Transcripts For CNNW The Situation Room 20150106 : vimarsana

CNNW The Situation Room January 6, 2015

With a new day about to dawn in the java sea, the search is about to resume for the wreckage of airasia flight 8501. Bad weather continues to hinder the search effort although two more bodies have been recovered and sonar has located more objects which may be part of the airliner. This is exclusive new video aboard the uss sampson. One of the American Warships taking part in the search off the indonesian coast. Even as the weather slows the recovery operation there are new questions about the dangerous conditions that flight 8501 encountered and whether the pilots were properly briefed. Our correspondents analysts and guests are standing by with full coverage. But first, lets take a look at the latest developments. Search teams aboard the uss fort worth detected two metal objects below water. But dangerous weather conditions monsoon rains, muddy water and Poor Visibility are making the urgent search in the java sea extremely difficult. Divers werent deployed tuesday because the underwaerpt current is still strong and visibility remains limited. Almost 100 divers are in the search zone and 15 more on standby to enter the water as weather permits. 20 helicopters and more than 40 ships remain focused on the area where its believed the commercial jet is located. Three seats from the flight were recovered on tuesday. A Flight Safety card and emergency equipment were also found. But the search continues for the downed planes wreckage and the black boxes containing the flight date and voice recorders. Indonesian officials believe icing may have contributed to the crash but they wont have answers until the black boxes are recovered. Time is running out before the pinging noise from those boxes fade away. So far, no pings have been detected. There has been progress finding bodies. Two more were found in the java sea, bringing the total to 39. The remains were airlifted and will be taken to surabaya where the difficult identification process will begin. Lately, youll find the bodies more decomposed. After the next few days r youll find maybe not an intact body. Reporter indonesia, which is leading the International Search effort is getting help from countries including malaysia, singapore and the United States. Cnn was granted exclusive access aboard the uss sampson where those on board are working around the clock to find anything connected to the missing plane. Weve recovered a lot of debris and bodies and quite tragic as it sounds it brings closure to the families. Lets go behind the scenes to the airasia search headquarters right now. Cnns kyung lah is joining us live from jakarta. What are you seeing and hearing over there, kyung . Reporter while that difficult search may be happening at sea, all the shots are being called here at headquarters in jakarta. We got our very first look at the headquarters with the man behind the operation. The intense search for airasia flight 8501 18 aircraft 38 ships in the java sea, in real time reporting into the command control center. Moments after we walk in whats happening . We have another two bodies. Reporter the plane just spotted two bodies . Yeah. Reporter two more bodies. But he wont know for sure until the ship reaches the coordinates and picks them up. This is the head of indonesia search and rescue the public face and recovery. The man calling the shots, a lifelong military officer trained for restraint and completing the mission. You want to find these bodies for the families. Whats possible becoming more challenging, as the search stretches into doubledigit days. Indonesia expanded the search zone further east. Officials at the command control center believe many passengers will likely be found on the sea floor still inside the plane. One clue for that theory search teams already found three passengers all from one row still strapped to their seat belts. But others are drifting a personal nightmare for the man charged with bringing them home. Youre sleeping here . Yeah. Reporter youre eating here . Yeah. Reporter you have not left here . Why . Because of the situation. The responsibility and the situation. And everything im an officer and a pilot. Reporter the ship radios back it has the bodies. Do you think you will find all the bodies . Im not sure, but i try. Reporter two more returning, more than 100 still lost at sea. The headquarters says the goals remain the same. The very first to find the bodies. Second the more pressing one, to give us all the answers, is to find the black boxes for the investigators, both becoming more challenging with these weather conditions. Certainly is. Kyung lah in jakarta for us, thank you. Lets bring in cnns Paula Hancocks. Shes right there on the indonesian coast watching whats going on. What are you picking up over there, paula . Wolf new information is coming out thats meteorological officials here in indonesia say that the airasia officials didnt actually pick up the meteorological report ahead of the flight. They didnt pick them up in person ahead of flight 8501. This doesnt violate any policies at this point. But it does mean according to meteorologists that they missed the opportunity to talk to them face to face so they could potentially tell them about any dangers that may be ahead in the atmosphere and the weather for that flight. It doesnt appear as though airasia has changed its policy since the accident. It appears they havent actually gone in person to pick up that information. But airasia Officials Say there is actually more useful and easier information to look at the electronic version of this Weather Report. So this is information coming in to us very interesting and Something Else that will be looked at very closely by investigators to see if weather had any bearing on this flight crashing. N the report reporting extreme weather, that that might could have been canceled . What are they saying about that . Reporter this is what investigators are looking at whether or not this flight would have even gone ahead. But theres no suggestion at this point that the Weather Report would have changed that in any way. Its not policy its not breaking any or violating any rules not to go in person to go and pick up this report. But when youre sitting next to a meteorologist, when you have a facetoface discussion these things can be discussed in more details. This is what the meteorologists are saying. And thats what investigators are going to be looking at. Paula thank you so much. Lets assess whats going on right now. Joining us miles obrien, peter goelz and our Law Enforcement analyst, tom fuentes, former fbi assistant director. At a minimum, if the weather is really bad, a pilot can always delay takeoff right . Its always the pilots discretion. Even if you have this facetoface meeting with the meteorologist, he doesnt make the decision on whether or not to go. The captain does. Nothing in those reports that would say, dont go. It was a weather challenge ahead of them. 300 miles away. But if every Airline Captain saw that and stayed on the ground we wouldnt get anywhere in the world. The metal objects theyre finding, they seem to be getting a setback. Is the search getting more complicated, more questionable right now . I dont get the sense that its more questionable. I just think theyre running into a very tough stretch of weather. There have been so many false leads. We thought there was the tail we thought it was major wreckage. Turned out to be junk from other planes or ships that went down in that same area. There seem to be all these false leads going on. Well, its tough. Theres a lot of stuff on the bottom of the ocean. Theyre not able to get a good view of it. The rovs, its too strong a current to put them down. And thats what you want down there, a goodsize remote vehicle that can cruise 24 7 to look for this wreckage. Youve been involved in these kinds of international investigations. Is there a level of frustration that begins to seep in at a point like this or are they motivated to just move and move and move because it seems to be very frustrating. Both. Theyre frustrated and theyre motivated. I think the more frustration that comes up the more motivation to keep at it and to keep working hard to resolve the issue. Richard, this frustration level, i get a sense that people are frustrated because they have been these false alarms, if you will. They thought they had the tail that could have been the black boxes in the tail. That was 24 hours ago. Seemed to be so promising but not so fast. Whats your sense of whats going on now . I think theyre doing their business in a very methodical, a very orderly way. And as peter says quite rightly, the weather is against them. They know what they are fighting against here. They know how difficult it is. These are thoroughly professional people and they know how they have to go about their business. So im sure theyre very frustrated because they know the plane is there. You dont get this much wreckage and this many bodies god forbid without knowing youre in the right area. So youve got the haystack. Its probably relatively not that big at least not compared to 370s. They know what theyre doing. Its just going to take time. But the fact that they havent heard one ping come from one of these recorders, theyre listening carefully, they have the best sonar equipment down there. The u. S. Has two ships on the scene with hightech devices, they havent heard a ping what does that say to you . Its disappointing, its not surprising. Its not uncommon for the pinger to be broken off for the black box itself to be embedded into a soft ocean bottom and the pinger to be covered with silt. Oftentimes the pingers dont work. Thats something the Aviation Community needs to think about. How do you strengthen the pinger . How do you strength benatteries so you can pick it up at a greater distance. Hard to believe at this day and age that a little cell phone, they can always detect wherever you are. But on aircraft equipment like this they cant detect they may never find these black boxes. They may never. And there are ways to solve it. You could have deployable flight data recorders that could float, or realtime streaming. When theres trouble on a plane, send information up to the cloud. The bottom line is regulators have to step in and say, this is mandatory. And you get the sense that the international cooperation, all the countries who are involved in this search right now, obviously indonesia, but the United States we know australias involved all these countries are working together or is there a little competition going on . Is there full cooperation . I think theres full cooperation. But to go back to miles point about the Auto Industry had the same protest when people were saying you need to put seat belts or airbags in. Oh, we cant. Its expensive. No one will pay the extra 30 for a car if we install these devices. How many tens of thousands of lives have been saved as a result of putting in seat belts . And this is kind of the same analogy to the aviation that they dont want to do it but if they do it, were not going to go through this every couple of months. Richard, the frustration is the technology is there but for some reason and youve studied it in depth over the years theyve decided not to go with the best technology. Even though so many lives 162 people on that plane, habit 3,300 of these airbus commercial aircraft flying around right now. We have no idea why this plane went down. It seems so frustrating that theyre not using the best technology. Its not only frustrating, its ridiculous. Its a little bit offensive. I spend an enormous amount of time talking to the top executives at the worlds airlines. They know what they have to do here. But they dont want to be mandated to do it. Because they fear that this opens up if you like a chain of events suddenly its this then the next thing. And not all airlines are the same. Not every airline needs the same level of technology because of the routes they fly. But the reality is airasia 8501 is proving that this process is not moving fast enough. The answers are on the table. And it now needs within the industry leadership for somebody to say, do it. Explain to our viewers who arent familiar explain what that means these International Aviation organizations. The u. N. Body that sets all the regulation globally, the global regulator. Its pretty toothless. It works by consensus. If we wait for them to do anything about it, we would have all retired. The industry body of the airlines when the airlines perceive that something needs to be done they get their act together. The working assumption is weather was the cause of this crash, right . Yeah we wont know for sure until we get the boxes. But that big blob of thunderstorm youre seeing on the screen is exactly where that flight was headed on that day. We know that the pilot, the captain requested a diversion, requested he was flying at 36,000 feet and he wanted to go up to 38,000 feet. Correct. And he never got a response . He was able to make the turn but he never got a response on the altitude change. It might have been an embedded thunderstorm scenario. Giant storm enshrouded by other clouds. So they wanted to get free of the clouds to avoid the big storm. How high can that airbus fly . Around 40,000 feet. It was getting pretty close what happens if it flies at 40,000 . Well you can squeak it out a little higher. But every foot of altitude you gain you lose performance on both ends. You can easily go too slow or too fast. And its only a few Miles Per Hour between both speeds. Gets very difficult to control. Well have more on this story coming up. Stand by all of you. Up next they face strong currents zero visibility dangerously sharp wreckage if they can even get into the water. We take a closer look at the risks confronting the dive teams. American divers are on the scene. Plus a visit to what may be the hideout of north koreas elite cyber attack unit. Stay with us. So nice, so nice sweet, sweet st. Thomas nice so nice, so nice st. Croix full of pure vibes so nice, so nice st. 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Despite bad weather, the search is about to resume for wreckage and bodies from airasia flight 8501. While the operation has managed to go ahead in the air and on the surface, the search conditions are extremely risky for divers if they can manage to get into the water at all. Brian todd is looking into this part of the story for us. What are you seeing . Tonight these divers are desperate to get in the water, frustrated that they cant. But according to a veteran navy diver who we spoke with whos worked these operations before once they get in, virtually every moment under water is fraught with danger. Searchandrescue divers aboard a ship in the java sea wait restlessly on deck, hamstrung by the weather. Translator the current under water is so strong so we cant use rovs or search with divers. Reporter how dangerous are those waters for rescue divers . In those type of currents theyre expending all of their energy and all of their concentration just trying to maneuver in those sorts of currents let alone trying to search for the wreckage in zero visibility. Its almost impossible. Reporter bobby skoley is a former u. S. Diver who helped in the rescue of the twa flight. A divers air hose is especially vulnerable. You are working in an aircraft wreckage that is full of twisted, razorsharp metal. And then it is intwined in miles and miles of all this electrical cable that you could get caught up in tangled in and then you would be trapped. Reporter then divers need to use knives like these to free themselves or their partner putting their own life at risk has to get them out. In the java sea where visibility is extremely limited, skoley says part of the airasia wreckage

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