JetBlue Airplane and Private Aircraft Nearly Collide Midair; Outgoing Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel Discusses Releasing Guantanamo Bay Detainees
VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN ANCHOR: A JetBlue plane nearly crashes into a small plane as it prepares for a landing. You'll hear from a passenger on board who describes this close call and what the airline is saying about this near disaster.</s>CHRISTI PAUL, CNN ANCHOR: And outgoing defense secretary Chuck Hagel holding nothing back. He sits down for an exclusive interview with CNN talking about pressure from the White House to release more prisoners from Guantanamo Bay, and whether the U.S. may need to spend troops to Iraq.</s>BLACKWELL: She could have spent decades in prison. But this week the woman convicted of shooting a gun near her estranged husband went home as a new deal frees her from a prison sentence. Can life return to normal? Plus heightened security, worries over the measles, and a fall from Grace for America's biggest sports league. Don't forget this -- pretty big football game going on, too. Newsroom starts now. It's 10:00 here in the east. Hope the morning has been good to you so far. I'm Christi Paul. I'm Victor Blackwell. Good to be with you. You're in the CNN Newsroom. And this is an air traveler's worst nightmare, a midair disaster. This morning we're learning a JetBlue flight barely missed colliding with another plane. Here's what we know. The jet was headed from Orlando to Westchester County Airport in New York last Sunday.</s>PAUL: Just when the flight was trying to land, we're told, that's when the pilots saw another plane headed their way.</s>BLACKWELL: And this morning we have new audio of those terrifying moments inside the cockpit. Listen.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: For 94 we have traffic 11:00 two miles moving. The height is unknown.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're looking into it, 94.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: But 94, if you'd like, you can climb or descend.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We have them in sight, JetBlue 94.</s>PAUL: OK, what you heard, that long beep, that was the alarm from the collision warning system. Let's bring in CNN national reporter Nick Valencia who has been examining this whole thing. That, if you're on a plane and you hear that, that's going to send a red alert.</s>NICK VALENCIA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It's frightening. That's how one passenger described the situation to me, the whole experience surreal. They didn't realize how big a deal it was until they were able to process this. I spoke to Rick Germano. He was one of the passengers on a full commercial flight, that JetBlue flight 94 coming from Orlando, going towards White Plains, New York. And on its dissension, that's when the alarm system went off. That's a collision warning system. Rick Germano, who was on that flight, as I mentioned, described to me the scene.</s>RICK GERMANO, JETBLUE PASSENGER: On approach to landing we were getting pretty excited because the flight was over, all of a sudden the plane made an abnormal maneuver. You could tell it just wasn't normal. And we turned quickly to the side and then all of a sudden heard a loud noise on the opposite side of the plane. I quickly looked over and my wife said to me we just got missed by a private plane. And our plane elevated and turned, and the other private plane dove and went underneath our plane.</s>VALENCIA: Rick tells me he has a five-year-old daughter and she was also on that flight with him and his wife. She was sitting right in the middle of both of them. He said that his wife actually saw the plane as it was making its way towards that commercial airliner nearly missing that full flight. He says what chokes him up the most is that his daughter's life, that five year old, could have lost her life. They all could be dead right now. He doesn't understand why it took so long for it to come out in the news. I was talking to him. I said, were you surprised there was a lack of news coverage? He said it speaks to perhaps that this happens a lot more than we care to believe.</s>BLACKWELL: What is the FAA saying about this, if anything?</s>VALENCIA: So here is the interesting thing. It appears that neither pilot did anything wrong, if you can believe that. This whole thing is under investigation right now. But the FAA did send a statement to CNN and I want to report that. It says "The pilot reported the smaller aircraft in sight, received the alert, and then climbed in response to the alert. The general aviation flight was operating under visual flight rules and was not required to communicate with air traffic controllers." So this small plane didn't do anything wrong. Rick Germano hopes that this would at the very least start a conversation about protocol in the air. He wants to see a change. The scary thing to him is that this could potentially happen again to somebody else.</s>PAUL: You know, we have that map, a lot of times, of all the planes flying in the air at once. And I know that people look at that and think, oh, my gosh, how does it not happen more often? So there's an investigation, but what exactly does that mean? Does that mean that they might actually implement some changes in terms of that small plane that you said it wasn't required to talk to traffic control, right?</s>VALENCIA: It was operating under visual flight rules. So just what you see, watch out when you're up in the air, just be careful what you're doing. You don't have to check in with air traffic controllers. That's the scary part of it all. But JetBlue is saying they're cooperating with the FAA, launching an internal investigation. We'll see what comes of this. This happened last Sunday in the middle of the afternoon, the details of which are coming out now, a week later.</s>BLACKWELL: We, of course, will continue to follow it. And I know the people on that plane including the Germano family will follow it until they get some answers.</s>VALENCIA: Absolutely.</s>BLACKWELL: All right, Nick, thank you so much.</s>PAUL: Boy, just glad that everybody is OK. But you know what, let's talk about this with CNN safety analyst and former FAA safety inspector David Soucie. David, thank you for being with us. There have been, as we understand now, at least two incidents of near collisions involving JetBlue. First of all, does that alarm you in itself?</s>DAVID SOUCIE, CNN SAFETY ANALYST: Well, JetBlue specifically doesn't alarm me necessarily. I think that this is something that's a system- wide problem. It's something the FAA has been dealing with for many years now. It's another example of this overcrowding and trying to mix VFR with IFR, visual flight rules as Victor was saying with instrument flight rules. And there's just no real communication between the two. But operating in airports such as that, it is frightening and it is something that needs to be improved.</s>PAUL: So as Nick was saying, since nobody did anything wrong and you talked about that as well with the visual flight rules, do you think that it's necessary to modify the way the small planes handle themselves?</s>SOUCIE: I don't think that's the case. I think the biggest problem is the air traffic control centers themselves who do monitor movement of VFR aircraft from primary radar. But I think the biggest problem is just that there's so much going on for those air traffic controllers, this is yet another case for next gen, which is the modification of our air traffic control system, the air space system itself, which would alleviate a lot of the air traffic centers' work burden. And so that's something held up by Congress, something that needs funding, but yet Congress is holding it up waiting for results from the FAA. It's a very difficult position that both of them are in.</s>PAUL: I'm sorry. Just so I understand and to clarify what you're saying, you do think that there need to be changes with air traffic control itself. Do you think --</s>SOUCIE: Correct.</s>PAUL: Do you think it's possible for them to add more people? Is there room for that? Is there money for that?</s>SOUCIE: That's a good point, Christi. What really next gen is an improvement in the technology itself. It would not require more people. It would actually require less. It puts more of the burden of separation on the aircraft as they speak to each other in the air. Right now everything that goes communicating-wise and coordination and logistics goes through the air traffic control centers themselves. What next gen does is it allows the aircraft themselves to communicate back and forth to each other, thereby allowing them to know exactly where the other aircraft are at all times. So it really relieves the burden on the air traffic control center and makes it a lot more safe essentially now you're communicating directly with that other aircraft in the air with you.</s>PAUL: All right, David Soucie, we always appreciate getting your expertise on these issues. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us.</s>SOUCIE: Thank you, Christi and Victor.</s>BLACKWELL: All right, thank you, David. And now to the fight against is. We're learning coalition forces have carried out nearly 30 new air strikes against the terrorist group in Iraq and Syria. At least ten of those focused on Kirkuk, the city with the rich oil reserve. Now the latest operations destroyed various ISIS targets, including a rocket tube, several vehicles, buildings as well as a bunker used by ISIS. U.S. ground troops may be needed to fight the terrorist group on Iraq's frontlines, that's according to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel who sat down with CNN for an exclusive interview. Hagel, who has openly disagreed with the administration, is scheduled to leave office in just a matter of days. Yesterday employees lined the halls of the Pentagon to show their appreciation. Hagel offered his resignation in November after pressure from the White House. But, as Hagel prepares to leave, the big question remains, will U.S. troops be returning to the fight in Iraq? CNN's Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr has more for us.</s>BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: I asked Secretary Hagel if he thought it was possible a small number of U.S. troops might get sent to the front lines in Iraq to help Iraqi combat troops do things like picking out targets. He made clear it's an idea that cannot yet be ruled out.</s>CHUCK HAGEL, DEFENSE SECRETARY: He said to his combatant commanders, Steve Hayes, senior writer for "The Weekly Standard," General Dempsey and General Austin, if you believe and you want to recommend, you think you need to recommend to me, to the president, that we should look at other options, then I want you to bring those recommendations to me. That so far has not happened. Whether that would happen in the future, again, the president has said to his commanders, if you think this is what's going to be required, I need to know it, you need to make the recommendation, and I'll listen.</s>STARR: What do you think?</s>HAGEL: Well, I think just as the president has said, and it's the advice I've given the president, it's what General Dempsey has, is we have to look at all the options. And I think it may require a forward deployment of some of our troops, not doing the fighting, not doing the combat work that we did at one time for six years in Iraq and we did for many, many years in Afghanistan, but to help air strike precision --</s>STARR: Locate targets, intelligence.</s>HAGEL: Those are things where we can continue to support. I would say that we're not there yet. Whether we get there or not, I don't know. Whether that's something that our military commanders would recommend into the future, I don't know. But I think, just as the president has made clear, I need to know your honest opinion, and he's been very forthright about that, what you think, if that's something you think is required.</s>STARR: You're saying you think it could be necessary?</s>HAGEL: It could be. But I'm not willing to say that it will be necessary. I say it could be necessary.</s>STARR: Hagel leaves office in a few days, but his view is one that is shared by some current military commanders. Barbara Starr, CNN, the Pentagon.</s>BLACKWELL: All right, Barbara, thanks. And our next segment we're going to talk with our military experts. They're going to way in on what the defense secretary just said. Are they surprised to hear that Hagel believes that there may be pressure or has been pressure from the White House over release of Guantanamo detainees? Also, what do they think about this suggestion that we could see U.S. troops on the front lines in this fight against ISIS?</s>PAUL: Also, all the attention should be on the New England Patriots and Seattle Seahawks, right? This year football may be the distraction surrounding the Super Bowl. Commissioner Roger Goodell not done talking about deflate-gate. We'll hear more. Stay close.