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EgyptAir Crash; TSA Staffing Crisis. Aired 8:30-9a ET

Aired May 19, 2016 - 08:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:30:48] ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: The breaking news comes out of Egypt. The apparent crash of EgyptAir Flight 804. Officials there continuing to update the media as we speak. Crews are out searching for the missing aircraft in the Mediterranean Sea, as well as in the air over the area where the plane was last contacted by Greek authorities.

Here's what we know. No debris has been found. We're heading into the 12th hour since this plane went off radar. The people matter the most, especially those who are missing, 66 people on board, 53 of them were passengers. You had children on this plane, as well as adults.

There are some interesting aspects to the population of the plane. Among the crew, there were three security personnel. We're not sure yet whether that's standard like an air marshal or was there some increased security aspect as well. Among who these people were, very little is known. We do know about a dozen were French. About 30 were Egyptian. And then there was a range of different ethnicities and nationalities that coordinates with that area of the world.

From the French side, the early word was that everything was fine on this flight. It checked in according to Greek authorities at the proper speed and altitude for that point in the flight. And that then, during the handoff between Greek and Egyptian authorities, something happened.

Let's begin there with our panel of aviation experts. We have Mary Schiavo, Richard Quest, David Soucie, and Miles O'Brien. And as we all know, part of the reporting responsibility here is that people join you throughout the morning. And for a lot of people, this is new information, my friends, so let's start with what we know best and first.

David Soucie, this point of crisis seems to originate when the Greek authorities are handing off to the Egyptian airspace, and they hear from the pilots, the pilots seem OK. They're at the right altitude and air speed and then something happens. And according to Reuters, from Greek authorities, there were very erratic movements in the air and a very rapid decent, 37,000 feet to 22,000, to 10,000. Give us your read so far.

DAVID SOUCIE, CNN SAFETY ANALYST: The things that's between those two events, Chris, is important to point out as well that the - the pilots did not respond when they were supposed to. They said everything was fine. Thirty minutes passed. Then at that point, they should have checked in with the receiving air traffic control. They did not do that. That air traffic control continued to raise them. They were not able to do that.

Then, 90 seconds later is when this rapid movement occurred. So it indicates to me there's a couple of things going on. Either there was some struggle in the airplane itself, or that there was some disabling effect. Something catastrophically failed on the airplane that caused these rapid movements. But it's very disturbing. And at this point, it does fit the profile of the aircraft going down and - and losing all power, all electricity, and going down into the ocean.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Mary, you know, when you - there are always haunting details when you, in retrospect, try to go back over what happened and what led up to a disappearance or a crash and, you know, this is one of them, as we've just been talking about it. 2:48 Athens Time, the Greek aviation air traffic controllers checked in and the pilots were described as being - the pilot was described as being cheerful and thanked the Greek air traffic controller. So nothing wrong.

And then, as we've all been saying, 30 to 40 minutes later, they try to check in again. Time to hand them off to Egyptians and they can't get them. And then on the ground, you know, panic ensues and they realize something is terribly wrong. What stands out to you?

MARY SCHIAVO, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Well, the fact that whatever happened, you know, we can't assume anything did or didn't happen in those - in the time - in the just under 30 minutes between the last check-in, when the pilot sounded cheerful, and the time when they missed their check-in, because they don't have to do the reporting, they don't have to call them up every, you know, every few minutes.

The time that we know for certain something had gone wrong is when they did not check in with the Egyptian air traffic control. They did not complete their handoff. At that point, whatever was happening was already happening because it's very serious, particularly in this area of the world. There's a lot of radar coverage. There's lots of military activities and military coverage and fleets on the Mediterranean, et cetera. So you don't want to be an identified aircraft in that area.

[08:35:23] So we know whatever happened, it was a three to four minute window. And in those last probably two to three minutes, from 37,000 feet to the ocean, we can assume the ocean, that would have been a situation where the plane was out of control because that's how long it takes to fall from 37,000 feet to the ocean, sadly.

CAMEROTA: Egyptian? We're -

CUOMO: All right, so we are hearing from the Egyptian authorities. They started off very slow in this situation to jump to any kind of conclusion. They didn't even want to say the plane had crashed. They said, let's just call it missing. Now, about an hour into the press conference, the Egyptian authorities

are now saying that it's more likely that this was an act of terror than some type of mechanical mishap. So somewhat of a 180 there, Miles, in terms of their own speculating.

But let's stick with following what we know at this point. One of the points of curiosity, we're now entering 12 hours since this plane went off the radar. We are right in saying this is much better than being in the middle of nowhere in terms of searching, 150 to 170 nautical miles off the northern coast of Egypt. However, according to coast guard sources, that's still a huge area and they see 12 hours as basically 12 minutes in relative search time. Why? How difficult is something like this, even in a highly trafficked area?

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: It's a big ocean. Even the Mediterranean is a big ocean. You're right, we're not in the North Atlantic looking for Air France 447, but they did find the floating vertical stabilizer within a matter of about four days after it disappeared from the radar screens - or it wasn't on radar at the time, after it crashed. And, of course, we're not talking about the Indian Ocean, which we've spent a lot about it - a lot of time talking about. There's a lot of shipping traffic in the area.

One thing that's unfortunate is, it is about the deepest part of the Mediterranean, about 15,000 feet deep. So when it comes time to be looking for those pinging devices, that will be problematic.

You know, it comes back to a point I've made many times, why on earth, in this day and age, we don't have real time telemetry from these aircraft as they fly. We would know almost everything we need to know right now about what happened on that aircraft if it had that capability. The aviation industry -

CUOMO: Well, it's just about money, right? It's a little bit about coordination, Miles, and about money.

O'BRIEN: It's strictly money. Strictly money. Strictly money. It's a bottom line decision by the aviation industry. Whatever they tell you otherwise, it's - that's not true. It is about money.

CAMEROTA: (INAUDIBLE) would help in scenarios like today.

Richard, we also know there were three EgyptAir security officials on board. They were among the ten crew. Are those the equivalent of what we would call air marshals?

RICHARD QUEST, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: Yes. We never really know how many or on what flights. I'm actually surprised, bearing in mind the nature of this flight, that there were perhaps three. I mean the load was only 56 passengers. But, remember, this plane had already done a rotation earlier in the day to. It had come from Aratra (ph) up to Cairo. It then had done a rotation from Cairo up to Tunis and back again. Then it had gone up to Paris.

Now, all of this entirely normal in terms of the number of legs that a plane would have flown. But we don't know necessarily how many - what the - what the profile of the passengers going up to Paris was. And also, of course, with the three security, whether they burned and turned and were coming straight back again, or had they actually overnighted there.

Look, it's an indication, to some extent, that Egypt takes security to a level of seriousness. We - there are - I've listened carefully to what - you know, to obviously the debates and the discussions, but the reality, of course, is, we have no idea.

CAMEROTA: Yes.

QUEST: And we can - we can speculate and we can go deep into the potentials on all - on possibilities. But the big unknown here, Chris and Alisyn, remains that at 2:27, well, 2:48, they're cheerful. At 2:48, they don't respond. And then shortly thereafter, there is this swerving. We've got no idea what caused it.

CAMEROTA: Absolutely. Richard, thank you.

Panel, please stand by. Obviously we will continue to check back in with you.

Chris.

CUOMO: All right, and at this point we just try to go on what we can learn from the various authorities and investigators. And things will be ruled out in their own course and time. The question here now is, whenever something happens abroad, what reflective impact does it have back in the United States? What does this mean as a reflection of what we're dealing with, with these recent TSA problems?

[08:40:10] We have U.S. Senator Dick Durbin. He's next on NEW DAY. He has great perspective on how this investigation will proceed abroad and what it means to you right here at home. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

CUOMO: We are following breaking news here surrounding the apparent crash of Egyptian Air 804. We're now hearing that Egyptian and Greek military assets are furiously searching the Mediterranean for this plane. It vanished off radar just about 12 hours ago. The Egyptian aviation minister is now saying it is more likely that the plane was brought down by terror than by a technical failure. But we do not know that that speculation is based on any information that is not known to us at this point. Because as far as we know, investigators and authorities in France and Greece are not going that far. They know certain things about the plane before it went off radar, but not that necessarily dictate a conclusion.

Something else that's in the wind this morning about why this might have happened is the security situation at Charles de Gaulle Airport. This flight took off from Paris and was supposed to go to Cairo.

Let's discuss this now with Illinois senator Dick Durbin. He's on the Senate Appropriations Transportation Subcommittee. He knows a lot about the TSA. I'm actually in your home state of Illinois. We're going to be talking to Secretary Clinton later on this afternoon in a sit-down interview. This will come up, but the context, the TSA, right here in Illinois, right here in Chicago, there are a lot of problems and confusions and frustrations, senator, about waiting time. And you know that locally they're calling for private forces there, staffing there to help offset these delays with the TSA. How do you balance convenience and security?

SEN. DICK DURBIN (D), ILLINOIS: Well, that's the right question. And let's take a look at where we are today. We had a meltdown when it came to airport security at O'Hare and Midway. Lines that went on for hours before people could go through them, and many of them missed their planes, had to stay overnight. Unacceptable. We should have seen this coming. We need a better response, more efficiency from the Transportation Security Agency.

I have Admiral Neffenger coming out to that airport tomorrow. I'll be with him. We'll be meeting with airport officials, as well as representatives of the airlines, to get to the bottom of this. They are sending in the shock (ph) troops to have more screeners, more dogs sniffing the luggage to see if there's evidence of bombs. All that's important.

[08:45:15] But, Chris, you asked the right question. Let's put it in perspective. Right now we are focused on EgyptAir and the suspicion, the possibility that it was a terrorist attack. We live in a dangerous world. We need to have this airport security to make sure we can get off the plane safely with our families at the end of our journey.

CUOMO: The TSA says that there's a lot of smoke coming from the political side. That they take the heat, but the bottom line is, it's about money. They're not properly funded, so they're not properly staffed, and that goes from the number to the quality to the vetting to the training. Is that the answer?

DURBIN: That's part of the answer. Another part of it is management and efficiency with the assets we currently have. But look at the numbers. Last year, TSA screened 708 million airline passengers in the United States. That was up 40 million over the previous year. About a 7 - 6 or 7 percent increase. I might also tell you that we haven't been increasing the number of screeners to keep up with this new surge in passengers on aircraft. We expect even more this year.

So we need to have the screeners. We need to have the bomb sniffing dogs. We need to have the screening sites at the airports. But we need to anticipate when we're going to have this surge in passengers so we aren't caught flat-footed as we were in Chicago last week.

CUOMO: Well, what do we know about the facts? Does the United States have more traffic volume than other major cities around the world where you don't encounter these lines? I mean, you know, you and I share a common quality that we know airports all too well.

DURBIN: We sure do. CUOMO: And I have to tell you, you know, the lines in the United States, Chicago, O'Hare, deserves a little bit of stink, but they're not that unique. It seems to be a problem here in big cities, maybe even more so than you see in other big cities around the world. Do you believe that? And, if so, why?

DURBIN: Chris, take a look at other places in the world. Their standards are somewhat different than the United States. Taking off your shoes in Europe is not a common thing. They may not have the pre- check arrangement that we have. So each - each country is different.

What I want to make sure of is that we do everything humanly possible to make airline travel safe for our passengers and their families that get on the airplanes. I wish we didn't have to face this madness, but we do. Let's do it efficiently and effectively. And that means making sure that we put the right assets in place. When I talked to Admiral Neffenger yesterday, I learned, if you bring in a bomb sniffing dog in that is well trained, and it takes about six months to train him, they can clear 5,000 passengers a day into the pre-check line that moves much more quickly than the standard lines. So there are ways to reach higher levels of efficiency. Passengers and airlines have to do their part.

The baggage fees are not helping us, incidentally, by these airlines. More and more people are dragging their bags through the screening sites by a margin of about four to one over checked baggage. We've got to tell the airlines, perhaps you have to forego a little bit of profit this traveling season so that we can move people through more quickly.

CUOMO: And, of course, they complain about fuel prices. Important to note, Peter Neffenger is the TSA administrator. You're bringing him here to Chicago to deal with the specific problem on the ground.

And, senator, I hope you understand, I'm not going to talk to you about the election today because with what's going on in EgyptAir, talking about the TSA just should matter more to people right now. Appreciate you dealing with this issue right now and we'll see where it goes from here. Appreciate it, senator.

DURBIN: Thanks a lot.

CUOMO: Thank you for being honest with NEW DAY today.

DURBIN: Thank you.

CUOMO: And, of course, we are here, Alisyn, I'm here in Chicago because we are going to have an exclusive interview with Secretary Clinton. We'll talk about what the response has been from her potential opponent, to what happened with EgyptAir, what does she believe this situation means about the state of affairs in the world and, of course, we'll talk to her about the state of play in her own party and in the election today.

CAMEROTA: OK, Chris, I'm very much looking forward to seeing that live interview. In the meantime, all of the breaking news that we've been covering

about the apparent crash of EgyptAir Flight 804, it raises question about whether this is another terror attack. Our terror analysts, Paul Cruickshank and Juliette Kayyem here next with what their sources are saying.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:52:33] ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

CAMEROTA: We do have some breaking news on the disappearance and assumed crash of EgyptAir Flight 804. The Egyptian aviation minister has just said it is, quote, "more likely" that terror, not a technical failure, brought down this plane. But he's also saying that none of the passengers on this flight had any known security concerns.

Let's talk about it. We want to bring in our CNN terrorism analyst, Paul Cruickshank, and Juliette Kayyem, CNN national security analyst.

Thanks to both of you for being here.

Juliette, how could he conclude this so early in the details, that it's more likely terror than any sort of technical failure?

JULIETTE KAYYEM, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Well, I mean, in the same way that all of us over the course of the last 12 hours have. You had a bunch of data when the plane first went missing, and then a variety of sort of data points that are suggesting - or let's just say are sort of precluding other alternative theories. And the most important is, clearly something catastrophic happened. No sort of dramatic weather to speak of. Not enough time for the pilots to do an SOS or any sort of emergency communication. Dramatic turns by the airplane. I am more convinced than I was last night this was a catastrophic failure brought by a - sort of a new source on the airplane. I don't know what it is, of course. And so that is why EgyptAir has to go by that theory.

And I have to say, you know, that press conference started off horribly. The sort of dithering about what this was. I'm glad EgyptAir is accepting that this is the likely theory, the reason why, is this is now an investigation. It is a global investigation. And you want to be able to have the resources, the security and intelligence resources, to drive where the investigation is going to go, because if people are responsible for this, we have to know who they are.

CAMEROTA: Yes, I mean, that aviation minister, defense minister, I should say, was reluctant to even say it was a crash. He said he was just calling it a missing plane.

KAYYEM: Yes.

CAMEROTA: Paul, what are your sources telling you?

PAUL CRUICKSHANK, CNN TERRORISM ANALYST: I think it's too early to tell whether this is terrorism or whether this was some kind of technical failure. This would be awfully early on in an investigation for them to have concrete indications that this is some kind of terrorist attack. Clearly they're going to be looking at that as a possibility. They're going to be examining the passenger manifest, the cargo on board, but also looking at where this aircraft was in the 24 hours before it appears to have crashed. And we know that this aircraft came back from Eritrea (ph), on to Cairo, and then on Tunis, and then on to Paris, passed through several airports in the developing world.

[08:55:14] The biggest vulnerability in the aviation sector globally right now is the fact that many airports in the developing world are lagging behind in airport security, in state-of-the-art machines, in the best training practices, in security protocols for workers at the airport. We've recently seen a number of bombing attempts and bombing at airports in the Middle East and Africa, notably a Metrojet in October over the Sinai Peninsula, that Russian airliner, a much more recently in February a Somalia passenger jet, Daallo Airlines Flight 159. A bomb actually went off on board. it was hidden in a laptop. A sophisticated device that airport workers recruited by the al Qaeda affiliated terrorist group, al Shabaab, managed to get on board that aircraft. Eritrea not too far away from Somalia. Just to the north of Somalia. Many airports this plane transferred through. Of course, Alisyn, also scrutiny about Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris.

CAMEROTA: Yes.

CRUICKSHANK: Where there has been concern about radicalization amongst airport workers over there.

CAMEROTA: Juliette, in the past, sometimes even before investigators are done with their investigation, there is some claim of responsibility from some terror group. If this were the case, what pattern do you think it would follow here?

KAYYEM: Well, if there is going to be a claim of responsibility, if it is terrorism, we would anticipate it in the next day or so. So we'll give it some time. It sometimes takes three or four days. Remember, the previous EgyptAir.

But I want to pick up on something Paul said. There - there have - the millions of people who are entering flights right now are nervous. We know this. And so to rule out terrorism is the most important aspect of this investigation. And the fact that we cannot rule - the fact that we cannot rule it out at this stage is essential because we need to know, both from the U.S. perspective about flights coming in from Egypt or Paris, as well as the European community. We need to know what is going on.

CAMEROTA: Yes. Yes, of course. Juliette, Paul, thank you very much. We really appreciate being able to call upon your expertise in times like this.

News coverage of the crash of Egypt Flight -- EgyptAir Flight 804 will continue with "Newsroom" with Carol Costello right after this very short break. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [09:00:08] ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: And good morning. I'm Carol Costello.