Return to Transcripts main page

CNN NEWSROOM

Germanwings Flight 9525 Crashes in French Alps; 150 Onboard Presumed Dead; German Chancellor Speaks. Aired 9:30-10a ET

Aired March 24, 2015 - 09:30   ET

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


[09:30:00] TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: This plane was still moving on at a substantial speed when it went down there.

And, by the way, you mentioned some of the tweets here, some more from Air Live Net. This is apparently a staging area down in that area. This is where they're still flying over -- patterns of planes flying over, looking for what might be there. And, of course, that picture there.

So the bottom line, Carol, if you come in here, even if your plane is still flying at 400 miles an hour, what do you do? There's not really much you can do there in terms of bringing a plane in, in any kind of safe manner.

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: All right, Tom Foreman, thanks so much.

I'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: All right, the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, talking about this plane crash. Let's listen.

ANGELA MERKEL, GERMAN CHANCELLOR (through translator): We don't know much about the flight and the crash yet. And we don't know the cause. Today I'm concerned with the depth of suffering that is being brought to so many people. My thoughts are with those people who have lost somebody. There are many Germans among them. This suffering is incredible of the families. We will do everything to get the help that they need in these difficult hours.

In the last hours, I have talked to the French president, Hollande, as well as with the Spanish prime minister. We have discussed and agreed that our countries have to help each other in any form and we -- with the forces at the site and at the airports. The foreign ministry has introduced a crisis center, which is coordinating everything. The Foreign Minister Steinmeier and the transport minister will go to the region this afternoon. I will go there tomorrow to make -- to draw my own picture so that I know what I'm talking about.

Let me say finally that the hour that we all mourn, we have to think of the victims and their families and their friends. Thank you.

[09:34:56] COSTELLO: All right, that was the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, talking about that plane that went down, Germanwings Flight 9525, 148 people on board. The passengers believed to be from Germany. You heard Ms. Merkel say many, many passengers were from Germany. Also on board, Spanish passengers and also Turkish.

I want to rejoin Karl Penhaul. He's at the Barcelona Airport, where this plane took off from. Families are starting to arrive.

Tell us about that, Karl.

KARL PENHAUL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (via telephone): Hi, Carol.

Yes, as the moments pass, more and more family members are arriving at a crisis center that has been set up at Terminal 2. In fact, as we speak, another two ladies have just gone through the gate in front of me, heading towards the crisis center. Apparently relatives of some of the passengers on board.

We do know that there were Germans on board. We know that there were Spaniards on board as well. But so far airline authorities haven't given us either a full list of passengers or the nationalities that were on board. We're expecting some kind of press release from them in literally the next few moments.

So far no further confirmation either of why that Germanwings flight may have left around a half an hour late from Barcelona's Terminal 2 airport. It was due to leave, we're told, around 9:30 local time and didn't leave until just after 10:00 local time. The weather has been bad in the Barcelona region for a number of days now, but no indication at this stage whether weather was a factor in the delayed departure.

But as I say, expecting a press release any moment now. In fact, I see the lady now heading towards us with a printed press release. If you are able to hold on, that may give us some additional information.

COSTELLO: Absolutely.

PENHAUL: This is a press release from members of the crisis center. It is headlined, "Germanwings." Last-minute reports, it says, from Germanwings. And if you bear with me, I shall translate some of it from Spanish and let you know what it says.

It's confirming the accident, the crash of its plane around 11:00 a.m. local time in the region of Niece (ph). That is information that we already knew. It says on board Flight 9525 there were 144 registered passengers and six crew, 144 passengers and six crew, so 150 people total on board. It says though that right now there is no additional information available. Germanwings is carrying out a complete investigation and until that investigation is complete, we cannot give any more information, says the Germanwings press release, which has just come off the printing machine now.

It says that Germanwings will update journalists as soon as it has any additional information to add. They have also added to their press release the number -- a crisis number where any relatives can phone for additional information. So I guess the only piece of information that perhaps we didn't have pinned down before, 144 passengers on board and six crew members. But this press release just come out from Germanwings. The airline company says it is giving no additional information at this time and will carry out -- and is carrying out already a full investigation.

And then, of course, the human side, again, as the minutes tick by, more family members arriving at the crisis center set up alongside Terminal 2 at Barcelona Airport, the location from which this aircraft set out from, Carol.

COSTELLO: All right, Karl Penhaul, thank you so much. I appreciate it.

As you heard Karl say, 144 passengers on board, six crew members, 100 (ph) people total. And it's believed all 150 did not survive the crash. Again, a Germanwings Flight 9525. That's an Airbus A320 aircraft, crashed this morning on its way from Barcelona, Spain, to Dusseldorf, German.

I want to bring back in our aviation experts Peter Goelz and Mary Schiavo.

Peter, I don't know if you heard Tom Foreman's report, but he said that as the plane was flying along, there was a dip in speed that lasted perhaps five minutes and then it speed up again, right? It started to climb. And then the speed dipped again and then shortly thereafter the plane crashed. Does that tell you anything?

PETER GOELZ, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Well, no, it's simply a focus of the investigation at this point. You know, that it's an interesting piece of information. The plane should have been on auto pilot at that point. The speed should not have been varying. That it did vary is a point that investigators will zero in on as soon as they get the black boxes, the flight data recorder in particular.

[09:40:04] COSTELLO: Tom also mentioned censors on the plane that could have frozen over, Mary.

GOELZ: Yes.

COSTELLO: Can you expound on that?

MARY SCHIAVO, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Yes. There was a -- there has been a warning put out by Airbus that this particular plane model, a 320, 321 had something called a stuck angle of attack indicator, and it had happened on another Lufthansa flight back in November. I think it was November 5, 2014. And what had happened there is the plane itself was giving erroneous readings of its angle attack. And that just means nose up or nose down, that's angle of attack. And the indicators on the side of the plane there, through what Tom had showed us, the pitot tubes, that they had put out a warning that they needed to go check these things because it had given some bad angle of attack readings.

Now, what would have happened there is you would have seen the altitude and you might have seen the altitude fluctuate and you probably would have seen that maybe even before the air speed. But if you dip your nose down, your air speed's going to go up. And if you put your nose up, the air speed's going to go down, if you don't adjust your thrust. So that could be a possible explanation. But who knows. But in these other instances, the pilots were able to recover because they were highly trained pilots. Lufthansa pilots are quite good generally speaking and they were able to recover. So that was the warning about this angle of attack indicator that has been out.

COSTELLO: OK, we'll talk more after a break. Thanks so much.

I'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: And if you're just joining us, I'd like to bring you up to date.

There was a plane crash earlier this morning, 5:01 Eastern Time. It's 10:00 a.m. local time. The plane took off. It was an Airbus A320 aircraft. Germanwings Flight 9525. It took off from Barcelona, Spain, and was headed to Dusseldorf and it crashed in the French Alps. We know now that 150 people were on the plane, 144 passengers and 6 crew members.

[09:45:06] Many, many people -- people and authorities -- people in -- in positions of authority have told us that there probably are no survivors.

Still, you see these helicopters in a staging area near Nice. They're flying up those mountains to search for possible survivors. Of course we'll keep you posted. Very remote area where this plane crashed so it will take some time to get new information from that area.

Just about, oh, , 15 or 20 minutes ago, the German chancellor Angela Merkel, talked about the crash, because there were many, many German passengers on board that plane, along with Spanish passengers and Turkish passengers. Let's listen to Angela Merkel.

MERKEL (via translator): Ladies and gentlemen, terrible news have reached us from France. The crash of the German plane, which had 140 people on board, is a shock which -- which we share with the French and the Spanish. We don't know much about the flight and the crash yet. And we don't know the cause.

Today, I am concerned with the depth of suffering that is being brought to so many people. My thoughts are with -- with those people who have lost somebody. There are many Germans among them. This suffering is incredible of the families. We will do everything to get the help that they need in these difficult hours.

In the last hours, I have talked to the French President Hollande, as well as with the Spanish Prime Minister. We have discussed and agreed that our countries have to help each other in any form and we have -- with the forces at the site and at the airports. The foreign ministry has introduced a crisis center, which is coordinating everything. The Foreign Minister Steinmeier and the Transport Minister will go to the region this afternoon. I will go there tomorrow to make -- to draw my own picture so that I know what I'm talking about. Let me say finally that the hour that we all mourn, we have to think

of the victims and their families and their friends. Thank you.

COSTELLO: We do have to think of the victims and their families and their friends. At the airport at Barcelona where the plane took off, families are gathering. Psychologists and psychiatrists are on hand to try to help them get through this period. I don't even know if that's possible. But they're there to help in any way they can.

And so is the NTSB, here in the United States. It's standing by ready to assist if need be. Let's head to Washington to talk about that and CNN's aviation correspondent Rene Marsh. Good morning.

RENE MARSH, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol. Yes, we do know that they're watching and paying very close attention. Of course, the critical information that they want to know is were any U.S. passengers on board? And as far as the plane's parts, any of that manufactured by any U.S. companies? So they are in close contact with the French equivalent of the NTSB.

We do know based on the information that's available now that this distress call came in about 45 minutes into the flight. We also have a bit of an idea as far as the descent of this plane. And we do know based on that data that this aircraft didn't just plunge in a drastic manner. It went down in a manner that could be equal to an expedited or emergency descent that pilots train for all the time.

We don't have much more information other than we know that that distress signal signaling an emergency went out 45 seconds into -- 45 minutes into the flight. But no other -- we're not aware of any other conversations between the pilot and air traffic control.

Now, oftentimes you'll hear pilots -- when you talk to pilots, they always say, the rules of the cockpit are you aviate first, you communicate after.

[09:50:00] So perhaps that is what was happening, why they didn't have that conversation with air traffic control. But you you're looking at the screen there. You're looking at what we know when this aircraft was last seen on radar before it disappeared from radar.

I was just talking to a pilot, Carol. And he tells me, look, they train for these sort of emergency descent situations all the time. The problem happens when, let's say, in this mountainous area, if you have updraft, we don't know if there was some sort of updraft that kind of threw things off course, so of course they're going to be looking at weather and was there any turbulence, things of that sort? But everything is on the table at this point. Carol.

COSTELLO: Yes, and according to "The Guardian", you may have mentioned this, I don't know, the distress call to air traffic control in Marseilles, was "Mayday, mayday, mayday." The pilot requested an emergency descent, and that meant all airspace had to be cleared below the route of the aircraft, so there was a problem onboard the plane. The pilot was aware of it and he was trying to get out of it. At least that's what it appears to be right now, right? MARSH: Right. And at this point -- really the standard definition of

a crash is when you essentially you run out of air -- you run out of altitude and you run out of air speed. And when you are dealing with a mountainous region like the Swiss Alps, if you're unable to see whatever the conditions are within the cockpit, you can see how challenging it becomes when you're making a descent and you just may run out of altitude before you hit something.

But what's going to be really critical in really filling in all of the blanks that we have at this point are those black boxes. So that will really tell us were parts of this plane not working? Were they functioning with one engine? Were both engines out? We don't know, so once we have those black boxes, we're going to know how the mechanics were functioning at the moment that the plane disappeared from radar.

COSTELLO: All right, Rene Marsh reporting live from Washington. Thanks so much.

Again, if you're just joining us, a Germanwings Flight 9525 went down in the French Alps. 150 people onboard, all presumed dead. We understand Germanwings will hold a press conference at the top of the hour. 10:00 a.m. Eastern time. When that occurs, we'll of course take it for you. And hopefully they'll have pertinent information to pass along.

I'm going to take a break right now. We'll be back with much more in the NEWSROOM.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:55:50] COSTELLO: All right, again, we're following a tragic story out of the French Alps. Germanwings Flight 9525 crashed on its way to Dusseldorf, Germany, from Barcelona, Spain. All 150 people on board are presumed dead.

Now, this Airbus A-320 aircraft is considered very safe aircraft, but Germanwings is a budget airliner. And we kind of wanted to get into the safety of planes of budget airlines. And Christine Romans is here to fill us in.

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: So this particular airline, Greenwings (sic), is a part of Lufthansa. And in 2002, this was an airline that was developed because there was all these -- Ryanair and airberlin, all of these small, budget, low-cost carriers were just exploding across the continent. And so this was one that was founded in 2002.

Now it's owned -- Germanwings is owned by Lufthansa, and it operates sort of its short haul routes basically. Lufthansa is the maintenance behind all of this, and Lufthansa has among the best maintenance in the world. Richard Quest says their maintenance is bar none. It's very, very good.

Where you see the corners cut -- everyone says, oh, the budget airlines cut corners. Where you see the corners cuts, it's in the things you feel like the size of the seat, the amenities. You're not going to get a drink on the flight; you're not going to be able to bring a bag onboard. Those are kind of cut corners you see. You don't usually see it safety. They have very good safety records.

I will say that, most recently, the best news for these airlines, the budget airlines, has been the drop in crude oil prices. They have more money to invest in newer planes. This is not a very new plane. It's a 24-year-old plane. So a lot of the budget airlines have been buying newer aircraft; in this case, this was an older plane. Carol.

COSTELLO: But all of our aviation experts say a 24-year-old plane is safe to fly, should not be a problem. They're reconstituted every so often.

ROMANS: They call it the workhorse of the industry, especially for these kind of short haul flights. I'll tell you that Lufthansa shares are down a little bit. I'm not surprised; that often happens just because of the magnitude of the tragedy. But the international air travel folks will tell you it is still the safest mode of transportation. It's hard to hear that on a day like today. But it is still the safest mode of transportation out there.

COSTELLO: Christine Romans, thanks so much.

Again, Germanwings expected to hold a press conference at the top of the hour in just about three minutes. So I'm going to take a break and hopefully we'll join the presser afterwards. I'll be back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)