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CNN NEWSROOM

Unresponsive Aircraft Flying over the Atlantic Toward Cuba

Aired September 5, 2014 - 14:00   ET

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


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ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Here we go. Breaking news. Top of the hour. As you and I are watching all of this play out together, I'm Brooke Baldwin.

As we are watching this little blue plane here, this is a live flight tracker, there is an unresponsive plane. It is a small aircraft. It has been trailed by U.S. fighter jets, Cuban fighter jets, as it's now been in Cuban air space. It is expected to run out of fuel at any moment. This is what we have based upon calculations. Sources tell us it should be running out of fuel at any minute now here.

U.S. and Cuban militaries are investigating. This small private plane left Rochester, New York, earlier this morning. Was headed to Naples, Florida. But what began the mystery here is that it didn't land. Kept heading south, as you see. Now according to this flight tracker, appears to be over water.

The FAA is now working with the Cubans to figure out what happened. As I mentioned a moment ago, you have these two American F-15 fighter jets. They have also been trailing this plane. They are ready to follow the plane. Once it leaves Cuban air space. So it's been in and out. So it's a matter of Cuban authorities, U.S. authorities trying to figure out what is going on and to mitigate any potential damage if -- if it crashes.

We have our team of experts following everything for us at this moment. CNN aviation analyst Mary Schiavo is with me. Aviation correspondent Rene Marsh. Our Cuban based correspondent, Patrick Oppmann, is joining me. And our Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr.

So, Rene Marsh, let me just begin with you and let's start with the newest bit of information, which is the calculations, based upon fuel, and sources telling us this plane should be running out of fuel now.

RENE MARSH, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: Yes. And that's the sad part about this situation here, Brooke. We don't know why the pilot is not responding. But this plane was scheduled, as you mentioned, to go from Rochester to Naples. It's been flying -- it's been in the air for quite some time now. We know from the FAA that they have been -- that folks on the ground have been trying to make contact with the pilot since 10:00 this morning. It's now after 2:00 p.m., so it's been quite a while since they have been able to make contact with this pilot. So we know that they've been trying and that the pilot has been unresponsive since 10:00 a.m. It was supposed to land in Naples at around 2:00 this afternoon.

Now we're still digging, because we don't know what is the situation inside of this cockpit. However, we have our producers, they've been poring over air traffic control sound, as well as other sound that is available and we do know what appears to be from another pilot who may have flew alongside of this plane. We know that that pilot described -- and, again, this is all based on radio transmissions, that they saw that this individual's chest was rising and falling. So clearly the person was breathing at the time that this other pilot flew by. But we don't know what transpired after that and why at this point no one is able to make contact with this pilot.

We also do not know how many people are on board, Brooke.

BALDWIN: OK. And just again, to be -- to be specific, what kind of plane, Rene, is this?

MARSH: This is, again -- we keep on referring to it as general aviation plane. But it essentially is a turboprop. We know it's a seven-seater. It's a private plane. You're looking at a plane similar to that one there that you have on your screen there. That's pretty much what it looks like.

And at this point we believe that it is registered to a real estate development company out of Rochester. Still working to get some more details. But that is what we know at this point.

We don't know how much fuel is left, but we do know that the time line for this plane to run out of fuel -- the time is ticking and so that moment will come soon. We know that fighter jets have been tracking this plane. (INAUDIBLE) from it at this point because it's no longer in U.S. air space, Brooke.

BALDWIN: OK. OK. Rene, stand by.

Barbara Starr, let me just come to you.

Explain to us, as far as the U.S. military is concerned, we mentioned this, two F-15 fighter jets. I also saw that the Coast Guard is now -- the Coast Guard is getting involved. Tell me why that would be and what you know as far as the military, both U.S. and Cuban, are concerned.

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Here's where we stand, Brooke. Two U.S. F-15s picked up this aircraft earlier today when it became unresponsive. They flew alongside of it. They reported initially seeing a pilot slumped over. Then the windows were reported to be frosted up. All the indications of hypoxia.

The plane continued to fly on essentially a straight line. The F-15s trailed it, but broke off before, of course, they entered Cuban air space. That's 12 miles out. So the F-15s broke away. At that point, a Cuban fighter -- military fighter aircraft picked up and started trailing the flight inside Cuban air space. What we know is the Coast Guard and then the FAA began communicating

with Cuban authorities about what was going on, what they observed, what they knew about the plane. Telling the Cubans everything they knew, because nobody wanted a miscalculation. They wanted the Cubans, and by all accounts the Cubans do understand at this hour, they wanted the Cuban's to understand this was an unresponsive plane entering their air space. This was not a threat. The two F-15s were not a threat. The Cubans did pick up and were trailing the aircraft as well.

Now the question is, will it run out of fuel in the next few minutes over Cuban land or back out in the water? What we know is that the two F-15s have now -- are circumnavigating, or going around Cuba. They are coming around the southern coast essentially of Cuba and will be ready to pick up any trail of the airplane if it comes back out of Cuban air space and back over international waters. But I have to tell you, frankly, U.S. military officials think the plane simply will run out of fuel before that happens. Nonetheless, Brooke, an extraordinary insight into a moment of cooperation and communication between U.S. and Cuban authorities.

BALDWIN: Barbara, thank you. Stand by for me as we look at this flight tracker here. I mean you see the red dots, the trajectory, the southward trajectory of this plane. And based upon the live pictures with the flight tracker, it is over water south of Cuba at the moment.

Patrick Oppmann, tell me what you know.

PATRICK OPPMANN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, we've been hearing from multiple sources, Brooke, that Cuban and U.S. diplomats here in Havana, obviously, as well as in the State Department, have been in close contact throughout this incident, and to keep it from blowing up into something more -- turning into an international incident, which is what we saw in 1996 when planes, with a very different purpose, from Miami flew to Cuba to drop leaflets over the city of that Havana and were shot down by the Cuban air force, killing everybody aboard.

We've been told that the U.S. government has told the Cuban government this plane is not a threat, and it appears the Cuban government is acting underneath that scenario. They, of course, tracking the plane very closely, making sure as best they can that it does not go down in a populated area. As you heard Barbara say, it's now south of Cuba. It's flown over perhaps the most mountainous and difficult place to access the Sierra (INAUDIBLE) Mountains.

But it's probably still in Cuba waters if it's just left -- just flown over Cuban land. So even if the plane were to go down in Cuban waters, still the U.S. and Cuban governments would have to work together to find out what happened, to investigate it, to recover any wreckage. And if that happens, to recover any Americans who are on board the flight. So still a lot of work left to be done here between these two governments that usually agree on very little, Brooke.

BALDWIN: To your point and Barbara Starr's point, it's incredible. Here are these two governments, U.S. and Cuba, working together. Patrick, thank you. And, again, let me just reiterate a point that Rene Marsh made at the

tip top of the show here, that we're hearing that these NORAD, these F-15 pilots, as Barbara was explaining, who are now circling Cuba and they were trailing this plane while it was still in U.S. air space. They saw through the window of this seven-seater plane, this unresponsive plane, one pilot slumped over before the windows appeared to be frosted. So slumped over.

Mary Schiavo, let me just bring you in, because just talking -- everything aviation, since this is totally your arena of expertise, when you hear slumped over, you know, I don't know the precise altitude of this plane at the very moment, but, you know, that brings up a notion of perhaps hypoxia. How do you - how do you read the situation right now?

MARY SCHIAVO, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Well, what's been reported, the facts reported so far make it seem very, very similar to the Payne Stewart (ph) plane incident. In that case, of course, what happened was the plane had gotten to altitude, but an outflow valve failed and the plane depressurized. And in that case, of course, they were at an altitude that once it depressurized, there wasn't much chance to survive, because you have just a small amount of time to get on the protective breathing equipment if the pilots have been trained and have it. And there it is a very similar scenario, the planes tracked it across the United States, figure out the fuel burn, the fuel on board, et cetera, and knew that it would not come down in a populated area. So the president never had to make the decision, NORAD and the fighter jets trailing never had to decide whether they would shoot it down or not. They knew it was going to go down in an unpopulated area.

Same thing here on the plane that was shot down by Cuba. It was a Brothers to the Rescue plane. It was a huge issue about whether it was in international waters or Cuban waters. So it's really important that the U.S. and Cuba are cooperating and they do have protocols for that.

So I would sense it was already leaving Cuba air -- Cuba land. I would think it's in international waters by now. And it's important to recover that to find out what went wrong and to recover the people on board, because it's a pretty new plane. I think its manufacture date was 2014, earlier this year. So you're definitely going to want to know. It's a combination French manufacture and a U.S. manufacture, Mooney (ph). They cooperate together to make this plane. And we're going to want to know what happened because things like this don't happen to new planes.

BALDWIN: Mary Schiavo, thank you so much.

We want everyone to stand by as we're watching this breaking story, this unresponsive plane, this smaller seven-seater turboprop plane, unresponsive, now south of Cuba. Getting new information that the plane may be dropping. We have to take a quick break. Stay right here. CNN, breaking news.

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BALDWIN: Back to our breaking news here on CNN as we watch this flight tracker. It is just a tad delayed, just a heads up. We've been watching this small plane, seven-seater turboprop plane. It took off from Rochester, New York, this morning, right around 8:30 in the morning. A couple of hours later, people became concerned. It was supposed to land in Naples, Florida. And as you can see, it is now south of Cuba and heading toward the island of Jamaica.

Getting new information here as we know that those F-15 fighter jets have been flying around it, as have Cuban authorities, just based upon different air spaces, reporting the pilot seemed slumped over, reporting the windows frosted on this small airplane. And just quickly, one other nugget we have, and this is according to Barbara Starr's reporting at the Pentagon, there are believed to be, in addition to the pilot, one or two other people on board.

Rene Marsh, let me go to you, as you're working this with us very closely. You have some new information. What, about the altitude of the plane? What do you have?

MARSH: Right, Brooke.

So when you look at flightaware.com, which we often depend on for flight data, looking at the raw data, it seems like whatever went wrong happened around the 10:00 hour, which jives with what the FAA told us. The FAA says that the pilot stopped responding to radio calls around 10:00 this morning. So going back to this raw data on flightaware.com, it shows that around that same time, 10:00 a.m., that this plane dropped some 3,000 feet. We don't know why. But clearly something happened there in which it made this drop of 3,000 feet around the 10:00 hour, around the same time the FAA says that they lost contact, radio call contact with the pilot, Brooke.

BALDWIN: So just to be crystal clear, when they lost contact, you're saying at that moment, 10:00 this morning, which was, you know, some four hours ago, it dropped those 3,000 feet.

MARSH: Right. According to the raw data, again on flightaware.com, around that time, around 10:04, you know, that is when we saw this altitude drop. And we also know based on that same data that it has been flying in a straight path, south, ever since. So once it did that drop, it continued on, on a straight path south.

BALDWIN: OK.

MARSH: And now you're looking again at the live map there in which we now know the current position there as it continues to fly, of course. The issue is, when will this plane run out of fuel? It has been in the air quite some time now, Brooke.

BALDWIN: Right, since 8:30 this morning when it took off from Rochester, New York. Rene Marsh, keep working those sources with me as we follow what exactly is happening.

David Soucie, let me bring your voice in here, the author of "Why Planes Crash," CNN aviation analyst.

I mean, David, when you hear that, you know, four hours ago at 10:00 this morning when they lost communication with the pilot, the plane dropped 3,000 feet. What's your take on that?

DAVID SOUCIE, CNN AVIATION ANALYST (via telephone): Well, it definitely reminds me of the Payne Stewart accident. And, in fact, if there is fogged windows. The interesting thing about this is the fact that someone had flown by and actually seen that the pilot may have been actually moving inside the aircraft, which would indicate to me that there may have been some kind of physical thing with the pilot as well, like a heart attack or something like that. However, that doesn't explain why the windows would be fogged up as though it was a rapid decompression.

So it appears that the aircraft is right now at about 25,000 feet. Now, the air -- this aircraft, the TBM-900, has the capability of flying at a cruise of about six hours now. So the minimum flight time it would have, if it was fully fueled, would be 4.3 hours. But now in this aircraft, it's a very new aircraft. It's been in play with the French military for many years. Very reliable. It has a Pratt and Whitney Canada engine in it, which is a PT-6, which has been around in nearly every turbo -- reliable turboprop in the flight regime. So this is an aircraft that's extremely reliable. So something has gone wrong here that is not something to do with the aircraft typically, but it would be very rare if it was. But it sure indicates to me right now that there was some kind of pressurization failure.

BALDWIN: Something horribly wrong. And you're exactly right, that's what we've been reporting, that one of these, you know, F-15 jets saw some sort of movement with the pilot, saw the slumping over, and then saw the frosted windows.

I want to get to that -- back to that in a minute. But as I'm watching this southward trajectory now south of Cuba, it looks to be - and, again, this is just a tad delayed, this flight tracker, over Jamaica. If it were to be - and, again, you know, speculation to your point about a heart attack, hypoxia, what have you. The fact is, the pilot's unresponsive. Would you have autopilot in a plane like this?

SOUCIE: Yes, definitely have autopilot. It's a fully pressurized aircraft has a service ceiling of 30,000 feet. It's used by a lot of corporate pilots, people who own their own companies, that have the wealth to buy a $3.5 million aircraft. This is no toy aircraft. It's not a small airplane. It's small in its size. However, it has very good capabilities. It's pressurized up to 30,000 -- actually, this one will go to 35,000 or 40,000 feet. So it's a good, reliable aircraft.

I was just at the safety symposium for Socata a few months ago getting a presentation for them. And their safety systems, their safety products, everything they do in this airplane is about safety. Far above and beyond most other aircraft. So I'm very, very shocked and concerned, as is Socata -- I've been on the line with them this morning too -- about what's going on up there. And they're dispatching people as soon as possible to find out what's going on with this airplane.

BALDWIN: Which is precisely why this is just more and more worrisome as no one is able to communicate with pilots, no one has been able to since 10:00 this morning. David Soucie, thank you so much for hopping on the line with me.

Got to get a quick break in. You're watching CNN breaking news. Unresponsive seven-seater Socata, perfectly safe, very reliable, small turbo jet plane, was supposed to land in Naples, Florida. And as you can see by this flight tracker, nowhere near. What is going on? Quick break. Back in a moment.

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BALDWIN: Breaking news here on CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin. As we watch together here, this is flight tracker, and you can see, if you know the geography here, this red trajectory, this red southward trajectory line cut straight through Cuba. There is this small seven-seater turboprop plane that has been unresponsive, been unresponsive for hours now. It took off from Rochester, New York, right around 8:30 this morning. Was supposed to land in Naples, Florida. But hours ago, pilots, anyone on the plane, unresponsive to any attempt of communication. So the question is, what is happening on board?

And so as we're getting new information, we've learned that now Jamaican aviation authorities are telling us it is now approaching Jamaican air space. So that's the latest as far as exactly where this plane is. As far as what exactly is happening, the State Department is actually now commenting on this. Elise Labott, one of our correspondents in the briefing, just asking State about this. Take a listen.

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MARIE HARF, DEPUTY STATE DEPARTMENT SPOKESWOMAN: Eastern today, two F- 15 fighter jets, under the direction of NORAD, launched to investigate an unresponsive aircraft currently flying over the Atlantic Ocean. The aircraft had departed Rochester, New York, with a flight plan filed to land in Naples, Florida. The plane's occupants did not respond to attempts to communicate. NORAD jets were used to monitor it. NORAD is in contact with the FAA. They'll provide more information on that. We have been in touch with the two countries over who -- in who's flight space it went through, the Bahamas and Cuba. I don't have more details on those conversations but obviously this is an issue of security and safety and so we were in touch, as well.

ELISE LABOTT, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, I mean, given that there are, you know, many issues of security and safety, it seems as if you have the channels to the Cubans that you can speak to them. I mean, are there other ways that you can, you know, kind of communicate with the Cubans on issues of national interest, like expand that to like other areas?

HARF: Well, we talk to them -- we have, for example, regular consultations and conversations about postal issues or maritime issues, so we actually have a number of conversations with them about some of these mutual interests of - or issues, excuse me, of concern.

LABOTT: I'm talking about other security interests. I mean postal --

HARF: Like what?

LABOTT: Well, I mean, other issues of security in the region.

HARF: Well, again, we talk to the Cuban government about specific issues as we say very openly in this room. I don't have more for you on that issue than -

LABOTT: OK. And then do you have anything on a plane being forced to land in Iran with a number of U.S. citizens?

HARF: I don't have any details on that for you.

LABOTT: Have you --

HARF: I just don't have any details to share at this time.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: That was the voice of our correspondent, Elise Labott, asking a couple of questions about this unresponsive plane here entering Jamaican air space. Again, that's the latest we've had from Jamaica aviation authorities.

You know, one of the issues as we've heard reporting from - at the Pentagon, from our sources at the Pentagon, that these F-15 fighter jets were trailing this plane for some time, actually reported seeing the pilot moving, then reported seeing the pilot slumped over, and then reported frosted windows. That can mean a lot of things. We don't know precisely what it means, but it could mean hypoxia. We're going to talk to our senior medical correspondent, Elizabeth Cohen, on the other side of the break. Talk about what happens to the body when there is a sudden lack of oxygen to the brain, cerebral hypoxia. That's next.

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