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Updates on the Missing EgyptAir Plane; French President: Likely that Plane Crashed. Aired 6:30-7a ET

Aired May 19, 2016 - 06:30   ET

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

[06:30:00] CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: 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.

Right now we have CNN International Diplomatic Editor Nic Robertson. He's live in London with more. Nick, you do have some new information. Help us understand.

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: Yes Chris, this information comes from the head of Greek Civil Aviation. We know from Greek authorities, they told us that they spoke to the pilots on board the aircraft at 2:26 in the morning local time, that there was nothing untoward, nothing wrong reported by the pilots at that time.

Now the new information is that conversation actually happened as the plane was passing over the island of Kea close to Athens. What the head of Greek Civil Aviation then says took place is extremely concerning. He said that Greek air traffic controllers called out to the aircraft 10 miles before it was due to pass out of Greek air space and into Egyptian air space.

When they called out to the aircraft at that time, they didn't get a response. They continued to try to reach the pilot and the co-pilot on board the MS804 as it was transiting out of Greek airspace into Egyptian airspace. They continued to try for a minute and a half to contact them with no response at all from those pilots for that minute and a half and then they say that's when the aircraft disappeared from the radar.

This is a new piece of information that will add to the picture that is emerging. It doesn't give us clarity over some definitive act that happened on board the aircraft or what happened on board the aircraft or to the aircraft but it does now add information that there was a period where it seems that the aircraft was in the air, that the pilots were unresponsive for at least a period of a minute and a half according to the head of Greek Civil Aviation. Chris?

CAMEROTA: Nick, I'll take it. Thank you very much.

CUOMO: I appreciate it, Nick.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Thanks Chris as well; thanks for that new information. Obviously, information is coming in by the minute. We'll bring it to you as soon as we have it. So why did Egypt Air Flight 804 suddenly vanish from radar at 37,000 feet? What are the theories on what could've gone wrong? We are live in Cairo and Paris with all the latest for you. That's next.

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CAMEROTA: We do have breaking news. We're bringing you all of the updates on this missing plane, this Egypt Air plane that fell out of the sky at 37,000 feet it appears. French President Francois Hollande is using different language than we have heard any other official using to this point.

He has been in the middle of a press conference and he has just said that it appears the plane has crashed. This is the first time that the word crashed has been used; before the plane was missing.

It has dropped off of radar but the French President confirming what many people, of course, have begun to believe and that is that the plane has crashed. Let's bring in now CNN Senior European Correspondent, Jim Bittermann. He is live from Paris. What's the latest there, Jim?

JIM BITTERMANN, CNN SENIOR EUROPEAN CORRESPONDENT: Well, I think the President was just hedging his language a little bit. I think most people have accepted the fact that this plane has gone down in the ocean or down in the sea in any case. The Greeks are reporting the debris that they're finding so I think that there is a kind of (inaudible) problem but other than that it appears that the plane has gone down.

The President has said that he extends his condolences to the victims and they've set up a crisis center for families of victims out at the airport here as well as a crisis center at the Foreign Ministry to handle things. The President himself was awakened at about six o'clock this morning by his foreign policy advisor to say that the plane was missing. So it appears that it has gone down with 15 people of French nationality on board as well as a number of other different nationalities.

No word as to exactly the cause but the French accident investigators are standing by here to go to Egypt. They said they're ready to go at any time but they're awaiting word from the Egyptians. The Egyptians have the final say on who is going to handle the investigation and it probably will be them but they may call for other people to help.

The French have also said they would be willing to help with any kind of military assets that they have in the area and could help in the search. And so far, at least as far as we know, there has been no request put in by the Egyptians.

The thing that they are doing here is they're checking everybody at the airport who might have had any kind of contact with this airplane - the security folks, the cleaning staff, the people that handle the baggage, the folks that were loading the food carts, for example - everybody that had any kind of contact with this plane is being thoroughly looked at this morning just to make sure.

There are 80,000 employees at the airport and it's been known that recently a number of employees have been told that they either were going to be laid off or going to be kept from highly sensitive operations because of their political beliefs. Alisyn, Chris?

CUOMO: All right Jim, I'll take it. And obviously, we are fixated right now on what happened to this plane, who was on that plane, also relevant. That's what Jim Bittermann was just referring to. At this hour, we know that there were 66 people on board this flight 804; 56 of them were passengers; 15 were French as Jim Bittermann just reported; about 30 or so were Egyptian and then there was a mix of different nationalities from there; 53 were adults; two were infants; one was a child.

Now, among the crew, the only point of curiosity is that you had three security members there. Now we're going to bring in our panel of experts. Is that normal? Was their heightened security here? Where does that lead us in terms of understanding this situation now that the French President just used the word crashed to explain this disappearance off radar.

Richard Quest, Miles O'Brien and David SOucie and also now with us CNN aviation analyst Mary Schiavo. So we have our best and brightest on this situation. Mary, let's begin with you and let's begin at the beginning. How do you take through the analysis here?

MARY SCHIAVO, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Well, I think it's very important, especially the news we have just received but I really think that we can't overlook the obvious...the obvious situation at Charles de Gaulle. I mean I just might as well say it; these weren't just people who were suspects who had political beliefs.

Charles de Gaulle had to let go or they fired 57 people who were on terror watch lists. There had been planes defaced. Allahu Akbar was written on the gas tank on the fuel covers of some of the planes. Four (inaudible) jet planes, brace planes were defaced at the airport. Those are shocking things.

I mean in many countries in the world that literally would get the airport closed because it's a shocking, shocking breach of security. So the fact that this flight had three security officers on board is just plain smart. But if someone has access to the plane and these were airport workers then the passengers and the security personnel on board or the pilots couldn't really do anything about something they might've placed in the baggage holds on the plane and elsewhere.

So I think that we have to, instead of saying they just had political beliefs, there was some serious stuff going on at Charles de Gaulle Airport and ISIS...workers at the Belgium Airport had ties to ISIS and with so many workers at those airports, and the airports are huge cities, we just can't overlook the fact that that's a possibility.

CAMEROTA: That is jaw-dropping, Mary. What you've just reported followed by what we just heard from Jim Bittermann. I mean that is remarkable. We also, Richard, just heard, however, from Paul Cruickshank, one of our terrorism analysts, that after the terror attacks that Charles de Gaulle had gone through this you know sweeping security sort of beefed up measures.

So I mean he was sort of suggesting that it's a safer time at Charles de Gaulle than ever before because they've really kind of upped the anty. So where are we with how security is with Charles de Gaulle given both of these conflicting things?

RICHARD QUEST, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: Given the conflicting reports, we certainly know that they beefed up security because there was perceived to be, if not a breach of security at least an element, an unsavory element, I'll put it no higher than that.

The reality, of course, and let me say the unthinkable that others may not say, is that if there is a security breach at somewhere Charles de Gaulle, if it is Alisyn, it transpires that this has been a security breach at Charles de Gaulle, then if we're in a very different game because you're talking about one of the top 20 airports in the world, supposedly one of the most secure headquarters of one of the leading groups at France (inaudible).

So I think before we lean in that direction, we take cognizance of it but certainly an incident...this plane by the way, in the previous days it had been to (Inaudible) a couple of times; it had done Cairo and this was doing...it was the fifth flight of the day to Paris. So if, if there is a security breach at Charles...at CDG then we're in a very different game. We're in an absolute...the rules have changed.

CUOMO: And Miles, I know you're working your sources; we are as well. The intelligence community on the U.S. side is getting ramped up to help in this as you referred us to earlier the U.S. has a lot of assets in this area for monitoring and other capabilities. They're very slow on the terror questions right now.

They're saying let's find the plane. Everything will come there absent any distress signal, any message from the pilots, any type of understanding from the aircraft itself. So where does that leave us in terms of understanding what you do to try to find the plane right now. Also, we're waiting on Egyptian authorities.

At 7:30 Eastern time we will hear from them for the first time and we'll bring that to you. So Miles, what do you see on that front?

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Well, Chris a couple of things. First of all, a lot of shipping traffic in the Mediterranean; if there's wreckage in that water I think we'll see it fairly quickly. Here's the most interesting thing I've read about this morning.

These are early reports but take it at face value. Greek air traffic controllers say they tried to hand off this aircraft to Egyptian air traffic controllers and the aircraft did not respond and yet they still had a radar return. Subsequent to that, it disappeared from radar. Now that implies that something was going on on that aircraft prior to its disappearance and it raises all kinds of questions about what might've been happening. Why did that plane not respond? Why did it fly on and then why did it suddenly disappear are the big questions right now. Was there some sort of struggle on that aircraft? Was there something else going on, a cascade of mechanical problems that began with a communication failure of some kind?

These are questions we need to look at. But the fact that it disappeared suddenly and it was predated by a handoff that didn't go well says something that we need to look at.

CAMEROTA: That is big news and David I want you to build on that. I'll just read you the report that we have from the Greek Civil Aviation Authority. They say that it was over the Island of Kea, this is in Greece, at 37,000 feet 519 miles per hour on speed.

There were no problems reported; however, 10 miles before exiting the Greek airspace, the pilot did not respond to air traffic controllers. They kept trying to reach the pilots without response. And approximately 90 seconds after exiting the Greek airspace, the aircraft was lost from Greek radar. David, what do you see in these details?

DAVID SOUCIE, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: It's very concerning that they did not respond and that's highly uncharacteristic they wouldn't respond at that time. They know that they need to respond. They know that they need to transfer over and it's just...that portion of the flight seems to be, we saw this with an MH370 just after the handoff, and I'm not implying that that was exactly the same thing here but we continually see this.

So the question, the bigger question for me, is why don't we know these things happen, we've seen them over and over again, what has been done to improve this? We have loved ones of these passengers now that are trying to get answers. We're all trying to get answers. But in the meantime, why are we not doing something bigger than this.

And this isn't necessarily the time to address that but it's something we have to keep in mind as we move forward is there's no reason that we don't have information about what was going on on that flight deck right now in our hands.

CAMEROTA: Panel, please stand by. We want to call upon you throughout the show. But the breaking news this morning is that Egypt Air Flight 804 appears to have crashed. This is according to the French President. What went wrong at 37,000 feet? Was there an act of terror? Was there a mechanical problem? These are all the things that we're exploring. Stay with us.

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CUOMO: We're following breaking news about missing Egypt Air Flight 804. The French President saying moments ago I appears the plane has crashed. It disappeared from radar just inside Egyptian airspace about 150 to 170 miles off the coast. There was no mayday. There was no word from the pilots. There was no distress signal about what could be happening on the flight and then it disappeared from radar. Now we're getting different reports about what happened during handoffs between Greek and Egyptian authorities. The flight originated in Paris. It was an overnight flight going from Paris to Cairo.

Let's bring back Paul Cruickshank and let's bring in Juliette Kayyem. Now Juliette has a range of expertise as a CNN National Security Analyst. She has worked in the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security. Thank you for being here on short notice both.

Juliette, let's start with you. The big piece of news to help fill in the unknown is Greek authorities say that during the handoff, as people should know at this point with all the different tragedies we deal with in the air from country to country, sovereign to sovereign, you get handoffs. So the Greeks were looking to handoff to the Egyptians.

During that window, after hearing from the pilots and recording the information as being accurate in terms of what should be happening there 500 or so miles an hour it was traveling at, 37,000 feet where it should've been, then no response from the pilots during the handoff. They tried to get them for over a minute and a half. That's the biggest clue so far. Your analysis?

JULIETTE KAYYEM, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: So we obviously still don't know what that means except here's the good news in these gaps in information; that's going to give an area for the search and rescue because remember, of course, this is a tragedy and there is going to be information on the plane.

There are family members who want to know what happened so it's going to give a range if in that two-minute time period something bad happened. As an investigation, we are all being cautious here. There are only five sort of ways the investigation will go, right. It's either the plane, the pilot, the luggage, a passenger or the you know airport personnel.

And so, while you're hearing all these different things going on in terms of an investigation, some might be mechanical error, some might be pilot error and then some, of course, either terrorism or some human activity. We're going to see the investigation going in those five different ways simultaneously until you can rule out some explanations.

CUOMO: All right so Paul you have the unknown which is why no distress call, no word from the pilots, no mayday and now no real pinging from distress-oriented activity, you know different beacons and such that the plane should have on board.

There is one report of a distress signal coming from somewhere in the area of the Mediterranean where this may have happened not confirmed by authorities yet. So you then have these two pieces of information, the handoff which Juliette was just talking about and then you have what was going on at de Gaulle Airport, reports of large numbers of people having been fired because of being on watch lists, terror watch lists. Put some meat on the bones of that for us.

PAUL CRUICKSHANK, CNN COUNTERTERRORISM ANALYST: Chris, that's right, there has been that Charles de Gaulle Airport, particularly in the wake of the terrorist attacks in November, about radicalization amongst airport staff, people with potential access to air side, baggage handlers, cleaners and so on.

They revoked a number of security passes over the past few months, but there are rigorous security protocols now in place at Charles de Gaulle Airport for airport workers. They have to go through the same screening every day when they come to work just like passengers do. They have to go through...their belongings have to go through x-rays; they have to go through metal detectors just like everybody else.

And those security protocols are actually more rigorous at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris and across the European Union than the security protocols in place in the United States. At most U.S. airports, workers arriving every day don't necessarily have to go through that very rigorous screening. They do background checks and that kind of thing in the United States as a general rule.

So there are tough standards in place in Europe. Also, the state of the art technology for explosive detection now makes it very difficult indeed to get bombs onto planes by getting it through the scanners, not impossible; terrorist groups are innovating all the time. They are trying to better seal, better conceal explosive devices. We saw a case recently in Somalia Mogadishu Airport in February where the terrorist group Al Shabaab managed to get a sophisticated bomb hidden in a laptop on board a plane that got through an x-ray.

Now given that the previous legs of this same airplane were through (Inaudible) not too far away from Somalia also Cairo, also Tunis, there's concern that some kind of device might've been able to be insinuated onto the plane on some of those legs in the developing worlds, Chris, where airport security has lagged behind.

CUOMO: Well, obviously that speculation fueled by what we know to have happened over the Sinai Peninsula, the same region obviously last year with that Russian flight that was then connected to ISIS. Juliette, Paul, stay with us. More information coming in. About a half an hour from now we'll finally hear from Egyptian authorities, Alisyn, and obviously we'll bring that to the audience when we get it.

CAMEROTA: Absolutely, Chris. We'll have much more of our continuing coverage of the breaking news this morning. Egypt Air Flight 804 appears to have crashed in the Mediterranean Sea in route from Paris to Cairo. We have the very latest for you next.

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