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Final Moments of Germanwings Flight 9525 Described in Chilling Details; Co-pilot's Troubles Medical History?; Prosecutor Co-Pilot Had No Organic Illness. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired March 30, 2015 - 09:00   ET

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

[09:00:04] CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: I like that. Daddy power.

Good morning, have a great day.

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN HOST, "NEW DAY": Good morning.

COSTELLO: Thanks so much.

CAMEROTA: You, too.

COSTELLO: NEWSROOM starts now.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

COSTELLO: Happening now in the NEWSROOM, news as to why the Germanwings co-pilot took down the plane as this pilot stood outside the cockpit screaming, "Open the damn door." What we're learning about the co-pilot's medical history.

Then growing calls to boycott the Final Four over Indiana's new law. It's a law critics say legalizes discrimination. Law enforcement set to speak live in 30 minutes.

Plus, down to the wire. Tomorrow is the deadline for the Iranian nuclear negotiations. So why is Iran backing away?

Let's talk live in the CNN NEWSROOM.

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

COSTELLO: And good morning. I'm Carol Costello. Thank you so much for joining me.

We do begin with breaking news this hour. A Turkish Airlines flight with more than 250 passengers on board has been diverted for an emergency landing after a note with the word "bomb" was found in the bathroom. The flight was bound for Sao Paulo. It is now heading for Casablanca. That's according to the airline's press office.

We will continue to monitor the situation and bring you anymore information as we get it into CNN.

Turning now to the Germanwings airliner and the final moments of that airliner and all aboard revealed in chilling detail. According to the German newspaper "Bild," the recovered flight voice recorder captures the captain frantically pleading to his co-pilot to unlock the cockpit door. The recording ends with the passengers screams as they realize it's too late.

A short time ago we learn that 150 investigators are fanning out across all aspects of this tragedy. Most are focused on identifying the victims and the hundreds of body parts painstakingly collected from the crash site. An access road is being built there to better allow the retrievable of victims and the wreckage. That debris strewn across several acres in the unstable mountainside.

CNN's Fred Pleitgen is in Cologne, Germany with more.

Hi, Fred.

FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. Good morning, Carol. And certainly those new details that are coming out about the final minutes of that flight from the transcript that the "Bild" newspaper put out this weekend are something that everybody here is talking about. And from that transcript, it appears as though this flight started fairly normally. It was about 20 minutes delayed then took off.

However, it appears as though from that transcript that Andreas Lubitz, the co-pilot, from the very beginning was setting his captain up to try and get him out of the cockpit. Let's have a look at how it unfolded.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

PLEITGEN (voice-over): Over the weekend, disturbing new details from Flight 9525's mangled cockpit voice recorder, published by German newspaper "Bild."

BILL WALDOCK, PROFESSOR, EMBRY-RIDDLE AERONAUTICAL UNIVERSITY: The CVR transcript was leaked way too early in the investigation.

PLEITGEN: The leaked transcript, criticized as mere voyeurism by French investigators, captures the steps 27-year-old Andreas Lubitz took to kill all 150 on board.

Around 10 a.m., the plane takes off from Barcelona. The captain then tells Lubitz he didn't go to the bathroom in Barcelona, and Lubitz replies, "Go any time."

Around 10:27, the plane reaches 38,000 feet, cruising altitude. The captain asks Lubitz to prepare for the landing, and after the check, Lubitz repeats, "You can go now."

Then the captain is heard getting up and saying, "You can take over."

Lubitz, now alone with the door locked, reprograms the autopilot from 38,000 feet to 100 feet, sending the jetliner straight towards the alps, dropping around 3,000 feet a minute. Air traffic control tries to contact the plane but receives no answer. An alarm goes off inside the cockpit warning, "sink rate." Then a

loud bang on the door, the captain screaming, "For God's sake, open the door." Passengers are also heard screaming. Five minutes before impact, more bangs can be heard, metallic noises as if someone was trying to knock the door down.

Ninety seconds later, another alarm goes off, warning, "Terrain, pull up." The captain again screams, "Open the damn door." Two minutes before impact, the paper reports Lubitz can be heard breathing. The plane now only 13,000 feet from the ground.

10:40 a.m., investigators believe they hear the plane's right wing scrape a mountaintop then screams once more from the 149 on board. Lubitz apparently stays silent.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PLEITGEN: And again, Carol, of course we can't verify this report's authenticity but it does make for a very chilling read. Meanwhile, the French authority that's investigating the crash called the BEA has come out and said that it is dismayed that any such information could have been leaked about the investigation. However, they didn't come out and question that what they were reading was in fact authentic -- Carol.

[09:05:12] COSTELLO: Frederik Pleitgen, reporting live this morning, thank you.

Also emerging today new images of Andreas Lubitz. The selfie shows him smiling and seemingly light hearted. A stark contrast to a man reportedly wrestling with depression and other health concerns. It is not clear when exactly this photo was snapped, but we do know this video was shot about 10 years ago. It shows Lubitz as a teenager skidded in a glider.

Members of that flying club say he was a fixture there and seemed like a normal teenager nurturing his passion for flight. Today, his family agonizes over what went so terribly wrong. Why would he intentionally fly an airliner into a mountainside?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MAYOR BERNARD BARTOLINI, PRADS-HAUTE-BLEONE, FRANCE (Through Translator): He's a man in deep distress. I get the impression that he's taken on his own shoulders responsibility for this disaster through his son who committed this action. I can tell you that this is a man who's life is totally broken. He had so much emotion in him. He went on his knees many times before the monument.

It was unbearable for him. That was my feeling. He was carrying the disaster on his shoulders and in part responsibility.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: Much of the investigation is focused on Lubitz's health both physical and mental. And bit by bit a troubled history appears to be taking shape.

Elizabeth Cohen, CNN's senior medical correspondent, she joins us live from Atlanta with that side of the story.

Good morning.

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol, trouble indeed. What we're learning from reports from Le Parisien, which is a newspaper in France is that he had been diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder and also that he had severe depressive symptoms. And we're hearing that he took two drugs, one an antidepressant and one an injectable anti-psychotic drug.

Now we don't know if he took these drugs once or if he took them many times over a period of years. It is really not clear. What is clear, what we've -- you know, what investigators have found is that there was this note from a doctor saying that he was, you know, of medical excuse, basically, that he shouldn't be working. And certainly, when a doctor writes that, it gives great concern.

And also the fact that he was taking -- the thought here that he was taking an anti-psychotic medication, you know, one wonders was he hallucinating, was he delusional? Is that why the doctor wrote the note? At this point we don't have those answers. But, you know, as you said, of great concern.

COSTELLO: Could some of these drugs cause vision problems? Because we keep hearing rumors that he had a detached retina or he had vision problems for another reason. What do you say?

COHEN: You know, Carol, one of these drugs which in this country we called Zyprexa is the anti-psychotic that gets injected. And if you look at the labeling it does say that it can cause blurry vision or vision problems. But we were talking to an eye doctor and he said look, you know, these drugs have these long, long list of possible side effects. But typically, people don't have blurry vision, they don't have vision problems when they're taking this drug. This is one of the things that might possibly happen.

So this vision part, you know, is not -- I'm not trying to make a pun here, but it's a little bit blurry, it's not very clear, we don't know if that played a role but probably not as a result of this drug.

COSTELLO: All right. Elizabeth Cohen, reporting live for us. Thanks so much.

Let's dig a little deeper with CNN aviation analyst and pilot Les Abend. We're also joined by CNN aviation analyst Mary Schiavo. She's the former inspector general for the U.S. Department of Transportation.

Thanks to you both for joining us.

MARY SCHIAVO, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Thank you.

COSTELLO: Les, I couldn't help but notice when Fred Pleitgen's report was running on air, you were shaking your head, you had your head down. You looked really upset.

LES ABEND, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Well, I mean, this whole thing is inconceivable to me that somebody that I work with would want to do that to commit mass murder, commit his own suicide. It's just -- you know, the op-ed piece that I wrote very much -- it tugs at all our hearts. But what I was really upset about was the fact that this sacred information, which is the cockpit voice recorder transcripts was released.

In this country, it's such a private thing. And I'm trained in critical incident stress management. And I had to debrief an individual that listened to that cockpit voice recorder knowing both crew members and he had to identify which was saying what. That was the worst case scenario for this gentleman to have to know the end game of that story and listen to the whole thing. So it's very private. I don't think the families deserve to know every detail because the bottom line is we know it.

COSTELLO: But does the public deserve to know?

ABEND: At some point when the investigation is complete. And it's -- all the pieces have got to come together to get to a certain degree of understanding and factual basis before you start releasing this kind of information.

[09:10:04] COSTELLO: So let's talk about the very human angle of the story.

ABEND: Sure.

COSTELLO: Because that's why you wrote your op-ed. You titled it, "Why I Take This Personally." Why did you title it that way?

ABEND: Well, because the fact that I'm losing the public trust. My customers are the most important things to me, they're what paying my salaries at the end of the game. And if they don't trust --

COSTELLO: You mean because of this pilot's actions --

ABEND: Because of this --

COSTELLO: -- people are losing faith in pilots, that's your fear?

ABEND: That's my fear. And I had -- flying back from London the other day, one of the passengers took a flight attendant aside and asked if I had family problems. So somebody has already vocalized this. Now some people say the wrong things because they're uncomfortable. But he vocalized it and somebody else might have been thinking the same thing.

COSTELLO: I got to tell you, Les, I fly a lot. I thought about it. I thought I hope this pilot in here is having a good day, I really did.

ABEND: And that's why I take it personally. Because he's taken a profession that we take great pride in and made people, my customers, doubt whether we have the ability to fly that airplane.

COSTELLO: So at some point he did -- he was a proud and responsible flyer. Everybody says it. And then something changed. So his mindset in that cockpit, you know, as a pilot it just doesn't make sense to you.

ABEND: It makes no sense -- it makes no sense to me. I mean, I know how pilots think, he might have been this as -- he might have been contriving this whole thing for a long time and then this was the opportunity he chose to utilize it. But it's inconceivable.

COSTELLO: Do you think it was a spur-of-the-moment decision on his part or do you think he had planned this?

ABEND: I think very much that he had probably been considering it and now here was the opportunity and he took that time to do the horrific thing that he did.

COSTELLO: Mary, do you agree? Do you think that he planned this or did he just take the opportunity when it came upon him?

SCHIAVO: Well, I think that at the very end, when they report from the transcript that there was this controlled slow breathing and the comment about go to the -- you know, to the pilot, he could go to the facilitates any time, I'm not so sure. I think whatever was building up was building for a long time. And when the pilot, you know, tells him to brief for the landing, et cetera, it might have been a spur-of- the-moment.

Also some of the drugs, if taken in combination can give a false sense of calm. So when the pilot left, did he take additional medication, did he get this false sense of being able to do this. There were reports -- I just flew back from London yesterday and there were reports in Europe about a former girlfriend reporting that he had threatened to go out with a very large event or a big bang if you will.

So I'm not so sure. I'm sure he must have thought about it for some time but perhaps it was an opportunity when the pilot left that he took advantage of.

COSTELLO: So when he set the autopilot to 100 feet, did he just sit back and let the plane do what it would do?

SCHIAVO: Pretty much so. I mean, the plane, you know, as Les can tell you, these planes are wonderful, they're magnificent. You know, Boeings and Airbus both able can fly themselves. So all he had to do was dial it in and then, you know, it's interesting that he did not say a thing. I mean, I worked other crashes where suicide was the motive, EgyptAir and some others, and they talk. On EgyptAir, for example, they said, you know, God is great, God be with me, et cetera.

And even in a non-suicide situation where people are in an accident, emergency situation they know they're not going to recover from, often they do say things like, you know, I love my spouse or things like that. So that was very chilling to me that he said not a word. So I'm not so sure that he -- you know, that drug --

COSTELLO: Les, you wanted to say something?

ABEND: Yes. I mean, this is speculation on my part. But he dialed down a mode control panel which is associated with the autopilot. But he may very well have been hand flying that plane because of the sink rate that we heard in that transcript. The autopilot wouldn't allow that to happen. So I'm thinking he was going to fly that plane for one last time in his life. That's just my supposition. But, you know, I know how pilots think. They plan things and, you know, this may have been that opportunity. It's hard to say.

COSTELLO: Les Abend, Mary Schiavo, thanks to both of you. I appreciate it.

Still to come in this NEWSROOM, Indiana caught in a firestorm after the governor signs a religious freedom law many say discriminates against gays.

CNN's Rosa Flores is in Indianapolis this morning.

ROSA FLORES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Carol, good morning. Businesses speaking out in droves against this law. But you know this is not the first state that passes such a measure. So why the outrage now? Why Indiana? I'll let you know after the short break.

[09:14:47]

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[09:18:24] COSTELLO: The governor of Indiana says he's protecting religious freedom. Critics say he's promoting discrimination against gays and lesbians. And now, the new law at the center of the controversy is causing some businesses to rethink their business in Indiana, while putting the governor and others on the offensive.

The law reads in part, quote, "A governmental entity may not substantially burden a person's exercise of religion." Adding that those who feel burdened can use this law as a defense if taken to court.

It is that phrase that opponents say will allow businesses to deny service based on religious beliefs.

CNN's Rosa Flores is in Indianapolis this morning with more.

Good morning.

ROSA FLORES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol.

Lawmakers expected to talk to reporters in just a few minutes to explain what clarifying this law actually means.

But let me tell you something. Over the weekend, the governor made one thing very clear, he said clarifying this law does not mean that it would be cleared from the books. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GOV. MIKE PENCE (R), INDIANA: This is not about discrimination.

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS, ABC NEWS: Yes or no? If a florist in Indiana refuses to serve a gay couple at their wedding, is that legal now in Indiana?

PENCE: George, this is where this debate has gone.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Sir, yes or no?

PENCE: Well --

FLORES (voice-over): Governor Pence punting on the key question fueling debate over Indiana's Religious Freedom Restoration Act. His insistence that the bill is pro-religious freedom and not pro- discrimination, doing little to quiet the firestorm.

Thousands over the weekend outraged.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

[09:20:00] COSTELLO: All right. We're going to put this on hold for just a minute because we have to go to the German prosecutor Christoph Kumpa who's talking about that terrible plane crash that killed 150 people total.

Let's listen.

CHRISTOPH KUMPA, DUSSELDORF PROSECUTOR: Who were investigated and asked, so we have written documents of what they said. I have to ask you to accept that the public prosecutors office is not able to and isn't allowed to speculate on the motives of the co-pilot who died.

The public prosecutors office has to find the facts and is only able to communicate facts. We have documents and data files that enable us to say this at this time. We have what we have told you in the past about what we have found out in our investigation stands as it is right now. There still is no evidence that the co-pilot told before that he'll do what we have to assume was done and we haven't found a letter or anything like that that contends a confession of that.

Added to that, this, we have not found anything in the surrounding, be it personal or his family or his professional surrounding, that is giving us any hints that enable us to say anything about his motivation. We have found medical documentation that show no organic medical illness. The co-pilot has been -- before he got his pilot's license, being in psychotherapy, psychotherapal (ph) --

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Psychotherapy.

(CROSSTALK)

KUMPA: -- has been in a psychotherapeutical (ph) with a doctor about that. He had been -- he had at that time been in treatment of a psychotherapist because of what is documented as being suicidal at that time.

In the following time, up to now, right until he took the plane there have been several visits at medical doctors and we have found, as we have already communicated evidence that his doctors documented him to be unable to work and to fly. But these documents don't show any hint of being suicidal or being aggressive against other people. That's what we have and can say right now. Thank you.

PAMELA BROWN, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: What about vision problems that's been reported?

KUMPA: This is speculation and I told you we don't have any history about organic illness. What you asked me about having problems with his sight, there isn't anything regarding his sight that is organic. OK.

But I tell you, this is the only clarification I'll do right now. We don't have any documentation that says that regarding his sight, any problems that he might have had or might have assumed to have, there isn't any documentation that says that this is caused by an organic illness, and that is anything I can and will tell you about this, OK?

[09:25:11] BROWN: Thank you very much.

KUMPA: You're welcome.

COSTELLO: All right. We just heard from the German prosecutor. You can see CNN's Pamela Brown standing right there beside him, helping him at times with his English. I'm sure he was doing that in part for an English speaking audience out there.

But you heard what he said. He said he cannot speculate on a motive in this case. He says, right at this moment, there is no letter that contains a confession of any sort. This man suffered from no organic illness. There were no hints of suicidal or aggressive behavior in his past, said that he had no organic illness. That's interesting.

I think we have our medical correspondent, Elizabeth Cohen, in Atlanta? Do we have? Not yet.

OK, let me go to Les Abend, then.

Well, frankly, what the German prosecutor said doesn't help us much understand anything further about what happened in the French Alps.

LES ABEND, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: I mean, this man obviously had issues. As far as we know, there was nothing tied to terrorism. But, obviously, this man had -- there was a six month time period, or 18 month, I believe it was, in his training program, where he had to take a leave of absence. That would send up a red flag for anybody involved with this training process because this training process is very specific to Lufthansa and Germanwings.

It's not typical in this States, most people get experience on their own either through the civilian ranks. So, something was going on with this guy that indicated stress -- COSTELLO: How about the stress on becoming a pilot? There is stress

you undergo while you are a pilot. This is not an easy job.

ABEND: I mean, this is part of our livelihood. This is what we expect. We don't like to take check rides, we don't like people watching us while we do our work.

But learning a new airplane, upgrading to another seat in the airplane, this is all part of our jobs. We deal with it in our own little way. Some of us just get done with the training for that particular day and go have a beer. And that's what most of us do.

We compartmentalize, we know we have a function to perform whether on the job or part of our training. And we deal with it. Pilots are very good at -- even if they have problems at home, because all professions have problems at home. We deal with it.

COSTELLO: But here's what I'm saying, it takes a certain kind of person to become a pilot because you're responsible for hundreds of people every day. If something goes wrong with that plane, you know those people are back there. That in itself is incredibly stressful.

ABEND: But, you know, we compartmentalize that, too. I mean, you know, it's our butts up there in that airplane ourselves. So, we're conscious of those folks behind us and those folks are important to us.

But at the same to ken, if we let that everyday of our flying lives affect us, you know, we could go crazy, the same with a doctor or lawyer, because there are lives affected by that. But yes, there's a stress level.

COSTELLO: Other stressful parts, too, this kid flew for what, what am I saying, an airline that's below the --

ABEND: The low cost carrier?

COSTELLO: The low cost carrier. That means he probably wasn't paid very much. We often hear those kinds of pilots work long hours and don't get enough sleep. All of that is stressful as well.

ABEND: It depends upon the airline. Yes, that seems to be the typical case, 600 hours is not a lot of time. I was 19 years old and had 600 hours as a flight instructor.

You know, this man was funneled through the entire airline system. He was trained specifically to operate in that seat and eventually gained the experience. So, the problem with the low cost carriers, because you're paying the incentive of compensation is much lower, you're not attracting as experienced pilot that goes in that seat.

COSTELLO: Let's stand by. Let's take a break, when we come back, much more in the NEWSROOM.

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