Sweeps through a ferry with hundreds of people on board. Why are authorities now launching a criminal investigation . Wolf blitzer is off today. Im brianna keilar. Youre in the situation room. Were following the breaking news. The indonesian government officially asking for u. S. Help in the search for that missing airasia flight. The pentagon says it could include planes ships, perhaps underwater devices and the massive search is about to get under way for a third day as dawn is breaking over the java sea where officials fear the plane crashed with 162 people on board. We are covering all angles of the breaking news with our correspondents and expert guests including the former head of the National Transportation safety board, debra hersman. We begin in surabaya indonesia with cnns Andrew Stevens. Andrew, give us the latest. Reporter brianna, as you say, dawn is just breaking here in surabaya. And the search aircrafts will be back in the air in the moment now. They have about an hour to get to the search zone which has now been extended. But so far as we head into day three of the search its been a very fruitless and frustrating effort in the search ongoing. A massive search operation is under way to locate the missing aircraft with 162 people aboard. Officials say 30 ships and 15 planes and helicopters are now searching for airasia flight 8501. Its last known position was over the java sea. Large waves and clouds initially hampered search efforts which began on sunday. It is not easy of course in operation in the sea, especially in the bad weather like this. Reporter seven zones. Reporter patrolled monday but there was no sign of wreckage. Four additional areas are now included in the search zone. Indonesia president is asking for patience from the families of those aboard the plane. Translator we will do all it takes to find the missing airplane and we hope that families of victims will be patient and pray that this search will have a conclusion. Reporter 5 36 a. M. The airbus a320 took off from the indonesian city of surabaya on sunday morning. It was bound for singapore, a flight that usually takes a little over two hours. 6 12 about 45 minutes into the flight indonesian officials said one of the pilots asked air Traffic Control permission to turn and climb to a higher altitude to try to avoid bad weather. Air Traffic Control approved the pilots request to turn left but denied permission for the plane to climb to 38,000 feet from 32,000 feet. 6 18 six minutes later, the plane disappeared from radar. Another six minutes later, 6 24 a. M. Air Traffic Controllers lost contact with the aircraft. There was no distress call. 155 passengers most from indonesia, and seven crew members were on board. Our concern right now is for the relatives and for the next of kin. Theres nothing more important to us for our crews family and for the passengers family, that we look after them. That is our number one priority at the moment. Reporter two teenaged girls looking for their parents are among those gathered at the International Airport here. Families are getting briefed at a Crisis Center set up at the airport, closeddoor meetings were held earlier with relatives and airline officials. So basically, brianna, as you see, the frustrations are mounting. This is a search that you cant help but draw comparisons with mh370 the stillmissing Malaysian Airlines plane. Chinas now joined this search. Australia is also part of it. Malaysia is. And the u. S. Has been asked to start looking at contributing some sort of sophisticated underwater search equipment. The seventh fleet is standing by ready to help. This really is ramping up. A lot of aviation analysts that i speak to say they expect some sort of news some sort of breakthrough in the next 24 to 48 hours. Certainly will be hoping for that as well. Thank you so much for that, andrew. Lets bring in cnn aviation correspondent rene marsh whos taking a closer look at the plane that was involved. We look at all aspects when Something Like this happens. Whats the Safety Record of this plane . When you look at the a320 it has a pretty good record. Consider this every two seconds someplace in the world, you have an a320 either taking off or landing. So shows you how much this airplane is in the air. It is not only flown by International Carriers but almost every u. S. Carrier flies the a320 when you talk about Safety Record this specific family of aircraft has made some 85 million flights. But when you look at the accident rate there have been about 26. So compare that. 85 million flights, the ratio of actual flights to the accident rate, 26, thats a pretty good record. This specific aircraft that were faukt here flight 8501 we know it was a newer plane, it was delivered about 2008 october 2008. It was just a little bit over six years old. And right now it is 5 00 p. M. Where we are. It is 5 00 a. M. In surabaya. The search i assume will start again at sunup . Yes, it will. Sunup is when the Aerial Search will be back under way. We heard searchandrescue Officials Say today that they believe that this aircraft is at the bottom of the java sea. And because of that they have officially requested indonesian officials have officially requested the u. S. Help in the search effort here. What that means is essentially they need that sonar equipment that enables them to search below the surface, if that he is where they believe this aircraft is. We also know two officials, two investigators from the french equivalent of the ntsb they have been dispatched to the region. We also know i spoke with airbus today, theyve sent two experts there. Their role will essentially be to help identify pieces of the plane if and when it is found. Theyll also be able to answer for investigators how the planes systems work. That will be critical. This is how we will move forward. But key is finding the wreckage. They need to find that and they need to find the black boxes in order to piece this together. We saw with mh370 when you dont have the wreckage investigators are pretty much at a dead end. And there are some objects but we dont know if they are important. Hopefully the investigators coming from france will be able to shed some light on that. Rene marsh thank you so much. We know the crew reported bad weather and requested a change of altitude just before the plane disappeared. Cnn meteorologist chad myers is taking a closer look at how the weather might have factored into this. Chad what was going on when this plane vanished . We were still before sunrise. We were still as the plane took off in pretty good shape. But unlike storms in america, that popup in the heat of the day, the storms along the equator, actually can get stronger in the morning. The air separates, the air and the jet stream separate. So these storms can go up a little bit stronger. Ill back you up to when the plane takes off. Here it goes into some bumpy weather. Im sure all the passengers still has seat belts on. Then all of a sudden somewhere around 6 06 local time the plane is approaching this wall of weather. And now the pilots have to decide where do we go left right, up down or between these storms . And this is where it gets so tricky because at 6 16 6 24 is exactly the place where that plane was, in the most violent area of thunderstorm activity. Its up and down. Its bumpy. Its violent weather. 50,000foottall thunderstorms here and many close together up and down next to each other. The pilot has to find the smoothest are place possible because the air goes over the wing to make the plane fly. This is how a plane flies. Because the wing on top has a longer distance than the flap on the bottom that makes the plane go up. If you lose that flow you get the potential for stalling. And stalling means the plane no longer has lift. And thats what we can. Even right now, that last frame right there, storms are popping up. Now, this is still about an hour and a half from where the plane was lost. But storms are popping up right now. So theyre popping up obviously right now in the search area and we dont need that. We need clear skies and not much wind. I dont see that in the forecast. All right, chad myers, thank you so much. I want to get more now on the breaking news with the former chair of the National Transportation safety board, debra hersman, now president and ceo of the National Safety council. Debra, thanks so much for being with us. Let us know what the latest is that youre hearing, if there are any new leads. Unfortunately, its been a long night for everyone over there waiting to begin the search again. The good news is theyre asking for help from folks who do have assets. I know that engaging the u. S. Everyone is standing by to assist. There is no such thing as a domestic accident anymore. Aviation is an international endeavor and we all are participating and we can all learn from what we find in this event. Youve led so many ntsb investigations. Walk us through what steps are likely being taken right now and just how important, how crucial is this time as we speak, these first couple of days, in the investigation . The first couple of days really are about holding that evidence down collecting all the perishable information and making sure youve got things like records, meteorological data all of the information that everyone can capture, you want to do that. As far as the investigators, for many of them you heard about these traveling from the b. E. A. Of france and from airbus, its really about getting there. For some of these locations, youre having to travel halfway around the world. That takes time for those folks to get on the ground and begin their work. But the hardest part of all of this is for those families. Its important to take care of those loved ones as this search goes on. Thats a very difficult position for them to be in and for the officials of the airline and of the company, they dont have a lot of information to share with them. So that gets very difficult, too. Definitely. You can imagine that. One of the things i think so many people who watched the search for malaysia air flight 370, one of the things that we came to realize was that the malaysian government really struggled when it came to leading the search for that plane. So i wonder when it comes to the indonesian government is this a reliable partner or a reliable leader in an investigation like this . You know i think the whole world probably learned a lot after 370. And for sure its about asking people for information, maybe not people in your own country but others for information about air traffic, about tracking about radar, about information and asking for help and asking for equipment. Some of those things are happening now. Id like to think that everyone learned from 370 to begin to engage all of those assets and resources as soon as possible and not to waste time. I think what youre seeing now, particularly in engagement with the families is very different than what we saw in 370 and also what youre seeing as far as International Cooperation and asking for help. Its sometimes hard but it is really important in situations like this. Multinational effort coming together very quickly now. Well be talking about that after the break. Well be right back with deborah hersman, the former chair of the ntsb ntsb. Stay with us. Whys that . Look what daddys got. 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We are back now with the former chair of the National Transportation safety board, deborah hersman. Thanks again for being back with us. I think so many people look at this particular case and the fact that this plane went into a thunderstorm they wonder if a thunderstorm in itself would be enough to bring down a commercial plane. I think theres a lot of people asking that question. Unfortunately in aviation we often see these events that we dont anticipate. Many of us didnt expect a flock of geese could take down an airliner by ingesting in both engines geese until we had the miracle on the hudson. But we just dont know what happened here. Generally, these kind of aircraft are very robust. Thunderstorms, lightning, things like that dont tend to be the things that give them problems. Smaller aircraft, yes. They are affected. Homebuilt aircraft experimental aircraft small, few seats on an aircraft, yes. We see inflight breakups with convective activity and thunderstorms. But not large transport category airplanes in the recent past. So i would say we expect them to generally hold up pretty well. But were always going to be looking for things that we didnt understand or weaknesses or of performance issues that we need to figure out. And typically youre looking at other things like human error or perhaps mechanical failure that coincided or resulted from bad weather, right . Right. Generally weather can be a factor in an investigation. It could be a factor as far as cause but its generally not in transport Category Aircraft its not going to be the sole factor. But weve learned a lot over the years. There were phenomenalike wind shear that we had to understand. We still have wind shear but its about making sure that we have alerts that the pilots can understand whats happening and that we train the pilots so that they know how to get out of those events. The pilot in this case was flying at 32,000 feet requested to ascend air Traffic Control said no. We do have a screen grab at this point that were still trying to confirm that at least according to this screen grab of air Traffic Control that the pilot appears to have ascended anyway to about 36,000 feet. That request, though to ascend what does that tell you as an investigator . The good news is we have information in this one that there was active communication with air Traffic Control. Theyre identifying that theres something that theyre concerned about. They feel like either its a safety risk or a comfort concern for their passengers and they are asking for clearance to deviate from their flight path. And so thats saying that theres something going on. You want to take that in context. Look at all of the radar data at the information, understand what the other aircraft in that area are doing. It is not unusual for a pilot to ask for clearance to get around weather. We all know that there are times when we fly. Pilots will be working to get around weather or around turbulence that we can have a smoother flight and it really is up to air Traffic Control to keep the aircraft separated while theyre inflight. Thoes their job. Thats why the pilots have to ask them for clearance. Just this year deborah, weve seen three malaysian flights, this is airasia, but its headquartered in malaysia. Theyve gone missing or they have crashed. The flight over ukraine traveling over a war zone mh370 still missing. Is this all just a coincidence or is there something to this . I think its a very unfortunate series of events affecting carriers from a certain part of the world. We still dont know what happened to 370. And certainly the shooting down of the aircraft over the ukraine, that was being in the wrong place at the wrong time, certainly for that airline. And this one, i think we dont know has happened yet. But it does point to the incredible growth that were seeing in this part of the world with respect to traffic, with respect to th