[John Berman, Cnn Co-anchor:] Hello, everyone. I'm John Berman.
[Michaela Pereira, Cnn Co-anchor:] And I'm Michaela Pereira.
[Berman:] We have major new developments in the search for the victims and wreckage from AirAsia Flight 8501. Search crews are focusing on an area of roughly 2,000 square miles. That's roughly the size of Delaware. A top Indonesian official says it's the most probable area in the Java Sea where the plane's fuselage might be. Now, they have recovered more of the plane's wreckage, including what appears to be a window panel. This photo was posted online by the defense minister of Singapore.
[Pereira:] And of the 162 people on that plane, officials say 30 bodies have now been pulled from the sea, four of them have been identified so far. One victim has already been laid to rest. In terms of the search, bad weather is proving once again seeming to be the biggest obstacle in the search. I want to turn to Andrew Stevens in Surabaya, Indonesia, where the flight originated and where many, many of those families were from and where they are gathered awaiting news. Andrew, can you update us? I know it's obviously nightfall there, but what is the latest on the search-and-rescue effort where it stands now.
[Andrew Stevens, Cnn Correspondent:] Well, on the search, Michaela, there is still bad weather across the search zone and that bad weather is expected to continue over the next couple days, so the frustrations are enormous. But, as you point out, they've narrowed the probable location zone, they call it, down that 2,000 square miles. That's still a fair chunk of territory, but they're now moving into an underwater-search stage, basically because the weather is so bad that visibility is minimal, and they're not just getting anywhere with their visibility aerial checks. So they've got ships on station there. They've got sophisticated listening devices. They've got sonar there. More are coming. And the plan is really is to now grid that area, looking for this fuselage. This is the key to the whole mystery, if you like. There's a large piece of fuselage, they think, with still many bodies inside, which also, they hope, contains the black boxes, the voice recorder, the data recorder. That's what they're looking for and, of course, still looking for bodies.
[Berman:] Along those lines, Andrew, what's the latest in the victim identification process?
[Stevens:] Well, four have been identified now, John. Thirty bodies have been recovered, including 12 from the USS Sampson which was on sight today. The bodies have most of the bodies have been brought back here. In fact, we've just come from outside the naval base at the international airport, very sad procession we saw there, too, ten ambulances leaving that naval base, coming down here to the police hospital for identification. But at this stage, there has only been four of the 30 bodies recovered and identified. That identification process will continue over the next few days around the clock as well. It's a painstaking process. They have to get it right. We don't know when the next i.d.s will be done, but it will be an ongoing process, obviously, over the next few days.
[Berman:] All right, Andrew Stevens for us in Surabaya, thanks so much. I want to bring in our aviation analyst here. Les Abend is with us. He's a commercial pilot. We also have our safety analyst and former FAA safety inspector David Soucie. He's written a new book "Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, Why It Disappeared and Why It's Only a Matter of Time Before This Happens Again."
[Pereira:] David, we want to talk about this report we're getting from the local media in the region and it's very grim, obviously that there were three bodies located found floating with their seat belts on in a row. We have not been able to independently confirm that here at CNN. If this turns out to be true, what does that tell you about what happened as the plane crashed.
[David Soucie, Cnn Safety Analyst:] It's really not definitive because of the fact that whether it broke up in the air or whether it broke up on the CNN, which is what we're trying to determine at this point, it's would be the same. They would still be in the seats; they would still have seatbelts on. There's some other evidence that we won't talk about that's a little too gruesome here on television, but hopefully it will tell them one thing, which is the if it hit the water and broke up in a forward rate of speed, you'd be able to tell that by the damages that the seat belt does to the body. If it was downed at a straight angle like this, which would indicate a flat spin or stall, deep stall, like Flight 447 that there are different types of injuries that you would see on those bodies, mostly internal type things as well. So there's some information that can be gained by the investigators on scene. It's nothing we'll get information about out here. That's what they'd be able to fell from.
[Berman:] It so, Les among these same reports that people were found strapped in their seats, there are also reports saying they're seeing images of the tail underwater. We haven't been able to confirm this, but if the tail separated from the rest of the fuselage, is that something you would normally see or sometimes see in situations like this and why would that happen? What does that indicate?
[Les Abend, Cnn Aviation Analyst:] Well, it indicates like Dave has been saying, did it break up in flight or impact? That will define how it impacted and the fact that it may have been is it inverted? Right side up? That answers questions in the kind of water and the depths they're talking about.
[Pereira:] These kind of searches are so painstaking and then you add the challenges of where they're searching. The weather has been impeding efforts, obviously. But we know that now there's 30 bodies that have been recovered, David. It sort of feels as though that was a big jump in terms of recovery over the last few days, even progress is being made. That's what it feels like from our end. Does that seem appropriate to you?
[Soucie:] It absolutely does because now we've got clues. Once the bodies are identified, it's going to be an enormous jump in the investigation because of the fact that they can place those bodies within a virtual model of the aircraft.
[Berman:] A seating chart.
[Soucie:] Exactly. And so then they'll know when the bodies came from. That will give them a lot of clues for the underwater search, because if they all came from the same area then you could say that's kind of where it broke up. They may be able, as I mentioned before, from the bodies be able to determine if they broke up in the air. If they did, the search will grow significantly because, like with MH-370, it was about six or seven miles across.
[Berman:] That hadn't occurred to me. You can actually put together a seating chart, and once you put together a seating chart, you can backtrack and see perhaps where the different parts of the plane ended up. Back to the tail for a second, aren't in A-320 aren't the black boxes in the tail?
[Abend:] I think there is one of them that's in the tail and one is a little bit further forward, so that would be good news if indeed they found the tail. Now they can begin the process of recovering data from the cockpit voice recorder and the digital flight-data recorder.
[Berman:] Because that's what, in terms of the investigation, these are the holy grails in terms of the search. They want to get their hands on those. They'll find out all the information they want. And, of course, as of now, we don't have any sense that they're actually hearing any pings.
[Soucie:] No indication of that at all at this point, no.
[Abend:] It was indicated by David Gallo that there's a lot of shipping traffic so a lot of noise for those devices.
[Pereira:] And towed ping locators, as we mentioned for those of you that are sort of new to this, we've learned a lot, certainly with MH- 370. You've both taught us a lot. So they have the side-scan sonars. They also have these towed ping locators, and it's important to talk about the acoustics of the ocean. It may not be very deep, only 100 feet. Comparatively to some other portions of the ocean, this is fairly shallow. But there's still acoustic noise there that could be affecting search efforts.
[Soucie:] And the reason it was so sensitive to acoustic noise during the 370 search is because of the fact that we were kind of using it for what it's not to be designed for. It's not really designed to locate the aircraft. It's designed to locate the box within the aircraft after it's under the water. So it's more of a proximate using the hydro phones to find it locally because it can be under silt, it can be under the aircraft. It's really difficult to find. It's not like it's sitting there on a shelf somewhere. So that's the part that underwater locator beacon, if it's functioning normally, is used for proximate location, not for generalized search, necessarily.
[Berman:] Les, there's one other area. We talked about this morning. There were reports that there was a two-minute gap between when the captain or the copilot we don't know who asked but asked to increase their altitude, to fly up from 32,000 feet to 34,000 or 36,000 feet, maybe even higher. There was a two-minute gap between when they asked permission and when air traffic control ultimately responded. Most of us aren't pilots, so we don't know. Is two minutes a long time to wait for an answer?
[Abend:] It really isn't. When you make a request, you understand, depending upon what sector you're in in the United States, these controllers are busy with other airplanes going opposite directions, crossing your route perhaps. So they're and they're talking to other controllers in other sectors. So two minutes isn't an incredibly long time for that kind of request. I don't know what the circumstance is. Apparently that corridor is like a red eye across the United States is for us. So I wouldn't find that very unusual at all.
[Pereira:] Les, David, we'll ask you to stick around, because ahead, we know there's several theories about how the flight ended up in the water or hit the water. One Indonesian official believes the pilot could have perhaps landed on the surface kind of like Sully Sullenberger-style on the Hudson. We're going to examine that possibility ahead @
[Thishour. Berman:] And then, what a life. We're going to take a look at the life and legacy of former New York governor Mario Cuomo who passed away at 82.
[Pereira:] And we're going to give you a story of race and redemption. See this beautiful woman? Well, almost 60 years after being cut from the Rose Parade because she's African-American, Joan Williams led the annual parade. We're going to talk to her about this significance of this, especially now when we're having this discussion about race in America.