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Search Focused on 2,000 Square Mile Area; Most Probable Area in Java Sea; Thirty Bodies Recovered from Flight 8501; Search Zone Roughly the Size of Delaware; Weather Hampers Search; Remembering Mario Cuomo

Aired January 02, 2015 - 13:00   ET

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

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: Hi there, I'm Brianna Keilar, in for Wolf Blitzer. It's 1:00 p.m. here in Washington, 6:00 p.m. London, 8:00 p.m. in Jerusalem, and it's 1:00 a.m. in Surabaya, Indonesia. Wherever you are watching from around the world, thanks for joining us.

Up first, new indications that searchers may be getting closer to finding the wreckage of AirAsia Flight 8501. They've recovered what could be a piece of the fuselage, as well as more bodies of victims.

Here's the latest. Singapore's defense ministry say that searchers have found what resembles a window panel from the plane along with other possible wreckage. Finding the fuselage and the plane's black boxes is key to determining the cause of the crash, but bad weather is hampering recovery efforts again today.

The search is focused on an area covering about 2,000 square miles. That, just to give you some perspective, is bigger than Rhode Island but smaller than Delaware. Officials believe it's the most probable area where the wreckage is located.

And crews have now recovered the bodies of 30 victims. The USS Sampson retrieved some of the bodies. The US Navy ship is helping with the search and the recovery. So far, only four of the victims have been identified.

Let's get more details now on the search and the recovery operations. CNN's Andrew Stevens is joining us from Surabaya, Indonesia. How significant is this, Andrew, that we're talking about a smaller search area that searchers are now concentrating on?

ANDREW STEVENS, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: It is significant, Brianna, in that very fact that they are narrowing down the focus which is very, very important. And they describe it as the most probable area in the search zone. So, that in itself is significant. But it doesn't mean it makes it any easier to actually get to the very bottom of this mystery and that is finding the flight recorders, the data recorders, voice recorders, the black boxes which will tell a story, most likely, of what actually happened to Flight 8501.

It has been and remains a frustrating search. Weather continues to play a key role for all of the wrong reasons, Brianna. Conditions were said to be better today but the head of the search teams said that they were very, very challenging conditions still. Waves reported of up to five meters. That's getting on towards 15 feet, to give you an idea. Plus, rain and very low visibility.

Now, this new area, the 2,000-square-mile most probable area, the searchers there are really going to be searching under water. They're going to be using listening equipment, sonar equipment to try to find out what is at the bottom of the seabed there, to map it to see if they can see any wreckage and also to listen for the pings from the black boxes or from the locator transmitters. They haven't heard anything yet.

As you say, they have found a window panel that has been brought to the surface. And there have been reports earlier this week that they may have located -- there was a sonar image of a much bigger object but that hasn't been confirmed since. That much bigger object obviously is the fuselage and searchers think that the fuselage, Brianna, mainly intact and it still contained many of the bodies. So, a very frustrating all around but so much so, obviously, for the families who wait here where I am at the crisis center in Surabaya for any sort of news of the fate of their loved ones.

KEILAR: Yes. And so many of them, you told us, are resigned, really, to the fate of their loved ones. And so, the next step for many of them is burying their loved ones. Now with 30 bodies having been found, only four identified, how does this process go of identifying these bodies?

STEVENS: Well, painfully or painstakingly slowly, I guess is the best way to describe it. They are very, very cautious and careful about identifying correctly the remains of these bodies. And they have been in the sea now for several days. A visual identification is becoming increasingly difficult, obviously, Brianna.

So, more and more, they're going to be relying on DNA. Also, on, perhaps, any distinguishing features. Clothing will play an important part to one of the -- the first of the victims was -- one of the identifications was a necklace that she was wearing which had her initials on it. So, they are looking at a range of any sort of measures, visual means they can. But DNA really does seem to be the big one and that does take some time. The first body took more than 24 hours to be identified.

As you say, there are now 30 bodies that have been retrieved. We were actually out at the naval base at the international airport a little earlier where the bodies are being brought and a very solemn procession went past our camera position. Ten ambulances bearing the bodies of the -- of the passengers on -- and crew on that plane coming back to this base here.

So, it could be some days, maybe two, maybe three, before they've all been identified. So, it is going to be slow process and the families, all they can do is wait and pray. And maybe, maybe, just maybe, Brianna, there is a miracle yet to be told in this story. But with each passing hour, it becomes just so unlikely.

KEILAR: Yes. Andrew Stevens, thank you so much, in Surabaya, Indonesia for us.

And I want to get more now on these new developments in the search for Flight 8501. I'm joined by CNN Aviation Analyst, and former NTSB managing director, Peter Goelz. We also have Les Abend, CNN Aviation Analyst and contributing editor to "Flying" magazine. And CNN Aviation Analyst David Soucie. So, we have this official, guys, in Singapore who says that there's a piece of what looks like a window panel from the fuselage that's been found. What does this tell you, Peter?

PETER GOELZ, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Well, not very much, frankly, but they'll need to confirm that the panel is actually from the accident of the aircraft. They can do that if there's an identifying serial number. They certainly can do it by consulting with the airbus people, see whether it is the right panel. But it, really, will not tell you a great deal. It's an interior panel. You can see some adhesive on it but other than that, the search is going to go on.

KEILAR: So then, Les, this is really maybe a clue as to where other pieces of the plane are?

LES ABEND, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Absolutely. I mean, it may -- everything is part of the puzzle and this may -- if they can find the location of this particular -- assuming this is part of the airplane, if they can find the location where this was -- where this window was, that might indicate how the airplane broke up, where it broke up. It's a -- there's a lot of forensic information that has to be disseminated.

KEILAR: So, this interior panel you're saying, right, Peter?

GOELZ: It looks like it, yes.

KEILAR: That's what it looks like to you. Does that tell us anything, David, that it might be an interior panel?

DAVID SOUCIE, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Well, not much because you'd have to determine where it was found in relation to the other debris to determine whether it came apart in the air or in the water. This particular panel is something that's not a very reliable piece of information because it's extremely light. It's very light. It's buoyant. It has nonporous materials in it. So, just a gust of wind could pick it up off of the -- off of the debris area and blow it for miles in one direction or the other. So, this isn't something that, typically, even if we knew where it was, would give us a lot of clues as to where the main area of the aircraft is.

KEILAR: OK. So, what about this 1,500 square nautical mile area, David, we're talking about? What might lead searchers to be looking just in this spot now?

SOUCIE: Well, there's some evidence, obviously they've done drift analysis from what they have found and have worked their way backwards to that. Now, the other thing is that if they're in these other areas, is that they've exhausted those. They've looked and there was no surface debris in the area so they focused it back in that area. But I would suspect that's probably the reason that it's narrowed down is because they didn't have success in the other areas.

KEILAR: OK. So, just sort of their excluding certain areas based on others it seems?

SOUCIE: Yes.

KEILAR: The bodies, we've been saying, Peter, tell -- it's a grim but it's -- they tell part of the story, perhaps. Three bodies now found. And that's a considerable number compared to what --

GOELZ: That's right.

KEILAR: -- we were talking about yesterday which was nine. But that also leaves 132 bodies still missing, at that point. There's an Indonesia official who says that three of the bodies were still strapped into a row of seats. We would expect that, right?

GOELZ: You would expect that and you would expect probably a great number, unfortunately, of the victims will still be strapped in their seats. And it's a terribly difficult task for the drive -- for the divers to be finding this. I mean, it's just hard work for the recovery teams.

KEILAR: Yes.

GOELZ: And the longer it goes on, the tougher it becomes.

KEILAR: It's emotionally demanding as well as physically demanding, perhaps more emotionally demanding.

Let's talk about the flight data recorders here, 24 days left of battery power left. That's the expectation, Les, because you have 30 days, roughly, right, give or take, on this battery that powers the pinger. That's not hard and fast, right? Could it last even longer? Could it last 40 days? Could it last 20 days?

ABEND: I'm -- you know, this is a better question probably better suited to Dave Soucie but any manufactured product that has a specific time limit on it probably has some flexibility so it's possible it could last 40 days. I doubt it. But, you know, the important thing is that the sonar equipment finds -- if it can find the fuselage or sections of it in the tail, of course, that would solve a lot of problems just right there.

KEILAR: OK. So, David, I mean, what do you think? Do you think that -- is this even really an issue, the battery power and the pinger, or are you convinced now that a lot of debris has been recovered or some debris has been recovered that eventually this is going to be found -- this -- the fuselage will be found by searchers pretty quickly?

SOUCIE: It's still a very important piece because of the fact that even once they find the main part of the aircraft or the tail of the aircraft, these boxes are twisted and mangled in amongst all of that -- all of that metal. It could be under the dirt. There's a number of places that box could disappear to, behind rocks. So, the purpose of that underwater locator big (ph) and the primary purpose is for proximate location which is not what we used it for in MH370. We used it to try to find the basic area. And they may be doing a little bit of that now, however it's very imperative and it's probable that they will not be able to get down there due to the weather and actually retrieve these boxes before that 25 days which is why we pushed so hard to make these 90-day batteries which still haven't been implemented in most of the fleets.

KEILAR: Sure. And any time we're talking about making changes, it just takes so long to make those kind of changes. Doesn't it, Peter?

GOELZ: It's frustrating. It's frustrating for investigators, frustrating for the public to understand why such a simple issue, like let's have these batteries extend beyond the 30 days, why that hasn't been done. And I think you've got to turn your attention to IKO, the civil aviation organization. And we've all got to put pressure on them to act more promptly and to encourage the carriers to do it on their own.

KEILAR: Yes. Maybe they will after this year. Final question to you, Les. There's an expert in Indonesia who is saying that evidence is pointing towards a successful water landing and that's why the ELT, the Emergency Landing Transmitter, didn't go off. He says the plane, then, likely sunk in the high seas. What do you think about that theory?

ABEND: Well, some of this, we have discussed on a few segments before. But the ELT, the Emergency Locator Transmitter, is mostly located towards the back end (ph) of the airplane and it's really designed for an impact on land.

KEILAR: On land.

ABEND: When it gets immersed in water, the antennas gets soaked and it doesn't emit a signal. There are some ELTs sometimes in the rafts and these rafts are now immersed potentially in the fuselage and those signals, although activated by water, are -- their antennas are also underneath the water. So, that's -- they're not transmitting, in other words. They're designed to float and once -- and water activates them. So, --

KEILAR: Yes.

ABEND: -- If they are immersed, it's not going to happen.

KEILAR: Yes. All right, Les Abend, thank you. Peter Goelz, David Soucie, you guys are going to stick around with me. We'll be talking a little later in the hour about some of the U.S. resources that are available for this search, key resources that actually been helping recover some of the bodies that we have seen recover overnight.

And next, find out what's making it so hard for divers to recover victims and debris from AirAsia Flight 8501?

Plus, we want to hear from you. Use that hash tag 8501QS on Twitter. We'll put your questions to our experts.

And then, later, one of the icons of the Democratic Party has passed away. We'll look back at the career of the former New York governor, Mario Cuomo.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: More wreckage found and now a total of 30 bodies pulled from the sea. There is progress in the painstaking search for the victims and the wreckage from AirAsia Flight 8501. But it's monsoon season in that part of the world and divers are hampered by life-hampering turbulence in the Java Sea. Our Paula Hancocks has more.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

PAULA HANCOCKS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: We're down in Cumi (ph) Port, just on the west coast of Borneo. And as you can see, preparations are underway for one of the search vessels to head out to the search location and try and locate some of those bodies and also some of the debris.

Now, this is a police boat. It's also going to have search and rescue on board. Some of the divers are going to be on board as well. They've already been out a couple of times, but many of them say they couldn't get into the water, it was simply too dangerous.

Today, they know they have waves of four meters or 30 feet high, and it's simply too dangerous for them to get in. One diver said he would basically be giving up his life if he tried to do that. So they're very frustrated. Sometimes they just have to sit and wait and hope for a break in the weather so that they can try and bring back more bodies and bring some closures to those distraught families.

Paula Hancocks, CNN, Cumi Port, Indonesia.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KEILAR: A top official in Indonesia calls the bad weather in the search zone the biggest obstacle to the recovery effort so far. Karen McGinnis is tracking all of these storms in the CNN Weather Center.

And, Karen, I feel like I keep asking every day, when is the weather going to improve, and it just seems like it's not. Any change today?

KAREN MCGINNIS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Yes, actually, there is a positive note as far as the weather's concerned, Brianna. But for days now, every day, we watched these squalls, these huge clusters of thunderstorms just kind of wind their way across the Java Sea. Here is the search area. There you can see in that last image, a thunderstorm cluster that moved across this region. They have seen torrential rainfall. This is monsoon season. There is when we see that seasonal shift of precipitation.

And right around 7 degrees south latitude, which is just about this position, they can see enormous amounts of rain. Even over the previous few weeks, they were seeing even exceptional rainfall given this time of year. We saw numerous pictures of flooding. Well, to have so many vessels in the ocean or on the ocean or in the sky, to have visibility that is so poor, really they want to be able to search, they want to be able to give families some closure, they want to be able to find the voice recorders, the black boxes so they can figure out what has happened with this aircraft.

Now this area, we look into Saturday and you can kind of see, we've got precipitation that is forecast to be to the north and to the south. In this search area, it looks fair. We're not looking at the wind nearly as gusty as we have seen. Twenty-five mile an hour wind gusts kicks the sea up. And you have to remember, the water here is only about 100 feet deep. So it's like sloshing around in a bathtub. It's very dangerous for anyone who wants to be able to see what's happening below the surface of the water, on top of the water, for those divers and certainly for aircraft.

But look at this. Going into Sunday, it appears as if this narrowed down search area is going to fair a little bit better. Maybe remarkably better. Can't rule out some thunderstorms. Certainly can't. And we go in the next 48 hours, there will be some here. But hopefully it will lie flat enough for a long enough period of time and we'll watch these winds taper off that as we go into Saturday, there you can see some of the yellow and some of the orange really starts to disappear. And once we get into some of the blue, that's when we know the winds, Brianna, are going to be between 10 and 15 miles an hour. Big difference than being 25 with some gusts.

KEILAR: Yes, and hopefully that will give the recovery efforts some calm and some good time there to do their search. All right, Karen McGinnis, great to see you. Thank you.

Are more U.S. resources needed for the investigation into the AirAsia crash? We are going to ask our panel of experts what they think about that.

And next, Mario Cuomo is being remembered for inspiring the nation with his speeches and providing leadership to the state of New York in his generation and beyond.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEILAR: Today he is being remembered as a giant and a friend. Mario Cuomo, the former three term governor of New York, passed away on New Year's Day of natural causes due to heart failure. He was 82. Just hours earlier, at the swearing in ceremony for his second term, current New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, his son, spoke about his father's legacy and inspiration.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. ANDREW CUOMO (D), NEW YORK: He couldn't be here physically today, my father, but my father is in this room. He's in the heart and mind of every person who is here. He's here and he's here. And his inspiration and his legacy and his experience is what has brought this state to this point. So let's give him a round of applause. (END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: President Obama also praised the legacy of Mario Cuomo saying, "we are all better for his life of public service." And the president added, "he rose to be chief executive of the state he loved, a determined champion of progressive values and an unflinching voice for tolerance, inclusiveness, fairness, dignity and opportunity."

Our Wolf Blitzer looks back at the life of the man who once said, "I talk and talk and talk and I haven't taught people in 50 years what my father taught me by example in one week."

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

WOLF BLITZER, HOST, CNN'S "THE SITUATION ROOM" (voice-over): New York Governor Mario Cuomo burst on to the national political stage with this keynote address at the 1984 Democratic National Convention.

MARIO CUOMO, FORMER NEW YORK GOVERNOR: And we proclaim as loudly as we can the utter insanity of nuclear proliferation and the need for a nuclear freeze if only to affirm the simple truth that peace is better than war because life is better than death.

BLITZER: It was so powerful, so well-delivered that it rocketed Cuomo to instant political fame. His political appearance even led some party faithful to wonder whether Cuomo wanted to be president himself.

CUOMO: And he said, will you think about it? I said, I have been thinking about it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: But are you going to think about it anymore?

CUOMO: I'll try, Sam (ph), to keep it out of my mind.

BLITZER: He first electoral success came in 1978 as running mate to Governor Hugh Carey. Four years later, Carey stepped aside. Cuomo then entered the race for governor and won. It's a position he held for 12 years, winning two more terms handily by emphasizing lower taxes, balanced budgets, public education, and affirmative action. In 1993, he passed up the chance to be appointed to the Supreme Court, choosing, instead, to run for a fourth term as governor.

CUOMO: It would have been wonderful to be a Supreme Court justice in many ways. It was more important to me to try to run and win again, because I thought I could serve better as governor than as a Supreme Court justice.

BLITZER: But Cuomo lost that race to newcomer George Pataki. He later said, after 12 years, voters were just ready for a change. Asked once how he wanted to be remembered --

CUOMO: One of the simple things I wanted to achieve is, I want to be governor, I want to be the hardest working there ever was, and I want, when it's over, and I figured on four years at first, I want people to say, now there was an honest person.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KEILAR: New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has ordered flags to remain at half-staff for the next 30 days in honor of the late former governor. Mario Cuomo is survived by his wife, Matilda, and five children, including CNN "New Day" anchor Chris Cuomo.

Still ahead, how good a job are Indonesian authorities doing handling the aftermath of the crash of Asia Air 8501. I'll find out what our experts think about that.

And later this hour, I'll ask them some of the questions that you are sending to us using the #8501qs.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEILAR: Welcome back to our viewers in the United States and around the world. I'm Brianna Keilar, in for Wolf Blitzer.

Updating our stop story this hour, the crash of AirAsia Flight 8501. Singapore's defense ministry says searchers have found what resembles a window panel from the plane, along with other possible wreckage. Finding the fuselage and the plane's black boxes, that is just crucial to figuring out what caused the crash. The search now focused on an area covering about 2,000 square miles. That's about the size of Delaware, a little under the size of Delaware. And officials believe that this is the most probable area where the wreckage is located. Crews have now recovered the bodies of 30 victims. So far, only four of the victims have been identified.