Leaked what it learned. A blistering report reveals a huge number of shootings by Philadelphia Police with half of the suspects turning out to be unarmed. Whats behind the shocking numbers . We want to welcome our viewers in the United States and around the world. Im wolf blitzer. Youre in the situation room. Announcer this is cnn breaking news. Our breaking news. Investigators are now starting to pore over a black box from an airliner that went down with 150 people down. The Germanwings Airbus a320 from barcelona to dusseldorf with 154 passengers and 6 crew members suddenly went into a dive and minutes later slammed into a mountain. All on board are presumed dead. Video from the scene shows widely scattered debris. One official says the plane was obliterated. The remote crash site is very difficult to reach. Extremely rough. And the weather is bad. With more rain and snow on the way our correspondents analysts are guests are standing by with the latest developments. Ill speak live with the former National Transportation safety board chair. Lets start with pamela brown. The cause of the crash is still very much a mystery, the plane in the crash considered the workhorse of aviation. It has an impeccable Safety Record and just received a maintenance check yesterday. Yet just as it reached cruising altitude today, a terrifying turn of events took place. Tonight new images show First Responders carefully traversing the jagged french alps where the germanwings plane went down. Investigators say just three minutes after the doomed flight reached a cruising altitude of 32000 feet usually the safest part of a flight something went horribly wrong. Flight tracking sites show the plane cruised to 38,000 feet before a descent. Its last known altitude was 6,000 feet. This airplane didnt fall out of the sky. Something occurred that i believe controlled it to get out of the sky and i believe it was done through the crew or as mentioned through the autopilot. A french Government Official says the plane was obliterated upon impact. Then came the grim announcement from french president Francois Hollande hollande. Translator there are many victims 150. Everyone on board is presumed dead including two babies. The flight took off 10 01 in barcelona, spain, en route to dusseldorf, germany. French Authorities Say there was no distress call from the plane. You would think some sort of communication would have gotten out. That does disturb me to some degree. However if this was a serious emergency that this airplane was experiencing, this crew was experiencing, they play have been focused on taking care of their airplane. First spot of the wreckage above a village in france with no service roads. Despite the challenging conditions, the french insuperior inster said crews found one of the planes black boxes but recovering bodies could take days. Thats because of the rugged terrain and weather. Officials say its causing a lot of challenges to rescuers. Its too early to know what exactly happened until the black boxes and debris are analyzed. At this point, the white house says there is no nexus to terrorism. French authorities are taking the lead with the investigation. Thanks pamela. What could have caused the airliner to go into a dive shortly after reaching its cruising altitude which should have been the safest part of the flight . Our aviation correspondent rene marsh has been looking into some of the possibilities. Wolf the facts we do have make this crash even more perplexing. This is an aircraft that were talking about here essentially as pamela said the workhorse of the aviation community. We know that it has an impeccable Safety Record. The aircraft had received its maintenance check just yesterday. And the captain of the plane we can also tell you has been with the airline for more than ten years. So what could have gone wrong . You can see that the planes rapid descent, it was very steady. When you look at these flight tracking web sites you can see that it was not an abrupt descent. You look at the line there and you get the impression this was very much so a controlled descent. And the pilots did it quite rapidly. Why would you want to do that . One reason could be a loss in cabin pressure. We saw that with Aloha Airline flight in 1988. That particular aircraft made so many takeoffs and landings the convict strant pressurization and depressurization it caused stress to the skin of the plane. That caused some extensive damage to the fuselage. That led to loss of cabin pressure. At 38,000 feet in the air if you dont have oxygen, youre essentially going to pass out. So you want to get your mask on. What the pilot will often do is get the plane to a lower altitude so passengers can breathe. But whats so puzzling at this point is essentially, you know before it crashed into these mountains here why is it for so many minutes the pilots did not communicate with air Traffic Control . Was it a situation in which perhaps they were incapacitated . We dont know. Of course thats something that investigators are going to be looking into. Of course theres also pilot error and we also know that potentially mechanical error could be an issue. This is a highly highly computerized aircraft, wolf. And they havent found any evidence to believe, as we noted, it could be terrorism or anything along those lines. No evidence of that at all, at least not yet. Rene, thanks very much. Theres deep shock and an outpouring of grief at the airport in barcelona, spain, where the flight originated. Lets go there. Cnns carl penhall is on the scene for us. Whats it like over there, carl . Reporter well, wolf in the course of the afternoon, weve seen scores of family members and relatives coming to the Crisis Center thats been set up at barcelona airport terminal 2. Many of them have been arm in arm with other relatives, many of them weeping as they come through the gates here all with their heads down not wishing to speak to the media at this time. Their priority is to get with airline authorities to get information firsthand. Also in that Crisis Center teams of medics and psychologists are on hand to help them with the support that they need at this time. Overnight theyll be moved to three motels around barcelona airport. Come the morning, lust thaunz saturday ais looking at the opportunity of flying them closer to firsthand information. What lufthansa is looking at is the a lot of those people on board could have been tourists returning home or going on vacation. Others we understand from local media could have been spanish businessmen heading to trade fairs in parts of germany. We do know as well that at least 16 people on board were teenagers, german teenagers, who had been on a School Exchange program in a town just north of barcelona. They were on that flight along with their two teachers. Were also hearing not only german, not only spanish, were hearing from the colombian government that two colombians were on the flight. Were hearing from our affiliate tv stations in australia. Theyre quoting the Australian Foreign minister that australians were on the flight also that turks may have been on the flight. Certainly a very koss mowcosmopolitan list of passengers. Were hearing from officials in washington theyre checking to see if any americans were on the plane also. Karl penhaul, thank you so much. Deborah hersman, she chaired the National Transportation safety board, now president of the National Safety council. Deborah deborah, thank you for joining us. Even though the searchers are having great difficulty accessing this crash site, there are photos of the plane, debris. How much will investigators learn from the actual wreckage itself itself . Theyre going to learn the most when they recover the black boxes, the cvr and the svr. But they can learn a lot from the debris field, particularly if they find something on the flight data recorder that kind of guides them to a part of the aircraft, one of the four quadrants of the plane, the nose tail and two wings, if there were any Control Surface problems or control ability issue highydraulic or engine problems theyll want to look at that debris. But the black boxes are the best information they can get. I know theyve found one, im not sure which. There are conflicting reports about that. Whats most important if they only find one . You know, thats like trying to ask someone to pick between their children. Theyre both really important. The flight data recorder will give them poe leshltentially 1,000 parameters of what the aircraft was doing, what control wrz directed. It will give them a lot of information about the aircraft. But the cockpit voice recorder is really critical information because it will tell you what the pilots were doing, what they were saying to each other, what they were identifying as problems or even if they knew there was a problem. You can hear things such as slurred speech if people become incapacitated, you can hear that. Theyre both really important. Some of the recorders out there are dual combination recorders. But i think were going to have to see what they brought off that mountain. And once they get both if theyre dual recorders or whatever, once they have both how long does it take to get the information from those recorders and start learning what happened . Well if they dont have a lot of damage to the recorders, they can get information off of them literally within a few hours. They can audition or do a quick listen to the cdr and really sketch out what they heard particularly in the part thats really appropriate to the investigation. With the flight data recorder it does take a little bit longer to make sure theyre able to corroborate all of the times and the information but, again, they can get a real quick view just within a couple of hours if theyre not damaged. Deborah hersman, please stand by. We have more to assess. New information is coming in. Well take a quick break. Much more with the former head of the ntsb, right after this. So. Youre sayin youll give me my credit score for free. Right now youre gonna ask for my credit card so you can charge me on the down low two weeks later look, credit karma are you talking to websites again . This website says free credit scores. Oh. Credit karma yeah, its really free. Look, you dont even have to put in your credit card information. What . credit karma. Really free credit scores. Really. Free. I could talk to you all day. A german airliner with 150 people on board crashes in the french alps, all presumed dead. Rugged mountain terrain and bad weather are making it difficult to reach the crash site. One black box already has been recovered. Were back with deborah hersman, the former ntsb chair, now president and ceo of the National Safety council. Deborah in december a lufthansa dropped 4,000 feet in one moment after the autopilot lowered the jets nose. How closely should investigators be looking at the autopilot system on all of these airbus planes . You know, i think theyll be looking at all past events to try to identify any similarities. In this event, at least with respect to the loss of altitude is very difficult. They really want to understand what caused this aircraft to descend and the way it did, whether it was manual by the pilots or whether it was done by the autopilot. The flight was originally flying at cruising altitude about an hour after takeoff at 38000 feet. Thats thought to be the safest point of a flight right . What are the options investigators are considering as to what went wrong . You know cruise flight is actually one of the safest parts of flight because i dont see as many events. But when you have a loss of control or you have an event thats catastrophic, you actually have the potential to lose the entire plane like youre seeing here in this situation. So its really important for them to understand what was going on. I know there are going to be so many things going on. They could be looking at pressurization of the aircraft. They could be looking at equipment. There apparently the aircraft had been inexpected. There was maintenance done just the day before. Theyll want to look very closely at the maintenance records if anything was changed or anything was checked, theyll want to know what that was. Geb begin, the black boxes will give them a road map. Investigators like to get them early so they know what clues to go after. What does it tell you that there was a distress call from the air Traffic Control tower on the ground obviously not necessarily from the plane itself from the cockpit . Well you know, pilots are always taught to aviate navigate, communicate. Its really about flying the airplane first if theres something going on. But given the amount of time that lapsed between when they left their cruise altitude to the ultimate crash, there was a lot of time at least to send out a beacon, a distress call something. So not seeing that from the crew is really going to be an important point for them to understand why didnt this crew communicate that there was something happening on the airplane when they had that much time . So that leaveds us to ask did they have that much time . The fact that air Traffic Control put the call out, its really important because its none dmoen straighting theyre tracking the airplane trying to communicate and actually being proactive about saying theres a problem. Everyone is going to be looked at in the investigation and the amount of time that lapsed between when decisions were made and communications happened will be critical. Once it went from 38,000 feet and began a controlled desent over the next six, seven, eight minutes whatever it was until it crashed into the french alps no communication whatsoever. Theyll be be listening very closely assuming they find the cockpit voice recorder to see what if anything was said if the pilots were even talking to each other, or if they were out cold and it was just sort of in a controlled descent. Thats right. Theres a lot of things that could have gone on. So understanding what situation the pilots were facing is important. But also the settings that the aircraft was in. Again, whether the controls were manually manipulated or whether they were automatically set and the aircraft was just following a pluggedin trajectory or rate of descent. That will be important to investigate rz. Do they automatically look at the pilots in a situation like this to determine if there could have been anything that could have caused a pilot or copilot to want to do this . There have been cases of pilots wanting to commit suicide right . Sure. I think that always comes up in investigations early on to understand the human, the machine and the environment. Clearly when theyre looking at the humans theyre looking at their experience, their history, not just whether or not theyve had the proper training and the amount of hours in the cockpit but also their work rest history. Are they fatigued . Are there things going on in their lives, personal or work that need to be paid attention to . They will be looking at toxicology tests. Investigations at their very nature look at everything. Theyll look at the aircraft at the maintenance, then theyll look at the environment. Was there anything going on . What were the weather conditions . What could have affected this flight differently than all of the other flights that were in that area . If you were investigating, whats the first thing youd be looking for . Well certainly those boxes. Like i said if you get those boxes they will give you the road map to whats next, where you want to go, what steps you want to take who you want to talk to. It will really point you in the right direction. But i think with respect to these early hour fz any crash, its all about the victims and their families and making sure that they get taken care of and get the information in a timely manner. Youve got to Pay Attention to that when youre on the ground. Deborah hersman, thanks very much for joining us. Thank you. Coming up, rain, snow and frozen terrain. Thats slowing the search and recovery in the french alps. And why was there no distress call from the airliner before it went down . Our aviation experts are standing by. Stay with us. Youre in the situation room. Floor mats. Clear coats. Youre getting warmer. Leather seats. And this. E that. Get your credit swagger on. Become a member of experian credit tracker and find out your fico score powered by experian. Fico scores are used in 90 of credit decisions. 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 for free. I just wanted to do it for the world and you know when you want something, thats what you do the best. Toenail fungus . Dont hide it. Tackle it with fdaapproved Jublia Jublia is a prescription medicine proven to treat toenail fungus. Use jublia as instructed by your doctor. 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There are no roads in and no roads out. Basically, the only option is choppers. You can drop folks in there. They have to hike down or go to the nearest town and still have to hike to get into this location. You can see extremely remote. We do know that during the crash their visibility was okay. We had relatively clear skies. But we also know things are going to change very very quickly into the next 12 to 24 hours, making for very difficult circ