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New Day

66 People Aboard Missing EgyptAir Flight. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired May 19, 2016 - 06:00   ET

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

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning. We want to welcome our viewers in the United States and around the world. This is NEW DAY. And we do begin with breaking news.

[05:58:47] A frantic search under way over the Mediterranean Sea for EgyptAir Flight 804. This plane vanished from radar about nine hours ago while cruising at 37,000 feet just minutes before entering Egyptian air space. The flight had 66 people on board. It originated from Paris and was just 45 minutes from landing in Cairo.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: All right, Alisyn. There's no word yet of any may day or word from the pilots of any problems, but there are conflicting reports about possible distress signals in the area where the flight disappeared.

The families of those on board were alerted. There's been an emergency response. Areas set up at the De Gaulle Airport, and of course, they're waiting for answers. And for us there are lots of questions about the plane's safety record, flight crew, security and possible terror links.

So we have this breaking news story covered the way only CNN can. So let's begin with Ian Lee, live at Cairo International Airport. Ian, the word from there.

IAN LEE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, good morning.

What we're waiting to hear right now is any -- any word from the search area that the Egyptian military is currently searching with coordination from the Greeks. We're hearing from the Egyptian armed forces that they have deployed all the resources possible. They have jets; they have boats. They are looking over this area, which is about 175 Miles north of the Egyptian coastline. That is where the area they're saying that this plane last appeared on radar.

We're also being told that a military hospital is being prepared for anyone who possibly survived that, but right now, the main focus is trying to find where this airplane went. Where did it crash?

Now Egyptian officials have yet to say that the plane has crashed, but it's been eight hours. We've heard from other governments, other officials that they're saying this plane has crashed. But the real question is, where is it? If there's any survivors, can they rescue them? And then they'll be looking at what are the causes of this plane going down.

So a lot of variables right now, and here at the airport, we've been seeing family members coming in and what they're telling us is that Egyptian officials aren't giving them enough information. And of course, when you're a loved one, you're waiting to hear about a family member, not enough -- no amount of information really is enough, but they are frustrated. They say they want to know, but this again is still very early in this investigation about nine hours since the plane disappeared from radar. So Egyptian officials are trying to piece together where exactly this plane is and what exactly happened.

CAMEROTA: Yes. Ian, we can just only imagine the uncertainty and the fear of those family members. Thank you for the reporting. We'll check back with you.

France's president, meanwhile, convening an emergency meeting with his ministers, vowing to work closely with the Egyptians as this investigation now gets underway. CNN senior European correspondent Jim Bittermann is live in Paris with more. What have you learned, Jim?

JIM BITTERMANN, CNN SENIOR EUROPEAN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Alisyn, President Hollande was awakened this morning by his policy advisors to learn that the plane had gone down.. It was only some time later that they discovered there were 15 French nationals on board. They have now set up a crisis center at the airport for the families of the victims. They also have another crisis center at the foreign ministry.

There was a brief 45-minute meeting or so with the president and his top advisors to get them all up to speed and to make sure they're on the same page. And then the foreign minister went to the airport and met with some of the family members for about 15, 20 minutes.

Now, as he came out he said, "Look, we've got to avoid all kinds of speculation." He said the best thing we can do for these families is to be very prudent about what we say and so he would give us no further information. Now, France is definitely going to be involved in the investigation, once they come up with some debris.

And at the moment, they have not found any debris of the accident. And so the investigators from the French aviation crash agency, the DEA are standing by. They're waiting to hear from the Egyptians about when they might be able to come to Cairo. They've also -- the French have volunteered any kind of search effort -- anything that they can put into the search effort. They've got military assets in that part of the Mediterranean. They can probably help with the search.

But again, so far at least, the Egyptians have not asked for any help. They are in charge of things as it stands under the international rules. So we'll see how this develops during the day, but the French are standing by to help.

And I should say one further thing, and that is out at the airport, they are looking into the records of everybody that had any kind of contact with this plane. That would include baggage handlers or security personnel, even the people who loaded the food service carts, that sort of thing, just to make sure that there might not be any involvement here if this turns out to be something that was caused by a terrorist or any untoward action -- Alisyn, Chris.

CAMEROTA: Thank you.

CUOMO: All right, Jim. Alisyn, let's get into the discussion of this and what we know right now and what we have to be looking at. Let's bring in CNN safety analyst and former FAA safety inspector David Soucie; and CNN aviation correspondent, Richard Quest.

Gentlemen, another one of these scenarios, let's do this the right way and just start with a checklist of what you look at in these types of situations. Richard, start us off.

RICHARD QUEST, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: What phase of flight did the incident take place? Take-off, landing, or in this particular case, in the cruise, the most safest part of the journey. And look at the profile of the flight itself, Chris. It shows it was at flight level 37,000 feet, and the profile just stops.

There's no descent. There's no may day. It tells me whatever happened was instantaneous; it was dramatic. Yes, was it explosive, perhaps, but certainly, it could have been mechanical, as well, which led to pilot error in the way it was flown.

[06:05:13] This was dramatic.

CAMEROTA: So David, we have on our seen here 30 minutes before expected landing. Other reports say 45 minutes from landing at Cairo. So would they have started doing things for the descent at that point? What do you see when you look at the course of this airline?

DAVID SOUCIE, CNN SAFETY ANALYST: The first thing I look at is the ADSB (ph), the last transmission from the airplane. And that was 157 Miles from the airport. At that point, the airplane had not reported in. It asked for descent. There was nothing going on, as Richard said. It's the safest part of the flight. It's the point at which everything is stable, so it was instantaneous, and it was catastrophic.

CUOMO: We're, of course, trying to do this by way of elimination of scenarios as we get more information. There is no word of mayday, Richard. The is -- there is a conflicting set of reports about whether or not there was some type of emergency transmission or beacon transmission from the water somewhat in the area where this plane was last seen. The population of the plane, 56 people could have been holding almost three times. That didn't.

It was close to an overnight flight. Left just before midnight Paris time, the population of that plane equally divided, basically. You had a lot of French. You had even more Egyptians and then random other designations. The lack of information, the lack of mayday, the lack of any interchange of trouble with the pilots means what?

QUEST: It means that whatever happened, there was a startle factor here, that it happened very fast. You've also got this question of, you know, the incident. It took place just after the handover. Crucial this, Chris. Greek air traffic control had just handed the plane over to Egypt and of course, the plane never checks in with Egypt -- Egypt ATC. It goes missing.

You know, some will sort of suggest that is similar to MH-370. I think that's a stretch way too far.

The reality is here, it's a red-eye flight. This plane has done five flights during the course of the day, and what -- what Egypt Air is using the aircraft for is a final rotation, to squeeze more economics, if you like, out of the plane. Every airline does it, and they do it by putting it in the air at 12 a.m. at night, landing it in Cairo at 3 in the morning, so it can turn itself and you get your passengers onto other flights.

At the moment I am not seeing anything about this flight that is causing me to raise an eyebrow of suspicion, other than the fact the incident happened at 37,000 feet, and there's no may day.

CAMEROTA: We want to bring in our CNN aviation analyst Miles O'Brien with us now. What do you see when you look at this set of facts?

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Alisyn, something catastrophic obviously happened on that aircraft. Thirty-seven thousand feet, no bad weather reported in the area. No apparent radio calls from the crew itself.

So was it a sudden mechanical failure of some kind on the aircraft itself, something innate to the aircraft? Or was it sabotaged in some way? Was it a bomb? Those are the two leading contenders at this point and based on the scenario, those are the two things at the top of the list.

CUOMO: And obviously, we had that situation just last year with the plane that went down over the Saudi Peninsula, the Russian plane. That wound up being an explosive device. That's why investigators are looking in that area. But of course, they have to go on what they know.

Now, David, let's try to have a little degree of optimism here, some of the things working in favor. Quickly scrambled resources from the Greek navy and air force. They have a lot of vessels in the area. They're sending a frigate and some quick-response planes to the area.

The water temperature, given good weather as Miles pointed out, there had been some clouding in the area, that was gone by the time the plane got there. The water temperature becoming very important if there was some type of survivable landing in the water. They say 23 Celsius. It's about 70 degrees Fahrenheit. What does that mean in terms of survivability?

SOUCIE: Well, there are two things working forward if there was a water landing. And that is an Airbus 320, is designed to not allow the aircraft to sink. As we looked at the accident on the Potomac, where Sullenberger has made the successful landing. That aircraft continued to float so there are survivors. If you're out in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean or something in that area where the temperature is so low, the survivability is very minimal, and it's very quick that even -- as quickly as you could get somebody out there to look for the aircraft, there wouldn't be survivors.

Now, in this case we definitely would see survivors if it was a successful ditching, and the aircraft is equipped to stay afloat.

[06:10:13] CAMEROTA: So Richard, what are we to make of that distress call or distress signal that happened in the vicinity of where the plane might have gone down?

QUEST: I don't think we make much of it at all at the moment, Alisyn. I'll tell you why. Because clearly, it comes two hours after the plane goes missing.

So it is unlikely, almost improbably going to be from, you know, any form of "may day, may day." What it is very likely to be is one of the emergency locator transmitters that are sent out an emergency signal when either there's a nasty pressurization, a crash or land, or they touch water.

It could be from a raft that's come loose and therefore also touched water and sending out the signal. But since we have not had any further confirmation of the nature. And the Egyptians haven't said -- actually, they've said it's not a distress signal. I think we can't hang our hats any more on that and just simply saying it's an anomaly at the moment that needs to be addressed.

Overall, when you look at the causes or potential causes, the -- I'm completely with Miles and David on this. And with one proviso. We have had two or three incidents in the last five years, six years, where there has been mechanical failure followed by incorrect pilot input. I'm thinking of Air France, and I'm thinking of Air Asia. In both cases dramatic immediate events which took the plane out of the sky catastrophically.

So I fully accept the necessity of putting a bomb and a device on the table but I also think you have to keep the mechanical, the pilot aspect of it also well and truly in the realm.

CUOMO: Miles, you had a quick response from the government, saying that it was off the radar, somewhat disregarding, therefore, the possibility that it could have landed somewhere, because obviously, then it would have been picked up on radar.

But you get the same curiosity that we have in all of these scenarios or too many of them, which is why wasn't this plane able to be tracked all along its route? We seem to have this conversation often, and there's always talk about improvements, but was this still using the old technology?

O'BRIEN: Well, in this case, that may not be as much of a factor. This is a fairly radar-rich environment, if you will. Much of the earth is not covered by radar. But the Mediterranean and this part of, you know, the eastern part of

Europe into the Middle East has a lot of radar assets, both primary and secondary radar, which is -- relies on the transponder system.

So I don't think that's going to be a huge factor. One thing to point out on those previous two crashes that Richard cited is that, in both cases, weather was a big factor. Both of those aircraft flying in and around some very big thunderstorms. We don't have that in this case.

One other thing to remember, too, at the end of last year, that MetroJet crash in Egypt, the Russian airliner. In very short order, U.S. national assets the infrared satellites that the U.S. maintains in order to watch for nuclear launches was able to make the distinction very quickly that there was not a missile launch from the ground and that there was an explosion that originated on the aircraft. That sort of data I'm sure is in a place right now. We just don't know about it yet, and that's going to help us know what happened.

Gentlemen, stand by, if you would. We'll call on your expertise throughout the program this morning. Also, we're tracking the search for EgyptAir Flight 804. This morning, no sign yet at this early hour, but the plane's disappearance does raise new security concerns about airport security, especially in the wake of the Paris terror attack. We'll explore that next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:18:13] CAMEROTA: We do have breaking news for you. The world is awaiting word of the fate of EgyptAir Flight 804, which vanished just hours ago. But already, the focus is partly on security at the airport with terror concerns persisting both in Cairo and Paris, where the flight originated and where it was headed.

Joining us now is Paul Cruickshank, our CNN terrorism analyst and editor in chief of "CTC."

Paul, sorry to have to come to you with this very mysterious and probably tragic news. What are your sources already telling you at this early hour?

PAUL CRUICKSHANK, CNN TERRORISM ANALYST: Well, it's clearly too soon to talk about terrorism as being a likely explanation, but the French prime minister, Manuel Valls, saying that they cannot rule out any possibility, Alisyn, so they'll be looking at multiple scenarios from a terrorism point of view.

The intelligence services will be looking at the passenger manifest. They'll be looking at the cargo. They'll be looking at the insider threats at airports. This plane took off from the Charles De Gaulle Airport in Paris. There's been some concern about that airport in Paris following the terrorist attacks last November. There's been some radicalization in that airport. They've tightened things up since then.

But Alisyn, they'll also be looking at where this plane was in the hours before. We know that it transited to France before taking off to Cairo through Eritrea, through Cairo. These are developing countries. There's been concern for quite some time that airport screening has lagged behind in these countries, that they haven't got state-of-the-art machines necessarily at all of these airports, that the training hasn't been the same as in some airports in the developed world.

And with regard to that obviously last October, we saw that plane being bombed out of the sky over the Sinai Peninsula. They believe that was an ISIS bombing attack and that an insider at Sharm El-Sheikh Airport and, according to Reuters, a mechanic working for EgyptAir, that helped get the bomb board in that case.

And then not a million miles away from Eritrea, in February of this year, we saw Al Shabaab, the terrorist group Al Shabaab in Somalia manage to get a sophisticated laptop bomb play onto a Somali plane taking off from there.

So they'll be looking at all of these scenarios, Alisyn, but clearly, too early to tell whether this is terrorism. But the suddenness of this event certainly making intelligence services very worried at this hour.

CAMEROTA: Understandable. I mean, yes, obviously, it is premature to have any definitive answers. Yet we're just getting more reports in by the minute.

However, it's not too early to raise the specter of terrorism, particularly given everything that you just outlined. The two Paris terrorist attacks. First "Charlie Hebdo" and then followed by the attack at the Bataclan within months of each other. The Brussels terror attack. And during all of those, I mean, Paul, you were right on the front lines of it. We learned just how many ISIS operatives or sympathizers there are in Paris.

So when you hear that a plane originated in Paris and is heading to Cairo, I mean, it can't help but send up red flags, I would imagine, for people in the intelligence community.

CRUICKSHANK: Yes, they're certainly going to be looking at that possibility, Alisyn. They're going to be looking at all possibilities. But there has been concern about radicalization amongst airport staff, who have some access to airside at Charles De Gaulle airport. Concern that some of those people have become radicalized in the wake of the Paris attacks in November. They revoked a number of security badges for some of those airport workers.

But the thing about Paris is that they have a pretty good airport screening technology there. State-of-the-art machines involving explosive trace detection, multi-view X-rays. It's difficult to get a device past those machines unless you've got some kind of insider help.

And even for people working at Charles De Gaulle Airport in Paris, the security screening has become much more intense over the last few months, not allowed now to bring liquids airside. So it would have been very difficult to get a bomb on a plane at

Charles De Gaulle Airport because of all the screening technology there. So if this was some kind of bomb attack, investigators will also be looking at where the plane was before. It was in Eritrea, on a leg before it was in Cairo. The leg before it was in Tunis on the leg before, as that plane came back to Europe.

One question will be, could somebody at one of those airports where security is laxer than in the developed world have managed to get a bomb on board a plane? We've seen attempts, obviously, attacks over the last year or so, both in Somalia and in Egypt.

Both ISIS and al Qaeda are trying to do this. They're trying to innovate new technologies to get bombs onto planes.

CAMEROTA: And let's talk about that for a second, Paul. If that scenario does end up bearing any truth to it, if something were to happen -- have happened before Charles De Gaulle, in Eritrea or wherever, then do -- does ISIS have the technology to then trigger something hours after, more than 12 hours after something was planted? And might that technology have been missed at Charles de Gaulle Airport?

CRUICKSHANK: Yes, I mean, it's a timer, right? I mean, the idea -- the scenario would be that you get a bomb onto the plane many hours before, in the developing world in an airport. And once you've got it on the plane manage to hide it somewhere. It's just a simple function of having a timer and then setting that to go off at a certain point.

But I would remind all our viewers that we are very, very early stages in all of this. And it might well turn out this was something mechanical, not to do with terrorism at all. There have been no claims of responsibility yet from any terrorist groups. No credible claims yet, Alisyn. Obviously, we're monitoring that very, very closely.

CAMEROTA: Paul, that is excellent context. Thank you for that reminder. All of our aviation analysts have been reminding us of that, as well. And we're just getting more reports in by the moment, so we will bring those to our viewers. Paul, thank you very much.

Let's go back to Chris.

CUOMO: All right, Alisyn. We are monitoring the authorities and the investigators right now. We're waiting on word from the French prime minister, Francois Hollande. He is supposed to be giving remarks. We see him there now, President Francois Hollande. And he is going to be giving some word.

Are we going to listen in now, or are we going to monitor it and report it when we get a better sense of what he's saying?

All right. So we'll monitor it, and we'll let you know if there's any new information. Right now, as is often the case, what we're dealing with is what we don't know. The only certainty is that this flight, 804 of EgyptAir, going from Paris on an overnight flight to Cairo, disappeared off radar over the Mediterranean just into Egyptian air space. Where it is, is unknown. No word from the pilots, no word from the aircraft.

[06:25:21] So right now we're waiting on information. As we get it, we give it. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

CUOMO: All right. We're dealing with breaking news out of Egypt. Authorities right now are furiously searching the Mediterranean for EgyptAir Flight 804. Dropped off radar hours ago in route from Paris to Cairo on an overnight flight. So far no immediate indication terror is involved. This is the stage of this investigation, where it's about the unknown.

There was no word from the pilots. There was no expression of any urgency. There has been no may day from the aircraft. There are conflicting reports about potential distress signals coming from the water.

So right now we're monitoring information. The French president, Francois Hollande, was just speaking. When we ingest what he said, we'll find what's relevant there for you and give it to you.