Transcripts For CNNW State Of The Union With Candy Crowley 20141228

Also with us peter golds former managing director for the ntsb and rene marsh. But i want to begin in beijing with cnn will riply who has been following the ins and occupants of what we know so far. Will. Reporter what we know is that the families right now in indonesia, dana are going through a similar agony that the families right here in beijing went through in the initial hours after mh370 disappeared where they are waiting at the airport for any information, information that for flight 370 families really still hasnt come they still dont have closure. The situation right now in indonesia, far different. We know air and sea search has suspended for the night because it is now dark here but at first light the century will resume. One thing we know thats also happening larger ships in the java sea will be turning on their large search lights to keep an eye on the water in the overnight hours here for any debris that may turn up. Obviously if a plane came down from a High Altitude if there are survivors of course families are holding on to any bit of hope at this point there would be debris something to see on the water and there will be a lot of people looking. Certainly overnight and much more in the coming hours in the morning. Will lets take it back a notch and if you can explain for our viewers what we know about what happened in the final moments of the communication between the pilot and ground control. Reporter well its monsoon season in this part of the world, dana. So planes in this particular area on this particular route from surabaya to singapore almost expected they will fly through turbulent weather. This was a particularly bad cell because there were three different storms that convergeed into one. We know that the if i lot road in wanted to get to a higher altitude to avoid this. That was shortly before air Traffic Control lost contact. Thats what makes this situation much different. They have the radar images. They have much more data to go on as they resume this search by air and by sea. Whereas with flight 370 there was no distress call no bad weather, no reports of any technical problems and transponders on the plane were switched off which is why that search still continues. So many families here still dont have answers. We can only hope families in indonesia will get answers much more quickly. Thank you very much. Well get back to you littler in the hour. I want to bring in our rene marsh. Rene you have been talking to your sources at the ntsb. What are they telling you. We reached out to the ntsb yesterday and still no official word on what their role would be. Weve seen in past incidents where they have played a role. However we dont know what the situation will be here. We know that they have lots of experience when it comes to this sort of thing whether it be analyzing the flight data recorders but, again, at this point we do not know what role the ntsb will play. I have been in touch with the manufacturer of the aircraft airbus. And they tell us that this is a relatively young aircraft. Were talking six years old. It was delivered in 2008. Has 23 how flight hours. Young aircraft. As far as the maintenance goes it went in for its last maintenance check in november. And everything checked out just fine. So i want seems as far as november goes or as late as november everything was okay with this aircraft. Airbus saying those they will be cooperating with investigators, french investigators which is essentially the equivalent of the ntsb here in the u. S. They provided us with a statement. Ill read to it just in part. It says airbus regrets to confirm that an a320200 operate by airasia indonesia lost contact with air Traffic Control this morning, december 28th 2014. They go on to say airbus will provide full assistance to the french Safety Investigation authority, the bea, and again thats the equivalent of the ntsb here in the United States. And to authorities in charge of the investigation. They go on to say their thoughts are with the families affected by this. But the key is really going to be locating that wreckage. Because in order for us to get to the next part of this we need to find that wreckage helps piece together this picture of what happened along with the flight data recorder. On that well actually bring in u. S. Air force Lieutenant Colonel Ken Christianson who specializes in what rene was talking about searchandrescue. Ken you were talking to our folks before going on the air about the fact that you are concerned that there was a lag time. Once again a lag time in beginning the searchandrescue operation. Tell us about that. Yes, dana. I think theres a bit of time missed like the missing malaysian aircraft delays on where radar it was and when First Responders got on the air and did the debris search. This is a very different flight because they were in radar contact for the entire flight. Only 2 1 2ing flight. They knew exactly when that plane went off the radar and at that point they should have alerted rescue forces. It was daylight and could have gone on a route search and that starts from the origin of the aircraft to and they concentrated the search where the aircraft went off the radar or went missing. Obviously, were just sort of theorizing here but based on your information, your knowledge or experience why do you think there could have been a delay here . From what ive been reading when it comes to the region indonesia has one of the best if not the best operations like this searchandrescue operations and their experience. I just think weve seen this twice now within a year that when airplanes are lost in this region or go missing, that theres not a sense of urgency or at least were not seeing a sense of guerra scene with the searchandrescue forces getting out there. It is summer in the Southern Hemisphere so water temperatures and things like that could sustain life if they were able to ditch safely. But it looks like this is more pointing towards weather related. Its all speculative until you find wreckage. Take us to the scene. If you were there, given your expertise in searchandrescue, it is night fall now, they have stopped the major searchandrescue, they have the big ships out with the big lights. When the sun comes up 6 00 eastern time in the morning there, whats the first thing that has to be done . First thing i would start again on a route search. They knew what the flight pattern of the aircraft is. You start there and immediately go to where the plane disappeared because you knew it was there and then as the airplane is flying in the direction of flight when it went missing the plane will drift down or if it came apart, if it floats down and then you look at the tides of the water and you can plot that and start looking there. Thats where your concentrated search will be. You want to get ships to that area helicopters or other airplanes, get eyes out and look at that. Weather is a big problem there. So they might have to fly below the clouds and us in the United States we have infrared devices or sensors to look for heat sources in the water. Im sure they have some aircraft equipped with that type of device or that sensor. Ken christianson thank you for joining us and for entrepreneur sight. Lets talk about what he said. Ill start with you steven because youre the big cheese in charge of all of these investigations for a while. What about what he said about the capabilities that they might have and whether or not they do have the same capabilities that the United States does . Well they have a lot of experience and theyve done a lot of major investigations with u. S. Help from the National Transportation safety board and from the faa. Very unlikely that well see anything remotely close to what we saw with malaysia 370. I believe they will find this airplane very quickly. And, of course why do you think so . Because its in a very confined space. Theres nothing, nothing unusual happen here like with malaysia 370 where the transponders were turned off it all looked to be completely deliberate where the data capability of the data stream from that airplane was also turned off. Here without those thing, like Ken Christianson just said the transponder was working, they know where this airplane was right up until the time it was lost. Its a confined space in shallower water. The recorders have pingers with at least 30 day batteries and now the world is shifting to 90day duration batteries. I suspect they will find this very quickly. Tom fuentes, the other big difference between the malaysia air issue and this one is the indian ocean compared to the java ocean which slike a pond versus an ocean. Its going to be much easier to search assuming its in those waters. The average depth of the java sea is 150 feet compared to some of the areas more than 20,000 feet deep in the indian ocean that they were looking. You also have a large number of ships thats very heavily traveled shipping lane air traffic lane there are 18,000 indonesian islands also where the plane could have gone down in. As mentioned by ken the climate right now there is daytime highs will be in the upper 80s fahrenheit which means that if the passengers are on rachtfts, in the water they have less of a concern of hypothermia. Ironically in this case i met with the Indonesian Ambassador at their embassy in may to discuss some of the Lessons Learned of the mh370 he dime you in search i went to the embassy, he invited me. He asked you. I had coffee with him and discussed it and we had a really great meeting. But the indonesians were interested in what lessons could be learned from the loss of mh370 and a the malaysian be handling of the case. They were interested in that case in case it happened to them. Thats obviously its good to know that they were preparing. Peter one thing, weve already exchanged messages where i expressed condolences to the indonesian people that have 155 passengers and seven crew members missing. Almost all the passengers were indonesians. Lessons learned. Unfortunately, theyve seen this movie before in the region and it was very clumsy to say the least at the beginning of the rescue mission and Search Mission ten months ago. Do they have kind of a well oiled machine now in the region because of that. They know what to avoid. What mistakes to avoid. The other thing too, understand is from early on in Malaysia Flight 370 there was this overlay of was this a terrorist act, this was a criminal act. And it involved different aspects of investigative agencies both within the malaysian government and the region that restricted the transmission of information. And that made the early days and weeks of the investigation very awkward for 370. In this case it is being treated as a simple Civil Aviation disaster. I think well see information come out in a much smoother way and i agree with Steve Wallace that this airplane is going to be found in a relatively short notice and well start searching for the black boxes pretty soon. Okay. I want all of you to stick around. We have a lot more to discuss. When our breaking News Coverage continues well be joined by a pilot who has flown the very same route that the missing airliner flew. Stay with us. My baby drove up in a brand new cadillac my baby drove up in a brand new cadillac look here daddy, im never coming back discover the new spirit of cadillac and the best offers of the season. Lease this 2015 standard collection srx for around 359 a month. Hurry in. Offer ends soon. Were following breaking news in the disappearance of air asian airliner with 162 people on board. Indonesia now says most Search Operations in the java sea have been halted for the night. However some big ships with powerful lights will continue looking in the dark. With us on the phone is former pilot and aviation consultant and with us via skype, miles obrien. Alistar i want to start with you. Youve flown this very route. Tell us about it particularly this time of year when the weather is very treacherous. Well any time of year in this particular area one can stumble across thunderstorms. But at this particular time these storms are a bit more prevalent. Theres a question of avoiding them by flying around them. Sometimes you choose to fly over them. But thats not always possible to do so. But, you know even flying through them through a thunderstorm aircraft are not necessarily going to get involved in an accident. But we cannot know for sure that this is the cause of this aircraft it does remain a high possibility. Any of us who have flown you know can go through turbulence. Sometimes turbulence thats very scary and turns out the be kind of a blip. What is the fact that this pilot asked to go higher in altitude tell you given the fact that air pressure pilot and have navigated these changes in weather patterns before . You can imagine the pilots seeing on their weather radar this cell ahead of them and make being a decision and of course they had daylight. They had sunshine to see the tops of those clouds. Making the decision they probably could get over the tops of them. But thunderstorms are very dynamic. Its really never advised to try to fly over the top of them for a lot of good reasons. When youre in a climate at that altitude for one thing youre in a very narrow margin of performance. It can get into a situation where youre very easily stall out the aircraft. A thunderstorm can grow rapidly and find yourself in the middle of it and dealing with extreme turbulence potential icing conditions and one of the most difficult things to do is hail. When hail starts hitting an airplane at those speeds you can imagine what happens after that. It gets very ugly very quickly. Miles, you were telling me during the break you see parallels between this and another infamous plane gone missing. Yes. Air france 447, were talking about the same weather phenomenon. It happens around the equator. Its called the intra tropical convergence zone and it whips up some of the most hellacious thunderstorms on our planet. It iced over the sensors which detenned air speed and a chain of events followed after that where the plane stalled and crashed killing all aboard. Its obviously unwise and one fair to draw any conclusions about whats happening so soon after an aircraft has gone missing. But right at the top of the list you have to look at the weather situation and you have to think about what happened to air france 447 in a thunderstorm of similar magnitude and strength. Alastar i want to ask you about the region and specifically the fact that this was a Budget Airline and one that apparently has changed the region in many ways mostly because as tom was saying there are 18,000 islands in indonesia and the fact that this Budget Airline has really sprung up there over the past 20 years or so has made air travel much more frequent and much more affordable. Having been a pilot there can you tell us a little bit about that . Youre absolutely right. Its also an area which is going through Rapid Economic Development and more and more people are able to afford to fly. Of course flying is by far and away the fastest form of travel in that particular area of islands and the other way is by sea and of course thats quite slow and time consuming. But i dont think Budget Airlines is a factor in this. Budget airlines somehow capture cost and capture safety. Thats not my experience. Nor the experience of the regulating authority who would insist that all aircraft flying within their airspace meet the minimum standards. Those minimum standards are quite high indeed. I wouldnt attach any significance to that at all. But the fact miles, that theres a much more robust air travel industry in that region in a place thats very very difficult when it comes to weather, what does that tell you . Well you know the key point here is its rapidly growing. Theres tremendous demand for aviation. These airlines have a difficult time frankly, filling cockpits with qualified pilots. And no matter what you say about it the minimums are the minimums. In the u. S. We have minimums and most of the Major Airlines exceed the minimums when it comes to training standards. What weve seen in the u. S. Is low cost Regional Airlines flying at the minimums and theres been all kinds of questions about how that might impinge upon safety. So you have a fast growing region. Theres tremendous pressure to meet demand. Any time you have that kind of pressure in addition to economic pressures to you know be competitive, its going to be a push against safety. The two just do not go in the same direction. I want to bring in here to the table, peter, do you think that there might be a fundamental problem with malaysian based airlines which this is one or do you think its just a horrible coincidence. I think its a horrible coincidence. As alastair pointed out airasia has a good safety record. These pilots were well qualified. They had a lot of hours in the cockpit. I think there was an issue that does come up on whether the sophistication of todays aircraft the fly by wire aircraft diminishes piloting skills because do you think it does i think theres evidence that it does yeah and that pilots rely so heavily on the logic and the Flight Control Management Systems that when they get in unusual situations sometimes they dont understand how their aircraft flies. That was true in flight 447. Should those of us who are passengers frequently in various parts of the world think twice about getting on a smaller carrier that might have pilots that arent as experienced. These pilots of experienced. Flight times looked good. As far as the budget i agree with what alastair said. You look at the two biggest u. S. Carriers that are lower cost jetblue and southwest two airlines that never had a passenger fatality between the two of them. The auto makes issue we just discussed with peter very critical. Of course the issue of whether or not highly animated planes cause pi lots to over rely or lose their fundamental flying skills no more clearly demonstrated than in the asiana accidents. Its day one. We dont know whats happened. Thats true. Just a matter of hours. Another issue the pilot is not asking to go left or go right. Hes trying to go over the storms. To me that indicates that if hes got weather radar in the cockpit maybe he just found himself surround bipartisan these storms and had nowhere to go and then as the weather reporters have already said the clouds were exceeding 50,000 feet. He couldnt go that high anyway. He could have gotten trapped where he couldnt go left or right or up. Ill ask to you stand by one more time. We need to take a quick break and talk more about weather and how that might have played into this. Closer look at that when we return. Stand by. Can you help me up . [ snow intensifies ] [ sleighbells ring in the distance ] aleve. All day pain relief with just 2 pills. Get back to being you. So i can reach ally bank 24 7, but there are no branches . 24 7 its just im a little reluctant to try new things. Whats wrong with trying new things . Feel that in your muscles . Yeah. I do. Try a new way to bank, where no branches equals great rates. The Holiday Season is here, which means its time for the volkswagen signthendrive event. For practically just your signature, you could drive home for the holidays in a germanengineered volkswagen. Like the sporty, advanced new jetta. And the 2015 motor trend car of the year allnew golf. If youre wishing for a new volkswagen this season. Just about all you need is a finely tuned. Pen. Hurry in to the sign then drive event and get a fivehundred dollar new years bonus on select new volkswagen models. Offer ends january 2nd. Were covering breaking news as unbelievable as it sounds a passenger jet is missing again in the seas off Southeast Asia. The airasia jet was carrying 162 people when it lost contact the Indonesian Air Traffic Control early sunday. The plane was on a flight from indonesia to singapore. The flights last transmission was a request to change altitude because of weather. Searchers spent the day over java sea. Indonesias Transportation Ministry say ships will use search lights to spot signs of wreckage. Stunned relatives of the passenger are in a waiting area. The plane carried 155 passengers including 17 children and a crew of seven. Vast majority of those aboard are indonesian. Others are from south korea, malaysia singapore, the United Kingdom and france. As we continue with our breaking News Coverage were jind by aviation expert julian gray and cnn aviation analyst mary schiavo. Lets start with the weather and our meteorologist Karen Mcginnis who has the latest on the weather now and what searchandrescue officials have to deal with there. What were looking at right now is what we call a future radar. What they can expect as far as precipitation or thunderstorms, looking ahead in time. This goes for monday and into tuesday. This is the java sea. Thats where the last transmission was or the lost aircraft. You can see theres kind of an effect. We got the daytime heating and thunderstorms start to build and then during the evening hours it releases the heat and quiet down. Now sunrise is in singapore around 7 00 in surabaya around 5 30 in the morning. So better to start out early in the morning, essentially were looking at those thunderstorms just kind of winding down. Heres surabaya heres singapore, the trajectory was right across the java sea. At the time that this aircraft radioed it want ad diversion from 32,000 feet to 38,000 feet these thunderstorm tops they were estimating between 50 and 53,000 feet. It would be impossible for that ircraft to go over those thunderstorms. So what would a pilot do . Eddie university around them. For passengers its unnerving to undergo such severe turbulence but aircraft are made to handle kind of those vibrating and jolting motions. Now in recent weeks weve heard about severe turbulence that has injured owe flight attendants on some of the international flights. To show you what were looking at here. Were looking at these red areas that are outlined and those are called pyreps pilot reports that indicates theres Severe Weather or turbulence. Thunderstorms as i mentioned, aircraft can take a certain amount of bouncing around. Thats not extraordinary. You see the airplane wings they are bouncing. They give and take. In a thunderstorm you have extreme updraft warm moist airlifting and reaches that maximum saturation point becomes super saturated and starts to fall out of the sky and you get these very heavy downpours and the intertropical convergence zone and it shifts depending on the time of year. Surabaya sits at about seven Degrees South late ti attitude from the equator. About seven Degrees South of the equator. This is the trajectory that we were looking at for flight 8501 asia air airasia. And they seemingly took off fine but we did see in some of the satellite images these huge clusters of thunderstorms that pilots would certainly be very wary of. They would see it in their cockpit on the cockpit radar and would know to avoid that and, dana pilots are trained to know how to land or take off during monsoon but they were apartment cruise altitude looking to somehow get around these towering thunderstorms at around 50,000 feet. Karen, so fascinating. Thank you. I want to pick up on some of what you were reporting on go back to our aviation expert julian gray who is joining us on skype and mary schiavo. Julian let me start with you. You heard karen talking about turbulence and the fact that these planes are built to with stand turbulence. Anybody who has been on a plane and been in turbulence knows its very scary. How much is a plane really built to with stand and how much are these pilots trained to deal with this kind of weather . Well the idea is to not go through a storm but as you said to go around it or over it. Avoid it basically. But if you cannot avoid it then you have to go through it and you try to find the least damaging portals to go through a storm. Every pilot is properly trained and they go on simulators every few months just to keep up with training. So they are tested. Really tested. Some of these pilots on airasia are actually very very experienced. Its a difficult area. Difficult region regarding weather. As you well know because youve seen big red blogs all over the weather maps and they have been converging. It could well be he knew about two of these storms but didnt know about third one that was heading his way. Mary you were talking earlier about what happens when a pilot runs into trouble. There are two codes that they have may day, we all know may day and pan pan. Can you describe what those are and what they mean . May day means youre losing control of the flight. May day san emergency. Its a dire emergency. A pan pan is level down. Youre not afraid youll lose the aircraft or lose the integrity of the flight or control of the flight but that its a very serious condition and either of those will require the air Traffic Controllers to give that plane immediate attention and immediate clearance, whatever i want needs to get out of danger. And, unfortunately, you have been dealing with, obviously, not just malaysia 370 but youve been doing this for your professional life. Traditionally is weather the biggest factor in planes that crash or go missing or situations like were in right now . No. No. Unfortunately, you know when you look at that and i follow the ntsb most closely, of course but for them the causes of crashs is predominantly pilot error. In over three fourths of the cases they cite the pilot is the predominant cause. Weather is often a very important factor. What we have in many accidents is we have weather situation that has put stresses on the plane, on the air speed indicators on the capability of the planes to fly in it and then the pilots have done something to aggravate it. If they tried to climb too quickly they could have a compressor stall on the engines. I notice this planes air speed seemed to be a little low compared to others in the area. On air france case 447 they didnt realize that their air speepd was deteriorating and literally spiraling or diving down and they lost that plane and then west caribbean 708 that was about eight years ago they were in icing conditions at cruise altitude and didnt deploy all the icing equipment. I want to bring back in alastair who is a pilot and has flown this route in indonesia. Lets pick up on what mary was talking about most of the time its pilot error. Whats your experience specifically with what we were talking about before the last break of the pilot using his or her own judgment versus allowing the computer to take control for lack of a better way to put it . Well mary is quite right but the pilots do in fact cause more accidents than any other reason for an accident. However, going back to the advance technology the automation on this aircraft it greatly reduces the pilots ability to lets be blunt about it to crash the airplane. I want has brought on other forms of accidents and thats pilot not fully understanding the equipment, the equipment not always properly designed its very difficult to understand some of the switches they have multifunctions depending on the phase of flight. But i can say myself as a pilot who started flying and has worked throughout the modern period. I would say i support all forms of automation that have come along. They have greatly improved safety and reduced the workload of pilots. Theres many instruments to work magnificent moving and its great improvements. Great improvement. Ill take it around the table. There is kind of a danger in too Much Technology . Weve seen it recently but alastair is correct. The older the terminology was accidents that were far more common than they are now in which a pilot flies a perfectly good aircraft into the ground. Technology has all but eliminated those kinds of accidents. But as steve mentioned, the asianic crash in san francisco, it raised questions about pilots ability to really understand what their plane was doing in critical moments under high stress. Whats your experience with that question going back to turbulence . So just well turbulence weather turbulence there are two kinds of weather that can be catastrophic. Convected weather which is turbulence lightning, and severe icing. My understanding was that planes could survive a Lightning Strike that ice is the big they are quite frequent. Ice is less of an issue with jet aircraft ice is in a ten degree temperature band and go up and through it so fast airplanes are capable of handling that too. Just to chime in on this automation issue. I agree with them that automation has bean huge boom to safety and we have devices on airplanes. We have systems now that have a complete map of all the training in the world and radio antenna. These are devices that just come to life when a pilot or some other human has already made a mistake and prevent a catastrophe. There hasnt bean midair collision with a u. S. Airliner since 1978. They have technology on the planes and radars on the ground sponsorship automation is a huge boom to safety. Were talking about technology and we havent talked about the important thing that most people who are lay people like myself would understand the black box. What do we know . Have we gotten any pings. Is it too early . Do we have any sense from that . I think it may not be too early other than we havent heard anything. The question here is how much information is being put out in terms love indicating any kind of a beacon or ping coming from the aircraft. One other point on the technology there are some crashes where the auto pilot, the Computer System has acted up if you will and its not worked correctly and confused the pilots. Sometimes the pilots have made a mistake based on getting information thats inconsistent where the auto pilot is acting in a manner that it shouldnt be. There have been some airbuses have crashed due to the Computer System they put a new package in that doesnt quite work right. Okay. Thank you. Stick around again. Well take a quick break and when we come back stay with us because well go the airport at indonesia where this flight departed. Stay with us. [ highpitched ] nailed it [ normal voice ] youre right, that was really easy. I know, i told you so. On progressive. Com you can compare our progressive direct rates with our competitors rates, so shopping is easy. You dont sound like flo. [highpitched] yeah, i do. [ clears throat ] who you talking to . [ normal voice ] what . Whats on your hand . Noth my wedding ring. [chuckles] symbol of our love and understanding. Comparing rates for you. Now thats progressive. [ highpitched ] nailed it thanks. [ male announcer ] fedex® has solutions to enable Global Commerce that can help your company grow steadily and quickly. Great job. mandarin cut it out. See you tomorrow. Covering breaking news. Airasia jet carrying 162 people vanished today during a flight from indonesia to singapore. Airasia is a Discount Airline based in malaysia. A tweet from the ceo says our priority is looking after all the next of kin for my staff and passengers. We will do whatever we can. Another tweet as your group ceo we will be there through these hard times. We will go through this terrible ordeal together and i will try to see as many of you. A tweet from malaysia transport minister reads deployed three vessels and three aircraft. Weve been talking a lot of the mystery of this plane, air safety all of the above but at the end of the day its about people. 162 people are now missing. And their families are, of course absolutely distraught. Talk about your experience with malaysia 370 versus now and the lesson that the government and the company seem to have learned in terms of a quick response. Reporter certainly, dana those tweets you just read from the airasia ceo Tony Fernandez they are remarkably different from the initial response in the hours after mh370 disappeared. Keep in mind this is a very media savvy ceo to begin with. He has more than 900,000 twitter followers so each tweet he puts out about this incident is getting literally thousands of retweets. What hes doing is something that Malaysia Airlines did not do in the initial hours, the initial days and weeks which success very transparent, acknowledging this is a terrible situation. One other tweet he said its his worst nightmare. He said they will look after the passengers and the families of the crew and the families of the passengers and they are going to get through this together. You compare that to what the families here in beijing went through, families of more than 150 people where the information was excruciating slow to come out and then conflicting information. People werent talking to the families at one point turning to us as members of the media both here in beijing and in kuala lumpur where i was out of desperation wailing in front of our cameras. Horrible scene. Horrible for viewers at home to watch and most all horrible for those families. And clearly now, Dana Airlines saw what happened. The fact that it took nine weeks to release a five page report that probably could have been released in the first week after mh370 disappeared. Were seeing a remarkably different response. Back to the families. They are now not in front of the cameras. They are in a special place being, where they can get easy communication from the airlines from government officials. They are being treated the way they should be treated, right . Reporter absolutely. What needed to happen is exactly what happened. There was an area set aside where they are looked after and im sure our crew on the ground in indonesia can describe in more detail what that actually looks like. But we know in singapore there are guards and any families gathered in that airport they are keeping the cam remarks growing number of cam remarks swarm of immediate kwa far away from those families so they have space to receive information as it comes in, to decompress. We actually believe according to local media in indonesia families are in a hotel already. They have rooms and be fed and most importantly they have a pipeline of information. They have crisis counselors available to them. Were talking about 155 indonesian many of whom were heading to singapore for the new year holiday to celebrate. This is supposed to be a week of celebration as we end 2014 and instead we end it with the fourth plane based here in Southeast Asia either missing or crashed. Its surreal. I want to follow up on one thing that tom fuentes here told us which was surprising and that is that during the whole malaysia air search the Indonesian Ambassador actually called him and asked him to come and meet with him to discuss Lessons Learned if god forbid exactly what has happened happened in their country. Knowing the region the way you do and the sort of differences between the way the governments approach these things does that surprise you or does that give you and inclination and us an inclination as to how this will go forward . Reporter keep in mind all of the geopolitical issues that were at play in this region when mh370 happened. I remember specifically being in a u. S. Military search plane and we had a flight delayed for more than eight hours even getting off the ground because we couldnt get clearance to fly over Indonesian Airspace to search for the missing plane. And so what all of that coverage did it is really shined a light on this part of the world and the fact that countries realize when theres a tragedy like this nations need to doemg. They need to share information. Certainly not compromising any sensitive Security Issues but share what they can and Work Together to try to find the plane, to try to find any possible survivors. We know each hour that passes the likelihood diminishes. Right now even though its night fall even though the search is suspended, tomorrow when the sun comes back up they want to get out there as early as they can, get eyes on the water, do the visual search. Any ships with side sonar they will search for debris. They need to find answers for families. Thats an under statement. Will thank you very much. Well go break. Stick around rene marsh has been working her sources at the ntsb and has some new details. Well tell you what they are after the break. [ snow intensifies ] [ sleighbells ring in the distance ] aleve. All day pain relief with just 2 pills. Get back to being you. The Holiday Season is here, which means its time for the volkswagen signthendrive event. For practically just your signature, you could drive home for the holidays in a germanengineered volkswagen. Like the sporty, advanced new jetta. And the 2015 motor trend car of the year allnew golf. If youre wishing for a new volkswagen this season. Just about all you need is a finely tuned. Pen. Hurry in to the sign then drive event and get a fivehundred dollar new years bonus on select new volkswagen models. Offer ends january 2nd. Were following breaking news the search is under way for an airasia airliner carrying 162 people. Cnns Andrew Stevens is now at indonesia airport where the airasia flight departed. Andrew you actually just had a chance to talk to the ceo of this company, we have been seeing his tweets what has he said about their understanding of what happened . Tony fernandez, not only is he the ceo, hes also the founder of airasia and he held a News Conference just outside of indonesia airport right now. He says our priority right now is to look after the family and the next of kin of those people who were on the plane. A couple of points he did talk about, i asked him, one of them was weather conditions he said there was heavy cloud in the area he wouldnt go beyond that. I asked just how experienced the pilot was, 27,000 hours, flying hes incredibly shaken as you can imagine, at one stage during the press conference it was outside, pretty sort of a rush job putting his head in his hands, and obviously a very very difficult time for him as well as the families that are on board. Were going to be getting to you throughout the day, as you get more information. Thanks for getting there so quickly and safely. Renee marsh, you have some new information . Reporter just a short time ago, i got off the phone with the ntsb and we have been wondering what their role could be at in point they say they are monitoring inging very closely the situation. It could call for some Technical Assistance if anyone needs Technical Assistance they could be called upon but its too early to tell exactly what their role would be. We also know that the french equivalent of the ntsb most likely by have a prominent role, this aircraft is a product of the french manufactured in france also the u. S. Does not have any citizens that we know of on board, so it makes sense that the ntsb will have a leading role nevertheless they say they have been in contact with airbus they have been in contact with the french e equivalent of the ntsb so they have been in communication. They are sitting waiting and watching of course theres not much they can do because the search effort is halted at this point. We were talking with will and with andrew at the airport about the families you know a lot about family assistance, because you wrote the book on it literally, right . In 1996 twa value jet and earlier the u. S. Air accident pittsburgh the families came together and were pushing the ntsb and i chaired a and we wrote the family assistance act that Congress Passed in 1996 that really set the worldwide standard and has been taken up by virtually every other country. Indonesia too . Indonesia signed the treaty on how you go about family assistance. The key is the family needs to hear it first, they need to hear whats going on and they need to hear it from the investigators. That was the lesson we learn back in the 90s, with just the beginnings of media saturations, if you dont get the information from the families youre really its just torturous. Well get the final thoughts as you have been absorbing all this with your expertise . And the ntsb gets the credit for getting family p assistance and getting the world going in that direction, so its day one of this accident many accidents are a causal chain of events this one could be it could be weather and it could also be pilots response to weather, that was very much the case in air france 447. Im confident theyll find this airplane and solve this accident. Any chance lets be optimists here what do you think, tom . Any chance this this didnt go to the java sea, that the pilot was able to land the plane on one of the 18,000 islands, that there could be survivors. I dont know about on an island but near an island and they were able to get on rafts and get to land. Its not the water is warm the air is warm so its not impossible. I think indonesias problem has been horrible weather at the time of the crash and now darkness. Lets hope in eight hours or 10 hours when daylight comes in that region they have success in locating the plane. Peter renee, tom, thank you very much for your insights. Thank you for watching state of the union, im dana bash in washington we leave with you live pictures of indonesia airport where the airasia plane was supposed to have landed. Good morning, everyone, im martin savidge, its 10 00 and you are in the cnn newsroom and we begin with breaking news a search at sea, now suspended after a passenger jet carrying 162 people went missing in Southeast Asia. Officials say large ships with powerful lights will continue to comb the waters for airasia