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New Day

Former NY Governor Mario Cuomo Dies at 82; 22 Bodies Recovered from AirAsia Crash; Oregon Routs Florida State in Rose Bowl

Aired January 02, 2015 - 06:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back. We're following breaking news this morning.

New Yorkers and the political world mourning the loss of a giant. Legendary three-term New York Governor Mario Cuomo passing away Thursday at the age of 82. His family saying he died from natural causes due to heart failure.

The loss happening just hours after his son, Andrew, was inaugurated for his second term as New York governor. Mario Cuomo was also the father of our NEW DAY anchor, colleague and friend, Chris Cuomo, and our thoughts are with the entire Cuomo family this morning.

Officials are stepping up their search for AirAsia Flight 8501. Ships set to scour the java sea with pinger locators, looking for signs of the plane, three weeks before those batteries expire. Another U.S. ship now heading for the search area which is being focused on a 20,000 square-mile zone, where the plane has been deemed where the plane most likely went down.

For the latest, let's go live to Gary Tuchman. He's on the ground in Indonesia -- Gary.

GARY TUCHMAN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Christine, here's what we know. The search is going painfully slow, 22 bodies have been recovered. But there are still 140 people to find.

The weather has been terrible. It stopped divers from going into the water. The divers presumably could find the wreckage if they go under, because the water is no more than 110 or 120 feet deep, and also perhaps find many of the bodies, which could still be strapped to seats on the bottom of the water.

In addition to that, they want to find those black boxes, he battery power for the pingers on the two boxes are only made to last for 30 days, it's been six days, that means there's only 24 days left to recover those black boxes or they won't have pingers to help find them.

Finally, behind me, the family tent that's been built here at the headquarters of the police department here in town, has been built here because right next to the police headquarters is the hospital where the bodies are being brought to be identified. A short time ago, the CEO of AirAsia, Tony Fernandes, went into the tent to talk to the family members. And he said he will escort the body of one of his flight attendants home. That flight attendant is one of the four people who has been identified.

Christine, back to you.

ROMANS: Gary Tuchman, thank you for that, Gary. In Indonesia this morning for us.

A bizarre story out of West Virginia, two suspects were arrested after one of them shot at police officers during a traffic stop. Before two dead bodies were found in one of the cars. The officers had pulled over a stolen SUV when the driver of a pick-up truck pulled up next to the officers and started shooting. One of the officers returned fire, the suspect in the pick-up truck was wounded and arrested. A short time later, the other suspect surrendered.

Now, after all this chaos, police found two recently deceased bodies hidden under a mattress in the pick-up truck. The two suspects are believed to be father and son. Both cops were wounded, but are expected to be OK.

Syrian and Kurdish forces are getting the upper hand on ISIS in Kobani. Activists based in the U.K. say Kurds have seized about 70 percent of the border city, helped along by airstrikes from the U.S. and its allies. The terror group has spent the last several months attacking Kobani and trying to get full control. An incredibly important spot there, it sits right there on the Turkish border.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Big, big developments. All right. Christine, thanks so much.

You know what yesterday was?

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: No.

BERMAN: It was awesome. There was a lot of great college football.

PEREIRA: You ate snacks and watched football?

BERMAN: Fans were treated to the first-ever college football playoff games on New Year's Day. You know what, they were really, really good.

Andy Scholes has more now from New Orleans in the "Bleacher Report."

ANDY SCHOLES, CNN SPORTS: Hey, good morning, guys.

Yes, you're right, John, that's exactly why fans have wanted a playoff for so long. You know, those games, they were awesome, like you said. But unfortunately, at the Rose Bowl, some tasteless off-the-field actions are making headlines this morning. After ending Florida State's 29-game winning streak, some of Oregon players were caught on tape mocking the Seminoles' tomahawk chop. Take a listen. (VIDEO CLIP PLAYS)

SCHOLES: Now, they seem to be referencing Jameis Winston's sexual assault allegations, which he was never charged for. In a statement, Oregon said this was unacceptable and the players will be disciplined.

Now, those actions came after the majority of Florida State's players did not shake hands with the Ducks after the game. They were clearly frustrated after having just an epic meltdown in the second half. Florida State turned the ball over five times, including a Jameis Winston fumble that rivaled Mark Sanchez' infamous butt fumble when he played for the Jets. Oregon scored on that play and cruised to a 59- 20 win.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIPS)

JAMEIS WINSTON, FLORIDA STATE QUARTERBACK: No one likes to lose, man. I mean, that's -- losing is really not in my vocabulary, to be honest with you. But we fell short, we fell short today.

MARCUS MARIOTA, OREGON QUARTERBACK: It's an incredible feeling. You know, you prepare all week and to find success and to be able to execute the way that we did. It definitely feels good. And hopefully, we can take a little bit of this momentum heading into the next game.

(END VIDEO CLIPS)

SCHOLES: All right. Meanwhile, at the Sugar Bowl here in New Orleans, it was a nail-biter. After falling behind early, Ohio State, their third-string quarterback, Cardale Jones, he led the Buckeyes on a 28-0 run, and they were able to hold off a late charge by Alabama to pull off an amazing upset, 42-35.

And this why we have the playoffs, guys, because it wouldn't have been Ohio State versus Oregon if it was the old BCS system. Those two are going to meet January 12th in Arlington, Texas, for the first-ever college football playoff championship.

PEREIRA: All right. Andy, thank you so much. We appreciate it.

Ahead, the search for Flight 8501, the area has been narrowed down, but still quite a daunting 2,000 square-mile area. The conditions are miserable. We're going to break down the challenges searchers are facing.

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BERMAN: Officials have narrowed down the search for the wreckage of AirAsia Flight 8501. Really, no small task, though. It's still about a 2,000 square-mile area, roughly the size of Delaware. Crews are scrambling to find the critical black boxes, have 25 days of power left we're told.

The rough weather is making things very, very difficult. They could hamper the search until at least Sunday, with high winds and waves posing big challenges for the underwater search.

Joining us to discuss this are: David Gallo, CNN analyst and director of special projects for Woods Hole for Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. And Les Abend, CNN aviation analyst and commercial airline pilot, also contributing editor for "Flying" magazine.

And, David Gallo, this weather is getting in the way of the search. They were able to get out there and recover some things. But the high waves and the winds really making things very difficult.

DAVID GALLO, CNN ANALYST: Sometimes, you know, you just have to shut down operations and it's bad for the teams at sea that want to get into a rhythm of working day and night to get this done. I know they're feeling the pressures to do it, but also for the families what a horrific thing to have to go through. But, you know, sometimes the best planned expeditions, you just have to stop everything for the sake of safety and for being able to work properly.

BERMAN: Do you still see progress though here as they close and make the search area smaller and smaller, and they do have the tow pinger locater in the water?

GALLO: Yes, it's gotten smaller overtime, which is good. But they're still about half of the size, it's about half of what we had to look for, for Air France 447. That was 5,000 square miles. So, it's still pretty immense, the search area.

For the TPL, the tow pinger locater, that's an awful lot of commercial traffic in the area and I'm assuming that the team knows enough to be able to clear some of that out so they can listen appropriately.

BERMAN: So, what you're saying is despite the fact that we say these are shallow waters, easier to search than a situation for Flight 370, you know, there are a lot of other traffic in the area. There are reefs there. They're their own challenges in the search.

GALLO: Oh, many, the surface noise, sometimes deep water, one of the few advantages is you can get below the wind and the waves. And in this case, you probably just can't. So, there's going to be constant wave motion back and forth and then up and down, and you've got the issue of visibility, which is probably low as well. So, all of those things make it a lot tougher in this case.

BERMAN: Les, I want to talk about some debris that they have recovered so far. You have the emergency exit door. You have pieces of scrap metal and now you have 22 bodies at this point recovered. Anything you can tell by what has emerged so far in where they found it into what might have happened?

LES ABEND, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: It's obvious the airplane broke apart, otherwise we wouldn't be having people attached to rows. How it broke apart is another story.

It sounds to me like it might have broke apart on impact. That would be my first speculative answer to that. But it would be interesting to know and I'm sure the investigating team right now is looking at where the folks were found. And that's very important, because that would define perhaps you know how the fuselage separated, if it did indeed break apart.

BERMAN: So, there's another aviation question I want to ask you here, Les, which is we're learning there with a two-minute delay between the times that the pilots asked the captain asked to raise the altitude in that flight 8501, to go above 32,000 feet. A two-minute delay before they asked permission and air traffic control responded.

Is two minutes a long time?

ABEND: It really isn't. Air traffic control has various sectors that they have to control in various airplanes. They got airplanes going opposite direction, crossing perhaps. So, to grant that request may take some time. It's not unusual unless -- and I'd like to hear what the inflection of the voice of the transmission of the captain was -- if he sounded like it was an urgent request, he might have got to it a little bit quicker. Of course, declared a mayday, which is an emergency, then they would have got to it a lot quicker.

BERMAN: They didn't, as far as we know.

If are you the captain or the pilot or the co-pilot on this airplane, and you don't get a response, within a minute, or two minutes and you're waiting -- do you have to wait? Or are you compelled to do nothing? Until you hear back? Or can you --

ABEND: It's subjective. You don't -- if you hear that the controllers constantly busy and there's a patter going on with other aircraft, you know the man's busy. So you can wait as long as a minute. Even checking in with another sector's frequency very often we have to wait and for the controller to respond.

BERMAN: We now have confirmed that 30 bodies, 30 bodies have been recovered from the sea so far, David.

I don't sense any urgency from you or David Soucie, who is on accident investigations before, over time running out, on these black boxes. We have about 25 days left to the batteries, there doesn't seem to be fear that time will be a problem here ultimately.

Am I reading that incorrectly, David?

GALLO: Not -- I think we're cautiously optimistic. There's two things going on. One is the humanitarian effort to get the bodies out of the water and that's absolutely positively urgent.

And I'm starting to feel that for the teams involved. That you know, time is passing quickly and for the families, especially.

For the forensic study, we still have a lot of time for the black boxes and I think if the weather can break this weekend they'll make a lot of progress very quickly, I hope.

BERMAN: And not to mention the fact, while the pings are always crucial, they could very well find large pieces of wreckage here, which could contain the boxes themselves, correct?

GALLO: Right. I'm hoping so. And again, we'll have to wait and see. But if all goes well, they should be able to zero in on it fairly quickly in a day or two. Once the weather breaks and they get optimal, they may never get optimal, but better working conditions.

BERMAN: Better at least. That could come this weekend.

GALLO: Right.

BERMAN: David Gallo and Les Abend, thanks very much. Appreciate it.

Michaela?

PEREIRA: Ahead, we'll have more on the painstaking search for Flight 8501. Investigators are battling terrible weather as they try to find that precious flight data recorder, a look at what the so-called "black box" might reveal.

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ROMANS: There's still so much we don't know about what brought Flight 8501 down. And much of that will remain a mystery until this is found. The black box needs to be recovered from the Java Sea. What does it look like? What does it look like below the orange exterior and what information can we learn from it?

David Soucie is here to walk us through the mysteries and the facts held inside this box and how it can help.

Now, first of all, six days, this plane went down six days ago.

DAVID SOUCIE, CNN SAFETY ANALYST: Right.

ROMANS: So, we have 24 more days of pinging from this before, before the pinging runs out.

SOUCIE: Right, the pinging actually doesn't come from this box. There's an external underwater locator beacon which mounts on this thing, that's the part we talked about, the 30 days, 90-day battery.

ROMANS: This here, the data is in here. This can survive a crash, impact, water, fire, everything.

SOUCIE: Everything. Everything, that's where this goes, there's some support equipment that goes in here. This particular model is not the one that's on that aircraft. But this is the one. This is a model previous to it.

ROMANS: This is all information, the voice data is separate. That's some place else.

SOUCIE: Right, this is the flight data recorder. And the flight data recorder keeps track of any movement on the aircraft. It doesn't matter, it's the movement, it also keeps track of the vibrations, ones that we couldn't hear as human beings. For example, the starter generator or the generator itself was putting out a wrong frequency. It had failed, one of the bearings or something this failed, it would pick that up.

ROMANS: All the information is here, and what does it look like?

SOUCIE: This is similar to what the one would look like here. And the challenge with this type of technology and this is prior to what we have now, with this technology, when there's saltwater on here and you bring it up out of the water and dries, it can cause damage to these components, short them out, they can actually cause damaging currents --

ROMANS: So, a diver couldn't go down, grab the handle and yank it up?

SOUCIE: No.

ROMANS: What's the process?

SOUCIE: The first process is finding it, which is the purpose of the underwater locator beacon. And there's a little bit of a misconception. The underwater locator beacon primarily is used just to narrow down where the box is once it's in the water. We've used it more now to even locate the wreckage. But, typically, the wreckage is already found, and this is to find it within the wreckage.

So, the first thing is to free it from where it's attached. And what it's mangled inside of. So, that's step one. Step two then is to take it out and put it into a container. If it's -- if it's a deep, deep water search retrieval, it has to be put into a pressurized container to maintain the pressure. Nothing dramatic can change on this. If it changes quickly, you risk losing the data.

ROMANS: So, a whole process to make sure that the thing comes up very carefully, with the same amount of pressure, with presumably in saltwater as well.

SOUCIE: Yes, right.

ROMANS: And then you got to figure how to dry it out and get -- retrieve the data.

SOUCIE: Yes, we've retrieved them from non-saltwater, from regular water in a lake. It's a very similar process. But the saltwater is particularly corrosive. So, we have to be very careful with that.

ROMANS: So, when you crack this open, I mean, who analyzes what's on there? There must be -- you can't just open it up and automatically know what happened. It has to be very painstakingly reviewed.

SOUCIE: Very much so. This model was more difficult even than the newer models, the newer models are much like plugging in a USB-type arrangement into your computer, and retracting the data from it. But it's the procedure of getting it there that's the most difficult.

ROMANS: There's so many intricate circuits inside the box. How -- I just can't believe that nothing could be destroyed after falling from 38,000 feet, falling into the ocean, whatever happened to the plane after that.

SOUCIE: Yes. Well, inside of this and inside the one that's on 8501, there's silicone, there's protections, there's shock absorbing and you also mount -- it's mounted in the rear of the aircraft. So, all of the energy, the whole 150,000 pounds of aircraft that's traveling as much as 500 or 600 miles an hour during impact absorbs the energy and the crumpling is literally a shock absorber. So, by the time it gets there, it's less damaged.

ROMANS: Is it your sense that we're going to find this for this flight?

SOUCIE: For this flight, absolutely. There's no question in my mind we're going to find it. Whether or not the underwater locator beacons are working or not, we're going to find this thing.

ROMANS: What's the most important thing the black box will tell us that happened to this flight?

SOUCIE: Well, one of the first things you want to find out, was there an in-flight break-up? The other thing that is most critical, we can look at how this happen, I think we have a graphic of this information here. But what the important thing that this keeps track of is the input of a control and the response of the control.

What we're looking for there is any discrepancy between, he tried to go forward or he tried to go back and it didn't move the control. That would indicate that there is a mechanical problem on board the aircraft. If they follow as expected, if it's going exactly where it is, then we start looking at external factors, whether it was weather, whether it was the pilot's decision-making or if the pilot made a decision, based on what he thought he saw, this will tell us what he saw as well.

ROMANS: We'll also get not from this box, but from a different one closer to the cockpit, we'll get what they were saying for the last two hours about the flight.

SOUCIE: Correct, the cockpit voice recorder records that and other sounds within the cockpit.

ROMANS: So, we'll be able to hear clicks and wheezes and alarms.

SOUCIE: Exactly, all of that. And most importantly, the two together paint the picture. You have the data here and you have the decision- making and the communication on the other box. And when you lay those together, you can see exactly what was said. When the pilot says -- we're in the takeoff and go round mode of flight or we've turned this down or turned that down, it validates the information we have here.

And more importantly, it gives you a view of what the pilot was thinking at the time. Or what kind of communication was going on between the two pilots at the time. To follow their logic and see what happened. That's where we get the real benefit of doing this. We learn, we learn how to get better.

ROMANS: Even if they're fighting to save the aircraft and not really talking you'll be able to hear what they're doing in the cockpit.

SOUCIE: Absolutely, absolutely.

ROMANS: Hear what they're doing in the cockpit.

David Soucie, CNN safety analyst, former FAA safety inspector. Thank you for watching us through the black box, which is orange, but it is known as the black box because it is so important in the investigation.

We're following a lot of news this morning. Let's get to it.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MARIO CUOMO, FORMER NEW YORK GOVERNOR: Peace is better than war, because life is better than death.

GOV. ANDREW CUOMO (D), NEW YORK: His inspiration and his legacy, is what has brought this state to this point.

MARIO CUOMO: People and the passion of belief are still more important than money.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Believed in the power of individuals to achieve.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: With no one like him. He could have been the president of the United States. He was that great.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The first funeral for a victim of the crash of Flight 8501.

TONY FERNANDES, AIRASIA CEO: The weather unfortunately not looking good for the next two or three days.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Praying has given way to despair.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Until we get the data recorder and the voice recorder, we're still somewhat in the dark.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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

Happy New Year to all of you.

We begin with a loss, one that hits so very close to home for us here at NEW DAY, the passing of an American giant. Legendary former New York governor, Mario Cuomo, the father of our dear friend and our colleague, Chris Cuomo, has died at the age of 82, an icon in American politics, a beacon within the Democratic Party. He died last night after hours, just hours after his son, Andrew, was sworn in to his second term as New York governor.

BERMAN: What an incredible life. His parents came from Italy, they had no money, they couldn't read or speak English. They ran a grocery store.

Mario Cuomo, he was a terrific athlete. He even played minor league baseball, his career ended after he was beaned. But it wasn't his physical strength, it was his words and how he spoke them that electrified Democrats. The keynote at the 1984 Democratic National Convention, remembered by many as one of the most powerful speeches of a generation. He liked to say, you campaign in poetry, you govern in prose. And he sure knew how to do both.

The tributes are pouring in all sides of the political world. Former President Bill Clinton calling Cuomo's life a blessing. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, a Republican, calls Cuomo, a giant. They're among the millions of Americans this morning remembering a true American great.