in just the next couple of hours, so search crews are keeping their finger crossed that the weather conditions permit them to continue their search.

That does it for me. Of course, you can continue to get updates on the search for flight 8501 on CNN.com throughout the evening.

Anthony Bourdain's PARTS UNKNOWN" starts right now. Happy New Year.