Gaulle airport with 66 people on board and due to arrive this in cairo some 3 1 2 hours later, and the air comptroller spoke to the pilot. Everything seems normal. At 2 27 a. M. , shortly before the plane should be exiting greek air space, controllers try to reach the pilot, but there is no response. The plane passes into egyptian air space two minutes later. After 40 seconds more, the radar contact is lost according to the hoe linic Civil Aviation agency. The early theory, this is a terror attack, and possibly a bomb, but no indication of an explosion. Meanwhile, the candidates are going headtohead on the politics of terror. And Hillary Clinton saying this. It does appear that it was an act of terrorism, and exactly how, the investigation will have to determine, but it is once again shining a bright light on the threat that we face from organized terror groups. Donald trump saying this, ask hillary who blew up the plane last night. Another terrible but prevent arable tragedy, and she has bad judgment and unfit to serve as president at this delicate and difficult time in our history. Cnn is fol e e log every single of this story. Richard quest is in london, and arwa damon in egypt, and so we dont know for sure it is terror, and so walk us through it, richard in bay jieijing. Well, your beginning description said it all. The greeks describe the pilot as cheerful, and then you have a 30minute gap and a transfer of from one aircraft or from one air Traffic Controller to another, and that does not happen because the plane does not respond, and then the plane seems to have fallen out of the sky. If you are looking at the radar data, it little rally just comes to a stop. Also though, the greeks say that there is a weird radar track are where the plane appears to swer tov the left and then go 360 degrees around. And now putting it all together, d don, and we have talked about the plane incidents on many occasion, and you have heard me say before, the planes dont fall out of the sky at 37,000 feet for no obvious or apparent reas reason. And there are really only two things here, that you are talking about bomb and terrorist nefarious activity or mechanical failure which may be compounded by pilot error. At the moment, at the moment in the absence of any other evidence, people are leaning, the Security Forces are leaning towards the security situation, the security solution. We just dont know. But in this situation, we are going to have to wait for black boxes. And evan perez in washington now, and u. S. Officials were quick to say that the likely cause of the 804 crash was terror and likely downed by a bomb, and how did they come to that conclusion so fast . Well, don, those are the only operating theories at this point. I dont believe they have made any conclusions, and they have not ruled out the mechanical possibilities that richard just talked about, and one of the things that is stuck out about this incident is that simply, we are talking about a modern sophisticated aircraft and from all appearances, a well maintained aircraft, and from talking to the officials, they believe that there was something wrong going won the mechanical functions of this aircraft. There are redundancies built into the aircraft to allow these pilots to radio for a distress signal and something going wr g wrong. If there is even somebody trying to break into the cockpit or the hijacking attempt, there were three Security Officials on the aircraft who perhaps would have been given time for the mayday situation, and these are theories, because they have not recovered the wreckage and they have not recovered the black boxes, but right now, one of the things they are doing is to focusing on the people on the plane, and not for any other reason, simply because they want to know more about them, because that is where this investigation begins. Arwa damon in cairo, the plane was headed where you are, and a massive search is under way for the flight 804 wreckage, and what can you tell us about it . Well, there is quite a bit of conflicting information throughout the entire day, don. At one point, we actually thought that the wreckage had been found after the Vice President of egyptair said that they had located at least a portion of it. Then he retracted that statement, and apologized for the misinformation. What we do understand though is that the area where the plane went down is about 120 or 130 nautical miles to the north of the egyptian coast. We do believe at some stage in the day, some debris had been spotted, but it is unclear as to whether or not that debris was part of the aircraft, and there is a fairly intense search effort that is under way. The egyptians are taking part, and the fwreeks are helping out, and some assistance coming in from other nations as well. But as reported throughout the entire day, time is of the essence here, and the longer it goes on, the more difficult to be to find the wreckage and of course, without the wreckage, one is not able to get any of the crucial and critical answers, don. And so, it was leaving paris, and that is where where Atika Shubert is. It had stopped in paanother pla before it came to paris, and it was swept. The country is on a state of alert which means that persons in that area have to be checked by police, and they have the personal walkers randomly check and swept so it is tight security here. What they are looking at is to see whether or not there were any weak links, and if in fact, there was a bomb on boarders was it somehow placed by somebody in the airport vicinity, and this is what the investigators are looking at, and so far, don, no red flags. Richard quest, can we discount mechanical failures or issues . No, we most certainly cant. I am glad you asked me that, don, because it allows me to redress to some extent the preponderance of bomb and terrorist possibilities. There are a number of scenarios where you have the plane suffering either a major catastrophic structural failure are or you have an avionics failure which is then compounded by the way that the plane may be being flown by the pilots. In this regard, we have two very good examples. Air france 449 years ago and airasia over to the java see two years ago. And in both of the cases the plane falls out of the sky, and you wonder what happened, but then you pin it on two issues, first the jubs and the circuit breakers, and in both cases, the pilots were overwhelmed by a mechanical failure, and the way that the plane was flown led it to stall. What i am look g fing for in th next day or so is any form of data or acars information from the satellite that tells us what was happening on the plane. We can learn a lot from that just at this particular stage. Secondly, further radar tracks. So far all we have had are the greeks talking about this swerve to the left, and 360 to the right, but we have not had that confirmed by anybody else. Was that a movement by the aircraft or was it the aircraft falling out of the sky . Don, do not discount mechanical just yet, please. And evan perez, i have to ask you because the security at Charles De Gaulle airport has been under skrcrutiny and dozen of airport employees were fired because of suspected ties to extremists groups, and does that point to the an inside job . Well, the french authorities will tell you that they know that they have a big problem, and speak ing ing to the french intelligence officials a couple of weeks ago in a meeting in london, they said they know that this summer is one they are on the high alert. They know that there sis a even in france where they will have their hands full with islamic extremists, and in belgium more recently, don, but they have said that they think that they have done a lot to redress the security addresses at orley or Charles De Gaulle, and the question is whether they can comb through the people who were with access before it left france and see if they can find a clue. And now, there were three people who perished on the flight, arwa, and what can you tell us about them . Well, of the 66, you did have the three children there, and that is especially difficult. Although, it has been phenomenally challenging emotionally and understandably so for the families of those who did die. And now, of the 66, 56 were passengers of the other ten, three were Security Officers. And now, you will always have at least one Security Officer on board, but in this particular case, there were three, and we dont know exactly why at this stage there were so many Security Officers on board, and then of course, you had the seven crew members. The families were gathered at the airport in cairo at least those who were in egypt at the time of the crash, and many of them when they first arrived this morning were quite shocked, but then as the day wore on and as they were leaving the facility, that there were, they had been initially brought to various hotels, they were in many instances overcome with emotions, and some of them quite angry at the egyptian intelligence and information distribution mechanisms, and wanting to know at lot more about what had happened and of course, the big question that everyone is asking, why it happened. We actually spoke to one of the journalists, the members of the press corps who was saying that a friend of his had seven family members who had died all at once in this particular crash. The actual passenger list, the manifest has not yet been made official at this stage. Arwa damon and Atika Shubert and Richard Quest and evan perez, thank you to all of you. 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Cash money the Biggest Discount and understand. The dizzcounts. Safe driver, paperless, paidinfull, multicar and joey fatone. Savin you five hundred im savin you five hundred we have autotune, right . Oh, yeah. Thats a hit all yeah egypt air flight 804 vanish and so far no trace of the plane or the 66 people including the three people on board. And joining me is chairman jim hall, and aviation analyst les abend, and jim, we want to start with you, both the u. S. And the egyptians are saying it is terror, and as an experienced investigator when you look at the evidence right now, what does it tell you . Right now, the evidence is 3,000 feet deep in the mediterranean. Until we have the black boxes which is the most important piece of information, and pieces of the aircraft, everything to this point is just speculation. If it was a catastrophic mechanical issue, how would the evidence be different . Would it be different right now . Well, unfortunately, the thing that i have been talking about for some time now is using the deployable flight recorders on the aircraft, and you nknow, running the risk every time these events happens, of a huge misunderstanding of international event, because we dont know what happened. This occurs time and time again, and they are deployable flight recorders that are used in the military and used for decades which is floating on the water, and we could have begun the investigation now, and now we have to go again down 3,000 feet to try to find the recorders before we can really start getting meaningful answers. And you have an issue with the microphone there, jim, and we will will come back to you when we get that fixed. And les abend, the pilot spoke to the air Traffic Controller and he said that, this is a quote, he was cheerful, and then no response and the plane plunged from the radar, and what do you have here . Well sh, the expanse of time and something happened. My gut is the catastrophic pilot, and something that just ov overwhelmed the crew, and if the data is correct with the turns and the disseescent that we are surmising and first of all, where is that data coming from . A radar target or fall apart, but it tells me that the crew is not in control anymore but why not . Was it because an event was occurred that they werent handling that was mechanical or was it possible that there was an explosive device on the plane. And very experienced crew, and no distress call, and why wouldnt they and i know the answer to this, because we talked about it in 370, and if you are overwhelmed you dont have the time to raise the distress call. Yes, and we have talked about aviate, navigate and communicate. And this is what we are the only ones on board to solve the problem, and the air Traffic Controller folks will do the best to help us, but at the end of the day, we can do it, and we cant get right to the problem f. We have to assess the problem first and we dont know the problem and it is not on the can checklist, we dont know what to communicate. So we have to work some of this out first. Or maybe they did try to get a distress call, and the electrical system was shutting down and there was no way to communicate. And so, is there a delay, and one agency takes control or one agent is si when they hand it off, you are have to pan yulely switch signals or communication, and could that have been a problem or issue . No, they have to verbally communicate into egypts air space, and they knew that the frequency change was coming up, and as a matter of fact, that is why the greek air Traffic Control folks were trying to get a hold of the pilots on board to say, hey, here is the frequency change, and contact the egypt air Traffic Controllers. And they would be in contact at all points. Yes. And now, they said that the search would resume at first light, and how do you do the operation, and hunt for debris here . Well, the frik is whether it is on the surface or beneath the sea is to be methodical about it, and you want to cover every square foot of the ocean and the sea and square foot of eventually every square foot of the sea floor, so it is going to be taking coordination, and knowledge of what sensors are out there and what platforms they are on and having, and it is like inviting people to come mow your lawn and if everybody shows up with a different lawnmowers and ideas of what the yard is going to be looking like, you will have a mess, so it takes an awful lot of coordinati coordination. What is that area like . Well, the e sea is fairly smooth and calm, and that is good news, and the sea floor is deep. The average dep is 2 to 2 1 2 miles so it is 3,000, 4,000 meters deep. The b the bottom, muds and sediment from the nile river, and so it is a fairly smooth and flat c e compared to some of the things that we have had to deal with in the past where we were looking at underwater mountains. Talking about 370, and that is a vast remote area, and this is not the same. This is heavily trafficked or at least more traffic in this than in 370 . Yes, more ship traffic, don, but it is not a lot. I took a look at it as soon as i heard about the tragedy this morning and took a look at the ships in the area, and there were a handful and most of them container ships on the way, and tr transiting back and forth, but, the one advantage that you have here is that it is fairly close to land as compared to two or three or four or five days just to get out to the search site, so they are close to land and jim, you said more information from the black boxes, but how quickly could they determine if it is terror once they recover that, and that is the first part to recover that. I am sure that they will probably go to the phrfrench laboratories and be read out right away. Of course, there is some information are from the air Traffic Control, but the Important Information given the circumstances that you all have been describing is going to be on the black boxes, and that information is so critical, and it is so frustrating that we dont have it. And jim hall, and les abend and david gallo, thank you. When we come back, the early officials thoughts, it is terr terrorism, and who might have been responsible, and should you worry about your next flight . Because you cant beat zero heartburn i take prilosec otc each morning for my frequent heartburn ahhh the sweet taste of victory prilosec otc. One pill each morning. 24 hours. Zero heartburn. A should i stay or should i go . Travel season fo nothing. This summer at Choice Hotels the more you go the better. Now get a free 50 gift card for staying just 2 times. So go. Book now at choicehotels. Com. You always have a choice. Make sure its ano maintelligent one. The allnew audi a4, with available virtual cockpit. The early theory among the u. S. Officials is is that e egypt flight 804 is taken down by a bomb, but no claim of responsibility. And joining me is the former director of security and also ambassador woolsey, and