As you probably know, it went down in the french alps on a flight from barcelona to dusseldorf, germany. The plane descending 27,000 feet in nearly 8 minutes and apparently flying straight into the ground. Tonight, there is new focus on a key safety feature on airbuses that can sometimes under rare conditions put them into a descent that can hard to stop. Airbus knew of the problem, and the European AviationSafety Agency the equivalent of americas faa issued a warning about it nearly four months ago. Rene marsh has been working her sources on this. She joins us momentarily, but first, how this tragedy unfolded. Reporter 10 01 a. M. , local time, germanwings 9525 takes off from barcelona after a 26 minute delay. Flies over the mediterranean and starts to climb. Around 10 27, hits cruising altitude after 38,000 feet. Just about three minutes later, right around the time 9525 is back overland in france, something goes wrong. Loses altitude quickly, a span of about 8 minutes, drops nearly 27,000 feet to 11,400 feet. Its now deep into the french alps. You just dont descend. As a pilot, you have to request the descent, have to request to change altitudes. Since we know they didnt do that because air Traffic Control did not know, had not communicated with them that they were talking to air Traffic Control, they could have told them about any problem they had on board. So whatever caused any problem was unable to communicate or have no time to communicate. As the plane goes further into the mountains, it continues to lose altitude. At 10 53, it crashes into the french alps. 150 people were on board. 144 passengers including two infants and six crew members. The crash site is extremely remote. Those first on the scene describe the plane as obliterated. The largest pieces of wreckage no bigger than a small car. The chances of anyone surviving is slim. Im concerned with the suffering thats being brought to so many people, german chancellor, Angela Merkel says. Well do everything to get the help they need in these difficult hours. Nearly half of those on board were german, including 16 students from the same high school. A vigil started earlier in the day by fellow students. Grows as night falls, the hope of any classmates survived fading. The crash site, one of two black boxes is found. Hundreds continue to work on both the recovery effort and to try and figure out exactly what happened to flight 9525. Well, more on that piece of air bus Safety Technology can sometypes sometypes determine if the nose is point inging too high, but if something goes wrong with the sensors, it can figure out if the plane knows if its pointing too high for the plane to keep flying and then steps in automatically to force the nose back down. The problem occurs when something goes wrong with those sensors. The result, obviously, could be terrifying. The aviation correspondent rene marsh joins us now with more. Youre learning about the safety alert regarding the type of plane. Whats the latest . Reporter anderson, just for context, we know these directives are relatively common. Many are oftentimes issued for an aircraft. So that alone isnt a red flag but in the absence of knowing exactly what went wrong on board this airbus a 320, we look at possible problems weve seen in the past. This is the actual dock. This is the air working its directive and issued by the European Aviation safety association. Administration. So we know their concern according to this document stems from an a321, that is the same family as the a320. Just slightly larger. The problem was that there were two, whats called an angle of attack probes on the airplane. Essentially, what these two probes do is measure the angle of the plane to the horizon. If those two pieces of equipment are not functioning properly, you could have the situation where the pilot is getting the wrong indications inside of the cockpit and based on that wrong information, the pilot is then entering his or her commands, but again, thats based on wrong information. And you have a situation where this plane could go out of control. So that is something that is being looked at. That was brought up in the press conference today. And the ceo of the airline did make reference that all the Software Updates and the maintenance has been completed on this particular aircraft. What about the history of this kind of a plane . Well, we know this specific aircraft is about 24 years old. So it is an older aircraft thats being said, its not something that when you look at it, you say, look, this plane should not have been flying. Yes, its an older aircraft. It had many hours on it, but still, many aircraft out there are still flying at this age. We dont believe at this point that age will be an issue. We understand it underwent a nant maintenance check just yesterday and underwasnt larger maintenance check in 2013. So it really just makes this mystery even deeper because you know it had been looked at by these engineers the day before, anderson. Thank you for joining us, rene. Now our panel. Richard quest. Cnn aviation analyst, les abend. Former ntsb chair, and analyst david soucie, former investigative and author of Malaysia Airlines 360, why it disappeared and why its a matter of time before it happens again. Richard, at this point, what makes sense to you . Very little. The nature of the plane, it was in cruise, the safest part of the flight. It was flying in extremely sophisticated airspace. Under euro control, and the first class airline, and first World Class Airline germanwings, and owned by lufthansa, and to reneys point, remained under the tactic which is industryss standard. There is no difference between germanwings and lufthansa wings and other planes. Germanwings has been a child of lufthansa going backwards and forward for years. Its now a crucially important part of lufthansa. So no, its Lufthansa Group through and through. Les, to you, does anything make sense . What possible explanation is there for this . Theres a lot of disturbing things to me. The lack of communication richard and i were talking about prior to when we got on air. You know, what i would like to know is what the communication was like all the way up to the point where we had our last contact with the aircraft. Thats not being talked about at this point in time probably because that information isnt quite available for the public. But that being said, something caused this airplane to come out, to leave cruise altitude. And i have a feeling, my gut says the crew was compelled because of an energy situation. What that emergency situation was, i dont know. It wasnt fast enough to do an emergency descent, which you would find in explosive depressurization. Which you would know right away. Thats the thing. This was an eightminute descent. Not exactly plummeting or anything like that. This is a descent rate that may be a little bit steeper than normal but not really a whole lot. Ive done this rate of descent on a normal approach, or a normal descent rate into heathrow. We know nothing about it. The attack, we dont know if that was a factor. Thats a scary factor but we dont know. Lets not put too much emphasis on that certainly at this point in time. Deborah, if it were some sort of omechanical issue one of the biggest question ss if it was problem specific to this aircraft for this e fleet, this a320 fleet in general. Thats right. And investigators are going to be looking very closely at that. One of the reasons why they really want to get those reporters as fast as possible is because theyre trying to figure out if theres an air worthiness issue not just for this specific airplane but for the fleet. If there are larger implications if there are inspections that need to take place or any Additional Information operators need to have. David, when you look at the debris field, the lack of fire, the lack of smoke, i dont know if thats the pictures are old, but does it tell you anything . Well, it does tell me that it was a singular point of primary impact. It appears to be two scattered points. Meaning the aircraft did kind of skim or break apart just before it hit its main scatter point. But at this point, this type of accident, whats happening in this realm is that the aircraft not only explodes as it hits the ground, but it kicks back. Theres a kickback effect. And those debris pieces that are coming back are intersecting and colliding with the aircraft thats Going Forward. This all happens within less than a second but all happens together. Thats why you see these horribly shattered pieces of aircraft debris, the good side of this is the fact the passengers on board would have had no idea, no clue what was coming other than they were descending. May not have known whether to prepare for impact or not. But the only good side of this is that it happened in less than a second. Certainly not ability to recognize what was actually happening to them on board. David, youre saying not only, so the plane, as it impacts the ground, breaks apart. But also, those pieces that, as it moves forward, the pieces that have broken off then bounce back and hit the aircraft . Right. Its kind of a splashback effect if you can imagine something hitting solid. It kicks back from that and makes a reverse push backwards. Almost makes a reverse push backwards. Most of the investigations ive done in this type of terrain, most of the debris field is backwards from the direction it was going in the first place. So those pieces that hit the ground come back at the rest of the remaining part of the aircraft. Had an intersection and actually had these collisions, massive collisions as theyre bouncing back, the back of the aircraft still coming forward. So this happens so instantaneously and people ask me, why are there so many little tiny pieces . Because its literally bouncing back and colliding with itself. And thats what creates this massive debris field and explosion. David, in terms of a debris field like this on a mountain slope, its got to be incredibly difficult to work this kind of a crash site. Its very similar to an air crash i worked up in casper wyoming, and it was snowing then. We had snow. We had debris. We had everything on the ground. We couldnt actually find the accident. We found a spot where we suspected it had hit. I was dropped off in a helicopter because there was no place to land. Search and rescue in snow cats. They dont have that advantage here. They cant take snow cats or snowmobiles up to the area because its already difficult to get to. That night in casper, because of that terrain an investigating we were able to find it in the snow but the helicopters couldnt come back to get us, and the search and rescue team we stayed there the night to find out what we saw what we could, and we were able to get there when we could. So that is one of the things that i saw that they quit quick ly and got the investigators out of there quickly. Were going to have to pull the investigators right away. Were going to have more on this. Take a quick break, continue the conversation and check in with nic robertson, a staging area in the alps and what may have been going on in the cockpit. More theories as the crash investigation gets under way. 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Do the walk of life yeah, you do the walk of life need to lower your blood sugar . Ask your doctor about farxiga. And visit our website to learn how you may be able to get every month free. Breaking news in flight 9525. There are problems in some airbuss like the one that crashed today, and it may be a problem that can cause them to descend suddenly and nothing they can do to stop unless they shutoff Flight Control computers. A lufthansa flight and european authorities issued a bullet in to address it. Its too early to say. Recovery operations under way tomorrow. Nic robertson is at a staging area now. Whats the latest, nic . Reporter the crash site is above us in the mountains. About 7 miles this way and of those, hamper efforts and the fact the whole side is so steep there, the wreckage side is over several hundred meters. Thats a concern. Access is really only by helicopter. Weve seen those helicopters sitting on the ground here throughout the day and the question when daybreaks in the morning, how low is the clouds and will the helicopters be able to fly and get access to the site . The rain has been coming over some of the High Mountain passes here has been particularly strong and that if it is falling rain or snow again at the crash site, that is also a worry, anderson. Obviously, concern for families is have they been able to cover any of their loved ones. Have teams been able to recover any of the passengers . Reporter yeah. From what we understand so far, helicopters have only been able to fly over the site. Although, we do understand one black box has been recovered and taken away. But as far as landing to try to get to some of the victims, that hasnt happened. The french air Accident Investigation Team is expected here soon. Thats a sevenmember team and they will have a member or a couple of members of the airbus Investigation Team with them, and that is the b. E. A. , and that is the french airbus Investigation Team that is going to be leading the team and they will be joined by the b. F. U. And that is the threemember team of the german Investigation Team and it is the french who will be leading the team, but so much concern to bring the victims off of the mountainside, and it has not startsed yet, an ededstartsedder started yet, an der anderson. Nic robertson, appreciate the update. One possible theory at the top of the program, others as well. As always at this stage, more theories than hard facts. The white house was quick today to discount the possibility of terrorism. Not everyone is. That said, even ruling out a deliberate act leaves other possibilities. Tom foreman has been exploring them. He joins us now. Tom . Weve talked to pilots, accident investigators, and they have said the passengers on board this plane or during the descent may have not noticed really unusual because the descent wasnt that fast. And that sort of does away with one of the first theories weve been hearing so much about here. The idea maybe this was simply a catastrophic failure in the air, like a wing or tail fell off of this plane. If that happened, it would probably come down much faster. It would be spread over a bigger area than the debris field youve been showing for some time now. That theory is not getting a lot of credence right now. Heres another theory. Is it possible that they in fact came in under control . If you look at the pattern of flight here, all of these experts weve talked to today said this looks like a deliberate act. Like there was a decision to either set the auto pilot to come down gradually like this or the plane was being brought in gradually, potentially while the pilots dealt with some problem they knew they had and just ran out of geography here. Had no more time in space and hit the mountains. If thats the case, if they had enough control to do this on purpose, then why all these experts ask, did they not try to turn and make it to some of the other airports, which were not really that far away. They would have at least had a shot at. So anderson, those are some of the real questions that are out there right now. Is it possible they didnt know they had a serious problem . You know, that sounds like a crazy idea and yet, everyone weve talked to today said yes. Its absolutely possible. Theres a phenomenon called control flight into terrain. And what that means is that the pilots are in control of a plane and for some reason, they dont realize what theyre doing. Maybe theres a problem with instrumentation that gives them the wrong sense of their air speed or the attitude of the planes pointing up or down, the altitude of the plane. Maybe they become so fixated on a given problem they lose whats called situational awareness. And they dont know that theyre flying into the mountains until its too late to do anything about it. Anderson . Terrifying thought, that. Tom, thank you. Just aheadly talk to a French Mountain guide who actual lily saw the crash site in the alps. He was able to get up there. And hopes for flight barcelona, flight 9525 originated and some of the families on board waiting for word. Woman its been a journey to get where i am. And i didnt get here alone. There were people who listened along the way. People who gave me options. Kept me on track. And through it all my retirement never got left behind. So today, im prepared for anything we may want tomorrow to be. Every someday needs a plan. Lets talk about your old 401 k today. 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