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AirAsia Confirms Debris is from Missing Plane; Congressman Michael Grimm to Resign; Scalise Spoke to White Supremacist Group in 2002; NYC Mayor to Meet with Police Unions

Aired December 30, 2014 - 06:30   ET

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

ANDREW STEVENS, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: You can imagine the scene.

I was speaking to a man whose friend was on board. Not only was his friend on board, but his friend's wife and three children and mother- in-law. A family of six, all on that flight. He said it was, it was hysterical what was happening there. There was hysterics, there were people fainting, screaming. Not helped, either, by local television, showing pictures of bodies floating in the sea.

So, you can imagine -- you can't imagine just how bad it must have been for them.

What we're hearing is that there is an Indonesian warship on station. Still the conditions have been described as quite rough, the seas are quite difficult. And right now we're wait for the arrival of the Indonesian president, Widodo, Jokowi as he's known, to meet both the families, and we're expecting him also to speak to the press.

So, a very, very sad, sad day for this country. A tragic end to the mystery of Flight 8501 -- Christine.

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: Thanks, Andrew Stevens for that in Surabaya, Indonesia.

I want to keep the focus on the area where the debris was found, only six miles from the where the plane was last seen on radar and at the southeastern end of the expanded search grid. So, did expanding the search repeatedly in the last few days help track this debris?

Here to discuss, CNN safety analyst and former FAA safety inspector David Soucie.

Let's talk, David, about where the debris was spotted. When you looks at the debris site in relation to where the flight path of the plane was, how will searchers backtrack to try to find the fuselage?

DAVID SOUCIE, CNN SAFETY ANALYST: Well, at this point, you're going to do some drifting and in that area, it's recycling, re-circulating, as opposed to MH370, where everything was moving in that direction. So, it can present challenges to where did goes, but at least it constrains the area to where they're going to be looking for the underwater locator beacons. ROMANS: When you see that the flight path there is just 60 -- debris

found just 60 miles from where it went from. They covered 13 zones. When you look at the expanded search area, 13 zones, 60,000 square miles, larger than the size of Georgia, we're told -- how did searchers find the debris so quickly?

SOUCIE: Well, it was interesting because the first few zones, this first seven zones, which was the initial search area, was up in the opposite direction where that was, they excluded that area by the fact they had already done the search and found nothing. And they went to the other area. It's interesting to note, though, that that area is behind where they got the last radar.

ROMANS: That's right. Behind where they got the last radar. Where you're seeing the teal or aqua block is where we've seen the debris, and the debris concentrated at this point.

SOUCIE: Exactly.

ROMANS: Pretty concentrated. Does it suggest to you that the plane was intact when it hit?

SOUCIE: It tells me there was not an in-flight break-up or not a significant one at least. Because of the location of the deceased and the location of the where the debris is. It's all centrally located.

ROMANS: So, when you look at the map and we layer on weather. You look at the flight path and you look at the weather, it really tells a story. There were at least three monster thunderstorms. Some, you know, whether experts telling us it would have been difficult to get around it all the way. You see the flight path and you can see these huge red thunderstorms. You can you layer it on top to see exactly what it looked like.

SOUCIE: And, look -- think about what the pilot was going through at this point. He's in the cockpit. He sees this terrible storm in front of him. It's escalating. It's getting darker and worse.

So, at this point, he's got a couple of decisions. The fact that it's behind the last radar tells me two things, it was either in a flat spin or in a deep stall. The deep stall is hard to predict where the aircraft is going to come out, because it's not really flying any more, it's simply falling and they're trying to get air speed up.

ROMANS: So, a stall is going to drop like a rock?

SOUCIE: It can, yes. It can become a flat spin is one result of a deep stall or it can also, they're trained to rock the aircraft until it comes down in a certain direction to get air speed over.

So, it indicates to me that either the deep stall made the aircraft came out and exited back the other direction, or the other possibility is that the pilot made the decision, the choice to turn around because he realized that it was a higher risk to go through the storm than it was to turn around.

Even though he might have been in the storm longer, it was worthwhile to come back. So, it's one of those two scenarios.

ROMANS: When we get flight data recorders and when we get voice recorders, we'll know more, so much more.

SOUCIE: That is definitely where the answers would be.

ROMANS: All right. David Soucie, thank you for that this morning.

We're continuing to follow breaking news -- bodies and scatter debris that are all but certainly from areas of Flight 8501. Will that evidence lead the investigators to the rest of the doomed jetliner?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back to our continuing coverage of the crash of AirAsia Flight 8501.

Officials in Indonesia have now confirmed that the debris spotted in the shallow water off Borneo Island is indeed from the doomed flight that vanished over the weekend. Several bodies and emergency door have all been found just six miles from the plane's last-known location.

Now, how can the debris lead investigators to what brought that plane down?

Richard Quest is here with us in studio.

So, again --

RICHARD QUEST, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: Good morning.

PEREIRA: Good morning to you. A hundred percent confirmation that this is debris from the plane that likely does not surprise you.

QUEST: No, I mean this is now turning into what one would expect. The plane, the debris is relative to where the aircraft was last known. The awfulness of picking up and recovering the deceased is under way. You pick up the wreckage. That is now whatever wreckage you can find.

And you start to bring in the necessary equipment to find the black boxes, the so-called flight reporters, which as we know are actually orange or red. And you bring in -- and they will find them relatively quickly. This is not going to be a difficult job, in the shallow waters of the Java Sea.

So, you'll bring in the locators, you'll recover them. You'll extract from these the necessary equipment. Now, I'm -- I don't know, but I think it may be doubtful that the Indonesians themselves will have the technology or the expertise for decoding them. So, the black boxes and the data we'll be sent to a center, maybe Singapore, Australia or Europe, where --

ROMANS: These were the steps that were so painfully looking in MH370, the crash earlier this year. There's still questions and no closure for those families. There's no plane.

What you're laying out to me is a textbook plane crash investigation.

QUEST: Absolutely. And it was interesting over the last 24 hours, as some of my colleagues got more and more, you know, why haven't they found the debris? Why haven't they done this? What's happening?

Well, it takes time. As you were showing on the map earlier, it's a large area. But now we've moved into the next very serious, very grave moment where you are looking for the remains. That's the number one priority -- to find remains for loved ones.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: And there are questions still, Richard, that could be answered by the black box about what happened.

QUEST: Not some, the questions. I mean the core questions.

We know, we have lots of pieces of the jigsaw, but -- on the table. But now, imagine a jigsaw, that once you push a button all comes together automatically, and that's what this box does. You take this box, and there are two of them, remember, the flight data recorder which will certainly have what the controls were doing, what the parameters of the aircraft, the way it was being flown. But we will also probably have the cockpit voice recorder and that will tell what you the pilots were saying to each other.

ROMANS: How many minutes of --

QUEST: We're well within, it's got a couple of hours worth.

ROMANS: A couple of hours?

QUEST: Yes, we're well within that.

PEREIRA: Save for the fact that they don't find this. We feel pretty confident that they are going to find the flight data recorder. If they were not, the puzzle pieces that you talk about, the way bodies were found, grouped together, the pieces of debris that were found -- what kind of answers can those give us?

QUEST: An enormous amount of information, because you're going to be looking at the stresses and the strains on the metals. How they came apart. It will tell you for example where the plane came apart, where the breaking points were how it hit the ground, all those sort of areas. Will be, that will tell you what the plane, the stresses that was on air frame at the moment.

But this box is the key that unlocks the mystery of how the plane was being flown and what was happening on board.

ROMANS: Richard, John and I were noticing this amazing statistic. That when you look at airlines in the Asia-Pacific region, over the past five years, air traffic has grown two-thirds, a billion passengers every year. This is a huge rapidly growing market, isn't it? QUEST: It is. And I can see where that question might lead someone

to suggest safety issues, rapid growth of an industry. Are they as careful as they should be? If it had been in some of the newer carriers, I might have been more concerned.

But this wasn't, all right, it's Indonesia AirAsia, versus AirAsia, the mainline carrier. But AirAsia is a well-known, well-respected, almost established --

ROMANS: Highly-rated low-cost airline.

QUEST: Unbelievably so, it is the core of that area.

Now, there are new carriers and let's be honest, one of the Indonesian carriers used to be a called Batavia, which was taken over. That was -- you know, certainly not in the category of an AirAsia. But the actual core aviation in Asia is no different than anywhere else, and it needs to be worth remembering, all the carriers, low-cost carriers, tend to be affiliated with one of the bigger carriers as well.

PEREIRA: Richard Quest, we appreciate you giving us your expertise. Thank you.

ROMANS: Thanks, Richard.

All right. To other news: trouble for two congressional Republicans, one of whom is now stepping down. Embattled New York Congressman Michael Grimm says he will step down after pleading guilty to felony tax evasion. Meantime, Representative Steve Scalise is receiving backlash after it was revealed that he spoke before a white supremacist group in 2002.

Athena Jones is live in Washington with more on both cases -- Athena.

ATHENA JONES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Christine.

These are not the type of headlines the Republican Party wants to see as their, as they prepare to take over Congress. But that's right, as you mentioned, Representative Grimm will be stepping down. He says on January 5th. He had at first rejected pleas to step down after he entered the guilty plea last week. But now, it looks like he's heading out January 5th.

Now, Representative Steve Scalise has a different issue, this issue of him speaking before a white supremacist group back in 2002. The group is European-American Unity and Rights Organization, or EURO for short. And it's founded by David Duke, who is the former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan and an avowed long-time neo-Nazi.

Now, Representative Scalise says he did not know that this group was related to a white supremacist and he says to "The New Orleans Times- Picayune", "I detest any hate group and the idea that I could be involved with one of them is insulting and ludicrous."

Of course, one of the issues is that David Duke was well-known as a white supremacist, as someone who harbored anti-Semitic views. And, of course, Steve Scalise is the number three House Republican. So, that's the big issue that they're going to have to deal with in the coming days -- Christine.

ROMANS: They are. Athena Jones in Washington -- thanks, Athena.

Today, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio will meet with several police union leaders in an effort to ease tensions between the city hall and the NYPD. The move comes a day after De Blasio was booed and heckled while addressing recruits at a police graduation ceremony. Police union leaders have blamed de Blasio for the city's volatile climate following weeks of protests in the Eric Garner case and the execution of two NYPD officers in Brooklyn.

The U.S. has conducted an air strike in Somalia, targeting a senior leader of the terror group al Shabaab. We don't know yet if the strike was successful, it was carried out by an unmanned aircraft Monday.

The Pentagon's press secretary says there do not appear to be civilian casualties. The strike comes after Somali military officers captured a top al Shabaab commander over the weekend.

And those are your news headlines this morning.

PEREIRA: All right. Christine, thanks so much.

We're watching news conference that's happening right now with Indonesian authorities in Surabaya about the doomed AirAsia Flight 8501. There, speaking are the head of the search and rescue efforts, the CEO of AirAsia in Indonesia, and also the head of the airport authority there in Surabaya.

We're going to continue to monitor what they say at that news conference, this as the search crews continue to get closer to the grim site of where the plane went down. What is it going to take to find the key parts of the plane, the data recorder, the main cabin? We'll take a look at that after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PEREIRA: Welcome back to our continuing coverage of the crash of AirAsia Flight 8501.

Devastating news this morning for the families of the 162 passengers and crew aboard that ill-fated flight. Now that debris has been found, crews can narrow their search for other parts of the plane, notably the main fuselage and that all-important flight data recorder.

So, how can that process be expedited? And can it be?

Mary Schiavo, CNN aviation analyst joins us. She's also former inspector-general of the U.S. Department of Transportation and an attorney for victims and families after airplane disasters.

And back with us once again, CNN aviation correspondent Richard Quest. Mary, I think let's begin with you, I think the important parts now in

this news that the debris has been confirmed to be that of the ill- fated plane -- in terms of backtracking to find those vital pieces of the fuselage and the flight data recorder, what are the steps? Help us understand how this process goes in these next few hours.

MARY SCHIAVO, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Sure.

What they do, the wreckage that is recovered, where they make a note, of the coordinates of the wreckage. And then they plot that against the currents, the known currents and there are tables of the currents and the tides and the movements of the ocean, literally of the world. And they put those on a big grid it kind of looks like graph paper, except of course each square represents many miles. And then, that's assigned out to the various ships and other ocean-going assets that they have. And each of those takes a coordinate to search and they just systemically go through it and they check off the boxes, if you will. So they know they have covered all of the areas where the wreckage could be, and they just backtrack working back to where the point of impact would be.

And then at that point, of course, where the point of impact is, is where they're going to want to get divers and submersibles and get those assets there as quickly as possible to get those all-important cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder, black boxes.

BERMAN: And, Richard, Mary brings up a great point. This water is shallow -- excuse me -- this water is only about 100 feet deep so divers could get in there and help with the search. Will there be sonar, these towed pinger locaters, things like that?

QUEST: Yes, well, the underwater locator beacons on the fuselage and on the recorders, they will now be transmitting as we know this, remember we went through this with all 370. So, yes, you will be putting assets into the water to try to hear those locators. But it's not again, in this situation, I don't think you're going to be at the extremes, because you're going to find debris.

As Mary was explaining, it will be reverse drifted to where the main debris field is where the fuselage is. Once you know where that is, you can then pretty much go down there and find it physically, rather than having to put in pingers and all that sort of stuff if they have to, they will. But time is on their side a little bit. Time is -- not much, but time is a little bit on their side, because the batteries, as we know, have at least a 30, 35-day lifespan.

ROMANS: These families -- Mary, I want to bring you on this, these families, are so interesting, they're going through a different experience than the MH370 families, who very publicly were getting little pieces of information. They were complaining they weren't getting complete information. We're not seeing kind of the hoopla around these families we saw on MH370. They're watching this news with us. They're learning piece by piece.

There's more information for these familiar list. You're an advocate for these families, what's important for them right now? SCHIAVO: Absolutely. Every piece of information they can get their

hands on. Sometimes airlines, I'm not saying this airline, but sometimes airlines get real secretive and they try to hide things from the families, or they say this is too much for the families. We don't want to tell them that.

That is seriously misunderstanding families and what they need. Every piece of information is important. For example, in some crashes in the United States, the NTSB holds hourly briefings, not just daily briefings, the families just want that information. And many have said to me over the years, don't hide anything from me, don't assume I can't take it I can.

PEREIRA: Right, that's so important, they need that information, investigators need that information.

But let's talk about the reality, Richard. We're talking about an area that there were severe thunderstorms, when this crash occurred. We also know that while the waters are shallow, we know it's a busy waterway we know there's been some tough weather and conditions for them to get there. Murky water.

Talk about some of those challenges in terms of getting to the actual debris.

QUEST: Well, you've got to find it first of all. Well, they've done that you've got to find the main debris field -- well, Mary as elegantly said you'll work backwards until you find it and then you go into the water and you start searching.

Now, in 447, they found the debris field, they found where the fuselage was. But they still had several months before they could find the black boxes. Because after, there was so much time had passed, there wasn't any pings from the locators. Which, of course, only go a couple of kilometers. So, they then had to literally search through the ground themselves.

In this case, I think it's going to be a lot quicker. I think you're going to find they'll recover these flight data and cockpit voice recorders relatively quickly, and they will be out of the water before long.

ROMANS: How long to analyze those recorders?

QUEST: Excuse me, once they have them, matter of days. It depends where they send them to.

ROMANS: They send them to London, you think? England?

QUEST: It could either go to Europe. I would imagine Singapore has the capability of, I don't know. But I would think Singapore has the capability of reading them. Failing of which would be Australia, U.S., France, the U.K.

France is often an important one, because it was an Airbus aircraft.

PEREIRA: Mary, 30 seconds left for you.

In terms of what the families are now going to be helped with, what is the process now for them? Obviously identification, we know they've been asked for photos. Give us an idea of the next few hours for them.

SCHIAVO: Well, the next few hours, I mean, they will have some chores to do at this point. They have been assigned next will be assigned to get photos. There will be some, in some, many cases like swabbing of saliva for identification. There will be lots of information, they will be taking from them, about personal information and then -- it's different country by country, but the airline should be seeking from them what they need, you know, hotels, transportation, relatives, other relatives that need to come in, cash and money for interim expenses.

Literally, the airline should be taking care of the families of the victims as if they're families of the airline and that will really go a long way to help both help the image of the airline and really step up to the plate and do what their responsibilities are.

PEREIRA: And especially help those families in such dire need right now.

Our thanks to Mary Schiavo, Richard Quest as always. We're going to have more on our continuing coverage of the crash of AirAsia flight 8501. That starts right now.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BERMAN: Debris spotted in the search for missing AirAsia Flight 8501.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The debris spotted six miles from the plane's last-known flight position.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A cargo door has been sighted.

STEVENS: There were bodies in the water.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The worst possible news for the families of these 162 people.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I can imagine, unfortunately I know exactly what they're going through and it's horrible.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The searchers have been lowered down by helicopter to try and find bodies from the water as well as debris.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The focus is on the people, on the passengers and the crew.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The most important clue now is the black boxes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They'll be able to piece together precisely what happened to this aircraft.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

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

We welcome our viewers in the U.S. and around the world. And we want to turn right now to our breaking news. AirAsia confirming that the debris found in the Java Sea this morning is indeed that of Flight 8501. Crews have recovered several bodies. An emergency door and aluminum cuttings in the shallow water off the coast of Borneo Island, just six miles from where the aircraft dropped off radar.

That debris will be brought to land as soon as possible, for closer investigation. Meanwhile, divers are being called in to the search site, to look for more bodies or perhaps the rare chance of survivors.

BERMAN: And while this is going on, the families of the 162 passengers and crew, they were called in to receive this news, so many of them you can see it right here, shedding tears, trying to wrap their heads around. likely fact now that they will never see their loved ones again. Some learning the heart-wrenching news from graphic images appearing on Indonesian television.

AirAsia CEO Tony Fernandes tweeting out his condolences saying his heart is filled with sadness.

We're covering the story from all angles, all the key location.

I want to begin with Andrew Stevens live at the airport in Surabaya, in Indonesia.

Hello, Andrew.

STEVENS: Hello, John. You join us just after the Indonesian President Widodo arrived just a few minutes ago.