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CNN NEWSROOM

Weather and the Missing AirAsia Jet; AirAsia CEO Responds to Families; Who's Really Behind the Sony Hack?; "The Interview" Made $15 Million Online in Four Days

Aired December 29, 2014 - 09:30   ET

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


CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: OK, so these storms can come suddenly. I totally get there. So is there instrumentation on board that can adequately help the pilot to determine where the hole is to shoot through the storm?

DAVID SOUCIE, CNN SAFETY ANALYST: Yes, there is. With the radar that's on board the aircraft, you can tilt that radar up and you can see kind of where the tops are, but it's not very specific about where the tops are.

In addition to that, by the time to get to when you were looking, the -- it could have piled up higher than where it was in the first place. That's why pilots typically don't try to go over the top because as these clouds are building, they're going up. They're not going down. So you have to watch that and understand where that's going.

As Miles said, you know, being able to select and pick the best route through the storms is something that has to happen at that time. It's nothing that you can predict. If you say, by the time they took out, 40 minutes later, it could be an entirely different picture than it was when you took off.

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: And, Miles, it's totally up to the pilot to figure out how to get around this storm. They can't like call into air traffic control and say, hey, can you find a hole for us to fly through?

Can you hear me, Miles?

We lost Miles. I think I have a negative vibe in my body this morning. I keep losing people.

SOUCIE: I think that's the gremlins (ph).

COSTELLO: But I'm glad you're still here.

SOUCIE: I'm here.

COSTELLO: So it's up to the pilot to totally make these decisions?

SOUCIE: Yes.

COSTELLO: He can't call for help from anywhere else? SOUCIE: Well, there is information and you can contact air traffic

control because the benefit there is, they've been talking to other aircraft who have gone through that area just recently, within the last few minutes. You may have had an aircraft go right in front of you. In fact, that's probably why they asked for the 38,000 foot altitude because an aircraft had flown through at 38,000. It had less turbulence than other areas. So, yes, air traffic control can provide information. But it's putting together a puzzle. It's all the information that you have in order to make the best decision.

COSTELLO: OK. So you've seen all of the information out there so far.

SOUCIE: Yes.

COSTELLO: And you investigate why planes crash. Your best guess.

SOUCIE: Well, I hesitate to guess, but there's a reason we do and I always qualify this. The reason that we speculate, the reason that we try to figure out what happened ahead of time, we got a lot of pressure from people out there in the Twitter world and social media saying, why do you speculate at this? It's painful for the families in all of this. But the reason we do that is so that the families are educated about what's going on and we can hopefully help with our expertise and background to help people figure out where the plane might be and it helps focus that search.

So, with that, I don't see a lot of evidence that would say that the aircraft had a survivable accident or that the aircraft was able to survive. And if there are survivors, if it did break up and there are survivors, this would be the best place for that because of the fact that the water temperatures are above 60 degrees, 70 degrees even in some areas and so -- and it's not a deep water, so your waves and your swells are not as deep as what we experienced with 370. So if there are survivors, this would be the best place for them to be.

COSTELLO: All right, David Soucie, Miles O'Brien, thanks to both of you. I really appreciate it. I do.

We've been talking about weather. It certainly played a part in Flight 8501's demise. And this is what we're talking about. These are the kinds of clouds that this plane flew through. These clouds can cause thunderstorms. And inside those clouds or thunderstorms are heavy rain and maybe lightning. Keep in mind, it's also very cold at 32,000 feet, so these clouds could contain both rain and ice.

Chad Myers joins us now from the CNN Weather Center with more.

Chad, tell us about these clouds and why the pilot probably wasn't able to fly over them.

CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: You know, they were 50,000 feet tall at times. These tops, these overshooting tops going up very rapidly. That's the turbulence you would feel when flying through one of these things. And how do you fly around something that's 150 miles wide to the left and to the right? They just thought that they could find something in between, and that's where they were. This intense area of thunderstorm activity kind of stretched all the way across their flight path. And it was a big storm that developed, as Miles said, very, very rapidly.

It was an explosive development right over very warm water. In fact, it was over 60 -- it was over 70 in some spots there, in this shallow water, it can be still over 80 degrees in that bubbling of air. That intense updraft is what we're worried about.

But also what goes up must come down. And there's also downdrafts in this storm. There are bubbles going left, going right, all of these eddies (ph) circulating around the airplane wings as well. And there wasn't much to get around. I mean you've got a 50,000 foot CV (ph) top, cumulonimbus top right there. You have more cumulonimbus here. Fifty-three thousand feet just to the southwest of that plane. This was a monster cell or number of cells put together in the Intertropical Convergence Zone. It is the area where hurricanes, typhoons, cyclones go. That's where they come from, the ITCZ, right along the equator at times, north or south of the equator, just depends on what time of year it is. These intense updrafts and big thunderstorms.

And, of course, sometimes -- and, Miles, if he's back, I don't know, I've been in a cirrus where we're flying through, we see a CB (ph), we know we can get through it because it's not that high, but the particles, the water vapor inside, the water vapor inside can be super cool. It actually water vapor can be below 32 degrees and not frozen yet. And you take a very cold airplane and you fly that through those super cooled particles, you can ice up an airplane very, very fast. And that's what could happen. Typically it happens at lower altitudes, but this is the warm tropics. So what I'm used to flying around, you know, the United States, is not what we're seeing here. There can be those super cool particles anywhere in the world at that altitude, Carol.

COSTELLO: Well, let's talk -- we lost Miles, but I have David Soucie here, so let's ask him about this. So the plane's instruments, because it's so cold up in the air, they could have frozen over possibly?

SOUCIE: Well, that's an interesting point because if you look at what happened to Air France 447, the ice crystals -- it didn't really freeze over, but the ice crystals themselves were of such the size that they got blocked into the peto (ph) tubes, which is where the information for air speed comes in from. So the pilots didn't know how fast they were flying, nor did they have an indication of angle of attack. So they don't know if the airplane's angling up or angling down and -- nor do they know how fast they're going. So they think that they're in an under speed situation. So they're -- or, excuse me, an over speed situation, so they're reacting in that way by pulling up the aircraft, trying to get it to slow down, when, in fact, they were already slow and that what caused the deep stall situation where the power's on, the aircraft's moving through the air, but yet it has not enough over the wings to keep it flying.

MYERS: Hey, David.

COSTELLO: Well, they were different kinds of planes, right, the Air France and --

SOUCIE: Very much so.

COSTELLO: And the AirBus, right?

SOUCIE: Yes. Yes.

COSTELLO: So, but would it --

SOUCIE: But both of the aircraft were of the same -- of the same type certificate data sheet. The type certificate data sheet is the basis that the FAA gives the manufacture to issue. So an AirBus 330, an AirBus 320, they were actually manufactured on the same type certificate, so they are subjected to the same testing levels and the same performance information. So there are similarities between the aircraft.

COSTELLO: Gotcha.

Chad, you wanted to ask something?

MYERS: David, yes, I know you've looked at the screen here, this one screen snapshot and it's literally just that, it's one snapshot. How often would this screen be updated? Is it every second, every two seconds, every three seconds? Because we only have one picture. This is not just a one second incident. We will have to figure out, was it 32, 33, 34 or was it violently up to 36? How quickly, and I know this is cached somewhere --

SOUCIE: Right.

MYERS: How much will we know from looking at the older frames and the younger frames than what we see here?

SOUCIE: Well, what we're seeing there -- and I have some doubts about that frame, to be honest with you, Chad, because of the fact that the aircraft wasn't cleared to go to 38,000 feet. It was just -- said, we'd like to go to 38,000 feet. So the fact that it was at 38 -- 36,000 feet tells me that the pilots either were not able to follow the emergency procedure process, which would be to communicate both ways and say, yes, I am going to 38,000 feet, which was not done.

So there's two things there, they didn't -- they didn't declare an emergency, which would have allowed them to go wherever they want to do -- wherever they want to go, nor did they then maintain two way communications, which is part of the procedure for deviation of the route. So they didn't follow either of those, which indicates to me that there was some kind of communications failure. I don't think that we're looking here at something like an inflight fire or something like that would have prevented the communications.

MYERS: Correct (ph). Sure. But could an updraft, a significant updraft in a thunderstorm, push this plane up 2,000 feet? I know it can drop it, but can it push it up that much?

SOUCIE: Well, I don't know about this particular airplane, but let me tell you about one incident that I did have in Colorado with an aircraft that had -- that did do exactly that and it broke apart in the air because they had flown directly into a very similar storm structure that had come over the top of the Rockies. And they continued to fly because of something that we refer to as pilot push. They have this desire to be where they're going to be so much that they forget about the fact that they could turn around and go back home.

Now, in this situation, as you pointed out on the graphic, that wasn't an option necessarily because these clouds had come in behind them as well. So even turning around wasn't necessarily an option for these pilots.

COSTELLO: All right, we're going to have to leave it there. David Soucie, Chad Myers, many thanks to you as well. I'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: Right now the aerial search for that missing airliner is suspended for the night. But when dawn break over the Java Sea, about nine hours from now, searchers will have an expanded new area to comb, looking for clues to what happened to that Asia Air Flight 8501. Richard Quest is CNN's aviation correspondent. He joins us now from Port Canaveral, Florida.

Hi, Richard. The Java Sea is not the Indian Ocean. It's not as deep. It's closer to land. So that's probably a positive thing as far as finding this plane, right?

RICHARD QUEST, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: Oh, absolutely. I mean you're -- but you've still got to find the aircraft. And, you know, it's not that simple. Your -- if the plane came out of the sky at 36,000, 37,000 feet, first of all, even knowing where the plane was, the nature in which it fell out of the sky, whether it went to the left or to the right, we've had real examples of this recently. If we go back to MH370, the report that was done by the Australian investigators specifically looked at the range of area that a plane can call from. And you're talking about many miles in different directions depending on how it comes out of the sky. So they will find this, but it's not -- you're talking about a sizable areas where you've got to search by sight literally looking for debris. And in a large body of water, that's not easy.

COSTELLO: I know Indonesian authorities are asking for sonar equipment. I know Australia's providing some equipment. Could the United States do that too?

QUEST: Oh, everybody will be. I mean there's no question. This is not one of those issues where anybody's going to be holding back. If you've got the equipment, and they need it, it will be sent.

You've got three things to look for, remember. They're going to be looking for the underwater locater pinger again. Now, they're going to, obviously. But there's no point in putting an towed locator, towed equipment into the water until you've got an idea of where it is. Now, the best hope so far remains wreckage. Those parts of the

aircraft, whether it's a seat cushion or part of the wing or anything that's likely to float, and experience tells us, with the exception of 370, that you do find something. Now the body of water is not as far from land as it was with 447. There are the ships and the planes there. It is probably only a matter of days or hours before somebody spots something simply because this is some of the most heavily shipped and traveled waters in the world.

So, Carol, I come back to my core point in this particular discussion with you. Anybody who thinks it's like looking over a swimming pool, and why can't you just simply see it, anybody who thinks that -- apologies obviously there's some messages coming through -- anybody who thinks that is fooling themselves, this is a complicated, wide area where you have to grid and you have to go backwards and forwards to find what you're looking for.

COSTELLO: We all know that air traffic control lost track of this flight 40 minutes in. I've been asking our aviation experts whether that was normal. They kind of say it is because of the weather situation. I just wanted to get your take on that.

QUEST: Well, we haven't really got a full tick tock. We're dealing with only half measures at the moment and more information is still to come. Yes, we know they requested the height. Yes, we know what time it was. But you're still in the very early stage, where actually the fine level of detail hasn't been released. The dotting of the i, the crossing of t.

So they lost contact. But as soon as you lose contact, you don't immediately launch a full scale air and search rescue. That's not the way it's done. You ask the previous controller, do you know where it is? You ask other aircraft in the sky, have you heard from? Have you seen? Do you know anything? And then you start to build up -- you call the company.

Now, the art in doing this, Carol, is an urgency. You know you've got -- you don't want to call a full scale rescue yet, because this might just be a minor thing. They might be having a problem in the cockpit. You don't know what it might be. But you at the same time don't want to let it get away from you. And so what I'm seeing at the moment is nothing that suggests an MH370 four or five hour delay type of situation. We're seeing the plane disappear from the radar. We know that calls were made. And the next thing, X number of hours later, when they really don't know what they're doing or they can't find the plane, then you get the full "It's missing, it's gone. Get the ships out."

COSTELLO: All right, Richard Quest reporting live for us this morning. Thank you so much.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, did Sony stumble on the future of digital movie distribution with "The Interview"? The scandalous Seth Rogen comedy just became the studio's top grossing online movie ever. We'll tell why -- I'll tell you how many millions watched next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TONY FERNANDES, AIRASIA GROUP CEO: We are very devastated by what's happened. It's unbelievable. But we do not know what happened yet, so we'll wait for the accident investigation to really find out what's happened. Our concern right now is for the relatives and for the next of kin. There's nothing more important to us. For our crew's family and for the passengers' family, we look after them. That is our number one priority at the moment.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: The words of AirAsia CEO Tony Fernandes following the disappearance of Flight 8501. In the midst of his first major crisis, Fernandes has been actively engaging anxious families and the public, taking to social media several times an hour.

Here's a tweet from earlier today. He said, "Keeping positive and staying strong. My heart bleeds for all the relatives of my crew and our passengers. Nothing is more important to us."

The sentiments continuing on the company's web site in the wake of uncertainty. The logo changing from a bright red to a more subdued gray.

So let's talk about this and how the company is coping and how the families, more importantly, are coping.

I'm joined by Dr. Jeff Gardere, psychologist and professor of behavior medicine at Touro, and Seth Caplan, managing partner for Airline Weekly. Welcome to both of you. Seth, I know you've -- hi, I'm glad you're here, Seth, because I know you've interviewed Tony Fernandes in the past. Give us a sense of who this man is.

SETH KAPLAN, MANAGING PARTNER, AIRLINE WEEKLY: Very much, Carol, in the style of the low cost airline CEO taking on the world. Americans, a lot of them familiar with Herb Kelleher who started Southwest. Europeans with Michael O'Leary, the Irishman who is sometimes so profane that you can't quote what he says in a newsletter like ours or on CNN.

And Tony Fernandes very much in that vein. The first time I interviewed him back in 2005, our headline was "The Southwest of the Southeast," because that's how they were styling themselves, as this basic, cheap, friendly and certainly safe airline. He has occasionally put his foot in his mouth rather, but back then I asked him about one of his competitors and he said, oh, he said my grandmother could run that airline and she's dead. That's the kind of guy he is.

But now, taking on obviously a role with more gravitas, and really following the rules you would lay out for somebody in this situation -- be honest and, most of all, be human. And he's doing that.

COSTELLO: How does his airline differ as far as safety goes from other airlines in that part of the world?

KAPLAN: Well, it's had an excellent safety reputation over the years and certainly has had to overcome concerns in that part of the world. You know, in places like the U.S., like Europe, people have come to take for granted that a cheap ticket doesn't equate to unsafe. It's not that a budget airline is cutting corners on safety; it's simply feeding you less free food, for example, and that sort of the thing.

But in that part of the world, that was a new idea, the thought that a cheap airline could be just as safe as any others. And when you ask people, actually, in various parts of the world what do you look for in an airline? Americans won't even mention safety anymore. Not that they don't want a safe airline, but it's just that they take it for granted. In southeast Asia, people will still rank that as one of their priorities, and AirAsia has generally had a reputation as a safe airline. This obviously now is a blemish on that reputation.

COSTELLO: So, Dr. Jeff, the families. No one can imagine what they're going through, but in this instance it seems like this airline has handled things better than when that Malaysia flight went missing.

DR. JEFF GRADERE, PSYCHOLOGIST & PROF., BEHAVIOR MEDICINE, TOURO COLLEGE: Absolutely. I think they've certainly looked at that past playbook and said these are the things that we're going to do that worked and certainly we're not going to do the things that didn't work. And certainly connecting with the families one on one, not going through a bureaucracy, is what's truly helping Tony Fernandes right now.

COSTELLO: So do the tweets help? And then changing the colors of the airline on the web site? Do those things help?

GRADERE: I think subtly all of those things help, because if nothing else it gives the message, Carol, that we care. We're focused on you. We're going to give you information, and accurate information, and if we can't do that, we're going to not give any information. As we saw, there was a lot of misinformation before and a lot of info coming in from the media rather than the Malaysian airline last time. So this time it's a much more direct route and certainly just showing that they care, that the families and the families of the crew are priority, they're doing, right now, all of the right things.

COSTELLO: And certainly authorities have said that the plane has probably crashed into the sea.

GRADERE: That's right.

COSTELLO: So they're not prolonging the agony, so to speak. Although I'm sure the families still have hope.

GRADERE: Well, the families are praying. We have some very religious families there and I'm sure most of those people are very, very spiritual. But if nothing else what we're hearing is that -- they're trying to hold on against hope, but they are preparing for the worst. And that's all that you can do. And I don't think their agony is going to be prolonged as much as we saw with the previous Malaysian flight disappearance.

COSTELLO: Well, I do know that the airlines have asked families for DNA and for pictures of their loved one, close-up pictures, so that they can better identify these passengers when they find them.

GRADERE: Which is a wonderful thing, because we know that this is important for them to be able to do this as quickly as possible. But more than anything else, they're keeping them busy. They're addressing their issues. They're making sure that they're getting crisis counseling right away. And so all of these things help them along with this grieving process and being in shock. They're communicating and that's the most important thing; it's a form of debriefing.

COSTELLO: Seth, Dr. Jeff, thanks to both of you. I appreciate it.

We'll continue our coverage of the missing AirAsia plane in just a minute. But first there are new theories about last month's massive hack on Sony Pictures. Originally, President Obama and the FBI said North Korea was responsible for attacking Sony. But some hacking experts remain unconvinced. The cyber security firm Norse did its own investigation and tells CNN a former Sony employee, not North Korea, may be the culprit. Even Republican Senator Lindsey Graham has his doubts about North Korea, telling CNN this weekend if the reclusive dictatorship was responsible, he could not imagine China didn't play a role.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R), SOUTH CAROLINA: You can't talk about North Korea without talking about China. You need to have a heart-to-heart with the Chinese. I can't imagine anything this massive happening in North Korea without China being involved.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: OK, so you can't talk about the Sony hack without talking about "The Interview". First, the scandalous Seth Rogen comedy angered North Korea for its plot about assassinating Kim Jong-Un. Now the film's breaking online sales records. In a landmark moment for digital movie distribution, "The Interview" was rented or purchased more than two million times between last Wednesday and this Saturday. In other words, in just four days, the movie earned more than $15 million online. And don't forget, it raked in millions more at independent movie theaters.

CNN's business correspondent Maribel Aber is here with more. Good morning.

MARIBEL ABER, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Hey, good morning, Carol. Better late than never for Sony and "The Interview". The studio says the movie earned $2.8 million at the box office. The film is playing in about 300 theaters so that's less than a tenth of the number that had initially planned on showing it. So when you combine online and theaters, the movie earned about $18 million for the holiday weekend. You know what, Carol? Not bad considering, before the controversy, the movie was forecast to gross around $20 million when it opened. So you know what? Pretty close.

COSTELLO: Pretty close. Maribel Aber, thanks so much.

The next hour of CNN NEWSROOM after a break.

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