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@THISHOUR WITH BERMAN AND MICHAELA

Weather Frustrates AirAsia Recovery; Search Continues for AirAsia Black Boxes; Rose Parade Redemption for African-American Grandmother

Aired January 2, 2015 - 11:30   ET

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


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MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: New developments from the search for Flight 8501. Search crews are focusing on an area of about 2,000 square miles. Roughly the size of Delaware. A top Indonesian official says this is the most probable area of the Java Sea where the plane's fuselage might be located. They have recovered more of the plane's wreckage including what appears to be a window panel. This photo was posted online by the minister of defense of Singapore.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Officials say 30 bodies have now been pulled from the sea. Four have been identified so far. Really the biggest obstacle in the search is the weather. That has been the case from the very beginning of this tragedy.

PEREIRA: It's been a very frustrating day for the divers dealing with some waves, reportedly as high as 13 feet.

Our Paula Hancocks spoke with a few of them about their vital but gruesome mission.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

PAULA HANCOCKS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Loading up to rejoin the operation, police and search-and-rescue teams prepare for the 10- hour journey back to the crash scene. Last-minute checks for divers facing the grim task of looking for bodies.

Apage Tupendi (ph) couldn't even get into the water on his last trip, the weather made it impossible. "This is my life," he says. "It's just too much of a risk."

With waves of up to four meters, or 13 feet, today's conditions are no better. The region's chief of police says the weather is without doubt the biggest obstacle in finding these victims. "I'd like to tell the families we are doing our best to get their loved ones out," he says. "We apologize if it's taking longer than hoped."

A search-and-rescue boat docks nearby, returning from a day near the crash site. The captain says they will not stop searching until everyone is found. "We were supposed to collect debris from a Singaporean ship near the site," he says, "but we gave up because the weather was too bad to do the handoff safely." A delivery of body bags for the police ship, then disappointing news.

(on camera): I've just been told this police boat is not going anywhere today. The weather is simply too bad. Another frustrating day for divers who desperately want to give distraught families some closure.

Paula Hancocks, CNN, Indonesia.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BERMAN: Our thanks to Paula for that report.

We want to bring in sea operations specialist, Tim Taylor; and our meteorologist, Chad Myers, to talk about these challenges.

First, Chad, I want to talk to you about the weather, how things are right now and where they're headed.

CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Well, we're running up to midnight local time their time so there's not really -- we won't have planes in the sky looking for debris in the water at this dark hour. But it does get better from here. Today, tomorrow are not great. But Sunday will be the best day of the search and that may be the day that they actually can find something because waves will be about two to three feet. I can't imagine trying to get two ships side by side at 13-foot waves. These aren't swells. This is shallow water, relatively. It's 100 feet deep. Your waves are steeper because the wave action bounces off the bottom and your waves are not a roller like you'll get out in 125,000 foot seas or 15,000 feet deep where the wave just does this. These are more sharp.

Today, we will see some showers and storms as they wake up but not as bad as they've been and then eventually we'll start to get the wind to die off. It will take a while. It will take 48 more hours but there you see the showers popping up here and there so nothing all that organized. Nothing like the pilot saw when he was flying into that massive wall of thunderstorms. That's the good news. The wind today still about 20 miles per hour. That's going to make about a 10-foot swell. Then we start to go down from there. Notice the yellow starts to go away. The orange is almost completely gone. Then by Sunday all we have is blue which means less than 10 miles per hour and those waves will settle down quite quickly.

PEREIRA: Well, that's remarkable. And it's certainly what they need, to have Mother Nature cooperate.

Tim, you're an accomplished sea explorer. You've been here with us a lot. You can give us an idea of what it's like for these divers and for the search crews to be out there, especially when it comes to the underwater search. It's monsoon season, we're hearing reports of 13- foot waves. How does that impact the search underwater, though?

TIM TAYLOR, SEA OPERATIONS SPECIALIST: Even if it calms down it will be turbid. All the water that rains on land runs off and brings dirty water to settle out. It takes days or weeks for that to settle out and get some clarity. I noticed there from the footage that they're using open circuit divers, which is scuba. So that's -- they're dropping these guys in here. Usually on a commercial job they'll have tether divers and they'll nowhere they are. So that's more dangerous because they're on their own going into wrecks or trying to find -- penetrate into these areas with very little visibility. That's tough.

BERMAN: Interesting. So the water is cloudy, dirty, you can't see through it and that will last even when the conditions improve?

TAYLOR: Yes, very much so. It will take a while to settle it. There's no Gulf Stream current to sweep it clean fast. It has to settle out of the water current.

BERMAN: But once these waves and the wind stop that is at least one of the obstacles out of the way.

TAYLOR: Oh, yes. But it's got to stop for some period of time. This is a battle these guys are going to be undertaking for -- it's the season. It's the monsoon season.

PEREIRA: We've been talking about this more focused search area. I think it's important to say more focus because it's still 2,000 square miles. In terms of a search area, is that large? Is that --

TAYLOR: I'm taking that to read it's still 2,000 square miles because they're still looking for debris and things floating and that's been scattered. So I'm sure they have more of a concentrated area they're looking for the plane because they're taking that data and bringing it back to ground zero, tracking it back. As days go by, you know from flight 370 it widens out the search area and the debris and that debris could have bodies so we're looking for bodies. That search area has to be wide. That's a visual aerial search area.

BERMAN: What tools do you have back underwater again? What tools do they have at their disposal underwater to help with the search? Some may be affected by that cloudy water you're talking about, others not as much, right?

TAYLOR: Visually, the divers, but all the rest of it, the sonar pinging, that can work in turbid water. Sonar sees right through it. It's the tool of choice. So finding the wreckage, recovering the bodies is the priority and so that's what's going to be suffering the most setback with weather, turbidity and the divers.

PEREIRA: We heard some sound translate there had from one of the searchers. Their lives are precious and you have to take that into account that these are humans that you're asking to dive into these conditions to send down below to do this. So this is another reason why this takes time.

TAYLOR: It will take a lot of time. And if you want to take a good example, the "Costa Concordia," which was on land next to shore --

(CROSSTALK)

BERMAN: They knew where it was the whole time. TAYLOR: I don't recall, but they might have had a diver lost in that,

and they didn't find last body until they raised the ship. So this could be months and months and months. Obviously, nobody wants that but those are the realities.

PEREIRA: Tim Taylor, always a pleasure to have you here with us. Thanks so much for your expertise.

One of the victims of the AirAsia crash was a 22-year-old flight attendant. She had been a flight attendant for two years, Khairunnisa Haidar Fauzie, Nisa, as she was affectionately known by her family, was still wearing her uniform. Her parents in Sumatra showed CNN her photos. They said she was an adventurous spirit. She wanted to fly so she could take trips around the world.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HAIDAR FAUZIE, CRASH VICTIM'S FATHER (through translation): She knew the risks but she loved this. It was her dream. She loved traveling.

APHANA FAUZIE, CRASH VICTIM'S MOTHER: Good-bye. Good-bye, Nisa.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PEREIRA: Heart breaking.

BERMAN: Our hearts go out to that family and all the others still waiting.

PEREIRA: 162 families.

BERMAN: Ahead for us @THISHOUR, searches still looking for the black boxes from 8501. We'll have our expert explain exactly what information they contain, how to get to it and what it may tell us about what happened to this aircraft. PEREIRA: And a little later, she was un-invited from riding in the

Rose Parade because of her race. Now, 56 years later, this African- American grandmother found redemption along Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena.

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PEREIRA: So bad weather, really bad weather, during monsoon season is hampering the search for Flight 8501's flight data recorders. It could be a while before they're found. We know they contain valuable information.

BERMAN: Here are a few things you need to know about black boxes. First of all, as we said about 10,000 types they are not black, they are orange. They are located in the tail section of an Airbus A320. They store about 25 hours of information about the plane's altitude, air speed, engine performance, other data. Then there's the cockpit voice recorder. It has two hours of pilot interaction with air traffic control.

I want to bring back our aviation analyst, David Soucie. David, you have worked with these black boxes, and you're author of a new book "Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, Why It Disappeared and Why It Will Happen Again." Let's get that in there.

(LAUGHTER)

Now the black boxes, the orange black boxes sitting in front of you, how do you get the information?

DAVID SOUCIE, CNN SAFETY ANALYST: With the new ones you're basically able to plug it in much like you would put a peripheral into your computer, a separate piece into your computer. However, getting to that point is not very easy because it has to be brought out of the ocean in its similar environment, meaning it has to be encased, then transitioned out of that environment --

(CROSSTALK)

BERMAN: You have to put in the salt water?

SOUCIE: You leave in the water it was retrieved with. If it's deep you keep it pressurized at that similar level of pressure. In this case they may or may not have to do that. Once it comes up, it's a rinsed and flooded with fresh, clean, de-ionized water then it's determined if the case has been breached. If the case has been breach, there's more work because you have to take it apart piece by piece and clean those pieces, all of those individual components, to make sure there's no salt or connectivity on it.

PEREIRA: So finding it, issue one. Retrieving it. issue two. Downloading or uploading the data, three. And then analyzing that data. There's so many pieces of information they want to listen to the sound of the recording of the pilots and how their voice inflection was and what they were communicating with air traffic control and also how the airplane was performing, correct?

SOUCIE: Right. And putting those two things together is like -- the exponential improvement in what you know about the investigation. So I think we have a graphic about the analysis that's done on these black boxes and the one that I've got here is from flight 447. And what it's showing us is you take the voice alongside of the actual data.

So, for example, across the top we have the cockpit voice recorder information and you can see where the pilots are talking to each other, the pilot versus the first officer. Below that you see all of the movements of controls. Here's where it's real important. For example, he says "I think you're pulling up. I think the aircraft is climbing." And the co-pilot says, "Am I?" He didn't really realize he was pulling the stick back.

If you look down below, it shows you that he was pulling the stick back so that's how it was determined that there was some kind of confusion about his reaction and what he was thinking at the time of the accident, which would indicate there was some kind of panic or that he wasn't acting appropriately to it. The third thing that's really important about this is that the cockpit voice recorder not only keeps track of the input, the movement towards the aircraft and what's sent to the computer but it also has information and sensors on each of the flight controls that will tell fit he wants to climb and he pulls back does the flight control make the appropriate action? And that would tell you if there's a break or mechanical failure in that system.

BERMAN: So what happened, what was meant to happen, you can plot that all against itself. Now all of this seems like really crucial data. None of it -- and I'm not a computer expert -- seems like it's more complicated than any other kind of data. It seems like the type of thing you could transmit much more frequently than they do. If you can be on Wi-Fi on an airplane why couldn't these be sending things back?

SOUCIE: Absolutely. There's not much information on this. My cell phone probably has more data than this does. And so why it's being -- not being transmitted.

And it doesn't have to be transmitted at one time. Currently what happens, too, is if they use the ACARS data, which a lot of this is similar to ACARS data, some airlines wait until the aircraft lands and the gear is actually sitting on the ramp before it starts uploading data about the flight that it was just finished. But if it's sent a little piece at a time, it would make this much easier. We'd know a lot more about where this airplane went down.

PEREIRA: We'll hear more pushes to hear that kind of technology implemented soon again.

SOUCIE: We'll be talking about that.

PEREIRA: Thanks, David.

BERMAN: Ahead for us @THISHOUR, a story of racism and redemption. The city of Pasadena offers a long overdue apology and gives a grandmother soon to be a great grandmother a chance to ride to a ride she was denied more than 50 years ago.

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PEREIRA: We have a story now, a tale of redemption more than half a century in the making.

BERMAN: It was 1958 when Joan Williams was picked to represent city employees. She was named Miss Crown City and set to ride on a float in the Rose Parade. But when a reporter discovered that the fair- skinned working mother was African-American, the invitation vanished. Williams has said she didn't dwell on that snub, that racism in those days was simply, quote, "a fact of life."

PEREIRA: But 50 years later, those facts have changed. Now 82 years old Williams received an official apology, and as the pageantry unfolded for the yesterday Tournament of Roses Parade, Williams was seated on the float. There she is under that red blanket.

Here's her reaction to seeing the float for the very first time.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOAN WILLIAMS, RODE IN TOURNAMENT OF ROSES PARADE: Oh, boy!

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They are going on one by one.

WILLIAMS: All good things happen in time. It puts a little on the hurt big time, and I'm glad that the community was open and ready to make an apology.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PEREIRA: Joan Williams joins us now by phone from Pasadena.

Joan, I understand it was a cold but beautiful day yesterday in Pasadena. How was that ride down Colorado Boulevard?

WILLIAMS (voice-over): Oh, it certainly was. It was very cold. So unusual for New Year's Day in Pasadena. But, you know, we dressed for it and it couldn't dampen the festivity. It was a beautiful, beautiful day.

BERMAN: It was a beautiful day and a beautiful ride in so many ways. After all these years, you got an apology from officials in Pasadena. What was it like to finally read those official words "we're sorry"?

WILLIAMS: Well, it meant everything. Because all the -- all the media blitz was happening and people were interested and I was very appreciative of that. But I hadn't really had a true apology. And New Year's Eve, I opened the front door and there on my porch was an envelope. I had no idea that someone had come to the door, and they left that envelope. And when I opened it, it was an official letter from the mayor's office on their stationery and it was finally an official apology. And I really appreciated that.

PEREIRA: Miss Joan --

(CROSSTALK)

PEREIRA: I'm so sorry to interrupt you. I know that your husband -- your late husband was a Tuskegee airman. He had to face racism challenges through his life. You don't harbor any bitterness about this. You sort of said that you do have a lot of feelings but bitterness isn't among them?

WILLIAMS: No, no, no. If the people of color carried bitterness with them at all times, they wouldn't be able to get on with their lives because here in this country, unfortunately, many Americans are not seen as human beings and I really, really want my country to rid itself of all the hate and disparity that we see. And interestingly enough, some years ago, Michaela, you officiated at a Teacher of the Year affair here in our city and my son was one of those who was a Teacher of the Year. He's now in Turkey teaching and -- PEREIRA: Wow.

WILLIAMS: -- and he's appalled at the way that America is seen from afar.

PEREIRA: Yes. We have so much work to carry on with here in our nation.

We understand you're about to receive your first great grandson very soon, your son and other rest of your family is so very proud of you.

We thank you for joining us to share this experience, Mrs. Williams. We're so glad that the city of Pasadena made it right after all of this time.

WILLIAMS: OK. Thank you very much for having me.

PEREIRA: Happy New Year.

BERMAN: A long time coming. Very long, in some ways.

(CROSSTALK)

BERMAN: So glad that she gets to share it with her family.

That's all for us. I'm John Berman.

PEREIRA: "LEGAL VIEW" with Pamela Brown after a quick break.

I'm Michaela Pereira. I forgot that part. But I still am.

BERMAN: You still are.

PEREIRA: I still am. OK.

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