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EgyptAir Plane has Disappeared over Mediterranean Sea. Aired 8- 8:30a ET

Aired May 19, 2016 - 08:00   ET

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

[08:00:00] CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: But Alisyn, that's the word we have from them right now.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: OK, our coverage continues. Stand by. We do have breaking news.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is CNN breaking news.

CAMEROTA: OK, we want to welcome our viewers in the United States and around the world. This is NEW DAY, and we are following breaking news. The French president says Egypt Air Flight 804 appears to have crashed after dropping off radar just a little more than 11 hours ago. Officials are not willing to go that far yet, Chris, as you've been saying, but of course they're not ruling out the possibility. They're calling it a missing plane. Greek officials say the plane swerved and plunged, these are their words, before its descent into the Mediterranean Sea.

CUOMO: I mean, all of the information coming out from the authorities right now who have been monitoring the radar and communications with the cockpit lead to catastrophic and that is in the Mediterranean Sea, about 150 to 170 miles off the coast of Egypt. Now, while that is much closer than it could have been in situations past, it will still be a very long time to coordinate this search. That's why 11 hours in there is still no word of where this plane might have landed up.

We have this story covered the way only CNN can. We have our best on the situation, so let's begin with Ian Lee live at Cairo International Airport. Ian, we just heard from the civil aviation minister. He was being careful in language, but what is reflected in the actions? What do we know what has been mobilized for this investigation?

IAN LEE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right. This press conference that we just heard, really not a lot coming out of it even though earlier this morning we were getting a lot of information from Egypt Air as well as other aviation officials. But what we know right now is that that plane disappeared a little after 3:00 a.m. according to Egyptian officials, and they are looking at the area where the plane disappeared from radar.

They are using the air force, their Navy, they have a huge search team out there looking, scouring the area for any sort of debris, and still, as we're hearing from them, hopefully some survivors, although as the hours tick on, it seems less and less likely. But the Egyptians are not giving us a lot of information exactly how they're doing that. We do know they're cooperating with the Greeks, looking for this. And we'll also need to remember the 66 people on board -- 56 passengers. And we've seen their families coming through here throughout the day, getting updates from the Egyptian government.

I think it's interesting to note, one man that we talked to, when he was done being briefed by the Egyptian officials, told us that they told him that the plane hit the water, thus, assuming it crashed. Even though we are hearing from the Egyptian officials they're not ready to call it a crash yet. But we have heard from the French president that he said this was a crash. So Egypt is using their words carefully.

But you do have those 56 passengers and, again, those family members wanting to know why, and when you talk to them, they say that they're not satisfied with the information that they're getting from the Egyptian officials, although that is probably to be expected because they just want to know what happened to their family members.

CAMEROTA: It is heartbreaking, that uncertainty, the not knowing, craving more information. We see it time and again, and we understand that's happening right behind you there, Ian, at this hour. Thank you for that reporting.

Also, French President Hollande saying it appears the EgyptAir flight has crashed. CNN senior European correspondent Jim Bittermann is live in Paris with more. What's the latest there, Jim?

JIM BITTERMANN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, President Hollande has said that in a speech this morning, he basically was talking about different subject, but he wanted to express his sympathies with the families of the victims. They're gathering out at the airport. There is a special area that has been set up for them. There were 15 French nationals on board the plane. There may have been some other family whose are located in Paris who might want to go out to the airport to be close to the latest developments in this as they come in.

Basically a far as the French are concerned, they're sitting and waiting until the Egyptian authorities summon them. Basically they have the accident investigators and teams, the BEA, which investigates not only aircraft accidents but other accidents, is on standby, ready to go where ever the authorities say they should go. But at the moment, they have not been summoned by the Egyptians.

So what the French are doing in the meantime are doing a very thorough examination of everybody who had contact with this flight before it took off from Charles de Gaulle Airport last night at 11:00, including baggage handlers and security people, looking at the people who were going on board the plane, anybody who could have had any correction.

[08:05:08] The fact is that Charles de Gaulle Airport has had problems with its security in the past. Back in November they held a news conference out there to say that they have lifted over the course of last year, lifted the credentials of 57 people at the airport who they felt were suspect or connected to political organizations or potentially terrorists organizations. And so they excluded them from employment out there. But there's 86,000 employees. So it's something they can do here while they're waiting for the Egyptians to say they need help on the investigation. Alisyn and Chris?

CUOMO: All right, Jim, thank you very much. We have intrigue surrounding what's going on with the security at Charles de Gaulle, France under a state of emergency as we know now because of recent terror activity. And then of course at the point of where the plane was supposed to land in Egypt, there are also questions about how the investigation may be continued from this point on.

However, in the middle is where our focus needs to be, where this plane was, and what happened to it. Let's bring back our panel, Mary Schiavo, Miles O'Brien, David Soucie, and Richard Quest is going to join us in just a moment I believe.

Mary, when we're looking at this, let's start at the beginning. This plane was doing just fine by all accounts on its path from Charles de Gaulle in Paris to Cairo in Egypt. It was over Greek airspace. It was in Greek airspace. The Greek authorities were in contact. They're told from the cockpit they got a good response, that things were going well, proper speed, proper altitude. Then there's about a 30 minute window that becomes relevant. Tell us what we know about what happens in that window and what it might mean.

MARY SCHIAVO, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Well, in the 30 minute window, it's quite possible that nothing unusual happened, because the pilots do not have to remain in contact with air traffic control. They had to report in, and they talked to the air traffic controllers in Greece the last time. They did have to report in to the Greece, Greek airspace, and then get into Egypt airspace. That's the point where they have to do the handoff. And so that is really the first point at which a reasonable person could conclude something is wrong. They missed their handoff point.

So whether whatever happened took three minutes or 30 minutes, it is very difficult to say on than the radar tracings. Now, the only thing we've learned so far from radar information that indicates something was amiss was only in the last two minutes or three minutes in the flight, where it was reported that the plane made an erratic 90 degree turn, by the way, an airbus would fight that. An airbus aircraft has limiters on the performance perimeters of the plane that really don't let the pilots do such erratic movements. So we can also conclude that whatever happened, most likely, in my opinion, took the plane out of pilot control and it was a catastrophic event in the last two to three minutes.

CAMEROTA: But David, I believe it was you talking to us about this, maybe Miles. But if there is a stall, if something happens with the plane, are pilots taught to do something that may appear to be to us on the ground erratic, but they're trying to save everyone?

DAVID SOUCIE, CNN SAFETY ANALYST: Yes, and Mary is correct about the limits on the airplane, but if something catastrophic happens or the pilot overrides it, can go to what's called alternate law. And what alternate law does is allow you to override those types of maneuvers and make those maneuvers if necessary, which is exactly what it is designed to do and the pilots are trained to do if the aircraft goes into a stall while power is on. To stall without power, it's different. But with power on, the pilots are trained to go full left rudder or full right rudder to get the aircraft moving, to get the wind over the wings so they can pick up airspeed and fly again. But if that did occur here, it's important to point out it did not work because the aircraft continued to go down and descend at a rapid rate.

CUOMO: And then you have this point of intrigue, Miles O'Brien, about what happens on the handoff, right? The Greek authorities are monitoring it, everything is fine. Then they say they can't hear from the pilots. You taught me this checklist many tragedies ago -- aviate, navigate, communicate. And in this situation it seems to suggests the first things they would do would not be to get in touch about what is happening in the plane. But take us through that analysis of what happens after these Greek authorities say, hey, we can find the pilots any more, and then there are these movements that need to describe to us.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: You've learned your pilot lessons well, Chris. Yes, that's exactly what you're supposed to do in an emergency. Fly the airplane no matter what, maintain some sort of situational awareness, realize where you are, navigate, and then if you have time in dealing with that, report. Tell them you're having trouble.

[08:10:02] It is difficult to imagine in a two-minute period what scenario would make it impossible for them to just push the button, which is right there on the wheel, and say hey, we've got an emergency here, mayday, mayday. So that's what leads me to keep thinking about some sort of deliberate act here, or was it some sort of mechanical failure, a cascade of failures that made communication impossible. You know, a lot of this sounds very similar to what we were dealing with MH-370.

CAMEROTA: Yes. In fact, on that note, we are just getting new information, a news bulletin from the Egyptian aviation minister, who says that no debris has been found. There is no confirmation of any debris being found, and you know, Richard Quest, that -- I mean, I know you believe it will be found, it will be found quickly. This is not MH-370. This is in a much sort of confined space. However, you know, it's all at this hour still so mysterious.

RICHARD QUEST, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Look, Alisyn, post MH-370, I will be the last person to say with any definitive view of what's going to happen and the way it is going to play out. All I can say is, if you draw on the normality of it, the regular flow of these sorts of stories, I would expect debris to be seen from the air or on the sea top within the next 12 to 18 hours, maybe less. And if you look over the Java sea, it might take another two or three days to locate the bulk of the wreckage. That is just plain common sense based on previous, many of these that I've covered over many years.

I think the unusual feature of this incident is that it is at altitude, you've got it at the point of transfer between two air traffic controllers, you have normal response and then an unresponsive cockpit, and then you have these swerves if they actually took place. And that is why it will be so significant, A, because it could be a security threat, it could be a terrorist activity, but also, because it could suggest something to do with the A-320. And that's why there's going to be urgency on all fronts from security, from aviation, from passengers, from an industry to get to the bottom of this fast.

CUOMO: Well, Richard, you just gave two good points of following in for Mary Schiavo, because you conducted these types of investigations for the NTSB. The first is what Richard said near the end there, which is if, if these swerves turn out to be true, if we've learned anything is that a lot of this early information can change. So yes, we're hearing from Greek authorities, but we don't know if it is radar or somebody passed it along to them. So if the information holds, it's going to keep the focus of this search in the water.

Now, I've been monitoring the media here and online in terms of where people are seeing this story going. And there is a lot of talk about, wow, 11 hours, they haven't found anything. Luckily I just got some word from coast guard friends who do this type of searching in the water, and they said 11 hours is nothing. This is 150 or so miles off the coast. You're going to have to look about 15 to 30 miles in either direction of whatever the best pinpointing is of this. Even with the Greek Navy, even with the Egyptians, this is going to take a long time. Why?

SCHIAVO: Because while the surface on the surface is a nice, flat area to look in, beneath the water, of course, it is like searching for a plane in the mountains. Really what they need to do first is get the same kind of equipment out there that we all dealt with in MH- 370 and Air Asia. They need to get the equipment out there to find the emergency locaters pingers. That's going to be the most important thing is you get that in the water right away, but as we've learned from far too many crashes over the last three years, as we've learned, they don't last forever. They can have a situation where the batteries haven't been changed. There are problems. So that's going to be the most important thing, because that is really going to be the only way to conclusively tell what happened.

So there will be things that float to the surface. So many things on an aircraft do float. But it is a huge area combined with the fact that so much of it is going to be in underground mountain terrain. And there have been crashes on the ground in the United States in the mountains that haven't been found for days, week, or years.

[08:15:00] CUOMO: Look, it's better than being in the middle of the Indian ocean. This is a frequently traveled place, and as David Soucie told us earlier on, one of the best notes of optimism is that this is an Airbus 320, as we all remember from Sully Sullenberger. It is a craft that is designed to hold up somewhat depending on the circumstances if it lands in water. But right now, no word of what's going on in that search.

Panel, please stay with us. Alisyn, we're going to keep monitoring information. We've heard from the French authorities, and the Egyptian authorities and the Greek authorities, but no word yet about what's going on with the actual search.

CAMEROTA: Okay, Chris, and as you know, and as we've all been talking about, the disappearance of EgyptAir flight 804 today is not the first tragic incident for the airline. Boris Sanchez joins us now with a look at EgyptAir's troubled history. What do you see, Borris?

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Alisyn, as you said, this isn't the first incident EgyptAir has had to deal with. The airline is actually known for a series of hijackings, having been attacked a full eight times. In November of 1985 EgyptAir Flight 684 - 84, I should say, from Athens to Cairo was taken by terrorists with the group Abu Nidal. The plane was forced to land in Malta where terrorists began shooting passengers every 15 minutes until their demands were met. A raid by Egyptian commandos then resulted in the deaths of 54 more passengers in what became one of the bloodiest hijackings in history.

And then notoriously in 1999, EgyptAir Flight 990 from New York to Cairo crashed into the Atlantic some 60 miles south of Nantucket. There was an investigation. They later found that the first officer on that flight deliberately flew into the sea. It was a case of pilot suicide. His motives, though, were never officially determined.

In March of this year, EgyptAir Flight 181 from Alexandria to Cairo was hijacked by a man wearing a suicide belt and he forced the plane to land in Cyprus, but that belt was later found to contain only several cellphones, no actual explosives. And believe it or not, the man was trying to arrange a reunion with his estranged wife in Cyprus. And while this wasn't an - an EgyptAir flight, the security in the skies over Egypt came to the focus last year Metrojet Flight 9268 exploded over the Northern Sinai area on its way to Russia in November - rather October of last year. 224 people, mostly Russian tourists, were killed and the Sinai branch of ISIS claimed responsibility.

Obviously it is way too soon to tell what is behind this latest disappearance of Flight 804, Chris.

CUOMO: There are a lot of different points of reference. There are a lot of unanswered questions. And yet Boris, as in all of these scenarios, there is one thing for sure. Lives have been changed forever. There were 66 people on board. Their families, scrambling to get to Charles De Gaulle Airport to find out what happened and the answers, as is often the case, are few incoming.

So we're going to stay on this. We're going to stay on the latest information and give it to you as soon as we get it. Stay with CNN.

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[08:21:35] ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

CAMEROTA: We are following breaking news for you. If you're just joining us, EgyptAir Flight 804 has vanished over the Mediterranean Sea. This happened nearly 12 hours ago. Greek officials have described what happened, saying that this plane swerved and spun in the air before then dropping off radar.

Joining me now to go over what we do know at this hour is Justin Green, CNN aviation analyst and president of the International Air and Transportation Safety Bar Association. Justin, thanks so much for coming in.

Okay, so we do know some things from radar, and of course, they are eyebrow raising because it's - it's really - deviates from what a normal flight looks like. So let's first start with the flight path. Here -- it was traveling from Paris to Cairo, it was an uneventful flight. There was no weather that should bring -- that would be able to bring down a plane, and then about 40 minutes before landing, they lose touch with the air traffic controllers and drops off radar. What do you see in the flight path?

JUSTIN GREEN, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Well, I think what you see is - is no -- at this point, no real direct evidence. The direct evidence that's going to come in is from the flight data recorders, the cockpit voice recorder, which is going to tell us what the pilots were talking about, if they were dealing with a problem, that's going to be evident. And that is the direct evidence.

The indirect evidence, the lack of weather, is - is indirect evidence that you can almost rule out weather. The fact that it flew the -- almost the entire flight indicates something about whether it was terrorism or not. You know, what would a terrorist...

CAMEROTA: Does it in.

GREEN: I - I - I think that a terrorist who's going to take the airplane and crash it could have crashed it in Paris, could have crashed it in Italy, but why wait until you're over the Mediterranean and do it as you're approaching Egypt? But you never know.

CAMEROTA: Right.

GREEN: You can't - you can't put yourself in the - in the mind, and there's been no claim of responsibility, which sometimes comes out right away and sometimes comes out a few days later.

GREEN: Absolutely. And there are no officials who are saying that they can connect this to terrorism right now. Everyone is exercising caution in theories. However, a couple other things that we know. It had just flown into Egyptian airspace, so let's put that on the map of what that space looks like. Air traffic controllers in Greece had been trying to reach this plane, and they had had an uneventful time doing so. They described the pilot as cheerful in their last communication, and then just when they were about to hand off to get into Egyptian air space, they could no longer contact the flight crew. What does that tell you.

GREEN: Well, it kind of reminds me of what happened with Malaysia Airlines 370, where Malaysia Airlines 370 disappeared after its last handoff from Malaysian air traffic control and before it was supposed to check in with Vietnamese air traffic control.

Here, apparently, it was still under control of Greek air traffic control and probably was past the point where that control should have been transferred. So, it - it - it's ominous. Everything is ominous. The fact that there was no emergency radio call, the fact that the airplane clearly, based on these reports, went out of control. Something catastrophic happened on the airplane, whether it's a bomb, whether it's a pilot, you know, intentionally flying the airplane out of control, whether it's a breakup of the airplane, we just don't know at this point.

CAMEROTA: The best guess, if we look back at our map, of where the plane disappeared, and where it might be and where people are now looking for it is, you see sort of the red beacon there blinking. It has been almost 12 hours, Justin, and we've just heard from the aviation authorities.

[08:25:15] No debris has been found. Our other experts have said that's to be expected, it's too early, but, you know, they are looking. I mean, from the air and the sea. Does it seem mysterious that no - no debris has been found to you?

GREEN: Not - not yet, and - and you have to understand, there's also emergency locating transmitters that are supposed send out a signal when the airplane crashes into the water. But those, especially when a crash occurs in the water are - are very, very unreliable. So there has been no report of a - there actually was a report, but then - then discounted.

CAMEROTA: There was a report of a distress - of a distress signal...

GREEN: Right.

CAMEROTA: ... going out, but then, again, people don't think that that actually came from the plane.

GREEN: That's right. So, the emergency locater transmitter, if it sent out a signal and - and they confirmed that they received it, that would show them the location of the flight. That apparently has not happened. And since it hasn't happened, most likely it will not happen.

The - the black boxes have their own pingers.

CAMEROTA: Right.

GREEN: But that's going to take time. You're not going to receive those until you start dragging sonar buoys through the water to find those. But I'm confident and I think every - every expert, you know, I'm a aviation lawyer, but every expert I've talked to is very confident that this airplane will be found. This is not going to be another Malaysian Airlines 370. It may take a couple of days, but it - my - my guess is, we're going to hear within today or tomorrow debris being spotted.

CAMEROTA: Let's hope that we do get information soon. Justin Green, thanks so much.

GREEN: Thanks, Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: (inaudible) Great to have you here.

EgyptAir Flight 805 vanishing without a trace so far over the Mediterranean. France's president says it appears to have crashed. The Egyptians have not gone that far yet. We have the very latest information for you, next.

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