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New Day

Aerial Search for AirAsia Plane Called Off For Night; CNN/ORC Poll: Jeb Bush Leading the GOP Pack

Aired December 29, 2014 - 06:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning. You are watching NEW DAY.

Welcome to all of our viewers watching from across the U.S. and around the world.

Hope fades fast in the search for AirAsia 8501. The aerial search has now been called off for the night. At this point, no sounds of the aircraft have been found. Rescue officials say they will be out again Tuesday, bright and early, scouring the waters for any sign of that aircraft, which one official says he believes it's at the bottom of the ocean.

Andrew Stevens joins us now live with the very latest developments -- Andrew.

ANDREW STEVENS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Michaela, yes, are you right. So, hopes are fading here, even though we had the vice president of Indonesia live on CNN just a couple of hours ago. And I asked him how optimistic he was. He says, well, this is still very much in a search and recovery mode at the moment, but he did also say that after 40 hours, it becomes increasingly difficult to see how people could survive, particularly if the plane went down in the sea. We reached 36 hours since that last communication. So, it gives you an idea of time now becoming absolutely critical.

That search really yielding nothing today. There have been reports of objects being sighted by one of the Australian reconnaissance planes that joined this search. The vice president said they weren't sure at this stage where those objects were linked to the missing Flight 8501. That continues but it doesn't sound particularly like a promising lead at this stage, Michaela.

So, again, we now look to the next day searching, day two, the full search that is. There are some 30 vessels, 15 aircraft, searching for what is still a wide zone. And for the families, of course, here at the crisis center at Surabaya airport, it is just heart break on heart break. They are not getting news. The frustrations are rising. They're now saying, they're getting more on information about what's going on in the search through television than they are through official channels.

So, the frustrations quite understandably rising here, 150 of the 155 passengers onboard were Indonesians, which gives you an idea how big an impact this is having on this entire country, Michaela.

PEREIRA: Tremendous grief, it's almost palpable. Andrew, thank you so much for that. We appreciate it.

Thirty-four minutes past the hour.

Let's turn to Christine Romans. She has the rest of today's top stories.

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Thank you. Nice to see you this morning.

Hundreds gathered for a candlelight vigil in Arizona to remember a rookie police officer killed in the line of duty. 24 hour-year-old Tyler Stewart was shot in the face at close range Saturday, as he responded to a domestic disturbance call in Flagstaff. Police say the suspected shooter, 28-year-old Robin Smith, opened fire after Stewart asked to pat him down. Smith then shot and killed himself.

Funeral services have been set for the second New York City police officer gunned down earlier this month. The wake for Officer Wenjian Liu will be Saturday, with the funeral to follow Sunday. Law enforcement from around the country attended the funeral of the Liu's partner, Rafael Ramos, on Saturday.

During that service, some officers once again turned their back on the New York Mayor Bill de Blasio. A move Commissioner Bill Bratton called very inappropriate.

Egypt has banned the Ridley Scott film "Exodus: Gods and Kings." Officials says it distorts Egypt's history and presents a racist image of Jews. They also objected to the depiction of god as a child, that also drew criticism in the West. The United Arab Emirates also scrapped this movie claiming it contains errors that are not in Islam or in the Bible.

Gamers rejoice, Sony's PlayStation network fully back online days after it was disrupted in a Christmas cyber attack. The network was hit with artificially high levels of traffic designed to disrupt connectivity. A group of hackers called the Lizard Squad claimed responsible for the attack. But CNN cannot independently verify their claims or their identities. The FBI is now investigating.

What I did not know is the day after Christmas, the biggest day of the 84 for gamers, that system went down.

PEREIRA: Well, at least you got to speak to your teenager for a while on that short day. That's always good.

Christine, thanks so much.

We're going to have much more in the continuing coverage for AirAsia Flight 8501. What clues are investigators over to find that doomed flight? We'll bring you the latest.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) PEREIRA: Good to have you back with us here on NEW DAY.

The aerial search for AirAsia flight 8501 has been put on hold now for the night after a second day of searching. We are getting a bit of an idea.

The plane was flying over the heavily traveled shipping corridor in the job at sea, with relatively shallow waters. How does it compare, though, to the MH-370 search we all know to well from earlier this year, and how long can it take to locate debris?

Joining me here on our giant map, David Soucie, our CNN safety analyst, former FAA inspector and also the author of "Why Planes Crash."

David, you know, we have the benefit of having this map here. It's a great tool for us to sort of walk through the events that we know. So, we know this was supposed to be a two-and-a-half hour flight. We know that the Air Asia flight took off from Surabaya airport at 5:36 in the morning.

DAVID SOUCIE, CNN SAFETY ANALYST: Right.

PEREIRA: We also know there are terrible, terrible, thunderstorms in the area.

SOUCIE: This area is really susceptible to that type of storm.

PEREIRA: Oh, it is.

SOUCIE: Yes, it's quite common to see this type of storm this time of year. Other aircraft have gone through as well. They had been avoiding the specific areas where the clouds have been building. There are different altitudes which you try to be the calmest areas that you can. Other aircraft that have gone through reported at this altitude, it was less turbulent than others.

So, 38,000 feet is the altitude that the pilot had selected as being their most optimal altitude to try to get through these storms.

PEREIRA: All right. So, everything seems normal. Two novel hour flight it's supposed to be until about 40 minutes into the flight. And we talk about that change in the altitude. The pilots request information to rise an altitude as you mentioned to that better air, right? Smoother air.

SOUCIE: Yes, they had. Now, this is what's interesting, Michaela, because they had said we need to get to 38,000 feet. So, while controllers are trying to make that happened, there was another aircraft in the area that was flying through, and that aircraft was in the way so this aircraft couldn't be approved to go to that altitude.

PEREIRA: Interesting.

SOUCIE: So, it was never really approved for them to go to 38,000 feet, although they did execute that client. There is a discrepancy there either in the information that we have, or in what the pilots did in reacting to what was going on at the time.

PEREIRA: You have shown us how these air corridors, if you will, are. This is considered a fairly busy one, correct?

SOUCIE: It very much is. Yes, there's a lot of aircraft that went through there, prior to and subsequent to the disappearance of this aircraft. They're still going through as we speak. There is nothing specific that is inappropriate to be flying through or anything else. It's an area they know has severe weather, it's an area that pilots are experienced at. And these two pilots were experienced at flying through this corridor.

PEREIRA: But what was really interesting that Chad was pointing out to us is that no matter where they would have turned, they would have found really bad turbulence, a hurricane without those strong winds swirling.

SOUCIE: Right. Yes, it's really the perfect storm. There are two or three that had boxed them in.

PEREIRA: Right.

SOUCIE: At that point, there is not really a good decision or a good place to go, because everything is boxed in.

PEREIRA: Let's look at the Java Sea, because this is the area we know the search area. It hasn't been pinpointed but they know this is roughly the area they are looking at, 240 by 240 nautical square miles. Correct?

SOUCIE: Right, right. Now, the reason it's that large, is there's a couple of things that went on. If the aircraft indeed went up to 38,000 feet and then at that point did a deep stall -- a deep stall is a stall in which the powers on, the aircraft is powering through, trying to climb, but it's climbing at a quicker rate than it could fly at. So, the actual air over the wings isn't enough to hold the aircraft in the air. So, the power on --

PEREIRA: Which a pilot would know.

SOUCIE: Of course, he would. Of course, he would.

However, if you look at Air France 447, the pitot tubes had blocked up. So, they didn't know how fast they're going. They really had no indication at all.

So, the computers are telling it, hey, I'm over here, at this altitude or this attitude the amount of air is not known by the hour. So, if this situation was a mimic of 447, then that's how a deep stall would occur because the pilot doesn't have that information to make the reaction.

PEREIRA: So, you've got these pilots that are knowledgeable in skills and have experience. You've got these planes that are far smarter than we are. Is there a discrepancy? Is there is a disconnect? Are we too reliant on auto pilot, for example? SOUCIE: Well, there has been a lot of discussion about that,

Michaela, because as you rely on automation, you expect it to perform at a certain way.

PEREIRA: If it doesn't, right, sure. So, you are not -- you can't go through flying the aircraft and making decisions, especially in storms thinking, well, the automation I have isn't going to work. You have to rely on it at some level.

So, at some point, it's too complex to succeed. There is so much on top of the other thing. In the industry, we call this the sand pile effect. You can put so many safety features on and continue to do that. At some point, it gives us an avalanche of failures.

I don't think we're there yet. I really don't.

PEREIRA: A lot of comparisons being made to MH370, because that -- in our recent memory, this is what we know. We know that was short of an anomaly.

SOUCIE: Yes.

PEREIRA: But talk about -- compare and contrast, the search areas, that was a remote deep section of the ocean that wasn't really well- mapped or known.

SOUCIE: At all.

PEREIRA: This by contrast is.

SOUCIE: Well, that's right. At this phase right now, all we are trying to do is trying to see where the initial impact was. Without that information, what we do know at the point we had communication, we had the ADS-B, the last transmission of ACARS, that sort of information that tells us where it was. However, if it is a deep stall, then coming out of the deep stall, you don't know which way the aircraft is going to go.

It could go in that direction, or this direction. At 38,000 feet, it's potentially going as much as 25, 30 miles in any direction. So, you add that altogether and you are in this 240 nautical mile area.

PEREIRA: And it could be murky water. You could have high seas. It's definitely murky. There is a lot of challenges David Gallo was talking about some of those challenges just in terms of searching that area. Again, a needle in a haystack. You got to find the haystack.

SOUCIE: Right.

PEREIRA: David Soucie, over here with us all morning, we appreciate it.

SOUCIE: OK.

PEREIRA: John? JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right. The anxious families hanging on every update. Their struggle as they await for word on the fate of 8501. We will have that coming up.

And also, some new political news, somewhere we have never been before. There was an actual front runner in the Republican field for president in 2016. So, who is it and what does it mean for the Democratic front runner, and who is that exactly? Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: We are somewhere we have never ever been before in the race for 2016. The Republican Party has a front runner in the presidential race. That according to a brand new CNN/ORC poll.

Who is that front runner? Jeb Bush now leads the field. Twenty-three percent of Republicans put their support behind him. This poll conducted in the days after he announced that he is actively exploring a run.

Let's talk about this. Let's talk about what this all means.

I want to bring in John Avlon, CNN political analyst and editor-in- chief for "The Daily Beast", and Margaret Hoover, CNN political commentator and Republican strategist.

Jeb is in with 23 percent. He is the front runner outside the statistical margin of error.

To me what this says is what he has been actively exploring to begin with. This is what he's been looking at for the last few months. If I get if, I can be leading this group of people, Margaret.

MARGARET HOOVER, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes, that's exactly right. I guess -- it's true he's also had a week of pretty good press, a bunch of 250,000 e-mails released through the Freedom of Information. Actually, he was going to release them, but "The Washington Post" got ahead of the game and publicized, basically demonstrated that he was hands on governor, he was corresponding frequently with citizens and constituents.

He has a lot going for him, besides, you know, his last name, which was also pretty favorable in a Republican primary.

But let's not get too ahead of ourselves, right? It's not even new years 2015. And as we know, this is going to be a very full field.

Even Jeb Bush is going to have, while he has some up right now, he's going to have some downs, because he's been out of office for a long time. He has been doing a lot since then. Republican primary voters haven't examined what he is up to.

So, there is going to be a lot of material for to us talk about over the next two years.

PEREIRA: That is so much fun. So, let's delve into even more. JOHN AVLON, THE DAILY BEAST: Let's do it.

PEREIRA: Chris Christie, 13 percent. Marco Rubio not even on the poll.

What is happening?

AVLON: So, this is what's interesting about this poll, because polls really have limited utility, 13 months out.

But, but, but, no, no, no, Christine, stop, I'm loving it. But what is really interesting is what you don't see in this poll. What's really interesting is you don't see the name Ted Cruz, you don't see the name Marco Rubio, you don't see the name Rick Perry.

People who are serious mounting races for president, you don't see a standard Tea Party banner carrier in this poll some that's fascinating, the fact Jeb is ahead, Chris Christie in two, that's a strong establishment corridor, Ben Carson if three, that's weird. The senators nowhere to be safe.

BERMAN: Can we look back at one second here and back at it again, because there is also something interesting on the map, where you look at the top two people right there, Jeb Bush and Chris Christie, that's 36 percent of the establishment block. They are way ahead, even if you add up all the others there who make up perhaps the Tea Party-ish side of the party.

AVLON: Absolutely. Executive leadership matters. That's one thing that shows. High name ID also matters a lot. But Christie is actually doing better in this poll than he has in some previous. And those senators who suck up so much of the oxygen in our national debate, when we talk about walk, people planning for '16, except for Rand Paul, they are nowhere to be seen.

Rand Paul has his own constituents. The other thing, Mike Huckabee, not someone we talk about a lot. But that evangelical corridor of the Republican base, that's reflected in Huckabee. It's going to be a factor. It always is.

PEREIRA: Let's move to the Democrat in front. Can you pull that poll up? Talk about a number, 66 percent for Hillary Clinton. We are looking at a Bush-Clinton lock do you think so early on?

ROMANS: Wow. Look at that.

HOOVER: Certainly, it's hard to imagine who comes up behind Hillary Clinton. I mean, Hillary Clinton, really, it's hers to win or lose, frankly. I mean, it's up to her. That's what those numbers say. That was the conventional wisdom years ago, as my husband got to say.

But truly, that's the case here. There is no insurgent first term senator --

AVLON: Look. I mean, Jim Webb is going to get in, in all likelihood, Martin O'Malley, governor of Maryland, those folks aren't even polled. Poor Joe Biden buried in that pack.

What is so significant, you can't say enough about, she is pulling six times higher than anybody else in the Democratic field. That is unprecedented in the Democratic side of the aisle, probably both sides of the aisle it's a Godzilla-like lead.

ROMANS: When I look at races like that, that means you got nothing to do but hurt yourself, when you have numbers like that this early in the game.

BERMAN: There is a precedent right now, President Barack Obama, who did an interview with PBS which aired this morning just a short time ago. And in this interview which really just aired, he was talking about this moment that he's been in since the November elections when the Democrats took a beating.

He calls it a liberating moment. I think he is talking about the decisions he made in Cuba, the decisions he made with immigration reform, and a lot of other things, net neutrality that had been going. A liberating moment, does that make sense to you, Margaret?

HOOVER: You know, it states that the president wasn't actually interested in giving a go in the last two years of his presidency when a few Congress was coming to town. I mean, there was a lot of sort of olive branches for the first 24 hours after the election. I'll try to work with the Congress and I'll try to see what happens when they come in.

But then, you know, he was liberating, he was able to just go off and act through executive orders and use the force of the executive branch, it demonstrates that what we sort of already knew, the president isn't affluent at working with legislature. He isn't very good at getting his agenda or initiatives or priorities through Congress. So, he felt free, like he didn't need to anymore.

I think it's unfortunate, personally, because I think always you have better legislation if it aligns first through the legislative branch.

AVLON: And I think there's a calculation he's making that, look, Republicans are going to need to work with him to pass legislation they want to see, maybe there is some common ground and trade agreements, corporate tax reform.

But this is a liberated lame duck, because I think he is saying, I'm in the going to get fooled against by Lucy and the football, and think that the Republicans are working when they can't control their own caucus. I'm going to do what I think is right and he took a shellacking in the midterms, and he got off on that, and he said, you know what, I am president the next two years, and we're going to take decisive action. So, I think he is liberated in his psychology and his actions.

HOOVER: Unfortunately, I feel because it's an entire new Congress. And you got, you know, give peace a chance. I said this several times. It is not that -- seriously, though, I mean, it's not that there isn't

going to be a crazy caucus in the Republican House of Representatives like there was before. But there really is new leadership in the Senate. Mitch McConnell is known as a deal maker, to the extent of big legislation that's happened during his presidency, because Mitch McConnell and Joe Biden made it happen.

So, there really was this chance of being able to get some things done. But the president decided he didn't want to deal with it.

BERMAN: Margaret Hoover, John Avlon, happy holidays.

AVLON: Happy holidays to you guys.

PEREIRA: Almost happy New Year.

BERMAN: Thank you so much for being here.

We are falling on a lot of news this morning, we want to get right through it.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: AirAsia flight lost contact with air traffic controllers Sunday morning.

STEVENS: There have been reports of objects floating in search zones. Do you know if they're linked at all to the missing plane?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're very devastated by what's happened. (INAUDIBLE) right now is for the relatives.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It was to be his last vacation with his family.

BERMAN: Passengers trapped on a smoldering Greek ferry.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: One of the survivors compared this to the Titanic.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The fire doors in the ferry were not functioning. They should have been able to hold that fire.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PEREIRA: Good morning, and welcome to NEW DAY. I'm Michaela Pereira. John Berman is here, and is Christine Romans.

It is Monday, December 29th. We welcome our viewers from across the country and around the world.

A massive search for missing AirAsia flight 8501 turning up empty. And the aerial efforts are on hold now for the rest of the night. A top rescue official said this morning the plane is likely at the bottom of the sea.

That aircraft with 160 people on board, including six children and one infant was on its way to Singapore from Indonesia when it suddenly vanished over the Java Sea on Sunday.

BERMAN: Now, this flight was airborne 42 minutes flying through rough weather when it lost contact with air traffic control. Right now, it's not exactly clear if that weather played any role in the aircraft's disappearance. There was no distress call made from the cockpit.

Indonesia's vice president says it is still a search and rescue mission going on there. But the hope of finding survivors, he says, is fading fast.

We are covering this story from all angles this morning, in all of the key locations.