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CNN Live Today

America Under Attack: Firefighters in New York Found Alive in Rubble; Some Airports Reopen with Heightened Security

Aired September 13, 2001 - 13:20   ET

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

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
NATALIE ALLEN, CNN ANCHOR: As we get word airports beginning to reopen, we have pictures right here. This is the first international flight that has now landed back in the United States since the terrorist attack. This Los Angeles International flight that arrived from Canada with more than 100 people aboard, people who have been stranded in Canada, holed up there until they received word that this airplane could take off and land in the United States, the first airliner has landed back since attack, and as you can imagine, more airplanes are beginning to takeoff as more airports adhere to new stricter safety guidelines.

For more on that story, let's go to our correspondent Miles O'Brien who's joining us here in the studio -- Miles.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Natalie, I don't know if we are going to see the picture of those people disembarking from that aircraft, but I suspect a few of them might kiss the ground now that they have arrived back in the United States.

I've heard tales. For example, a member of my family flight attendant for Delta, she has been stuck in Gander (ph), Newfoundland all this time, awaiting a scene like this one, and I'm sure she'll be able to do that very shortly.

Let's take a look at the FAA's Web site for just a moment. FAA.gov is the place to go. If you want to find out what airports are open right now, the airports that have certified themselves to be up to snuff, if you will, under the new guidelines. Bunch of airports here. A lot of smaller sized ones.

I'm not going to go through them all. I've underlined some of the biggies. Atlanta, of course, is a big one, Buffalo, BWI -- Baltimore-Washington, Cleveland, EWR is Newark airport, ID, Dulles Airport. Some of this we've been telling you about, but just to confirm. JFK, of course is John F. Kennedy Airport, La Guardia open. MCO is Orlando. That's big airport. Memphis is big. That's Federal Express country, and that's important that that's open. Miami, St. Louis and Tampa, but notable for being not on this list, Boston, BOS, not on there still, DCA, that's Reagan National Airport, DFW, huge airport, of course Dallas-Ft. Worth. We -- ORD, is O'Hare Airport, busiest in the world. Denver, not on the list as well. LAX, Los Angeles, still shutdown. SFO, San Francisco, also one of the intended destination of those hijacked flights, not open as well. Detroit, DTW, big hub for Northwest, SEA, Seattle.

A lot of airports that are still closed, as we tell that this system is back up and running, it's getting back up and running in fits and starts, because of the fact that we tell you that these airports need to certify the FAA that they have met the requirements for this added level of security, so it's going to take some time before this system is up and running, as we're used to have it up and running, and I guess that goes for an awful lot of things in this country right now -- Natalie.

ALLEN: And, Miles, no doubt, the phones are jammed with people trying to check on their flights and any tickets holding. What can people expect now as they head back to the airport to try and take a flight, as far as how much longer take them to get through, and just what they can look as far as security measures?

O'BRIEN: Well, it occurs to me that I suspect on some of these shorter flights that people are accustomed to, it might be something just to get your car in drive, given the amount of time it will take to deal with extra layers of security, the additional questions, the more frequent physical searches. All of that is going to increase your time. No curbside check in. All of that will add up to more time and more inconvenience for airline customers.

So I suspect you could immediately think of pretty much doubling the amount of time you bookmark for arrival at the airport, and that obviously has ripple effect. That might make many people decide to get in car, and certainly these airlines certainly dealing with what appears to be a softening economy, potentially maybe a recession. We've talking about. This couldn't come at a worst time for them.

ALLEN: Absolutely.

Let's switch tracks just for a moment, Miles. We've been reporting on the Pennsylvania airliner crash, and we've just heard today that debris from that crash has been located miles and miles away from the crash scene. What can you tell us about that?

O'BRIEN: I had a feeling you would ask about that. So let's bring up this flight track if you will. This is based on FAA radar data, and this is the flight of United Airlines flight 93, which all the way up until it got to Cleveland, appeared on be on its way to San Francisco, SFO, and then took this very, very sudden turn here. The transponder went off, and made its way toward the Baltimore-Washington area. But ultimately, as we know, crashed here.

Now, what happened we haven't been able to determine, but we have a little bit of circumstantial evidence. First of all, yesterday, we discovered that passengers onboard the plane, through phone calls to their families, had made the decision based on the knowledge that other planes had been hijacked, and they knew that one of the planes had gone into the World Trade Center, in a sense, they knew destined for something along those lines, made the decision to try to attack the hijackers. We don't know exactly what happened next. We do know it did crash into rural field. We also know today that there is another debris field between two and six miles to the north of that crash site. What does that mean. That means something fell off the airplane before it crashed, there's no question about that. What could have caused that? Perhaps a small explosion might have caused a piece to fall off.

The people who were on the plane who called their family members said that the three hijackers had a red box which they say contained a bomb. We don't know for a fact, but that is one possibility. Another possibility is there was some sort of struggle on that plane, which caused the plane to go into some very steep and rapid bank maneuver, which would have increased the g forces or the load on wings, for example, might have caused an engine to fall off if it was that much of a rapid-type maneuver.

And one other thought comes to mind, If I were a passenger on that flight and I wanted to thwart the effort of a hijacker to reach a destination which you might fear it might be heading, what I would do is I would open an emergency door. Rapid decompression of that airline. That airplane would not make it to its destination.

This is all in level of speculation. These are three areas to think about and look at as they continue to look in that debris field, and now this second debris field two to six miles away -- Natalie.

ALLEN: Miles, thank you. The Attorney General Ashcroft saying they believe the black box will be found from that location today, and of course, we have the incredible cell phone calls as we've heard loved ones calling their families from that plane to tell them what kind of situation they are in.

We do want to make one clarification. We did have pictures of the first international flight landing in the United States at Los Angeles International. Miles reporting that that airport was not open yet. So we are not sure if that airport is open to outbound traffic, but we can confirm that one flight has landed back there today -- Lou.

LOU WATERS, CNN ANCHOR: The most astonishing news in the past few minutes the discovery of firefighters, New York firefighters, found alive in the rubble alongside the collapsed debris of building number one of the World Trade Center. The five were discovered inside a sport utility vehicle that had been parked there. They have been pulled from the rubble and been taken to, we believe, Saint Vincent's Hospital. We are parked outside there to at least verify they are at that hospital, and be able to follow the progress of their survival.

And we are hearing not only about stories of survival today, but of the heroism involved in this attack on the United States, including the fact that Thomas Burnett (ph), who placed four telephone calls to his wife from the plane that Miles O'Brien was just telling you about, saying that he and others were going to attempt to do something. They knew about the other attacks by the other airliners and knew they probably would be next. So Mr. Burnett's wife, Dinah (ph), is now telling authorities that her husband phoned her against her best judgment and wishes, he said that he and others were going do something aboard the plane.

We have Jim Dent with us now as we get into this matter of -- Jim, can you hear me.

JIM DENT, FMR. AIRLINE PILOT: Yes, I certainly can.

WATERS: OK, Jim Dent, we are going to will talk about these new security measures that have been implemented at airports that have been certified to go ahead with resuming operations if they stringently comply. I want to go over a couple of them with you. One of them is thorough search and security a check of all airplanes and airports before passengers are allowed to enter or board aircraft. That would seem to be security measure that I thought was in effect the whole time?

DENT: No this is one of the new ones, and actually this is one of the better once they've implemented. I would highly recommend they do something like this.

WATERS: What does that mean exactly?

Well, what it means is someone would come onboard the airplane, and they would check all the seatback pockets, they would check the overheads, behind all the pillows, check all compartment are closed to make sure nothing is in there; look underneath all the seats to make sure somebody hasn't planted something in the airplane they can retrieve later.

WATERS: So something has been not left behind by a passenger on an incoming flight?

DENT: That's right.

WATERS: Now a total ban of knives. I did not know before that knives were not banned. However, I have ridden in first class only occasionally, and I noticed that we're using steak knives on the meat in first class. They also have been banned. Prior to this, blades shorter than four inches have been allowed. No more knives aboard aircraft. That's good.

DENT: That's another thing that I think was long overdue. It was always a standing joke among flight crews and everything else is that they allow steak knives on the plate.

We never quite understood that, but it's one of those things that I think is a good idea, especially in light of what's happened.

WATERS: Of course, we know from the evidence that's been gathered so far that these hijackers used box cutters and razor blades embedded in plastic as I understand it. Now I don't know if that would have fallen under the purview of these new security precautions.

DENT: Probably not, and here again, it would be -- it would be very tough to detect these sorts of items. One of the problems with the new regulation is that you cannot ensure 100 percent that any of the items that could be used in a hijacking or an attempt -- a terrorist attempt like this could be detected. It's just -- it's just physically impossible. WATERS: A ban on curbside and off airport check ins. This has been banned before during emergencies when airports had been under intense security, but as a general rule, it had not been disallowed because it inconvenienced passengers, but that's no longer going to be the case.

DENT: That's true. They are going to stop the curbside check in. This is going to be a really immense logistic problem for the airlines. You're talking a system that moves hundreds of thousands of people everyday and having those people check in at facilities, verifying their identity out at the ticket counters, checking in baggage, you're talking a huge logistical problem not to mention a manpower problem.

WATERS: OK, we have that and you just touched on it, prohibiting all but ticketed passengers with photo IDs from going past airport metal detectors. Passengers without baggage no longer able to go directly to the gate to get a boarding pass.

DENT: That is absolutely right. Here again, I think that you're going to have a huge logistical and manpower problem. Whether these two -- last two items would do anything to prevent something that -- like that just happened to us, I'm not so sure that would occur, but anything that you can do to ensure the safety, of course, is important. But you also have to balance that with your capabilities and also the percentages of what this will do to protect the traveling public.

WATERS: All right. We -- a couple other mentions here, closer monitoring of vehicles around airport terminals. Of course that's a no-brainer. An increased use of federal air marshals, more officers on duty at airports. On that score, there have been several suggestions about what to do in the future. A great number of people suggesting air marshals. Now I don't know if this rule applies to air marshals aboard airplanes, it doesn't say it specifically. How do you understand?

DENT: I believe it includes having actual air marshals on the airplanes. In the early '70s, of course, with all the hijackings to Cuba and so forth, this was a much publicized rule, and unfortunately, it's sort of slid by the wayside. I think having that information out there to the flying public and also to the factions that do these sorts of things is definitely going to be something that's going to hinder them in the future or let them consider some other venue rather than the air transportation system.

WATERS: All right, Jim Dent, thanks so much.

We're going to get a better idea of what the security measures are and how they may or may not be working in the next several days as America attempts to get back into the business of air travel which will become much more difficult than it had ever been before.

DENT: It certainly will be.

WATERS: Now back to Aaron Brown in New York. TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com