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CNN International: Brazil's President Observes Minutes Of Silence After Voepass Plane Crash, All 62 On Board Presumed Dead; Video Shows Ukrainian Troops At Gas Transit Hub In Kursk; Russia's War On Ukraine; Passenger Plane Crash In Brazil; Investigation Misinformation Targeting US Election. Aired 4-5p ET

Aired August 09, 2024 - 16:00   ET

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

[16:00:30]

ANNOUNCER: CNN breaking news.

JULIA CHATTERLEY, CNN INTERNATIONAL HOST: Good evening.

Tonight, Brazil's president says 62 people are presumed dead after a plane crash the southern part of the nation. Disturbing video shows the aircraft falling from the sky.

Brazil's Civil Defense said it crashed into multiple houses and a residential area outside of Sao Paulo. Several bystanders captured the aftermath in videos that are now on social media.

The Voepass plane left Cascaval and was en route to Sao Paulo when it lost signal a few hours ago. Isa Soares joins us now and has been reporting on this for the last hour.

Isa, I think the first thing we have to say is, just terrifying experience for those on board, for the people that witnessed this. The people that are now watching this, and of course the families of those that were on board this flight.

ISA SOARES, CNN ANCHOR AND CORRESPONDENT: And I think that is so important, Julia, to remember when we look, when we show viewers the footage we are about to show. Bear in mind, we are talking about 62 people, 62 lives, 58 passengers, and four crew members.

Let me tell you what we are learning this hour. This is a Voepass flight ATR Plane 72, traveling from Cascaval in the state of Parana to Guarulhos. That's just about an hour -- and I think we have a map -- an hour-and-a-half flight from one state to the other. This is something that would be done daily. This is an internal flight.

What we then learned is that -- and we do not know the reason, we won't know, of course, until we have that black box, Julia, is that plane suddenly dropped out of the sky and then I don't mean to use that word lightly and I use it, of course, knowing that 62 people have lost their lives.

But if we look at that footage that we were just showing you, we know that the plane dropped dramatically in the last few moments. It was cruising at 17,000 feet, dropped to 250 feet in 10 seconds, climbed another 400 feet in about eight seconds. Eight seconds later, it lost just under 2,000 feet descending rapidly as you saw, roughly 7,000 feet in just one minute.

And where it descended in the city of Vinhedo is a residential area, as you can see from that footage, Julia, and it fell almost pancaked in someone's backyard. You can see pools, you can see a garden. And what I've been hearing from analysts and I know you'll talk about this with your guests, if there is no way to have come out of it, no survivors.

Unfortunately, we heard that from President Lula, who in the last two hours or so asked for a moment of silence as that news was breaking.

An investigation will be started. We know the Brazilian Air Force has sent a team to the ground to investigate, but there is so much we, as of yet, do not know.

Important of course, we are getting information on the ground from our teams as to not just how quickly this happened, but the question is over the air quality, the weather, did that play a part? At this moment, just important to note that luckily, Julia, no one died, no one on the ground there in the residential area died and it is incredible to think that given these images right now on our air of how that plane fell.

It is an ATR 72 plane. I've heard it from analysts, I am sure you will hear it, too, that it has a bit of a checkered past, but I would imagine this would have been one of many daily flights it would have been doing, domestic flights.

So there is a lot we do not know, but we are hoping to get more information from Brazilian authorities this hour, Julia. But a tragic horrendous day for those families in Brazil.

CHATTERLEY: Certainly, and up to 62 families now in mourning. And as you said, lots of questions to ask at this stage, but what appears to be some kind of miracle amidst the tragedy as we were showing those pictures there and I will reiterate it again as you were saying, this looks like a plane in amongst houses, swimming pools.

The idea that when this plane came down, there was no further loss of life, at least at this stage and as far as we know. It is quite astonishing actually, Isa, at this moment.

[16:05:10]

SOARES: It is, especially look at this footage, Julia. I mean, there is -- as that camera pans, you can see there is a gate. It looks like someone's backyard. There it is, and then you have the aerial footage. That is someone's garden.

Of course, it is residential, but it is in the outskirts of Sao Paulo. Sao Paulo, one of the biggest airports of course of Brazil and just to see that and there is the aerial image, the fact that luckily, luckily, Julia, that no one has died is such -- it is important news, very good news of course, but there is a lot we do not know in terms of the operations on the ground, what is happening.

We don't know if there was a mayday call. We do not know if this had to do with the weather, if it was a de-icing system. What I keep hearing is potentially, aerodynamic stall. I will let the experts talk about that, but at this moment, President Lula asking for a minute of silence as Brazil, of course, deals with this horrendous loss of life, 62 people on board, 58 passengers and four crew members.

We do not know the identity of the passengers, but we are working to try and get more information for you as quickly as we can -- Julia.

CHATTERLEY: Yes, and will be very careful about speculating about anything at this stage --

SOARES: Indeed, indeed.

CHATTERLEY: -- until we have more actual information. But your point about what may have been the contributing factors here we will continue to cover.

Isa, thank you for now for that update.

Let's talk a bit more about what we've seen.

David Soucie is a former FAA safety inspector and a CNN safety analyst and he joins us now.

David, good to have you with us.

We've just been showing our viewers terrifying, I will call them images of that plane falling vertically out of the sky, and again we will reiterate that we are talking about 62 passengers here whose lives are believed to be lost, families now in mourning.

So I don't want to be very careful about how we discuss this, but what are your observations of not only the dissent and perhaps the fact that it pulled up for a short period of time, too, but just what might have happened here.

DAVID SOUCIE, CNN SAFETY ANALYST: Yes, it is really difficult to talk about the technical aspects of this at this point, of course with the loss of life. And I am hesitant to do that, but I think it is important that we kind of say what we think might be going on here.

So it appears to me that some icing had built up. They had been in flying through a hundred percent humidity, which creates droplets of ice or droplets of water that become ice and that can get built up on that wing and become very heavy.

And so as that happens, flying through that, at 14,000 feet, it was subzero weather and that can create a lot of weight on the aircraft and it appears that that maybe a contributing cause to this.

And at that point that it builds up and you can see based on the fact that the aircraft went down and then tried to climb back up again, the up climb could have been from the ice breaking off. It could have been from a pilot's reaction, we simply don't know.

But the point is that at that point it becomes a very difficult thing at that particular altitude to recover from because the aircraft simply doesn't have enough air going over the top of the wings, or its too heavy to keep continuing to fly. And so the only way out of that is to nose the aircraft down or to roll the aircraft a little bit to try to get some airspeed over the top of the wings.

But once they get to that lower altitude, it is really nothing that pilots could have done at that point. Once they flew into that ice and had that ice happen, if the de-icing system didn't work or if the anti-system wasn't on, those two things can cause that ice to build up but it is a tragic, tragic situation.

And again, I feel for these families that have lost so much.

CHATTERLEY: Again, we will keep reiterating that because this is a terrifying thing to see for people to watch, and there are obviously, people that were watching that and videoing that, but of course again, as you said, we are talking about many, many families that are now in mourning and thinking about just what happened here.

We obviously have to hear the voice recorder. We need to understand the flight recorder. Just based on what you were saying. And again, we are unfortunately speculating at this stage and there will be an investigation. How much information value can be gleaned to help us understand better, if indeed that is what took place?

SOUCIE: Well, this is a turboprop aircraft. It is an ATR 72 and it has a lot of information that is recorded, both in the data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder, so from both of those pieces of equipment, we will get some information.

Some of the information that we would gain are the air speeds, the exact speed of the aircraft, the angle of attack of the aircraft. And that will give us a lot of information or give the investigators a lot of information about what could possibly have happened.

[16:10:15]

The objective of any investigation, and it is of little solace to these families at this moment, but to keep in mind that any investigation, the purpose of that is to prevent it from ever happening again. And so that's why we have to be very careful about what information we discuss.

But at this point, that's where I would be looking, it is in those black boxes to see exactly what air speeds happened, what the outside air temperatures were, how much the humidity was on that, particular aircraft and whether or not the airspeed or the anti-icing or the de- icing system, which both are critical in those flight modes, where they operating properly? Were they activated at the proper times? Those are the things that we do.

It is not to point fingers, it is not to say this person made a mistake or that person made a mistake. The reason we investigate is so that we can make sure that this never happens again.

CHATTERLEY: Yes, you learn from an awful tragedy like this, as you say, and ensure we prevent anything like it in the future.

David Soucie, sir, thank you so much for your help.

Let's bring in Richard Quest now.

Richard, awful tragedy. At least 62 people's families now in mourning. What do you make of what you've seen in terms of the video and what may have gone wrong from your understanding?

RICHARD QUEST, CNN INTERNATIONAL HOST, "QUEST MEANS BUSINESS": Let's break this down into three or four areas, you have -- working backwards if you will.

You have the crash itself and what you can see from that. And the way in which the plane goes into this flat spin. Literally, the plane has no forward momentum. It comes to an absolute halt. So, that's -- and falls out of the sky.

It might go up 400 feet as it is descending, but that could either be because of pilot inputs or more likely because there was some lift from the aircraft that's from the speed.

But now let's go back to the cause, the approximate cause and we don't know. All we know is that for some reason, engine failure, improper pilot inputs, icing over the wings, failure of the de-icing equipment, structural. I can reel of a million of them.

But this picture shows that at that point, the plane lost any form of forward motion and as we've talked before, to those who are not familiar planes fly because air goes over the wing. The air going over the wing takes longer up the top and the bottom and it creates lift. So, it comes this way, and it creates lift that way. But the moment the plane stops forward and the airflow is disrupted and the plane falls out of the sky.

The number of reasons -- you know, at one level, Julia, the number of reasons are not that many because such a catastrophic failure, but they are so fundamental to what took place here that you are looking at either structural failure or you're looking at total power loss, or you're looking at improper inputs from the pilot. Those are the sort of range of things you're looking at, because the flying conditions were not that bad.

Yes, there was some ice, there were some cold air temperatures, but this is a well-known, well-experienced airport in a sense and that plane fell off the sky.

CHATTERLEY: We are talking about -- and we have information to suggest 17,000 feet in one minute. Richard, just in terms of the time that you have to respond over that distance when you're recognizing a situation and even just based on the videos that we saw, is a pilot able to do anything at that point to try and prevent this?

QUEST: Excellent question and the short answer is yes and no, and I am not being facetious when I say that.

The plane starts falling out the sky at 17,000 feet, but now, wind the tape back to a minute before that. What was happening in the 30 seconds? A minute? Two minutes before? Was it slowing down? Was there an input? Did something fail?

You know, the falling out of the sky, if you will, is the last bit of what has gone wrong. Now, once you get a stall like you're looking there, almost nothing -- it is known as a non-recoverable stall.

A non-recoverable stall and most stalls and pilots practice, are recoverable at some point. But this is a non-recoverable stall and frankly -- never say never -- but the moment that plane started falling, because it had no forward momentum --

[16:15:07]

You see, essentially what would have had to happen is as the plane is falling out of the sky, that it would have had to put the nose down to get some speed to get that lift across the wing, to get it back in the air.

There was very little, virtually none. It would have taken -- it would have taken pilots of genius performing exactly the right maneuvers in exactly the right order at exactly the right second and even then, it wouldn't work.

CHATTERLEY: Richard Quest, thank you for your wisdom and of course, David Soucie before him, too. Thank you.

Now, as investigators try to determine the cause of the crash, they will also want to know if weather, as Richard was saying there, played a role.

Let's get straight to Chad Myers.

Chad, your observations on this. We've heard a little bit about rainfall, some ice on the wings perhaps. Your wisdom, please?

CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: If you read David Soucie's book and I have, more than once, you will know that not one thing will technically bring a plane down. It is a series of things that go wrong.

We don't know what the first thing that went wrong was to get this plane from going 290 miles per hour to only 50 miles per hour forward speed and as Richard clearly talked about, you need that forward speed to get the plane to stay in the air. That is why they don't fly when they are just taking off at 50 miles per hour, you have to get almost to the end of the runway at 125 or so to get that forward speed over the top of the wing to get the lift.

So why? Well, the answer is, we simply don't know what happened in that 30 seconds that Richard was talking about, it is the critical, critical thing. Looking at the weather, there was rain in the area, but the temperature was 12 Celsius. It wasn't below freezing, so there wasn't icing on the ground and we don't really care what was happening on the ground because that is not where the event occurred.

The event occurred between fifteen and seventeen thousand feet in the sky and looking at some of what we call the soundings, the weather balloon soundings, and even the virtual soundings that computer models can show. There was a possibility that the temperature could have been around three degrees C below zero with a relative humidity of 100 percent.

When that happens, you can get something called rime ice or pellet ice. You can get the ice to form on the wing itself or even on the front of the plane if there is enough of it coming in. So yes, the plane can get heavy, but it is that lift, it is the stall of the wing and stuff. We don't mean stall like the engine on your car when we turn it off and its stalls, that's not the stall we are talking about.

The engines were running. We could hear them running in that video, the audio from it clearly showed those engines were still running. What happened between those 30 seconds, between when the plane was doing 290 compared when it was doing a forward speed of 50? We simply don't know. So, there is only speculation of what caused that to happen.

Even if you turn the engines off, you're not going to go from 290 to 50. That is simply not going to happen. It's going to coast for a while. It can slow down. yes, but it is not going to go to that extreme.

So something catastrophic happened in the sky likely here in the cloud cover you're seeing here, this is where the plane took off and this is where it was going to land and that is only about an hour-and-a-half, an hour-45-minute flight and only somewhere around seventeen or eighteen thousand feet high.

So we were not even seeing thunderstorms. We were seeing rain, strata form clouds and rain, but that rain, if that fuselage, if the wings were five degrees below zero and all of a sudden it flew into a relative humidity, hundred percent, even if it was at or above zero, that ice could form quite quickly.

I talked to a pilot flying from Phoenix to Idaho. He was flying around Salt Lake City, cold airplane, very, very cold, probably five degrees below zero for the outside of the skin of the plane, flew into an updraft of a thunderstorm. All of a sudden, he couldn't see out the window, the ice formed that quickly because there was liquid water in the cumulonimbus cloud going up, even though the temperatures around it were minus five.

But the ice stuck to that plane and it was a terrifying 45 minutes where he couldn't see out of the windshield before the ice finally went away and he could see where he was going and I mean, that is IFR to its limit when you literally can't see anything. So all of the things Richard talked about, David Soucie talked about, read his book if you want to know a lot more about aircraft and how they stay in the sky and why they don't. David is a genius when it comes to that stuff.

CHATTERLEY: Yes, but an important illustration to your point, it is an example of just how challenging these kinds of environments can be even when the weather seemingly is pretty benign.

Chad, thank you for your insights too and surpassing all of that, of course and we will continue to ask questions and there will be an investigation, but our hearts, thoughts, and prayers are with the friends and families of those believed to be lost, all 62 tonight.

We will continue to cover this story.

Coming up, Ukrainian forces appear to be moving further into Russia and capturing key facilities. We will discuss.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:23:08 ]

CHATTERLEY: Welcome back.

Ukrainian troops appear to have captured an important natural gas hub in Russia's Kursk region. Video of them standing in front of the facility was posted on unofficial Telegram channels.

CNN has geolocated this footage from the Kursk region which shows burnt-out Russian military trucks and the bodies of military personnel.

Russia has declared a state of emergency in and around Kursk and the neighboring Lipetsk region was struck by what the governor there called a massive drone attack. He said it targeted energy infrastructure and hurt nine people.

Nick Paton Walsh joins us now.

Nick, you've been writing about what you think is going on here and you suggested or asked at least whether it was desperation or inspiration on the part of the Ukrainians now to attack directly inside Russia.

What do you think is the strategic objective here and how potent is it?

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: I mean, I think as this goes on, it looks less like a desperate move and appears to be having significant success, certainly embarrassing Russia.

Now the gas station you referenced was something that as this began on Tuesday-Wednesday, appeared to be part of a Ukrainian move that Ukraine had essentially denied was even happening or not commented on. Now, they are very boldly posting pictures themselves standing in front of the Russian gas giant, Gazprom saying, look, here we are.

And it isn't just Sudzha, the main town near there, which they appear to be in or have taken. There are suggestions that they are at various points of the compass around there, sometimes possibly 10 kilometers to the north, slightly less to the south and in fact, the shocking video you're showing there of what appears to be according to other videos, a huge, large convoy of Russian troops and ammunition that was hit by significant artillery strikes in the early hours of yesterday. That is even further away from Sudzha. It may well have been artillery or missiles, we are not quite sure what hit.

But it is causing says the Russian state media over 500 people to be evacuated from that area.

[16:25:07]

So we are seeing the area impacted by this incursion grow significantly, as of course, with that does the embarrassment and the undermining of the claim by Vladimir Putin's chief-of-staff Valery Gerasimov, that they had stopped the Ukrainian advance. The question you originally asked me, too, sorry for the skew, but we are just getting to it is what are they playing at?

Well essentially, there is infrastructure possibly being targeted. Maybe there are railways, maybe there are other things that they have in their sights they are not talking about, but really, this is also causing Russia to have to rapidly rethink its troop structures elsewhere on the frontlines. They are going to be racing people to push the Ukrainians out that will ease pressure on the other parts of the frontline.

And at the same time too, this is a welcome change of the headlines for Ukraine. It had been bad for the last months. Now, they are able to show success, how they can take Russia by surprise, and Russian weakness.

You are showing shocking images there just now, Julia, of possibly Russia's response to this Ukrainian move and that is to fire a missile at a crowded supermarket.

We've just learned that among the 14 dead in that, three children, officials suspect, they are still combing through the human wreckage they are pulling out of the rubble there. And while that market would have been crammed probably on a Friday morning with civilians, maybe some soldiers as a frontline town, all trying to get food ahead of the weekend, it is another sign of how Russia hits civilian targets at will and it seems at a time when they are experiencing pressure elsewhere on the frontline.

So this coming too with other good news for Ukraine where the US has said they are giving $3.5 billion more in assistance, but still overall, this week, Ukraine able to project strength and have a new cycle that at least suggest they are not on the backfoot anymore -- Julia.

CHATTERLEY: Nick Paton Walsh, good to get your insight, sir. Thank you.

All right, let's talk more about this Andriy Zagorodnyuk is the former Ukrainian defense minister. He is now a distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Council, and he joins us now.

Welcome to the show, sir. Thank you.

Can I ask what you think is going on? Because we have seen a period now of 18 months where certainly the senior leadership of the military in Ukraine has been criticized for being perhaps too conservative and too defensive. Is this now them going on the offensive?

ANDRIY ZAGORODNYUK, FORMER UKRAINIAN DEFENSE MINISTER: It is certainly major development. The government and military leadership are keeping the strategic games currently in sort of ambiguity and basically they are not commenting anything about the operation and -- but certainly we see already some effect and we clearly can make some deductions that first of all, there is going to be a major diversion of the attention, but perhaps the troops from other parts of the front.

Russia has over concentrated its forces in the areas of their choosing originally, which was areas around Kharkiv and areas around Donetsk and they were pushing -- they are applying pretty much all of their resources. We knew like -- Ukraine, knew, an analytical community, military community, they knew that there hasn't been any reserves for Russia. I mean, the reserves very scarce and less prepared and less equipped and so on.

So essentially, any surprise move was really creating them huge troubles because for a couple of days, Ukraine already occupied an area which has more than original counteroffensive, which was happening in 2023.

So, it is a substantial success from -- even from mileage perspective, but certainly will have a very serious operational, perhaps strategic meaning shortly.

CHATTERLEY: Do you think energy infrastructure is also at play? Nick Paton Walsh was just talking there and he mentioned Sudzha and said, I mean, we believe at least it is partially under Ukrainian control, but it is a very important Russian gas terminal that is there on the border that feeds gas via Ukraine to Europe.

Do you think that partly, at least is part of the strategy here? It is sort of arguably more easier to attack it in than to hold it.

ZAGORODNYUK: Let's not forget that this whole pipeline moves through Ukraine, throughout the whole country of Ukraine.

CHATTERLEY: Of course.

ZAGORODNYUK: So essentially, I don't think that that was actually the goal. Certainly, actually the gas station is under complete control of Ukraine because it is still located in a town which is at least announced by Ukrainian troops as being under complete control. And as we could see from even open source intelligence maps, the troops moved way beyond that point.

But more importantly is that let us remember also that when the whole world was pushing Ukraine to negotiate, Putin was saying that they are ready to negotiate from what they call the new reality and the new reality -- by new reality they said that, well, they control part of Ukraine and there is nothing that can be done about that, and the world needs to understand that Russia, if Russia captures some area, there is nothing that can move it out of that area regardless of international law, regardless whether its right or wrong, whatever.

[16:30:17]

So now the world sees that actually, the reality is that Russia can concentrate troops, and they can actually move into some region, but that means that they left everything else unprotected. And that reality doesn't look good for Russia at all. So perhaps that would be if any negotiations are coming, and I'm not saying any expectations about these negotiations. But certainly the situation will look completely different.

But more importantly, Russia is pushing in the other sides of Ukraine, has been threatening Kharkiv, has been threatening the villages of Ukraine, Ukrainian territory, every single day. And they are certainly will not be able to concentrate on those, and they will need to move out in order to protect those areas or do something about that. And most likely that's going to be a complete reconsideration of the operational strategy.

CHATTERLEY: Interesting. So that I'm understanding correctly what you're saying is, is that if we continue to see greater talk about talks taking place, then it's better to go into those negotiations with more land and have that to negotiate, if you're the Ukrainians, versus the Russians in order to do so.

ZAGORODNYUK: Russia was projecting complete, you know, they're like -- they could do whatever they wanted. And they were saying that, yes, if we sit down at negotiation table, we will be dictating terms because we are -- we can do anything. If we want to take area, we will take area. If we need to kill like 100,000 of our own citizens and soldiers, I mean, we can do that but we will still take that area.

Now, so basically, they're all -- their main advantage was that they had lots of people, lots of soldiers, and they could spare no cost, even by taking a small parts of Ukrainian territory. They could literally, you know, afford that.

In this situation, we even see that that strategy isn't not working. So even that is not protecting Russia from other side.

CHATTERLEY: It's an important shift, sir. Thank you so much for your time.

ZAGORODNYUK: Thank you.

CHATTERLEY: Good to chat to you, all right. And we'll have more on the breaking news on that passenger plane crash from Brazil. It appears all 62 people on board have lost their lives. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:35:36]

CHATTERLEY: Welcome back. And returning once more to our breaking news story, a plane carrying 62 people has crashed just outside San Paolo, Brazil. Authorities have just said that the black box, which records flight data, has now been found. The governor of San Paolo has called together a crisis cabinet to respond. Emergency agencies are also on the scene.

One eyewitness recorded this horrifying video of the plane falling from the sky. The regional turboprop was flying from the city of Cascavel to San Paolo. Multiple passengers say they did not make the flight because they went to the wrong gate. One of them telling Brazilian media, "my legs are shaking, only God knows how I'm feeling."

The Brazilian president mourning the victims at an event earlier.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LUIZ INACIO LULA DA SILVA, BRAZILIAN PRESIDENT (through translation): I have to be the bearer of very bad news, and I would like everyone to stand up so that we can observe a minute of silence because the plane has just crashed in the City of Vinhedo in Sao Paulo with 58 passengers and four crew members, and it appears they all died. I want to ask for a minute of silence for the victims.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CHATTERLEY: William Waack from CNN Brazil joins us now. William, our heart and thoughts, and prayers with all those involved, and of course, their families. You are a nation in mourning today.

WILLIAM WAACK, CNN BRASIL ANCHOR: Yes, we are. I'm your colleague in Brazil. I'm an anchorman for CNN in Brazil. Sorry for the improvisation. Today is my day off. I'm not in the newsroom, but I'm following very closely what's going on. Because I'm a private pilot and I fly exactly where that accident has occurred today, Julia.

CHATTERLEY: William, if you can talk to us then, as a journalist, and we do thank you for your time. But also as a pilot then, having viewed what you've seen, the plane that we've been showing literally falling almost vertically from the sky, what are your thoughts and observations?

WAACK: Well, I try not to speculate but it's obvious. Obviously, investigators will be focusing on the meteorological conditions. We had a warning this morning about severe ice, exactly where this aircraft was flying.

This is an ATR turboprop, two turboprop engines, and they fly exactly where we have severe ice. Severe ice can alter substantially the air parts (ph). It means all the surfaces in an aircraft, any aircraft, that are used to control flight.

So if you are as a pilot, in a condition of severe ice, you are in deep troubles. And as we see from the pictures you are showing while I'm talking these aircraft, it's in a water we call a flat spin. Flat spin is turning around its own axis, but without any control, without any movement forward. It's only falling down.

CHATTERLEY: We also know, William, that the authorities have managed to find the black box. And to your point, there will be an investigation, and we do need to understand the communications, the flight controls, what was taking place at this stage. Can I ask what's being said there in Brazil, perhaps?

And I agree with you, we don't want to speculate too far at this stage, any information about perhaps the plane itself and its history. We know it was manufactured in 2010, we know it was sold in 2022, but there have certainly been some questions raised about this plane.

WAACK: Well, it's a well-proven plane. The arc here is a wonderful airplane. It's very well-equipped. It's very much adequate to that sort of mission. I think the meteorological conditions probably will be the focus of any investigation in these circumstances.

This plane was flying in a very congested aerospace. It's a very complex aerospace, where pilots have to keep really, really, very much disciplined, particularly frightened levels. And when an aircraft like the ATR-72 finds itself in a condition of (inaudible), the first thing to do is go down, is get out of that situation

[16:40:09]

And this requires some quick decision by the pilots if they are flying in a congested air space, with adverse conditions. It's a difficult environment to take decisions to say the least.

CHATTERLEY: Certainly. William, good to have you on again. Thoughts and prayers with you, with the families of those impacted by this and those suspected lost. Thank you for your time. William Waack there.

WAACK: Thank you.

CHATTERLEY: All right. Still to come, CNN investigates the pervasive search of misinformation targeting the US presidential race. Our Donie O'Sullivan spoke to the My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell, a prominent election denier. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CHATTERLEY: Welcome back. I'm returning once more to our breaking news this hour. Authorities say they have found the black box from the plane that crashed in a residential neighborhood near Sao Paulo, Brazil. The nation's president says all 58 passengers and four crew members are presumed dead. The aircraft's registration showed it was manufactured in 2010 and bought Voepass in 2022. It also shows the plane was denied operation for air taxi. It's unclear when or why that determination was made. Aviation analyst Peter Goelz is a former Managing Director for the National Transportation Safety Board, and he joins us now. So good to have you with us.

First, let's talk about the black box. What will they be looking for, informationally, from the black box, and how long will it take to get it?

PETER GOELZ, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Well, there are actually two black boxes on a plane like this, two data recorders. One that records how the plane is flying, all of the mechanical computer operations of the plane. It has literally hundreds of parameters that it's monitoring. And then, there's a second recorder that records all of the sounds and communications within the cockpit. Both of them are critical in an investigation.

So if they have the data recorder, they will they will know exactly what the plane is doing, second by second. Did it drop just before it went it climbed? Were the pilots applying downward motion to the aircraft? Were the engines functioning fully? It will give you the complete picture.

[16:45:09]

And in the voice recorder, it will tell you what they're discussing. Were they on top of what they were supposed to be doing, were they doing the correct checklist, were they taken by surprise, was there some other thing going on that might have disrupted the flight? So once both boxes are secured, it generally takes a fairly short period of time, just a few days to download the information.

Brazil will do it probably with another country, and they will be able to issue a preliminary report within 30 days.

CHATTERLEY: And I mentioned that at some point this plane was denied. I'll use the term very carefully, denied operation for air taxi. Does that strike any alarm bells for you or is it, again, a case of, let's not make suppositions at this stage and we'll just find out the history of this plane as the investigation continues?

GOELZ: Yes. Part of any investigation like this includes monitoring and reviewing every piece of paperwork attached to it. They will go back and look at all of the maintenance that was done recently, over the past year, over the life of the plane. Was there a reason why it was denied the air taxi? Was that reason corrected? So it's premature to say that that was contributing cause here, but the investigators are so thorough, they will go through every piece of paper connected to this aircraft.

CHATTERLEY: And, of course, the families, those that are now, we believe, mourning loved ones, will also be demanding answers as soon as possible as well. So I'm sure you've been watching the images that we've all been seeing, a terrifying image of a plane seemingly vertically falling out of the sky.

What strikes you as, again, we're going to be cautious about speculating at this stage, probable cause that may, at least in this case, have created a situation like this?

GOELZ: It's really difficult to speculate. For some reason the plane was in what could be called an aerodynamic stall. And it was falling from the sky, from the wreckage that we see on the ground, it appeared to pancake into the ground at a horrendous speed. We just don't know what caused that.

It could be ice, it could be human error. There was an accident in Nepal a year ago with a similar type of aircraft where the pilots inadvertently feathered their propellers, which meant that their engines were not producing power, and the plane stalled and crash. That's why the black boxes are so critical. So we'll -- the authorities will find out in a very short period of time what happened.

CHATTERLEY: Yes, and we'll get those families of a loved one some answers as soon as possible.

GOELZ: Yes.

CHATTERLEY: Yes. Peter, thank you so much for your for your insights. We appreciate your time. Well back after this, stay with CNN.

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[16:51:15]

CHATTERLEY: Welcome back. And an update on that devastating plane crash in Brazil, authorities have just updated the number of people they believe lost in that plane crash. It's now 61 presumed lives lost, not 62. It does still include four crew members, but now 57 passengers believe dead. So just a reminder the total loss of life now believed to be on that plane crash as a result of that plane crash in Brazil, 61 not 62. Any further headlines or developments on this, we will bring them to you immediately.

For now, we'll move on. US Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate Tim Walz are set to hold a campaign rally in a few hours time in the battleground state of Arizona. She's won a rare endorsement from the nation's oldest and largest Latino civil rights group.

Meanwhile, former President Donald Trump returning to the campaign trail with his own rally tonight in Montana, the Republican nominee looking to give his party a boost in one of this year's most competitive Senate races. And Microsoft says Iranian operatives are ramping up efforts to influence the US presidential election. They're allegedly doing so by creating fake news sites targeting liberal and conservative voters.

Microsoft also claiming Iran tried to hack into the email account of a high ranking official on an unnamed US presidential campaign. Donie O'Sullivan has been traveling across the US investigating the pervasive surge of misinformation targeting November's election. A new chapter of his misinformation series airing this Sunday on CNN. Here's just a taste of Donie's interview with the My Pillow CEO and renowned election denier, Mike Lindell.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONIE O'SULLIVAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: His belief in election conspiracy theories and his insistence on pursuing them has almost cost him his business.

And the box stores and stuff kicked you out after January, January 2021.

MIKE LINDELL, CEO, MY PILLOW: January 9th when I got all the evidence.

O'SULLIVAN: But do you realize what you're doing when it comes to elections, it risks all of this. Like the world --

LINDELL: I'll risk all of that but I can't risk our country. I won't back down.

O'SULLIVAN: There's no moment where you say, you know what, I should just go back. Focus on those --

LINDELL: Never, never, never. I will never look back. I can't unsee what I seen and I can't unknown what I know. If you guys knew what I know, you'd be safe. You go, Wow. No, I get it.

O'SULLIVAN: I want to try find out. I want to try understand.

LINDELL: So this machine, I took -- it only one thing, everything we send out has a Bible verse in it.

O'SULLIVAN: Wait, So this is custom made --

LINDELL: We put a Bible verse in every single package that goes out of here.

O'SULLIVAN: What?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CHATTERLEY: And Donie O'Sullivan joins me now. Donie, it's fascinating because I watched that. I think we all have friends, people who still believe that the election was stolen. And he's actually quite a likable character, and he does fundamentally believe, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that the election was stolen. And he's willing to keep fighting the fight.

O'SULLIVAN: Yes. Look, I mean, that's thing, Julia, right, is a lot of folks, especially here in the United States, will know of Mike Lindell. He's known as the My Pillow guy. His commercials pop up all over the place.

And, you know, he's quite affable and quite funny at times, but he has gone down this rabbit hole, right, of misinformation himself. He is a -- he's buddies with Trump. He's a Trump ally. But, Mike, unlike maybe somebody, you might have in your family, Julia, or someone I might have in my family, or my set of friends who believe these conspiracy theories. Mike has the means to do something about it.

And what he's been it is spreading them. He has set up his own social media platform, his own video streaming service, of course, because a lot of the election conspiracy theorists got kicked off the major big tech platforms after January 6 and 2021. So, look, he's done all of this, and not to mention he's using his Pillows, and Pillow promotion codes is giving them to other MAGA world influencers so they can help support themselves to spread more conspiracy theories.

Of course, it all sounds a bit absurd and it would be laughable, except this is really serious stuff, and we've been traveling the country, and I want to show you a clip from one event we went to just a few months back.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The election was stolen in six battleground states. Those six states were decided by the votes of illegal aliens who came in through our open border.

O'SULLIVAN: These false beliefs about the last election are being used as a pretext to cause chaos and confusion about the next election, and they've spread far beyond this room in Vegas.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Freedom! Freedom!

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This is not a fight between Democrats versus Republicans.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Come on, come on.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This is a fight against good and evil.

O'SULLIVAN: Do you think it will be a fair election?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think they're going to try and cheat.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Our voting system was always (inaudible).

O'SULLIVAN: Are you concerned if Trump loses that there will be another January 6?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No, I think it will be a civil war.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O'SULLIVAN: And, look, Julia, that's the sort of rhetoric we were hearing as well in 2020. You also heard in there this kind of new conspiracy theory that's been popularized, that undocumented immigrants who are coming to the country are voting en masse in some way for Harris to steal the election. That it's just false. There's zero evidence for that.

But, look, what a lot of the folks that we've been speaking to, they have been convinced that the only way Trump can lose, just like in 2020, is that if the election is stolen, if the Democrats cheat. And you saw what happened last time, when people were convinced of that. It led to an attack on the US Capitol.

CHATTERLEY: Sixty-two lawsuits filed, I believe, 61 failed, and that was Democratic and Republican judges, despite evidence to the contrary. It's terrifying, isn't it? It's breaking the country apart. Donie O'Sullivan, great work. Thank you. I look forward to watching it.

And that concludes our news for this hour, I'm Julia Chatterley. The "Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer" starts now.

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