aviation correspondent, and katie higgins, and joining us by phone is greg fife of nbc news aviation analyst and former ntsb investigator. your reaction to tonight s developments? i ll tell you, lawrence i think this is a major, major development. with a caveat that claudio mentioned in that so far this is a new york times report. it sounds like it s single source, so you have to be careful. meanwhile, it begins one of the first things that makes any sense in this whole crash. call a spade a spade. the implication here is that if one pilot left the cockpit for whatever reason and the other pilot then locked him out, wouldn t let him back in the implication is that the scenario would be that this pilot who is now piloting the plane alone in the cockpit, takes the plane in
greg fife, thank you very much. okay. there s also news today regarding former prisoner of war bowe bergdahl who is now being charged with desertion. his lawyer will join me live, next. then, one of the two fraternity brothers caught on tape singing a racist chant. the. i knew they were wrong. i never knew why or how they were wrong. his apology and what he didn t say, perhaps as important. that s still ahead.
to leave that on the table until you have sufficient facts, and circumstances to rule it out. greg fife thank you very much. okay. there s also news today regarding former prisoner of war bowe bergdahl who is now being charged with desertion. his lawyer will join me live next. then, one of the two fraternity brothers caught on tape singing a racist chant. the the. i knew they were wrong. i never knew why or how they were wrong. his apology and what he didn t say, perhaps as important. that s still ahead. jack s heart attack didn t come with a warning. today, his doctor has him on a bayer aspirin regimen to help reduce the risk of another one. if you ve had a heart attack be sure to talk to your doctor before your begin an aspirin regimen. its effects on society really came about because, not because i was selfish and wanted one for myself, which i did. its because i had, had a passion. my whole life i wanted to teach myself to build computers. i wanted to build these things
no answer. there is never an answer. he said you can hear he is trying to smash the door down. the airbus a320 crashed about one hour after takeoff yesterday morning from a flight from barcelona, spain, to dusseldorf, germany. it is being described as being pulverized by the mountains and there are no survivors. joining me by the phone is aviation expert greg fife. what is the protocol for pilots in the cockpit? we know that this reached cruising altitude. you can imagine the scenario in which one pilot apparently, after reaching cruising altitude, leaves the restroom and cannot get back in. what is the protocol that guides how that is done in a cockpit? well, let me just clarify that there is alternative methods of getting into the cockpit.
and you have to be really careful with how they handled the information. that s the implication of what we re looking at in this report the alternative explanation is that the pilot who remained in the cockpit was somehow physically disabled and incapable of opening that door. what could possibly create that kind of scenario? well, a medical condition of some kind, a medical emergency. but the piece of the puzzle that i think we need to focus on here is that the plane descended. either he was flying the plane and stair stepped it down at the 4,000 foot a minute rate, or he set the autopilot for that. we don t know that. it will be more important than ever we get the flight data recorder, because that will tell us when the autopilot was set and where it was who set it. whether it was set from the pilot s side of the plane or from the co-pilot s side of the plane. greg, how what is the