At Least Seven Bodies Recovered from AirAsia Crash
BRIANNA KEILAR, HOST: See you next year, Jake. Happening now, more victims -- new recoveries of AirAsia passengers with the first bodies arriving onshore. Bad weather, though, has some of the mission on hold. Will it make finding the plane itself even harder? Water landing, perhaps? Some clues suggest the pilot may have been attempting a rare and desperate move. I'll talk to a pilot who did it successfully, the man behind the miracle on the Hudson, Captain "Sully" Sullenberger. And bizarre video -- North Korea releases new images of leader Kim Jong-Un flying a plane, as Sony makes moves to distribute its controversial film parodying him even more widely. Wolf Blitzer is off today. I'm Brianna Keilar. You're in THE SITUATION ROOM. New details and grim new discoveries in the crash of that AirAsia jet. The first bodies recovered have arrived on land. Seven have now been pulled from the Java Sea where the plane crashed with 162 people on board. And while recovery efforts are going full force on the water, the air search has been held up by bad weather. Now there's conflicting information about whether the plane itself has been found. One search official tells CNN sonar has defected debris from the Airbus A320. But the head of Asia denies that. We are covering all angles with our correspondents, including reporters in the region, and our guests, including Captain "Sully" Sullenberger, the pilot behind the so-called miracle on the Hudson. But first, here's the latest that we're learning.</s>KEILAR (voice-over): Two bodies from AirAsia Flight 8501 arriving in Pangkalan Bun, Indonesia, and rushed to a hospital. This is their first stop before being sent on to Surabaya, where two victims arrived earlier, their caskets marked 001 and 002. One hundred military personnel there to pay their respects. But further recovery of remains or debris being hampered by bad weather that has grounded search planes.</s>TONY FERNANDES, CEO, AIRASIA: The weather, unfortunately, is not looking good for the next two or three days. And that is slowing us down. But they did inform me that the ships are looking to operate 24 hours, which is very encouraging.</s>KEILAR: Those ships desperately searching for the plane's fuselage, and with it, data recorders that could untangle some of the mystery behind the crash.</s>FERNANDES: The search and rescue team is doing a fantastic job. They're narrowing the search. They are feeling more comfortable that they are beginning to know where it is. But they have -- there is no confirmation of them.</s>KEILAR: In the crisis center, victims' relatives held a prayer service, hopes for their loved ones fading, as they were asked to provide photos to help identify remains. One family Gary Tuchman met had seven loved ones on board Flight 8501.</s>GARY TUCHMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: How does a man cope in this situation?</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (through translator) I am very sad, of course. I am devastated.</s>KEILAR: Joe Indry (ph) is this young man's grandmother. As Eric drove to the airport, he thought about opportunities he missed out on with his grandma.</s>ERIC, RELATIVE OF AIRASIA VICTIM: I basically regret all the time I was supposed to spend time with her. Now I can't do it anymore. SYUONG THEJAKUSUMA, RELATIVE OF AIRASIA VICTIMS (through translator) when we heard the information, firstly, of course, we hoped our family members were safe and thought of nothing, until yesterday morning and afternoon. We still hoped we would get a miracle that our families are still alive, because my mother, my sister, we were very close.</s>KEILAR: And this is Suyong's other sister, Thele Hoa.</s>THELE HOA, RELATIVE OF AIRASIA VICTIMS (through translator): I ask God why he is testing us this way, by taking them away without giving us the chance to say good-bye.</s>KEILAR: But this family knows a miracle is most unlikely.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: My wife said why is it always the best that leave first?</s>KEILAR: Definitely. And Gary Tuchman joining us now live -- you've been talking, Gary, to these families. What more are they telling you about how they're holding up?</s>TUCHMAN: Well, Brianna, most of these families have come to terms with the fact that it's likely their families have passed away. We have talked to some people, though, who are refusing to give up hope. One young man telling us his grandmother is missing and that he believes it's possible, that some of the rafts were blown up and that maybe his grandmother got on a raft and is on an uninhabited island somewhere. And he literally asked officials, are you searching land masses near where the plane went down? And they told him they are. I mean they really are. They're looking at everything, although officials acknowledge that the possibility of finding anyone alive is miniscule, at best. We're standing right now at the police headquarters in the city here. That sign, in Indonesian, says, "police headquarters" and it says, "waiting area for the families of AirAsia." And what's happened is the crisis center was at the airport this morning. And right now, it's just after 5:00 in the morning here, in the new year of 2015 in Indonesia, they're moving the crisis center to the police headquarters, because it's next to a hospital, which is to my right. And that hospital is where the bodies are being brought to be identified and to be autopsied. So family members are to arrive shortly. Most of them are getting a well earned good night's sleep, because it's been very difficult. They've been up for many hours at a time. And now they're going to be coming back to this area here, this tent. And they're going to be getting counseling. They're going to be getting food and water. They're going to be getting all kinds of information. And that's one thing we've got -- we have to stress, Brianna. Compared to the Malaysian Air incident in March, the communication has been relatively good. There have been a few snafus, including an accidental live transmission by Indonesian TV of one of the bodies, which was very upsetting to people. But all in all, the communication has been good and a lot of the family members who are grieving so much are appreciative of that fact -- Brianna.</s>KEILAR: That is good to hear. Gary Tuchman in Surabaya, thank you. Once this plane is located, crews will face the monumental task of pulling it from the water. We have CNN senior Washington correspondent, Joe Johns, with this. And the depth of the water here, we're talking 80, 100 feet, it makes this doable, but it's not easy.</s>JOE JOHNS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It's not easy. It's an enormous job, Brianna. And at first, it can take a long time, quite frankly. They have to map out all of the pieces of the plane and where they are. And only then, the heavy lifting begins.</s>JOHNS (voice-over): How do you pull a plane up from the bottom of the ocean?</s>PETER GOELZ, FORMER MANAGING DIRECTOR, NATIONAL TRANSPORTATION SAFETY BOARD: What you want to do first is to really map the entire accident scene.</s>JOHNS: We spoke with Peter Goelz, a former investigator with the NTSB, who worked on the recovery and rebuilding of TWA Flight 800 that crashed after takeoff from New York City.</s>GOELZ: You document everything until you really get the information off the data recorder and the voice recorder.</s>JOHNS: He says the site needs to be treated like a cream scene and mapping the debris field before removing objects could be key to finding out what happened. Then comes the process of pulling up the giant pieces of debris from the bottom of the sea.</s>GOELZ: You would have a number of lifting cranes and you would have teams of divers. And the divers, of course, even working at 100 foot depth, you'll have to have decompression chambers.</s>JOHNS: A potentially slow process, because divers can only remain at depths for short periods due to health concerns. But does Indonesia have the know-how to carry off a recovery effort like this? There are still questions about the location of all the debris.</s>DAVID GALLO, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: It seems like a fairly small body of water, but when you're out there, it's huge.</s>JOHNS: David Gallo, with Wood's Hole Oceanographic.</s>GALLO: Usually, you're extremely careful now to say that you've found something until you ground truthed it.</s>JOHNS: Wood's Hole participated in the recovery effort in the crash of Air France Flight 447 off Brazil's northeastern coast, whose black boxes took almost two years to recover, footnoting what a painstaking process this can be.</s>JOHNS: On the other hand, this crash occurred in much less water, which raises the possibility that. It will be easier to get all the pieces. Still, there are concerns, quite frankly, of souvenir hunters, because since this is much less water, it's even a possibility that recreational divers might go and try to bring pieces out. That's a concern.</s>KEILAR: I hadn't even thought of that. It's a horrible thing to think of, that possibility. I'm sure it's very real, though. Joe Johns, thank you. Weather complicating the efforts here to find the plane. Let's talk to CNN meteorologist, Tom Sater. He's working on this part of the story for us in the CNN Weather Center. What are we looking at right now -- Tom?</s>TOM SATER, ATS METEOROLOGIST: A much, much better day, Brianna. Yesterday at this time time, we talked about the search area, most likely, would be looking at the most intense rainfall that they have seen since contact was lost with this aircraft. We're still searching in section five. This was the band of heavy tropical rains that moved into the area approximately 4:00 in the afternoon local time. They had to suspend the recovery and search operation. These have been moving from the south northward. Today, a much better picture. When we think of thunderstorms, we think an intense rainfall is two and three inches, which it is. This is dropping 10, 12, 15 inches. And they just don't move as fast. Now, we're looking at much better conditions now, but you're going to find the best at night. This is moving out of the area. What we had yesterday, because they had to suspend the search, it was too dangerous to get dive teams in and out of the water. Once they're in the water and they're down 25, 30 feet, that's fine. It's stabilized, and so is the aircraft on the floor. Remember, is the Java Sea, not only is it shallow -- and Joe mentioned it would be easier to retrieve the craft -- but there's a lot of sediment. So that's going to help stabilize that craft. But the seas yesterday were up and down. They were not -- the vessels were not fighting seas coming in from one direction. Because they were slow-moving, it sloshes the water. And when that happens, you just can't tow the pinger locators. You can't tow the sonars. We had problems in the South Indian Ocean with the Malaysia 370 flight. The Australian tanker kept breaking some cables with a Bluefin 21. So they need to do that at night when the water is quiet and tranquil. We're looking at much better conditions, not only in the daytime, but at night, as well. But it's so erratic. Yesterday, the storms coming from the south. Today, they're coming from the west and the southwest. It's hard to forecast, but I do believe the next couple of days are pretty good. However, I've got to take you further to the north, where a tropical storm devastating parts of the Central and Southern Philippines. Jangmi was its name. We had not only 30 dead from flooding, but we had a landslide that buried another 20 yesterday. This is no longer a tropical storm or a depression. But typically, they move toward Vietnam, or up to the north in South China or even Japan. But it's getting caught in a flow which could take the system down into our region. Again, It's not going to be tropical in nature, but that is going to be enough circulation to intensify the storms, to bring more of a pattern, more of those winds coming into our region to intensify the rainfall in maybe four ore five more days from now. But until then, the news is that still, it looks like our wind pattern comes toward the southeast. The current pattern for the last five days, Brianna, has been generally west to east. So even though there may be a breach in the fuselage, and we believe that because we have found debris, it is generally to the southeast. Now, when you look at the surface, and this is important, keep in mind, we do not have topography on the Java floor, that has deep crevasses, mountain passes or valleys, that causes the force of water in the ocean to push debris. That debris, only at 100 feet, is not going to move much at all. In fact, it probably won't. So they've got to find that. Also, consider the channel is shallow. This is good news for the pinger locators. It doesn't have to work and bounce off different frequencies or different walls, crevasses, as mentioned, so they should get a pretty good handle on it. Quickly for you, this is the picture out of the Singapore C-130 aircraft that's showing the rainfall and just how saturated it is. This also playing a role in the low visibility. So we're keeping an eye on that in the waters, but at least the dive crews, Brianna, should be able to get back in the waters and the operation should resume for the next 24 hours.</s>KEILAR: Very good news. Tom Sater, thank you so much. I want to bring in my next guest, Captain Chesley Sullenberger, the pilot whose safe water landing of a crippled U.S. Airways jet became known as the miracle on the Hudson. Captain Sullenberger, thanks so much. For being with us.</s>CHESLEY SULLENBERGER, CBS NEWS AVIATION ANALYST & SAFETY EXPERT: Good to be with you, Brianna.</s>KEILAR: I know you certainly have studied and heard all of the information that we're getting about air Asia Flight 8501 at this point. Can you just sort of walk us through? I think I want to look at this from the beginning. As a pilot going -- dealing with a storm such as this one, walk us through the procedure of what you would go through to deal with this.</s>SULLENBERGER: Well, there is strategic weather avoidance and tactical weather avoidance. And the strategic avoidance begins before the flight starts. The airline dispatcher, who also helps plan the flight, would be looking at the best route of flight to avoid weather as much as possible. Of course, the pilots, once they reviewed their flight information, would want to make sure that they could operate the flight safely. And then the tactical weather avoidance happens during the flight, as they look at weather ahead of them, whether it's visually out of the cockpit windows or with the aid of their on board weather radar. The investigators, of course, will be looking at how adequate the information was provided to the dispatcher and the pilots was, what alternative routes of flights might there have been, how good was the air traffic control coordination among the Indonesian air traffic controllers and between the Indonesian air traffic control facility and the Singaporean air traffic control facilities, how easy was it and how much time did it require for pilots to get approval for deviation request because of weather or to change altitude? They'll be looking...</s>KEILAR: Well, let me...</s>SULLENBERGER: -- at all those.</s>KEILAR: -- can I ask you that, because it was two minutes, I believe, between his request, the pilot's request to climb, and receiving the basic denial of the request. Is that too long?</s>SULLENBERGER: We'll have to wait and see. It isn't terribly long, but two minutes would seem like an eternity...</s>KEILAR: Sure.</s>SULLENBERGER: -- when you're facing weather threats ahead of you. And you would want to deviate as rapidly as possible. That's one of the things that need to be investigated. You know, we've -- need to look at this in terms of how well the air traffic control system operates, how it organizationally works...</s>KEILAR: Yes.</s>SULLENBERGER: -- and how good the human performance was and what the culture is, you know, were best practices, was efficiency promoted. Or was this a rigid, more bureaucratic system that lacked flexibility. Those were the important things if this turns out to be a weather- related event. I should also say that in almost every accident, it's never the result of a single failure and a single fault layer. Instead, it's the end result of a causal chain of events. We'll see if weather was a factor and to what extent.</s>KEILAR: Yes, that it might be multiple layers of failure actually. And, obviously, we don't know, there are so much still to know. There are no black boxes at this point. We don't have the analysis of that. But there have also been a lot of similarities perhaps to the crash of Air France 447 that flied a few years ago, going between Rio and Paris. In that instance, the pitot tubes on the plane, they froze over, gave an incorrect reading to the crew as the plane was flying through a storm. Do you think that could have happened here?</s>SULLENBERGER: That's one of many possibilities. We have to look at this in terms of the system and how it is designed to operate. You know, increasing complexity in our cockpits while it's good in many ways it's not a panacea and it introduces certain new risks. It makes possible in the example in the case of air France 447 and the failure of speed sensors to have rapidly cascading effects through multiple systems in the cockpit. And it was confusing and overwhelming to the pilots. So, we have to look at how we design our systems, how good our policies and procedures are and how well pilots are trained to deal with this. Recent studies have indicated that increasing use of automation in the cockpits is de-scaling pilots to a certain extent and we've lost some of our manual flying skills. But an even greater risk is that it seems to be that this lack of mental engagement and awareness during the flight, as we monitor more automation doing much of the work actually hurts us in terms of our ability to analyze, to troubleshoot and to quickly fix challenges that we face.</s>KEILAR: That you're not perhaps as engaged as you should be and ready to respond. I have a lot more questions about that, really, the training the pilots are receiving and whether it is enough. We'll be talking more to you, Captain Sullenberger, after a very quick break. We'll be right back.