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New Day

Objects on Sea Floor Believed from Flight 8501; Bodies Arrive in Surabaya; California Drivers Stranded in Snow

Aired December 31, 2014 - 06:00   ET

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

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They've found wreckage of what appears to be the plane's fuselage lying at bottom of the Java Sea.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You would think it would have to fall belly- first.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I think the plane stalled.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Clearly the aircraft has broken up.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A stark in your face reminder of the human tragedy.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I am the leader of this company and I have to take responsibility.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning to you and welcome to NEW DAY. It is the final day of 2014. It is Wednesday, December 31st, 6:00 in the east. I'm Michaela Pereira, along with Christine Romans. Poppy Harlow is here with us as well.

We begin right with our breaking news, a dramatic development overnight in the crash of flight AirAsia Flight 8501. Sonar may have detected wreckage at the bottom of the Java Sea.

This development comes a day after debris and victims' bodies were recovered floating on the surface of the water, rough winds, rain and surf however have halted today's search.

Search teams are hoping to get become in the water soon. AirAsia's CEO says the weather forecast for the next several days is not looking good.

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: More heartbreak for families awaiting word on the fate of their loved ones. A seventh body was pulled from the water. The bodies of two victims arrived at a naval air base in Surabaya for identification.

Relatives of the 162 people onboard that plane understandably in anguish. Many were seen crying, yelling and even fainting. We're covering the story from all angles as only CNN can. We want to begin with Gary Tuchman live from the naval air base in Surabaya. Good morning, Gary.

GARY TUCHMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Christine, hello to you.

We can tell you right now we saw an amazingly poignant ceremony two hours ago when the first two victims were brought back here to Surabaya in coffins, with an honor guard of more than 100 military members from the Indonesian army, air force and navy aboard an Indonesian air force plane.

The caskets came off the plane. They were numbered 001 and 002. We don't know their identities. They were brought to a nearby hospital where they will be identified. And that honor ceremony will repeat for each and every one of the bodies that is recovered.

The mystery of where this plane went down appears to have been solved. But the mystery of why the plane went down has not been solved.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

TUCHMAN (voice-over): This morning, the first group of recovered passengers arriving in Surabaya in an emotional ceremony in caskets marked 001 and 002.

This as Indonesian authorities focus on pinpointing the exact location of AirAsia Flight 8501, officials confirming sonar imagery located wreckage believed to be from the aircraft, submerged at the bottom of the Java Sea.

GEOFFREY THOMAS, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF/MANAGING DIRECTOR, AIRLINERATINGS.COM: What's going to be of particular interest is what parts of the airplane are there -- the wings, the tail -- just to sort of try to understand whether the plane broke up in flight or remained intact.

TUCHMAN: Other reports suggest the plane may be lying upside-down, according to "The Wall Street Journal."

On Tuesday recovery team brings in pieces of debris ashore, along with the remains of six passengers and a flight attendant. Authorities now faced with a gruesome task: recovering more of the passengers from the wreckage and identifying the bodies for grief-stricken families.

But some still hold onto hope, one woman with six family members on board telling CNN, "There is nothing confirmed as far what happened to the passengers and we are still hoping there is a miracle and they survive."

At the crisis center here in Surabaya, relatives gather for a prayer service inside the airport. Next, the hunt for clues, answers as to what brought down AirAsia Flight 8501, likely contained in the plane's flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder, otherwise known as the black boxes, located in the tail section of the aircraft.

THOMAS: I'm hoping by first thing next week that we're going to have a very clear picture of what happened to this airplane, because the industry absolutely needs to know, urgently, what went wrong.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

TUCHMAN: Now, the CEO of AirAsia has become a familiar presence on television over the last few days. He spoke just a few minutes ago.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TONY FERNANDES, CEO, AIRASIA: Search-and-rescue team is doing a fantastic job. They're narrowing the search. They're feeling a bit more comfortable that they're beginning to know where it is. But they have -- there's no confirmation, no sonar, nothing. Some visual identification.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TUCHMAN: You heard what he said about the sonar. We have talked to people in charge of this search mission, and they have told us, while it's not definite, they do believe that the sonar from the airplane has identified the plane as being on the bottom, in about 100 feet of water in the Java Sea.

We should tell you we just found out minutes ago, Michaela and Christine, that an additional five bodies will go through that same ceremony that we saw two hours ago, about one hour from now. So tonight, seven bodies will be brought back to this airport where they started a trip which was supposed to be so much fun, so many people going away for New Year's, and now they're coming back here tonight -- Michaela, Christine.

PEREIRA: Seven families will begin that process of mourning. A hundred and fifty-five families still waiting until the remains of their loved ones are brought back. All right, Gary. Thanks so much.

We know that the search efforts, obviously, have been hampered because of the weather in that search area. It's continuing to deteriorate. We're told it's going to be bad for the next two or three days, in fact.

Let's take a look at the system that's moving through there. Meteorologist Chad Myers joins us.

We know that this is kind of an intense weather area to begin with. Especially this time of year.

CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Take a look at the map behind me. Take a look at these red areas. These are tops of thunderstorms, 45,000 to 55,000 feet tall. The search area is right here. This is the map of about 6 a.m. local time there, when they wanted to do the search.

Here's the problem with this area. The weather is bad in the morning when you want to send the crews out, and then it gets good at night when the sun goes down.

You could see Gary. It didn't even look like the wind was blowing. For a while today the wind was blowing 35 or 40. Here's what it is right now. There's not even any rain showers in the search area.

Tomorrow morning, bam, we're right back here where we were yesterday. We have showers and thunderstorms everywhere. Tomorrow night, the showers are gone. The next morning, Friday morning, they're back again right over the search area, intense; and then by the afternoon, they're gone.

So as soon as you lose the light in the area, then you lose the bad weather, and that's not what you want. You want it to go the other way, would be more ideal.

But with four inches of rainfall just in the next couple of days here, and this is a devastating map here. These are wind speeds of 50 miles per hour right over the search area. We're going to get waves of 25 feet there.

Michaela, back to you.

PEREIRA: Yes, Chad, and of course, there's urgency to get the remains of those other passengers out. But at the same time, they don't want to risk the lives of search-and-rescuers, at all.

MYERS: You bet.

PEREIRA: Chad, thanks so much. We'll check back in with you.

For more now we're joined by CNN aviation analyst and former inspector general of the U.S. Department of Transportation, Mary Schiavo. She also represents victims and families following airplane disasters. Also here with us, CNN safety analyst and former FAA safety inspector David Soucie. He has a new book coming out, "Malaysian Airlines Flight 370: Why it Disappeared and" -- chillingly -- "Why it's Only a Matter of Time Before This Happens Again."

Good morning to the both of you. I think we have to talk, obviously, about these overnight developments. First, we're told, David, that sonar has detected the wreckage of the plane, the fuselage of the plane on the bottom of the sea floor there in the Java Sea. and then now backing off, saying that's not confirmed; that's not confirmed. What does that say to you, and what concerns do you have about that?

DAVID SOUCIE, CNN SAFETY ANALYST: Well, Tony Fernandes is not the kind of man who is going to take something on its surface value. Until he has proof that, yes, that is that aircraft, he's not going to say, yes, it is the aircraft.

So that's why I think we're seeing here, is they don't want to make mistakes like 370, where they said, "This is conclusively -- this is what happened," and then come back later and say, "Well, no, we were wrong." That's why right now you don't see the screaming and the crying. You see the acceptance that's going on with the families because of the fact there's not been any misinformation.

PEREIRA: Misinformation, lack of transparency, Mary, one of the things that we heard complaints of with MH-370. This time they're trying to be as transparent as possible. They're trying to make sure that most information is released. But also factually.

So let's talk about this development. What do you anticipate if the sonar has spotted something? Given what we've seen in terms of the debris field, the deceased that have been found in the ocean, do you anticipate we're going to see a whole fuselage? Do you anticipate the plane will have broken up?

MARY SCHIAVO, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Well, I think the plane will have broken up. Because from the altitude at which it was flying, I mean, literally any altitude over a few thousand feet, I mean, a plane hitting water is comparable to a plane hitting cement.

And so I think most likely we will see it broken up. There will be large pieces, but we know it has broken up because of the bodies that have already been found. They had to get out of the fuselage one way or another. And they got out by being broken up.

But there may be some pretty large pieces. And what would be very helpful for everyone -- the searchers, the families, and of course, the air investigators -- would be if that tail part of the fuselage is still intact and the black boxes are still there on the ocean floor. Then they don't even need to go listening for pings. They just go in and get the black boxes without even disturbing that recovery of the body process.

PEREIRA: Mary, speaking of the bodies, we understand some of the bodies that were recovered, the deceased that were recovered, some were unclothed. One was wearing a flight attendant's uniform. Help us understand what that tells investigators when you've done these investigations.

SCHIAVO: Well, you know, the clothed and not clothed is kind of interesting, because in some accidents the victims are clothed. Other than, you know, tearing away or depending upon the forces. And others they're unclothed. And the unclothed ones, for example -- I'll give an example of a crash that was long ago. And that was the shoot-down of Iran Air. And the plane broke up in the air at altitude. And the victims were largely unclothed. The fall and the forces on the body falling from the air actually ripped the clothing off.

In other accidents it's a mix, because some who are ejected from the plane upon impact, the clothes are ripped away; and then others who surface later, they're intact. So you tell a little bit about the clothing. It's certainly not conclusive. But it does help searchers have an idea if the plane will be intact, in large pieces or small pieces, et cetera. So it's just one of the many pieces of information they'll look at.

PEREIRA: Another piece of information that we know that is on the side of investigators that are on scene of the search and rescue, is the fact that we've talked about quite a lot. That areas of the Java Sea here are only about 100 feet deep. I imagine that the hope is that parts of the plane will be intact. It will help with the investigation. And in fact, wasn't Air France, there was a good portion of the plane...

SOUCIE: Yes. Resting on the bottom.

PEREIRA: Resting on the bottom. You have to be very careful on how that's brought up. Do you bring it up right away? How does that...

SOUCIE: No. You don't necessarily. The only thing you do in the investigation, the only thing you do is in the purpose of finding out what happened. Once you find out what happened, there's really not a lot of benefit in doing anything more. Because you're taking resources away from the investigation of and the purpose of the investigation.

So at this point, and with Air France 447, as well, the focus is on getting the bodies back to the loved ones. They really need to do that. Closure-wise.

There's also a lot of evidence, as Mary said, about the clothing. There's other evidence about what is in lungs, for example. Is there salt water in the lungs or is it -- are they clear? Those are all clues in this puzzle of riddles that we're trying to put together.

PEREIRA: And of course, most of the clues will come in in the flight data recorders that they're hoping to get, as Mary mentioned, in the tail of the wing. David Soucie, Mary Schiavo, really appreciate it. We'll be talking about it throughout the morning.

ROMANS: All right. We have another developing story we want to bring to you, breaking overnight in Southern California. More than 100 motorists trapped on a highway in heavy snow. Dozens have been rescued at this hour, but there are more still awaiting help.

A car accident led to major delays during a winter storm. By the time the accident was cleared, many cars were unable to get out, thanks to a foot of new snow.

We want to bring in San Bernardino Fire Chief David Hartwood to give us the latest on rescue efforts. He joins us on the phone.

Good morning, Chief.

DAVID HARTWOOD, SAN BERNARDINO FIRE CHIEF (via telephone): Good morning. How are you?

ROMANS: I'm fine. You've had a very, very busy night. So you say 25 people in one group have been rescued. Another 50 people in another group. We're looking at a map right now and some video of just what the conditions are. Tell us how you're getting them out.

HARTWOOD: Yes, so we used on the Crestline side, the Lake Arrowhead side of one of our mountain ranges, we used snow CATs. We have a fleet of snow CATs for our mountain resort communities. And we brought them down to some lower elevations. And we took some stranded motorists on the Lake Arrowhead side to Crestline First Baptist Church, where they'll be sheltered overnight.

And then on the other side, our L.A. County side, and that's the Mount Baldy area, we took 40 occupants. Mount Baldy Road was closed and

impassable. So we took them by crew buggy, a vehicle we use to transport our fire crew members up to Mount Baldy Lodge, and they'll be spending the night there.

ROMANS: It gives you new meaning to a ski vacation, doesn't it, when you can't get there. When the skis are on -- happen to be in your car. Tell me about the condition of the people who you're -- who you're rescuing.

HARTWOOD: They're in good spirits. We had on both sides, we had motorists who were prepared and decided to stay with their vehicles. But as I said, a number of them, about 40 on the Mount Baldy side, the L.A. County line side, and then closer to 50 on the Lake Arrowhead side chose to take us up on our offer to transport them to a warm location and some food and coffee. And they'll be staying the night there.

PEREIRA: Happy new year, I guess, to all of them. Much better than spending the night in your car.

What are you advising people who are trying to drive in the area? I know it's an arctic snow mass and a lot of winds that have come together to cause the system. What are you telling people who might be on the road?

HARTWOOD: Well, we -- we always tell people here in our mountain communities, especially during the winter, to drive prepared. And that is to not only have a full tank of gas, but then to have food and clothing, warm clothing in your vehicles.

This was especially odd for us. This is -- we're used to snow in our communities, mountain communities here, especially resort communities, but snow level got all the way down to 1,000 feet here. So really these right above the valley areas, our inland empire and San Gabriel Valley areas, received, like you said, up to 12 inches of snow. So that -- it was odd for us.

And then most people just went up for a day of skiing. Roads were good in the morning, and then they got caught and ill-prepared to come back down the hill.

ROMANS: All right. Chief Mark Hartwood, we wish you the best of luck. We wish all of those people a happy New Year. Glad to hear that so many of them were so prepared. Thank you, sir.

Our CNN's Sara Sidner, by the way, is on her way to the scene of those rescues. We're going to have more in our next hour about what's happened there. The San Bernardino mountains, just east of L.A.

PEREIRA: Hearty folk there.

ROMANS: Yes. Well, you know, that's a lot to go through for a ski trip. Let's get to Poppy Harlow. There's a lot more going on in the world.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN CORRESPONDENT: A lot of headlines for you. We begin in suburban Philadelphia, where police shot and killed a man who they say tried to run them over. Police are saying that they were trying to arrest this 52-year-old, his name, Joseph Anthony Pacini, on Tuesday for posting online videos, threatening to kill police officers, as well as FBI agents. His death comes a little more than a week after a man who made similar threats then shot and killed two NYPD police officers in their patrol car, then shot himself in a subway station.

U.S. Law enforcement officials are pushing back hard against Sony hack theories suggesting that a former employee, an insider may have been behind that cyberattack. It comes after cybersecurity firm Norse says that evidence it collected points to an inside job, adding it couldn't find any clear indication that North Korea offered -- or ordered, rather, or funded the attack. Well, U.S. officials say Norse only examined a very narrow piece of the hack. They say they still firmly believe North Korea was responsible.

Also, House Majority Whip Steve Scalise is in damage control after admitting he spoke to a white supremacist group. CNN has learned Scalise is trying to gauge the level of support he has right now after that 2002 speech surfaced just days before the new GOP-led Congress convenes. House Speaker John Boehner says he has, quote, "full confidence" in the Louisiana congressman. In a new statement Scalise says he does regret the mistake and wholeheartedly condemns the views of the group that he did speak to.

And it is very early here. But it is New Year's Eve in the U.S. as we prepare for tonight. But in some parts of the world they're already ringing in 2015. It is amazing. Look at that beautiful celebration.

PEREIRA: Wow.

HARLOW: Happy new year, New Zealand. These pictures from Auckland, New Zealand, where revelers brought in the new year just a few moments ago.

A small part of Russia will hit the new year at 7 a.m. Eastern Time here, followed by eastern Australia at 8 a.m. Eastern. The countdown to 2015 here in the east now just under 18 hours away.

PEREIRA: I love that, kind of watching the new year rung in.

HARLOW: I love watching it.

PEREIRA: Every hour, somewhere.

HARLOW: I ring it in early every year. I move all the clocks forward three hours.

PEREIRA: You've already done that.

HARLOW: So the kids think it's 9 p.m. But it's hard with cell phones and devices where they can see the real time.

HARLOW: They know. They know what's up, Mom.

PEREIRA: All of my people are on the West Coast, I'm going to have to face time with them at 12, and then I worry that I'm going to have to face time with them when it's their 12, as well.

ROMANS: You're going to be on TV tonight, Michaela. You can't do that.

PEREIRA: I know. A lot going on.

ROMANS: Thank you, Poppy.

HARLOW: You're welcome.

ROMANS: Back to our top story right now, the mystery surrounding what brought down AirAsia Flight 8501. Our experts weighing in on some questions you have tweeted us.

PEREIRA: To perhaps a possible breakthrough in the search. Objects thought to be from the wreckage of the plane have been spotted on the bottom of the Java Sea. Is it the main fuselage? If not, where does the search go from here?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ROMANS: Welcome back to NEW DAY.

Sonar equipment may have located objects believed to be from AirAsia Flight 8501 on the bottom of the Java Sea. Divers need to get there. They need to get to that site tomorrow. They were hampered this morning by rough weather.

There are still many questions about what happened to the ill-fated flight. I want to go through what we know and what we don't know at this hour and answer questions you've been sending us over Twitter.

I want to bring in CNN aviation analyst Les Abend, who is also a commercial airline pilot and contributing editor of "Flying" magazine; and Jeff Wise, the science writer and author of "Extreme Fear."

Now gentlemen, in terms of what we know and what we don't know, what we don't know is exactly whether they have found this plane, investigators on the scene are saying sonar has most likely shown them where it is, but the CEO, Ton Fernandes, of the company is saying there's no confirmation yet. They have an idea, but there's no confirmation. What do you make of that, Jeff?

JEFF WISE, SCIENCE WRITER/AUTHOR: Well, I think if they had really found it, if they had side-scan sonar images of portions of the fuselage on the sea bed, there wouldn't be room for ambiguity. It would be clear. And so the fact that they're uncertain leads me to tip it to the probably not column. But listen, this is still early. We just don't know.

ROMANS: Right. Or the CEO is just being very cautious here. He's just being very cautious. And the investigators think they know where it is from what they've seen, but the CEO is being cautious.

LES ABEND, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Yes. And I'd like to think the investigators know what they're doing, but you know, I agree with Jeff, that there is that possibility. Absolutely.

ROMANS: So waiting to clear all that up and figure out exactly what is there. And it won't be right now, because they're not in the water right now. At least, they are not searching in the water because of the weather.

So let's talk about what we know and what we don't know and how all of this information is going to be so important to investigators. We know that parts of the plane may have been located by sonar at the bottom of the sea. That's what the investigators are telling us. What we don't know is how large those parts are, where the parts were located or their orientation on the sea floor. Jeff, there's still an awful lot to discover here.

WISE: Yes, and we've seen this before in other accident investigations. Information comes out early in the process; it's sketchy. It's inconsistent. It's going to take a little bit of time to sort out what's true and what's rumor at this point.

ROMANS: We know also, gentlemen, that the debris was found a distance from the last known location of the plane. We don't know how far away the debris field was from the rest of the plane or what condition. We know -- we know that the debris was found in the ocean, 100 to 200 kilometers from the last location. We don't know if the final resting place of the plane is close to the debris field at this point, do we, Les?

ABEND: We don't. We don't. And that, in and of itself, is going to make a forensic aspect of the investigation important. You know and how far it drifted. How it impacted the water. I mean this -- what's happening now is little bits of information are coming in, enough that now you can develop even more theories and more speculation.

ROMANS: Well, you put those theories and speculation to rest when you get the black boxes, the data recorders, where you can hear the voices of the pilots, what was happening on the flight deck, and you can see what the avionics, what the mechanics of the plane were telling us. What we know about that, those black boxes are the key to piecing all this together. But we don't know where they are or how long it will take to locate them. Especially -- especially, Jeff, if we're going to have rough weather for the next few days.

WISE: Absolutely. This does not help to have these huge thunderstorms brewing up.

The kind of thunderstorm, incidentally, that probably was linked to the problem of the plane in the first place is also now making difficulties to recover the wreckage and debris.

But this is -- I should point out, this search is now going pretty quickly...

ROMANS: Yes.

WISE: ... compared to other similar incidents in the past. There's a ton of resources being poured into this. ROMANS: Yes.

WISE: I think memories of MH-370 are very fresh.

ROMANS: Yes.

WISE: Nobody wants another lingering mystery. People want to figure out what happened so that they can solve it.

ROMANS: Richard Quest and I were saying yesterday this is almost like a textbook crash investigation. Hampered by bad weather, but it is following through -- following through in what has been historically how you investigate these crashes.

On the subject of the black boxes, I want to bring in something someone asked us via Twitter. "Why in this day and age do we rely on the physical recovery of these boxes? Do you think this will push airlines to move to mandatory -- mandatory streaming data recorders?" My car, for example, tells me when there's something that needs to be fixed or something that's amiss. An aircraft does not.

WISE: Well, they actually do a have that kind of system.

ROMANS: Well, telling the driver. I guess you're right. Yes.

WISE: The ACAR system, in the case of Air France 447, there were these -- every minute sending maintenance reports back to Air France headquarters in that case.

ROMANS: Right.

WISE: The problem is if you have a systemic failure, like in this case, we had the failure of the secondary surveillance system with air traffic control; if that fails, then you also have this other system failure, right back to where you started.

The black boxes are a very robust piece of equipment, and it's been well proven. It may be the case that, ultimately, in the future we move to this kind of system.

ROMANS: Very -- I'm very aware as we report this story of compounding the agony for the families who are watching every little thing we say, watching every little bit of news as they try to grieve together and try to put the pieces of this together.

But something in particular that a lot of people are asking us about, when you look at the wreckage we've seen so far, the oxygen tank, the slide. We know the body of a flight attendant was found. Here's our next Twitter question, "It sounds like, with them finding a stewardess, air tank and slide, did the airplane land and people tried to get out, but it sank too fast?" Heartbreaking to think of.

ABEND: Yes. You know, that's another piece. It's hard to say at this point without -- without really having concrete evidence and, like you said, the information from the digital flight data recorder to see exactly what happened. What's interesting is that, if these passengers were found with this

flight attendant, the flight attendant had a particular position in the airplane. So if we know who these passengers are...

ROMANS: Right.

ABEND: ... can identify them and where this flight attendant position was, then that helps solve some of the puzzle.

ROMANS: It helps solve the puzzle, but it does compound the agony of trying to figure out what these people went through. In these crashes, even reporting these crashes, you try not to think about what people went through.

WISE: I couldn't help but be struck by the irony of, in the wake of MH-370, there were so many calls, including from me, saying we need more information faster. And then we had the reverse problem yesterday, where these families were there in the meeting, and they were seeing this, too much information coming in; seeing the lifeless body while they themselves are waiting for information about their loved ones. It was pretty heartbreaking.

ABEND: There's never a happy medium. There never is in this.

ROMANS: No. Gentlemen, thank you. We'll continue to analyze all of this and wait for more answers from the sonar finding the wreckage and also getting those data recorders. We're going to continue to answer your questions this morning. You can tweet them to us using the #8501qs -- Michaela.

PEREIRA: All right. Thanks so much, Christine.

So the question is, have Indonesian searchers found AirAsia Flight 8501? Objects thought to be from the plane may have been spotted by sonar at the bottom of the Java Sea. We're going to take you live to Indonesia after a break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)