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Reuters: Plane Fell 22,000 Feet & Spun Before Vanishing. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired May 19, 2016 - 07:00   ET

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

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ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

CUOMO: Welcome to our viewers in the United States and around the world. This is NEW DAY.

[07:00:42] The news this morning, breaking developments, French President Francois Hollande saying that EgyptAir Flight 804 appears to have crashed. It certainly vanished from radar en route from Paris to Cairo on an overnight flight. There is a search underway at this hour in the Mediterranean Sea. The plane had 66 people on board: 53 passengers, the rest crew.

This was -- all seemed to have happened within 45 minutes from scheduled landing. And now, Alisyn, we're getting word from Greek authorities. First, they had said there was problems with the handoff. They had heard from the pilots everything was OK. The plane's altitude and speed was correct.

But now there's new information coming from the Greek authorities that is going to fuel more concern.

CAMEROTA: Absolutely. This is by way of Reuters, Chris, and they say that the Greek defense minister has just reported that -- on the missing aircraft that it was in Egypt air space at 37,000 feet and made sudden swerves. So that's different.

We had heard that it just dropped off of radar, but to hear that it made sudden swerves that may tell our aviation analysts something significant, and we will check back in with them momentarily.

There is also word surfacing about a distress signal picked up in the general vicinity of where the plane disappeared. No word yet if that came from the plane itself or maybe from a connected raft or something of that sort.

This as the families of those on board are desperately waiting for answers, and there's still obviously questions swirling about the plane's safety, its safety record, its flight crew, the security checkpoints.

And of course, you can't rule out whether this was an act of terror. So we have this breaking story covered from every angle the way only CNN can. We want to begin with Ian Lee. He's live at the Cairo International

Airport, where we know families are gathering. Ian, what's happening at this hour?

IAN LEE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right. We've been seeing families coming here over the course of the day. A lot of them, the ones that are willing to talk to us, a lot of them aren't willing to talk to media. They just want to know what is happening, what happened to their loved ones.

But what we know at this moment is this plane took off from Paris at 11:09 p.m. Paris time. It was traveling over Greek air space when these problems developed, and it was around 2:45 a.m. local time is when they last contacted -- had last contact with the pilot. He thanked them, and then they lost contact with them.

CAMEROTA: Obviously, we've just lost him. Yes, Chris.

CUOMO: Momentarily. So let's get to Jim Bittermann. He is in Paris but following the developments there. We just heard from President Francois Hollande using the word "crash." Now we're hearing from Greek authorities, Jim, that are putting more facts into the situation, that there were problems on the handoff, that according to Reuters, Greek authorities are saying that they saw swerves in the air pattern.

Now there's another word from Reuters via Greek authorities that this plane dropped 22,000 feet suddenly, then made these so-called swerves, then disappeared.

JIM BITTERMANN, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: All of this is adding to the mystery, Chris, because we've been saying since early morning that it suddenly disappeared from the radar. This is the first word that we had of civilian radar scopes that you could look at online. There was no indication that anything to contradict that.

But now what the Greek military is saying does seem to contradict that version of events and will add to this mystery, because clearly, something was going on for some time before the plane finally disappeared. That's something that the aviation experts will, I'm sure, be pondering.

One of the things that's curious here, too, is the fact that the French aviation investigators have not been called in so far. They're on stand-by. They would normally be totally involved, because they've got 15 French nationals, because the plane is an Airbus, which was built here in France, because the plane took off from here.

[07:05:07] One would think that they'd be making their way towards the Middle East. They are not. They're waiting for the Egyptian authorities to clear them to come in. It's also not clear what will actually happen eventually with this debris that we hear is being found off the coast of Greece.

Will it be brought to Greece and reassembled there or will it be taken to Cairo? The Egyptians are in charge of things. There's a remote possibility it will be brought back to France, because it's an Airbus. But I think that that's another question that needs to be answered, as well. So a little bit of confusion, I think, on the part of not only authorities in Egypt but authorities here, as well -- Chris.

CAMEROTA: Jim, I'll take it. Thank you very much for that reporting. We want to discuss all of this with our CNN safety analyst, David Soucie; CNN aviation analyst Mary Schiavo; CNN aviation correspondent Richard Quest.

OK. We have some new information now that I want to bring to you. Let me start with you, Mary. This comes from the Greek defense minister, and it comes by way of Reuters.

The defense minister says that immediately after this plane entered Cairo air space, it made swerves. We hadn't heard that word before. It made swerves in a descent that the defense minister describes as 90 degrees to the left and then 360 degrees to the right before plunging into the Mediterranean. So swerves and then these jagged left/right turns.

Mary, what do you -- what does that tell you?

MARY SCHIAVO, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Well, again, when we look at these things we always go back to past crashes or past disasters to see if anything looks similar. And I keep coming back in my mind to TWA 800, and of course, now there are reports that the airplane continued after communication ceased, the airplane continued to fly for a few minutes after that.

There have been other tragedies in the past where an explosive event -- in the case of TWA 800, it was a center wing tank explosion. It was not terrorism. And then in other cases there was a bombing -- where the plane continued to fly after the event and made these erratic kind of movements.

And if you're at 37,000 feet, the trip from 37,000 feet down to the earth, even in a direct falling motion, is going to take two to three minutes. So that would explain the two- to three-minute difference between the loss of contact and when they think that the plane actually went down.

So you have reasons why that could happen. Unfortunately, none of them are reasons that give you many -- you know, much hope. And my heart just breaks for the families. But we have had tragedies in the past where we've seen this scenario, and it's been an explosive event. It has been in a situation where there's been an explosion on board.

CUOMO: Richard, we're using the word "swerve," because that's what Reuters is reporting the Greek defense minister said. But a 360 degree movement is not a turn. It is not a swerve. That is a complete rotation of the aircraft, and certainly, that wouldn't be a maneuver. Right?

RICHARD QUEST, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: No, that's falling out of the sky, Chris. That's literally the plane in extremis. And we can go back and look at what we've heard from the Greek aviation officials and the air-traffic controllers.

Now, they say, and I'm putting the times into Paris time. The last time they spoke to the plane it was 1:48, 2:48 their time, 1:48. The next time they tried to speak to the plane was half an hour later, and they got no response. That was at the point of handover to Egypt.

Now, clearly, whatever took place was taking place after 48 for the next 30 minutes around that time. Because -- but we don't know when. And it's dangerous for us to say that it happened at the handover point, because all we know is that, at 48, the pilot sounded cheerful; and everything was OK. And you hear nothing more for the next 32, 34 minutes until the plane falls out of the sky.

So you've got to be very careful at this point to say, you know, at what moment was the event taking place? Were they unable to respond because they were overwhelmed?

I don't think at this point, you know -- if there was a mechanical issue, they may not remember to call out, but if they were being called in, they're likely to have answered if they could.

However, if it's a security issue that's at stake here, then it's very different, because now you have a situation of an unresponsive cockpit. You have clearly an event that takes place.

As for this swerving and this massive fall, we don't see that on any of the civilian radars, which means there's been a failure of the ADSB reporting, which is significant in itself.

[07:10:09] CAMEROTA: Miles, you know, you just try to read the tea leaves from the little bit of details that we have so far, so just to build on what Richard was just reporting, yes, the Greek and civil aviation authority reports that, at 2:58 Athens time, the pilot was -- I mean, these words stick out to me, because it may suggest what was going on inside the cockpit.

The pilot was cheerful and thanked the Greek air traffic controllers for the information of when the handoff would be. And then as Richard said, half an hour to 40 minutes later, no response whatsoever.

So you know, cheerful gives you the impression that they were unaware if something was happening or if there was a plan or if there was going to be a mechanical problem, but at that moment at least at 2:48 a.m. Athens time, things were going as expected.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: I've got to say, Alisyn, if these reports about those unusual maneuvers bear themselves out to be true, this is painting a little different picture than how we started this morning here.

The idea that they missed a handoff, no communication, and either during that time or immediately subsequent to that time, it was engaged in maneuvers that were not normal in any way, shape or form implies potentially a struggle in the cockpit, potentially a hijacking scenario and we can't -- you've got to put it on the table, was there a flight crew member involved in this. Was this in some way a pilot suicide/homicide. These are things that changes things.

CAMEROTA: Why do you get that. Why are you picking up on that, rather than just a midair explosion and the plane falling from the sky?

O'BRIEN: Well, a midair explosion and a 360-degree maneuver. It sounds like the plane was intact. So again, if that -- if that report doesn't bear itself out, if it truly vanished from radar, as we first heard this morning, that does...

CUOMO: Help us understand this, because a lot of this information is very natural to you. You know, you're a pro on this. Ninety degrees, we're saying maneuver, swerve. Again, these aren't our words. This is coming from reporting of Reuters and Greek authorities. So we want to put in some margin for that translation, but 90 degrees is not easy to affect in the air.

Three-hundred and sixty degrees would be a complete rotation. It doesn't suggest a controlled movement, Miles. So that's what we're asking about. Is that how it comes across to you, or do you think that a pilot could have still been in control and moved the aircraft that way?

O'BRIEN: It could go either way. It depends -- you know, when we think of an explosion, we think of a catastrophic event: the plane just kind of breaks up and falls out of the sky.

In this case, we obviously had an aircraft that had aerodynamic capability, enough to do these maneuvers. Does that imply that, if in fact there was an explosion, that the plane still was able to fly on or was something else going on on that aircraft. That's all I'm saying, is that whatever happened there, it's not the sudden mysterious vanishing event. There's something that allowed that plane to fly on in some fashion.

CAMEROTA: OK, David, what are you hearing?

SOUCIE: Well, what I'm hearing is something that I heard Richard say be very careful and I agree with that. But respectfully, I disagree with many of the other things he was saying.

This maneuver, we need to understand here, Airbus 320, when it has the power on and it stalls, the pilots are trained to do exactly what we're describing here. What they are trained to do is to go full left rudder, full right rudder, full left rudder and try to get the aircraft to maneuver left and right so that it can fall down and move to the right to get air speed back over the wings.

So to me, there are two scenarios here. If there was an explosion on board, which -- which could indicate it completely exploded the aircraft. It could have, as in Flight 800, as Mary mentioned before, where the aircraft came into two pieces, it climbed and it turned, but that's because there was no tail.

CUOMO: So David...

SOUCIE: In this case that is one of the scenarios.

CUOMO: David, let's just keep going with what we know as we learn it. Here's the latest piece of information. Immediately after the aircraft entered Cairo air space at 37,000 feet -- this is from the Greek defense minister -- the aircraft swerved 90 degrees. OK? That's what we heard, to the left, as you suggest, David Soucie.

And then 360 degrees to the right, which would mean it wound up in the same position from where it started and descended from 37,000 feet to 15,000 feet and then 10,000 feet. That's when signal was lost.

So Mary Schiavo, when you hear those numbers and those descriptions, help us understand.

SCHIAVO: Well, again, as David Soucie was saying, you know, you could have a problem, rudder control problem, something like that. This plane, if it was a different plane we've had plane models in the past that have had some serious rudder control problems.

[17:15:04] But when I hear the drop, the drop in the altitude from 37,000 feet is what concerns me the most. That is a serious issue. And I think that's what was a problem going on. I think it's an explosive event.

CAMEROTA: Richard, your thoughts before we take a break?

QUEST: The -- what I'm -- what I'm hearing is -- I can agree with every one of my learned colleagues is saying, and I can sign on board with all of them. But what I am hearing here is this gap of communication, from the 2:48 cheerfulness, a 30-minute gap, which is then followed by a failure to respond to a callout, which two minutes later is followed by the event where the plane goes into extremis.

Now, that is -- the failure to respond to the call back is what I'm picking up here. Whatever was happening, either it was they were overwhelmed on mechanical issues -- so yes, David Soucie, I will sign -- I can sign up to that. Or there was something absolutely terror- related taking place in that cockpit. Because they would have responded otherwise.

If air traffic control says, "Are you there?" basically, even in the middle of a crisis somebody responds. And that's why I think this -- there's a 30-minute gap, and I think that proves to be crucial.

CUOMO: All right. Richard and everybody else, the analysis obviously helped by new information from the Greek defense minister that is showing the flight path that this plane took and very erratic behavior after it just entered Egyptian air space.

What we know, what's going on in the water right now to find this plane, we're going to talk to a veteran pilot and also a former NTSB investigator about what this all could mean at this point. Stay with us.

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ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

[07:20:52] CUOMO: If you're just joining us, we have word that EgyptAir Flight 804 appears to have crashed. That is the word from the French president, Francois Hollande. We're now hearing from Greek authorities, as well, as you look on your screen. You see the map. The plane was just entering Egyptian air space when it went off radar. This was a flight, an overnight flight from Paris to Cairo.

Greek authorities were monitoring the plane during this portion of its flight, says that after a good report, a good check-in from the pilots at a proper altitude and a rate of speed, they could not reach the pilots. Then there were some sudden movements that we're going to detail for you now before the plane disappeared from radar nearly 11 hours ago.

There's an active search going on, mainly led by Greek water assets right now in that area of the Mediterranean.

Let's bring in Les Abend, a former triple 7 captain and contributing editor for "Flying" magazine; and Peter Goelz, CNN aviation analyst and former NTSB managing director.

Gentlemen, thank you for joining us this morning at short notice.

Les, we've discussed these kinds of things many times before. Help us get some perspective from the final information we've just received. This is an Airbus A-320. The movements, according to Greek authorities, the defense minister, right before it went off radar, was that the plane was at 37,000 feet at proper speed of about 500 or so miles an hour.

It then, at 37,000 feet, made a turn 90 degrees to the left. Then 360 degrees to the right, which seems like a complete rotation, dropping to 22,000 feet rapidly and then 10,000 feet rapidly. As a pilot, what do those movements suggest in terms of how much control was maintained of that aircraft?

LES ABEND, CONTRIBUTING EDITOR, "FLYING" MAGAZINE: Well, let me preface it with the cliche thing. We're very early in the investigation, and we -- a lot of us, as aviation analysts, try to compare this to other accidents. But any good accident investigators will tell you, you know, just put on the brakes for a little bit and let's -- let's let this whole thing unfold.

In answer to your question, it seems especially with the -- with the events leading up to it, which was a very relaxed cockpit, from my perspective, what we're pointing in, what we're doing is it's a benign -- cruise is a benign aspect of the flight. So if I'm faced with an emergency all of a sudden at cruise altitude, I've got time to do things.

But our acronym is aviate, navigate, communicate. So if I've got an emergency, I'm going to try to assess the situation and go to the appropriate checklist.

Now, these 90-degree turns, it's hard to say where is that information coming from? Was it -- is it radar? Is it flight aware? We don't really know the source of this information. And then the 360 degree turn, that seems very abrupt. It's not something that I would do in a particular emergency, unless I was losing control of the aircraft, and that's sort of where I'm going.

Why were we losing control of the aircraft? Could it have been a catastrophic issue in regard to an explosive device, something nefarious? Or could it possibly have been a stall situation? We're still early in this investigation.

CUOMO: Mr. Goelz, are those all equal possibilities at this point? Obviously, Les is a pro. We've all worked together before, but when we hear about these movements, this is more information than we often have at this point. Usually, it's the plane has disappeared. We're looking for it and where it is. And we don't know what it was doing at any of the real movements before impact or whatever its fate was.

Here we're hearing about these turns. Is that helpful?

PETER GOELZ, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Well, sure. I mean, this was a heavily-monitored area. So we're starting, and we've got at least three jurisdictions starting to discuss it. My last investigation at the NTSB was EgyptAir 990. And that was a plane that crashed off of Nantucket that was determined that the pilot flew the plane into the ocean.

During the early stages of that investigation, as we looked at the radar tracking, it was very perplexing. We didn't know why the plane was performing the way it did. It was only when we got the cockpit voice recorder that we understood what terrible things were going on.

[07:25:25] So this -- as Les mentioned, this is very early in the investigation. We don't know the sources of this. The one thing we do know is we probably have multiple sources of radar information for this that should help us pinpoint approximately where the plane went down, and they've got to get the black boxes as soon as possible.

Well, Les, that is one of the things that's fueling hope in the unknown right now is that this is not a quiet area. Starting from sea level above, you have tons of Greek assets in the area. You have American assets in the area. American monitoring assets in the area to help with detection. You have a lot of ocean-going traffic in this part of the Mediterranean.

And then as you move up, this is active air space, and there's a lot of monitoring and radar detection there, as well. What does that mean in terms of the time window we have here in terms of finding out where this plane is and how it got there?

ABEND: Well, I think -- I think, Chris, that's a very positive thing. It's still a big piece of ocean out there, so it's going to take a little bit to define where that particular crash site may be in the water.

The fact that -- I mean, this whole area is covered by radar, so we're not dealing with the Malaysia 370 scenario. This airplane should be found. I mean, I have fair confidence that this airplane will be found within the next 24 hours if not sooner.

But when it's found, there may be pieces of it. So we're going to get a good indication on whether parts of that airplane came apart in flight because of whatever the particular source of this catastrophic failure -- what occurred. So I -- you know, this is a better scenario than what we've had in past events.

CUOMO: Abend and Goelz, thank you very much. Stay with us.

Alisyn, back to you. One of the menacing parts of this is no word from this aircraft after these moves. No distress signals that can be confirmed at this point. And as we know, those families waiting back at De Gaulle Airport, you know, 66 people on board, 53 passengers. A couple of infants and a child, they want answers.

CAMEROTA: Of course, and it does make it so mysterious when there's no distress call and no communication. So Chris, we may get a few answers. We are waiting to hear from the Egyptian government any moment on Flight 804. They are holding a press conference so obviously, we will monitor that live. We'll bring it to you. What could have gone wrong? Answers ahead.

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