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Air India Passenger Plane Crashes At Ahmedabad Airport; Rescue Teams Heading To Site Of Plane Crash In India; Protests Over ICE Raids Ramp Up Across The U.S.; Hegseth: We Need "Capability To Surge National Guard". Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired June 12, 2025 - 06:00   ET

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

[06:00:00]

RICHARD QUEST, CNN BUSINESS EDITOR AT LARGE (via telephone): In fact, I would imagine even as we are speaking, people are waking up in Seattle or Charlotte and are sort of planning to get on planes or from London elsewhere and head down to India to be part of that investigation. You'll have the NTSB.

The plane was going to the United Kingdom. Therefore, you will have the AAIB, the Air Accident Investigation Board, which is part which is The US equivalent of the NTSB. They will be a party to the investigation. India will be a part. But the investigation will be led by the Indian authorities because this has happened on Indian soil.

SANDOVAL: CNN's Richard Quest with some reporting and insight on this air tragedy unfolding right now in the western Indian city of Ahmedabad. 242 people aboard an airline are involved in an incident. Much more after this break.

You're watching CNN's breaking news coverage.

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AUDIE CORNISH, CNN ANCHOR: It's 6:00 a.m. here on the East Coast. Here is a live look at New York City. Good morning, everybody. I'm Audie Cornish. I want to thank you for waking up with me and bring you this breaking news out of India this morning where authorities there say a passenger plane has crashed at an airport in Ahmedabad. This video shows heavy black smoke near the airport. Air India has confirmed that it was one of its planes that was traveling to London.

We're going to bring in now CNN Salma Abdelaziz. Salma, what details have you learned so far?

SALMA ABDELAZIZ, CNN REPORTER: We just received word that there were 242 passengers and crew on board that flight. 242 souls. And when, of course, you look at these images, Audie, that we are looking at of this thick black smoke pluming from the site of the accident of emergency crews rushing to that scene. It is very difficult to imagine if any of those 242 souls have survived this crash, which happened less than a minute after takeoff, at only 625 feet.

Of those 242 people on board, 169 are Indian nationals, 53 are British nationals, one Canadian national, and seven are Portuguese nationals. That's according to an Air India statement. The airliner has also set up an emergency services center to provide support to the families and to provide support to those emergency crews on the ground.

We've also heard from India's Civil Aviation Minister who says he is doing his utmost to provide whatever is needed for those rescue workers on the ground. You look at those scenes again, the charred buildings, the crowds, the residents, you wonder how big the epicenter of damage is when it comes to this plane crash.

This plane was also supposed to land here in London at about 06:30 local time at Gatwick. We've heard confirmation from Gatwick that that flight was expected, which means that this -- that families on this side could also be asking questions this morning as they try to find out again what happened to the 242 people on board that flight.

For now, the focus is, of course, on the scene of the crash where emergency rescue workers are working right now through the rubble, through the charred buildings, through the fires that you're seeing, on your screen there.

And the other focus, of course, the other epicenter, of course, is going to be this emergency services center that's been set up by Air India. You can expect that family members will be rushing there with questions, with fear, with worry and concern, Audie.

ABDELAZIZ: Salma Abdelaziz in London, thank you for reporting. We're going to continue to follow this throughout the day, this crash with 242 people aboard.

Coming up on "CNN This Morning," The U.S. is pulling all nonessential personnel from The Middle East as President Trump seems less confident about securing a deal with Iran.

Plus, RFK Jr. appointing eight new members to the CDC's Vaccine Advisory Committee. Who are they? Where do they stand on the science?

And President Trump has a night at the theater met with cheers and boos at the Kennedy Center.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JIMMY FALLON, AMERICAN COMEDIAN AND TELEVISION HOST: Yeah. The actors were told that they could sit out tonight. They didn't want to perform for Trump. As soon as she heard Melania was like, OK. Bye.

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[06:05:00]

CORNISH: We're monitoring breaking news out of Western India. An Air India jet has crashed moments after takeoff in the city of Ahmedabad, North of Mumbai. The passenger plane was bound for London. So, so far, we've learned 242 passengers and crew were on board. We are going to be following this story throughout the morning as we learn more about who is on board and what was happening with that flight. An emergency curfew now in effect in Downtown Los Angeles for a straight night as protests against ICE raids continue along with troop deployments for a straight day as demonstrations ramp up across the country.

[06:10:00]

So here's the latest. Nearly 400 people have been arrested in L.A. since protests began on Friday. According to the White House, that includes 330 undocumented migrants, as a growing number of cities struggle to contain the unrest.

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CORNISH (voice-over): Police in Seattle detained several protesters overnight after some in the crowd started throwing fireworks, setting fires, and throwing bottles and rocks at police. The mayor of Spokane, Washington has imposed a curfew and declared a state of emergency after a day of demonstrations in her city.

Protesters are also filling the streets of Downtown Chicago and New York City where more than 80 people have been arrested. The resistance appears to be building. All of the cities highlighted in the map are now dealing with protests.

As the Trump administration accelerates its raids, more than 70 undocumented workers were detained on Wednesday when ICE agents stormed a meat plant in Omaha, Nebraska.

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(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MAYOR JOHN EWING JR. OMAHA, NEBRASKA: There's been some unnecessary fear created by the incidents yesterday. There was one raid, and then there were several attempts by federal agents to go into businesses without warrants, and they were denied entry. And so that's created fear.

CORNISH (voice-over): 4,000 National Guard troops and 700 Marines have been deployed to L.A., and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth suggests national guard orders could extend to more states.

PETE HEGSETH, DEFENSE SECRETARY: Part of it is getting ahead of a problem, so that if in other places, if there are other riots in places where law enforcement officers are threatened, we would have the capability to surge National Guard there if necessary.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: So there's going to be a federal hearing in San Francisco this afternoon on governor Gavin Newsom's effort to block the deployment of troops to L.A.

Joining me now in the Group Chat this morning, Kevin Frey, Washington Correspondent for Spectrum News, New York 1; Zachary Wolf, CNN Senior Politics Writer and author of CNN's "What Matters Newsletter;" and Karen Attiah, Washington Post Columnist.

First of all, welcome the new folks to the chat. It's a busy week for you guys to jump in. And I want to start with you, Karen, just for a minute because you, actually have done kind of, I think, a resistance school this summer --

KAREN ATTIAH, WASHINGTON POST COLUMNIST: Yeah.

CORNISH: -- for people who are interested in joining protest movements. The reason why I'm coming to you is because there is such thing as a tipping point. There are sparks, which is what you see in L.A. People physically fighting back. It's not planned. It's not organized. But then organized protests can spring out of that as a result. What are you watching for?

ATTIAH: Yeah. I think in -- particular when it comes to L.A., and this is something that kind of went under the radar for those of us who aren't from California, the arrest of David Huerta, the --

CORNISH: The CIU leader.

ATTIAH: Yeah, CIU leader, a very well respected, labor leader. Not just the arrest, but being injured by ICE, by -- you know, he was wanting to oversee, you know, what was happening and just ask questions. Right?

So I think as we're seeing all of these, protests, it's particularly the arrests of politicians. Right? We saw this Ras Baraka. Right? And to me watching that over the weekend, that was I was like, oh, wow. This --

CORNISH: Yeah. A tipping point for the viewer, right, for people at home who are like, how is this playing out?

ATTIAH: But then also the mobilization of labor unions sounding the alarm. California democratic -- excuse me, California politicians over the weekend saying, this is not OK.

CORNISH: Right.

ATTIAH: Of course, it's not OK to, you know, brutalize people regardless of your stature. But I think from, looking at this and looking at -- well, first of all, you know, just to be very fair to -- despite the picture that the president wants to paint of what's happening in L.A., I'm also watching friends, people on social media in L.A. who are like, this is not the disastrous crazy war zone that is being painted right now.

CORNISH: Yeah. Let me jump in here because the mayor, L.A. Mayor Karen Bass, was speaking. I think it was, on Wednesday where she was outright saying that saying there's widespread disorder is a lie. Let's see if we have that.

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MAYOR KAREN BASS, LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: The curfew that we put in place yesterday is about six square miles of a city that is 500 square miles. So the portrayal is, is that all of our cities are in chaos, rioting is happening everywhere, and it is a lie.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: Kevin, at the same time, I feel like this is a great big do over for the law and order crowd who felt like things got out of hand in certain cities in Minneapolis or Seattle, after -- or Portland rather after the Black Lives Matter protest.

[06:15:00]

So they see this as a moment to, like, yes, they're going to -- Tom Cotton doubled down, you know, saying send in troops again. Like, they're not deterred by this, this split screen.

KEVIN FREY, WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT, SPECTRUM NEWS, NY1: No. I mean, let's kind of two threads to pull out here. One, when it comes to what the mayor was just touching, I mean, this is the power and the evil of television in some sense is that you only see what's through this little square in front of you.

And so you can kind of get this microcosm of a moment in a city that might not be reflective of the larger picture.

CORNISH: Or your social media might be telling you something completely different. I don't know about you. Do you feel like you've seen a lot of videos people have taken surreptitiously of ICE doing its work? I don't know if you've seen that on your timeline or, you know, people saying, oh, look, this happened in my neighborhood.

Like, they don't need the TV, I think, to follow all of this. But it's having an effect when people are looking at the poll in Quinnipiac saying that -- asking how the president is handling, immigration and deportations. Those disapproval numbers have nudged up.

ZACHARY WOLF, CNN SENIOR POLITICS WRITER: They have. But there -- I mean, I think that there's still a split, and we shouldn't, underestimate kind of the, you know, support he has, the president among his base.

And, you know, I think I saw some new polling in the Washington Post today that showed Independents sort of veered towards being against it, but it's not as cut and dried as you might think. I mean, the country is very divided on this.

What I find kind of interesting to Karen's point is that, you know, the administration likes to say that these are professional protesters, but the protest in Nebraska was at a meatpacking plant. These are working people. In Los Angeles, we're talking about garment factories. So it's like, this is the kind of thing that will seep out and affect people, you know, in their daily lives at some point as well.

CORNISH: And, also, one of the things I get nervous about is when you bring in the military, when you militarize the zone, so to speak, injuries can happen. Dangerous things can happen and will that have an effect on, as you said, how people see this.

FREY: -- backlash from industry --

CORNISH: Exactly. All right. You guys stay with me. We're going to talk about a lot of things today. We're also following a lot of breaking news.

If you want to kind of keep abreast of what's going on this week on this issue and others, please check out Zachary's writing in the "What Matters Newsletter." It publishes Monday through Friday. You can sign up now on CNN.com. I'm actually a subscriber. I'm not saying that because I work here.

All right. So we're going to continue to follow this breaking news out of India. Basically, what's happened is a passenger jet has crashed at an airport in the western part of the country. We're learning that it was a Boeing 787 Dreamliner. That's according to flight radar.

Right now, we don't have reports of casualties, but upwards of 242 people were reportedly on board. We'll be right back.

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[06:20:00]

CORNISH: Want to bring you more on that breaking news out of India. A passenger jet carrying 242 passengers and crew has crashed at an airport in Ahmedabad. Joining me now to discuss CNN Transportation Analyst, Mary Schiavo.

Mary, let's just talk about it taking off and apparently crashing so soon after takeoff. What are you thinking as you hear the early reports about what's happening?

MARY SCHIAVO, CNN TRANSPORTATION ANALYST: Well, as I hear the early reports, this is 787 Boeing Dreamliner. This will be the major crash, the crash of a Dreamliner. And as we can see, there's also some footage floating around out there on the Internet, if it's correct, it does appear that the plane, was just after takeoff.

I don't see any flaps deployed. Now flaps are like little winglets on the back of the plane, little parts of the wing that help give it lift, and you use those at various parts in the flight. I don't see those deployed.

And, also, the important clue was that the pilot was able, according to unconfirmed reports, able to get off a mayday call. That means that the pilots knew they had a problem, some kind of a problem on the plane. We don't know yet if it's a mechanical or some other issue. But by being able to communicate that mayday call, we do know that the pilots were having trouble with the plane.

So already there are many, many clues, but the explosion that was recorded on some tape that's floating on the Internet unconfirmed, does not look like it was -- would have been a survivable crash, sadly, tragically. CORNISH: And we should say we're showing images that we've been able

to verify and caution people out there about what you're seeing on the Internet. But the images we're seeing here are incredibly striking. We're having people hand pull away luggage, and materials from that crash scene.

You mentioned the Dreamliner. What's significant about that? What was significant about this style of plane that, draws your attention to it being the to be in a crash?

SCHIAVO: What's significant is it, was, you know, when it when it came on the market now, admittedly, several years ago, you know, the newest -- it had a lot of features on that aircraft that made the aircraft, how should we put this? It made the aircraft less susceptible supposedly to pilot errors and had a lot of additional flight assists and other equipment.

And, of course, people will be thinking immediately about the Boeing crashes of the two, 737 MAX 8 aircraft, not the same as this one. But in course of that investigation, it was revealed that there was a lot of equipment on that plane that took the control away from the pilots, and that turned out to be deadly. It was called the MCAS, which drove the plane into the ground against the commands of the pilots.

[06:25:00]

Now from the video that's out there and what happened is that the aircraft in those crashes pushed the nose down. The pilot pulled it up. The plane kept pushing the nose down. I don't see that in the one very short video clip. But some of the equipment is the same, and this is not the same aircraft as those two prior Boeing crashes.

But that would put tremendous pressure on Boeing, on the investigators, on the regulators to say see if there is any correlation between those crashes and the computer equipment and computer programming on this plane, which is, like I said, the newest, most modern plane of the Boeing fleet.

CORNISH: The last time we had you on "CNN This Morning," I believe you were talking about, the crash in the Potomac, and you were talking about the difficulties created and having a recovery or a rescue scene over water.

With this, it looks like it's right in a city. People are pulling some of this debris, away from buildings -- charred buildings. How do you even begin to investigate something that is in a scene like this?

SCHIAVO: Well, you know, sadly, investigators have had to do this hundreds or, well, literally thousands of times. And so what will happen next is literally an international team of investigators, it will be the Air. It will be the India's team. They will be the lead investigators because it happened in India. The United States, National Transportation Safety Board will attend because it's a Boeing aircraft, so they will be invited into the investigation because the aircraft was made in The United States. And, England will be involved, U.K. because there will be many passengers on there, and it was bound for England. So it will be an international group of investigators.

But the thing they do is, of course, you know, try to remove all any survivors and, of course, all remains. And then they're going to be looking for those black boxes. This aircraft has the newest, most modern version in the world of black boxes. It will record, you know, hundreds of different settings on the plane. If it was having a mechanical, chances are it will be recorded on the flight data recorder.

If the flaps were not set correctly, for example, it will be on the flight data recorder. And the cockpit voice recorder will record whether or not there was a mayday call and what they were able to say they perceived going wrong with the aircraft when they got the mayday call out, if that's correct.

So the next order of business will be to get those black boxes. Because the plane was American made, they will likely be downloaded. The data will be downloaded in United States outside of Washington, D.C.. There's a lab. But it doesn't have to be. India can do it too. Britain can do it.

So those would be the steps in the investigation in addition to, of course, identifying and getting the passenger list, the manifest of who was on board, notifying everybody, and setting up what's called a care team. The airlines are required to have a care team to care for the families, to care for the persons who, you know, may have survived, to provide medical care, counseling care, to provide immediate cash support to those families of anyone on the plane to get there to hear the briefings on the investigation, et cetera.

So there are a lot of moving parts right now, most of which are all covered by regulations and by international laws and treaties, because it was an international flight. So it will be rather, according to the book as they say. And, those very same laws, regulations, and treaties will require an initial preliminary report within 30 days. So, and sadly, this will not be the go around on these kinds of investigations. We've seen an awful lot lately.

CORNISH: But it does have to be a moment for these families. As we said, 242 people reportedly, on that flight, people from London, people from India, we're hearing earlier, possibly Portuguese nationals.

Mary Schiavo is a CNN Transportation Analyst. I want you to stick around this hour, as we learn more information. We at CNN, of course, will be monitoring the situation on the ground in Western India. This, of course, after this passenger jet bound for London crashed just moments after takeoff.

Right now, we don't have more information or any information really about specific casualties. When we come back, we're going to bring you more reporting.

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[06:30:00]