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AirAsia Search and Recovery Continues; Did AirAsia Pilot Try to Land on Ocean; Answering Viewer Questions on Flight 8501; New Clues Jeb Bush Will Run in 2016.

Aired January 01, 2015 - 13:30   ET

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

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DAVID GALLO, WOODS HOLE OCEANOGRAPHIC: Usually, you're extremely careful not to say that you found something until you ground truth in it.

JOE JOHNS, CNN WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Woods Hole participated in the crash of Air France 447 off Brazil's northeastern coast, whose black boxes took almost two years to recover, footnoting what a painstaking process this can be.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

JOHNS: Now, on the other hand, this crash occurred in much shallower water than the Air France flight, suggesting recovery could be easier, but poachers or tourists looking for souvenirs -- Brianna?

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: Unbelievable to think that's a possibility.

Joe Johns, thank you so much.

And I want to continue the discussion on the search-an-recovery efforts.

Joining me now is retired Lieutenant Colonel Ken Christensen, an aviation consultant, and he worked with Air Force search-and-rescue. We also have our safety analyst and former FAA director, David Soucie, author of "Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, Why It Disappeared and Why It's Only a Matter of Time Before This Happens Again."

The unconfirmed report about the slow descent by the plane, if that's true, David, what kind of debris field would that create?

DAVID SOUCIE, CNN SAFETY ANALYST: You expect to have a pretty significant debris field, and we haven't seen that, so it's very confusing to me as to why it doesn't make sense both ways as to whether it was a high-impact because we would have significant amounts of debris.

KEILAR: OK.

And, Colonel, can you explain -- we're getting these numbers -- we have not confirmed them, CNN has not confirmed them. But this is coming to the "Sydney Morning Herald" from data that was leaked, as we understand it, from Mode-S radar, if I'm saying that correctly. What is that exactly?

LT. COL. KEN CHRISTENSEN, AVIATION CONSULTANT, FORMER AIR FORCE SEARCH & RESCUE: The Mode-S radar gives a number of parameters for the air traffic controller. More than just the heading and altitude and air speed. Also giving some GPS guidance, as well, or coordinates, as well, so they are tracking that after the incident. they'll pull the tapes and find out where the airplanes actually tracked until they have lost electrical power and the system goes inoperative.

KEILAR: Is that something that all planes have?

CHRISTENSEN: Not all planes, but that's all commercial planes are now getting Mode-S, that's correct.

KEILAR: All commercial planes are now getting that.

So, David, what do these numbers tell you when you look at them, if they are true, if they are confirmed?

SOUCIE: Well, as we said before, there's some confusion as to what true air speed is versus indicated air speed versus ground speed, and so these numbers are telling us, what they are telling us is ground speed. If it was from Mode-S transponder, which you mentioned there had been, there would be more information available, so it's possible we didn't get the entire bucket of information available because the secondary surveillance radar, which is what the Mode-S is, should be giving us a little bit more information than what we have here, should give us KIAS, knots of indicated air speed, as well, which is the air speed relative to the airplane and not to the ground. That would give us a lot more information, but to me it looks as though if this information is correct, it looks as though there was an encounter of some kind of significant weather and the aircraft had stalled and had made a flat or dead pan spin stall.

KEILAR: A dead-pan spin stall, so what is that exactly?

SOUCIE: It's basically, a flat spin. In other words, there's no significant air going over the top of the wing, not enough air over the top of the wing to create lift. If there's no lift, of course, the aircraft falls down and the best thing to do at that point is to get the nose of the aircraft down and get enough air flow going over the wing to pick up speed, pick up forward speed, then at that point you have control of the aircraft, but in a flat spin, there's no control over the flight control surface really.

KEILAR: Like not flying a plane at all, almost, it seems.

Colonel, we don't have the black boxes, obviously, but one of the victims, the bodies themselves are providing some evidence. One victim who has been identified had an I.D. and a necklace on her body. Does that tell you anything about the impact?

CHRISTENSEN: Not having seen that, really clothing is more telling than sometimes jewelry. Jewelry can sometimes have a lot of structural stability and stay on the crash victim, but clothing can get shredded off if you're exposed, if you're flying through the air and you're exposed to these very, very strong, stronger than hurricane, stronger than tornado-force winds, it will absolutely shred your clothes off. So it depends on if the body pulled up had clothing or not, but that would point towards in-flight breakup as opposed to the airplane hitting water and then having the occupants protected by the airplane during the impact. Now, saying that, you can have pieces of the airplane, break up in flight and have the nose, which has the whole nose and the cone on there, impact the water and that sort of protects those people in front of the airplane from the wind blast and people in the aft portion of the airplane would be exposed to wind blast, so you could get a mix. Again, putting that together is like David talks about, that would point towards why that aircraft crashed.

KEILAR: All right, thank you, gentlemen so much. Lieutenant Colonel Ken Christensen, and we also have David Soucie with us. We'll be talking more to you gentlemen. Thank you.

And there's a question, you know, could the pilots of this doomed AirAsia plane have tried a water landing? We know from Sully Sullenberger's "Miracle on the Hudson," it is at least possible in certain conditions. We'll be hearing from him coming.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEILAR: We may never know what happened in the last moments of AirAsia Flight 8501. One theory suggested that the pilot may have tried to land on the ocean. We know, from Sully Sullenberger's "Miracle on the Hudson," landing his crippled jet on the river, that it is possible under the right conditions, but in the roiling Java Sea during a storm? I asked Sullenberger about that.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHESLEY "SULLY" SULLENBERGER, PILOT: That's an interesting problem, too. It's been done. It's more challenging, obviously, in the open ocean than an inland waterway, but in the United States in our flight simulators, it's not possible to practice a water landing. Before our water landing, the only training we'd gotten was a theoretical classroom discussion. Of course, there was a checklist, a protocol, but we'd never done it. Of course, we had one chance to get right something we never anticipated or specifically trained for, and being in the open ocean would be a much more challenging situation, but over water in general, it's featureless terrain where depth perception is difficult, descending without engine thrust, much steeper and much more rapidly than a virtual landing on a runway where you can make a more gradual approach. It would be a very challenging thing to do, but it's possible. It's theoretically possible.

KEILAR: I went back to your audio from 2009, U.S. Airways audio, and one of the things that struck me was that you were in constant contact with air traffic control from the time that you hit the flock of birds and determined that you'd lost thrust in both engines until really just, I think, seconds before you landed in the Hudson River. The pilots of Flight 8501 did not make any distress calls. We know that the general rule of thumb is aviate, navigate, communicate. Communication does come last.

But let's play out that audio from your landing on the Hudson in 2009.

(BEGIN AUDIO FEED)

CONTROLLER: Turn right, you can land.

SULLENBERGER: We can't do it.

CONTROLLER: OK, which runway would you like?

SULLENBERGER: We're going to be in the Hudson.

(END AUDIO FEED)

KEILAR: That was just moments before you landed the plane in water, on water. We didn't hear a distress call from 8501. Why not?

SULLENBERGER: It's possible that they couldn't. It's possible that they were too busy trying to fly the airplane and saw whatever problems that they were facing. Again, they may have been true to their priorities and communication, as you said, was one of the last ones. In reality, except for starting a search-and-rescue effort, there wouldn't be a lot of help air traffic control could give you at that point. So I wouldn't read too much into it. It's too early to tell. We had the luxury of being in direct communication with air traffic control immediately after takeoff, but still, first, you have to fly the airplane, begin to take the first steps. It was about 25 seconds before I made the mayday call. First, we had to establish roles and responsibilities and begin following our protocol, and then get to the communications. That was not the first thing that we did.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KEILAR: Captain Sully Sullenberger on the differences in his landing on the Hudson River and what may have occurred with Flight 8501.

To find out what services are available for those coping with air disasters such as crash of AirAsia Flight 8501, you can go to CNN.com/impact. And still ahead, our panel of experts will answer your questions

about the crash of AirAsia Flight 8501.

And later, some politics. Jeb Bush takes another important step toward clearing the way for a presidential run. We'll talk about what happens if he jumps into the race.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEILAR: Time is critical in the search for the wreckage of Flight 8501. The pingers on the flight data recorder boxes have about 25 days of power left and information in those boxes could be key to finding out what brought the plane down. Many of you have been tweeting questions about the investigation.

We've been paying attention to those and want to bring in our panel now to answer your questions.

We have CNN safety analyst, David Soucie; and Ken Christensen, an aviation consultant, and he worked with Air Force Search-and-rescue.

So, Colonel, our first tweet to you, the tweet is, is it about time too r to attach emergency locator beacons on airplanes?

CHRISTENSEN: There are emergency locator transmitters on airplanes currently, both general aviation and emergency locate transmitters. The underwater locator beacons are not on all general aviation airplanes, but they are on all commercial and military aircraft.

KEILAR: So I want -- let me sort of follow up on this, because ELTs, right, isn't that what they are called?

CHRISTENSEN: Correct.

KEILAR: So they have these ELTs and I think there's more than one on a plane, they are not as reliable as, say, you know, a black box is very reliable. And in almost any crash where you find one and you recover it, it's just a wealth of information, yet something like an ELT, it seems like they don't always work, is that a good read on that?

CHRISTENSEN: Partially. When talking about ELT, that is one of the black boxes that are on the aircraft.

KEILAR: OK.

CHRISTENSEN: What that gives -- that communicates with a satellite, but you can activate that from the cockpit manually prior to a water ditching to notify the search-and-rescue satellite, and that will pinpoint your position. But they also go by impact, if you crash on land. When the impact forces when the airplane hits the ground, that will start transmitting. Why that does not work on an impact in the water where it might initially impact but the antenna is out of the water. So then all that's on the airplane is the underwater locator beacon and you have to be within, like, one, maybe as far as five, six miles where you can pick that up. So that provides zero information for you until you are at the location of the potential crash. That's a problem we had with Malaysia 370.

KEILAR: OK. Still to be located at this point.

David, this one is for you. Could the aircraft have suffered a massive decompression, making the crew unconscious and unable to react? Do you think that's possible or likely?

SOUCIE: Of course, it's possible. I don't see it as likely. Because from the evidence that we see the debris field is very small and had that happened the aircraft would have impacted with great force and there would be debris -- the debris field wouldn't just be limited to the bodies and the exit door and the emergency slide as it is right now.

KEILAR: OK, Colonel, Joel is asking how high can a plane go to avoid storms, and why couldn't they, this plane, fly near water to try to land.

CHRISTENSEN: Well, in that region, the closer you go to the equator and don't forget on the southern hemisphere it's their summer now and our winter up here in the north, so the more heat, the more vertical development you get with clouds or the thunder clouds, thunderstorms if you will. So those are going up and those were at 55,000 feet. That far exceeds the ceiling capability of this specific aircraft, and the pilot flying knows that, so it would not be in his best interest to try to climb past that, and he knows that. So they were making a left turn or a right turn and maybe climbing 1,000, 2,000 feet for smoother air, but you're going to lose capability in your airplane and get in a worse situation than if you stay lower.

KEILAR: Yeah, go around, not over, and the pilots know that.

David, there's one viewer who's concerned about the route, saying Flight 8501, plus the Malaysian flight makes it two flights in that region that did not make it to their destination. Should I be worried about raveling to Kuala Lumpur? What do you tell this viewer?

SOUCIE: I don't see a lot of connection between these two, at least on a proximate cause. Now, if you're concerned about whether or not there's something higher decision-making by the management I wouldn't be concerned about that level either because you got very capable CEO. He's handling this very well and has a long history of handling things very well. So I wouldn't go there either. If you're talking about a level of fear the regulatory level there's sufficient are regulatory safety measures in place. I'm not drawing a connection between the two. I think the probability of an accident would be higher now than it would be at any other time.

KEILAR: Put his concerns aside, perhaps.

David Soucie, Ken Christensen, thanks to both of you.

SOUCIE: Thank you.

KEILAR: We're getting more clues that Jeb Bush is getting ready to run for president. Next, our political experts weigh in on what it means for the overall campaign.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

North Korea's leader may be open to talks with the south in his end of the year message Kim Jong-Un said he would consider high level talks with South Korea's president but only if certain conditions are met. He didn't reveal what those conditions would be. Also this week North Korean state TV showed pictures of the supreme leader to flying a plane. The talks come on the heels of South Korea's announcement they would like to re-open talks with the north.

There's another indication that Jeb Bush is setting up a run for the White House. Last month, he announced he was actively exploring a presidential run.

CNN national correspondent, Suzanne Malveaux.

(LAUGHTER)

SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hey, Brianna.

KEILAR: Happy New Year to you.

Tell us what's the new development here and why we're sort of wondering what's going on with Jeb Bush.

MALVEAUX: It might be a New Year's resolution. I don't know. There's no question it really looks like he's getting much, much closer to a presidential run. He has announced he's resigned his membership from all of his corporate and nonprofit boards, including his own education foundation. He also left his position as a paid adviser for an education company that sells online courses for public university students. So this information, as you know, is just one of the necessary things that you have to do to get rid of your about it interests so there's not a conflict interest if you become a official and also to devote the time that's necessary, right, to explore a return to politics.

Brianna, he's also done something that's not easy for a lot of us, he lost nearly 20 pounds, formed a PAC, released 250,000 emails as governor, and also writing an eBook. So he's very busy. It was a couple of weeks ago I covered this story. We were talking about it because he's 61 years old. Former two-term Florida governor. He posted this on Facebook: "I decided to actively explore the possibility of running for president of the United States."

So, he's getting a lot of buzz right now. He's popular with the party establishment. He brings in big donors. Speaks fluent Spanish. Was the governor of the state need to capture the votes in Florida but he's gotten criticism from his own party particularly from the conservatives. They see him too moderate on immigration reform and education.

What's interesting is that Bush has declined an invitation to speak at a political event at the end of the month, it's the Iowa Freedom Summit organized by big time conservative Representative Steven King, who is one of the most vocal critics of immigration reform. You have more than half a dozen Republican attenders reflecting how important this is. Bush decided a conflict in his schedule but also he's trying to set himself apart from the pack.

KEILAR: A lot of us might see a conflict in views with that group.

So I want to bring in CNN senior digital correspondent, Chris Moody.

So there's a number of moves there. He lost 20 pounds too, trying to say look I may be fit, I'm physically fit to run. So, you look at this, Chris, and what do you think? Is he running? CHRIS MOODY, CNN SENIOR DIGITAL CORRESPONDENT: Last night, Jeb

Bush took the biggest public step towards running for president out of all the people we've been looking at over the past few months. There's a big difference between talk about running for president and actually taking, making the hard decisions to do it and disassociating yourself or stepping down from these groups is a tough choice and it's a big thing. Now, what this -- is not just to the people. It's also to the donors. Sending a message to them to saying, look, I'm very serious about this. I'm not playing games. Keep your powder dry, I'm coming in 2015.

KEILAR: Keep your money in your pocket, waiting for me.

MOODY: Right. Right.

KEILAR: Let's take a look at the latest poll on the GOP menu, if you will. Jeb Bush the front-runner. He has 23 percent. Remember, this poll did not include Mitt Romney. Is this all -- we're very far out here, Chris. Is this all just about name recognition, name I.D.?

MOODY: Polls two years out have a lot to do with just name I.D. People when they get calls by these pollsters they say the name they recognize. You saw Rudy Giuliani up at the top back in 2007, 2008. That has something to do with it. It's a signal to the candidates themselves that, hey, I may have a shot here. People know who I am. It gives them an opportunity from provide their message. People are willing to listen to them. One anomaly, Dr. Ben Carson doing very well in these polls despite orb not having the same kind of name I.D.

KEILAR: He got a little bit of name I.D. being as a FOX contributor. He's no longer doing that, a sign he's serious about throwing his hat in the ring.

This poll, Suzanne, we looked at a Hillary Clinton/Jeb Bush match up. Hillary Clinton comes out on top. Smaller margin than against any of the other prospective GOP candidates, Ted Cruz, Chris Christie, for instance. If Jeb Bush runs, do you think this impacts Hillary Clinton's decision to run?

MALVEAUX: No, absolutely not. They have already --

(CROSSTALK)

(LAUGHTER)

MALVEAUX: They have already gamed out all the possible contenders that she could be up against. They acknowledge and realize that Jeb Bush would probably be one of the stronger contenders but no, that would not impact her at all. She's focused on making herself the strongest candidate possible no matter who she goes up against. It's a margin they are not concerned with.

Also, I should let you know it was just a couple of months, last month, when I covered George W. Bush's book, the unveiling to his father, this conversation came up, it kept coming up whether or not Jeb Bush is going to run. And George W. Bush said in acknowledging that Hillary Clinton would be the most formidable and experienced opponent to go up against his baby brother but they are itching for this. They are dying for this. This is something they think would be epic and historic. And you might recall it was Barbara Bush, the mom, who said we don't need any more Bushes. She has changed her mind.

(CROSSTALK)

KEILAR: Suzanne Malveaux, Chris Moody, thank you and happy New Year to both of you.

(CROSSTALK)

KEILAR: And that's it for me. Happy New Year to all of you out there. I'm going to back. Tomorrow you'll see me.

For our international viewers, "Defining Moments, 2014" is next.

For our viewers in North American, "Newsroom" with Ana Cabrera starts right now.