Qantas Airbus Makes Emergency Landing After Engine Explodes; Nancy Pelosi: The Next Minority Leader?
JOHN ROBERTS, CNN ANCHOR: Good Thursday morning to you. Thank you so much for joining us on AMERICAN MORNING. It's very good to have you with us today. I'm John Roberts.</s>KIRAN CHETRY, CNN ANCHOR: I'm Kiran Chetry. We want to get you caught up on what's going on. First of all, some scary moments in the skies over Singapore for passengers on board a Qantas Airbus A-380, saying one of the plane's engines exploded and fell apart shortly after taking off. The pilot made an emergency landing. Everyone, OK. Qantas, though, is grounding its entire fleet of A-380s until they can figure out what caused this.</s>ROBERTS: What's next for Nancy Pelosi now that the Democrats have been dismantled in the House? The nation's first female speaker has to decide if she wants to be the next minority leader. And if she does, will fellow Democrats even throw their support behind her? A live report from Capitol Hill is just ahead.</s>CHETRY: And we are keeping a close eye on Tropical Storm Tomas as it makes its way toward Haiti right now, with hurricane warnings in effect for that island nation. We're going to check in with Rob Marciano and find out more about the storm's path.</s>ROBERTS: A midair emergency to tell you about this morning in the skies over Singapore. Qantas Airbus 380, that's the world's largest passenger plane, the double-decker, forced to make an emergency landing in Singapore after one of its engines ripped apart just six minutes after takeoff.</s>CHETRY: Yes, it was a double-decker super jumbo, 459 passengers and crew, headed from Singapore to Sidney, Australia, when witnesses said they heard what sounded like an explosion.</s>ULF WASHBUSCH, PASSENGER (via telephone): As you can see on the pictures, there was engine damage that happened about five minutes or so after takeoff from Singapore on Qantas QF-32 to Sydney. We heard a loud bang. And I was on the side where the engine is. A loud bang. A little bit of flares for a short time and the engine shut off pretty much immediately from the flight deck.</s>CHETRY: Let's bring Zane Verjee right now. She is at the Singapore airport. Do we have any more information on what may have happened to the engine, Zane?</s>ZANE VERJEE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, the investigation has now started, Kiran. But I want you to take a look at the picture of the engine here. If you can -- if you look at it, you can see that the main engine is still pretty much intact but if you look a little bit further back, you see that parts of the engine is missing. That's called the cowling. It's something that closes off the engine and just fell off. I spoke to an aviation expert who said that there could be two causes here. There could be an engine malfunction or a foreign object could have gone inside the engine. And we don't know what really happened. It is not clear. But that's what some of the experts are saying. The CEO of Qantas had this to say about the engine.</s>ALAN JOYCE, QANTAS CEO: I'm not sure of what's actually happened with the debris and the authorities is looking at exactly what did occur on this and why parts of the engine cowl which it looks like left the aircraft and fell into -- on to the ground. We are still looking at what exactly was the cause of that.</s>VERJEE: Qantas is saying safety is number one for their passengers and, you know, some of the passengers that are speaking said that they were really lucky -- Kiran.</s>ROBERTS: Yes. Zane, when you look at that picture, too, you can see a little bit of smoke or fire damage behind the forward part of the engine cell, as well, which may be a suggestion that maybe it was the main fan that had some sort of a problem. But the passengers that you talked to coming off of that plane, obviously, they're shaken up by what happened. Anybody would be. What did they tell you?</s>VERJEE: Well, they were. They were escorted out by security after being here for such a long time and being briefed. Some of them didn't want to talk, most of them actually. The only thing to say was, John, the staff was great. The staff was excellent. Everyone handled it really well. There were a couple of people that came out and said that they heard a couple of bangs. I spoke to one person a short while ago who said this -- there was one loud bang, a jolt and then a flash. He said it was like lightning have struck us. There were four holes in the wing. He said that there was one big hole and three smaller ones. They're all at hotel now and they're hoping to fly out to Australia tomorrow -- John, Kiran.</s>CHETRY: All right, Zane Verjee for us at the Singapore airport. Good on the pilot, though, to be able to land that huge jet.</s>ROBERTS: And very lucky, too, that when, you know, parts of that engine blew through and took off the cowling and into the wing they didn't hit the fuel tank or cut any fuel lines, because that could have been catastrophic if that happened.</s>CHETRY: Very lucky this morning. Well, things change quickly when it comes to politics as we saw the results of the midterms yesterday. Democrats and Republicans are now talking about getting together over a couple of Slurpees. Yesterday, President Obama said that he and the Democrats took a shellacking this week and he's ready to sit down with Republicans to find a better way forward.</s>ROBERTS: And remember the mantra that he repeated over and over again on the campaign trail, how Republicans sipping Slurpees on the sidelines while Democrats were trying to push the car out of the ditch? Well, that line came back to haunt him yesterday.</s>REPORTER: Thank you, Mr. President. I want to ask if you're going to have John Boehner over far Slurpees.</s>BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I might serve -- they're delicious drinks.</s>REPORTER: Since --</s>OBAMA: The Slurpee summit. That's good, Chuck, I like that.</s>ROBERTS: Our Brianna Keilar live on Capitol Hill this morning. She herself a fan of the Slurpee.</s>CHETRY: The Coke Slurpee.</s>BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Coke Slurpee.</s>ROBERTS: The president and speaker in waiting, John Boehner, got a lot to discuss. Both of them do seem willing to get started what's on the surface at least looks like a positive development.</s>KEILAR: Yes, on the surface, at least, John and Kiran, a spokesman for John Boehner saying, let's hope the president will work with us to cut spending, stop the tax hikes and get our economy working again -- and then the humor here -- and then we can all go get Slurpees together. The new wicked apple flavor sounds awesome. So, this is funny. But is it really going to happen? Is there going to be bipartisanship? And one of the reasons the people are skeptical is because you just look at the make-up of what the new Congress will be, Republicans have picked up -- some Republicans very far to the right so you think that they shift over to the right, and Democrats have lost some of their more moderate members. So, you would think that they might become a little more entrenched to the left. And then, of course, Democrats are still in control of the Senate. So, where might they find some area of agreement? Well, it's certainly not health care reform because Republican leaders have made it very clear that that may be on the chopping block although they're downplaying necessarily completely taking that off the table or repealing health care reform as it is -- perhaps spending cuts. And the best I can tell you about this, guys, as I talked to Democrats and Republicans, and they say this may be an area where we can find agreement, but specifically, what are the spending cuts going to be and, at this point, they can't tell us, guys.</s>CHETRY: Nobody wants to get specific about that. It's also interesting when you talk about Nancy Pelosi, the first female speaker of the House, what her future may be. Any indication?</s>KEILAR: Yes, what is she going to do? This was the question even before election night. Is she going to stay at the helm of Democrats as minority leader or will she do what some other speakers have done? Is she going to step aside or is she going to get out of Congress altogether? She had an interview last night with Diane Sawyer and here's what she said:</s>DIANE SAWYER, ABC NEWS: Are the odds you'll stay?</s>REP. NANCY PELOSI (D), CALIFORNIA: I'm -- as I said to you, in our caucus, we do things by consensus and when we have that consensus, we'll have some announcement to make.</s>KEILAR: So, she's trying to gauge support. And what she is doing, and this is standard after any election, she's calling every single Democrat in the House, mostly either to say congratulations or just to touch base with them if they did lose. And so, she'd be gauging support in that way. But at this point, we don't know what the support is there. What I can tell you is that Republicans jockeying and throwing their hats in the ring for leadership positions, Democrats are in a holding pattern. They're waiting to see what Speaker Pelosi does, if stays or goes. The majority leader, Steny Hoyer, saying he's not going to run for anything -- he's not going to run to be the leader if she is running. So, everyone is just kind of waiting.</s>ROBERTS: Licking their wounds this morning. Hey, I have one question. Is the flavor wicked apple or was that his description of it?</s>KEILAR: No. I think the flavor is wicked apple.</s>ROBERTS: OK.</s>CHETRY: It's probably so sour, you know. It makes you start to wink funny.</s>KEILAR: Yes, I agree.</s>CHETRY: I can't get it with the Slurpees. I'm sorry. But I know what to get you now if you ever come up to New York.</s>KEILAR: Yes, please. Thirty-six ounces.</s>ROBERTS: Every one of those in your stocking for Christmas. Brianna Keilar this morning -- Brianna, thanks. Coming up on eight minutes after the hour:, also new this morning: Mexican police say two students from the University of Texas in El Paso were gunned down in Juarez, Mexico, this week. One of the students was a U.S. citizen. The other was Mexican. The border city is one of the world's deadliest. Last month alone, gunmen killed more than 350 people in Juarez.</s>CHETRY: Well, U.S. authorities seized 30 tons of marijuana after an elaborate underground tunnel was discovered connecting a drug warehouse in Tijuana to San Diego. A 600-yard border tunnel equipped with lighting, ventilation and a crude railroad system to move the drugs. As one official put it: "Not a good day for the cartels."</s>ROBERTS: More than million homeless people in Haiti are bracing for a hurricane this morning. There are hurricane warnings right now with Tomas intensifying again. It could be a category 1 storm again by the time it hits tonight or tomorrow morning.</s>CHETRY: Nine minutes past the hour. Let's get a check of the morning's weather headlines. Rob Marciano in the extreme weather for us. Hey, Rob.</s>ROB MARCIANO, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Good morning, guys. Yes, Tomas is getting a little bit of strength overnight after being downgraded to a tropical depression. Here it is, about 150 miles south of Kingston, Jamaica, about 300 miles south of Port-au- Prince, Haiti. As of the last advisory which just came in minutes ago, they haven't increased the strength of this thing, but it looks like it's getting a little bit more organized. And the forecast is for it to intensify to hurricane status once again. If not that, it will be a strong tropical storm and it doesn't really matter talking about Haiti and Port-au-Prince. We'll follow those tent cities. There's no place for these people to evacuate. You don't need much in the way of wind. So, even a tropical storm force winds here is going to be a problem and there's going to be some heavy rain, as well. We continue to track this situation as we go through the afternoon. Meanwhile, a lot of rain from New York down to Miami. Look at this mess. This is kind of affecting Tomas a little bit as far as pulling it to the north, but away from the U.S. Heavy rainfall across New York, Philly, D.C.; problems with travel both on the ground and in the air this morning, it's kind of a mess. But the weekend, or at least tomorrow afternoon and through Sunday, looks better but cool. A lot of cool air driving down, all the way down to the Gulf of Mexico. Still warm and relatively dry out west across southern California. They got up to 100 degrees yesterday -- record-breaking temperatures there. And I tell you what. There might be some flakes of snow flying on the backside of this. Don't expect any sort of accumulation but it will be a reminder that winter is right around the corner. John and Kiran, back up to you.</s>CHETRY: Triple-digits in California.</s>ROBERTS: California, here I come.</s>MARCIANO: Exactly.</s>ROBERTS: Thanks, rob.</s>MARCIANO: All right, guys.</s>CHETRY: So, can they all get along? A look at what the next two years could look like with Speaker John Boehner. Ten minutes past the hour.