Germanwings Plane Crashes in France; Airbus A320 Considered "Work Horse".
CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Do you attribute that to the information they got from the cockpit or just the simple fact of where this plane went down and it probably could not have been a controlled landing that high up in the mountains?</s>JIM BITTERMANN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I think there was an assumption made by the president and others here that because of where this is, a very difficult area even for hikers to get into -- it's a recreational area sometimes in the summertime for hikers to go to, but the fact is it's a pretty remote area, and I think that the assumptions that they've been making. One of the reasons the president may have spoken so quickly on this, he has the king of Spain in town today, it's an official visit by the king of Spain as it happens. As well, he's been in close contact with Angela Merkel over economic problems in Europe. So he really is kind of in the middle of it. and this unfortunate crash has put him in a spot where he probably wanted to respond right away.</s>MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: All right, Jim Bittermann, we thank you so much for that. Want to turn to Fred Pleitgen who is in London. You know this route well. We also know that not only air bus but Lufthansa and German Wings are all European companies. We understand German Wings is set to hold a press conference. Have they confirmed that this flight went down, because earlier we were hearing that they were aware but had not confirmed it themselves?</s>FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: The most recent information we have comes from Lufthansa themselves, which is of course the parent company of German Wings. And they so far are saying that they're still trying to get information. They say at this point in time they cannot confirm exactly what happened. However, they also say if their worst fears come true that this would be a very dark day for them and of course for German and for European aviation. But you're absolutely right, these are some of the biggest aviation companies in Europe. German Wings itself a direct subsidiary of Lufthansa. It was founded by Lufthansa in the early 1990s to compete on the growing market of low cost carriers. There was another big kid in town in German called Air Berlin that basically revolutionizing air travel in Europe at the time. Those low cost carriers were still fairly new, and Lufthansa wanted to get in the market. And one of the claims that Lufthansa always made or one of the things it did to advertise German Wings, it said it's a low cost airline but it has Lufthansa safety track record behind it. The one thing that people always talked about with German Wings is they know the planes get serviced by Lufthansa Technique which does plane servicing for companies around the world. It's one of the most well-known and one of the most trusted servicers, technology companies for aircraft. And so that was actually one of the big sales that they made. They said this is a very, very safe yet low cost airline. And flights show 17 destinations in Germany to various places around Europe, also the Middle East, also flights to places like Egypt. And it does have a full airbus fleet. All of their planes to my knowledge are of the A3- 20. So you would have A3-20 model itself, that A3-19, a sort of small version for shorter routes, and then maybe a couple of A3-21 aircraft for longer routes. They don't generally fly long haul. But also we've been saying that Lufthansa was planning to rebrand this airline.</s>PEREIRA: It is just a two-hour flight as you mentioned. You also pointed out to us, and it's important to reiterate right here that we're getting closer to Easter, families traveling. So obviously this will be a great deal because we cannot, cannot forget the human cost. And 148 souls are believed to have been lost between Barcelona, perhaps even Paris, and, of course, Germany, and who knows where other cities people were connecting to. A great deal of tragedy there. Do we know, do we have any idea about the flight manifest? It's probably too early to tell that, Fred?</s>PLEITGEN: It's interesting because the French authorities have come out and they say they're trying to identify the passengers at this point in time, which obviously means they're looking at the flight manifest. They want to see who these people are, who their relatives are. I have heard from some people I know at German broadcasters that apparently there are some relatives who are making their way to Dusseldorf Airport. That's still very early information of course. At this point in time the airline hasn't even confirmed that it knows very much about what happened. But it seems as though all of this is slowly sinking in. And people who would have known a relative or friend who might be traveling from Barcelona to Dusseldorf today, they would be very worried right now. And as far as the human cost is concerned, Angela Merkel apparently has already spoken with the French president, with Francois Hollande. They've talked about this. She's set to give a speech in about an hour or so to talk about this as well. But of course this is a gigantic tragedy for German aviation. It is one of the biggest if not the biggest crash at least in German airline history. There was one that was worse that happened in Germany in 2005. However, Lufthansa itself has had two major incidents in its entire history. One of them was the first ever crash, by the way, of a 747 that happened in 1974 and one of its plane skidded off a runway in Poland in 1992. That was also a model of the Airbus A3-20 as well that it was on an icy and wet runway that it went across and six people died in that. But they've never had anything like this happen yet.</s>ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: OK, Fred Pleitgen, if you can stand by for us. We'll check back with you. We want to bring in now David Soucie, our CNN aviation analyst. David, you're always so helpful at crunching the numbers, looking at the data, and helping us understand is it. So let's just go through what we know. And it's incredible that we do all know now the altitude and the speed because of all these online flight trackers. And one of them here that we've been looking says that something about half an hour into the flight. This flight took off at about 9:55 or 10:00 a.m. local time in Barcelona. Then at about 10:30 something starts to happen where the plane that had been flying at 38,000 feet begins gradually descending each minute over the course of about seven minutes 24,000 feet. Is that alarming? Can planes make that sort of altitude climb and dip normally, or does that mean something half-an- hour in bad started happening?</s>DAVID SOUCIE, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Well, I think there's an indication that something bad happened about a half-an-hour in. But the gradual decent is not really that gradual. At 3,400 feet per minute you know you're going down. It's faster than an elevator at that point. You're feeling it down. It's pulling you down. So you can sense that. You do know what's happening. But it is a very controlled manner from what we know. You've mentioned the fact that we do know this. It is fascinating the technology that we kind of for granted right now. The ABSB system which reports this altitude, and this is what companies like Flight Aware and these companies that we look at right now, what they're doing is they're receiving information from the ADSB which is one of thousands of pieces of information that's being sent to the airline, but this is public information that we can get. And so it analyzes it on every flight. You can go there and track any flight at any time and understand exactly what's going on in real time. So the technology that is available right now is just really spectacular, and it allows us to get information very quickly so that we can get people out there right away and make some determinations as to whether this is a, you know, search and rescue or if it's just a search and retrieval of what's left at the accident scene.</s>CAMEROTA: So in addition to what we know about the altitude of this plane, we also know some interesting things about its speed. What did you see in those numbers?</s>SOUCIE: Well, what's interesting about the speed, the air speed, is that there was a rapid decline in the speed at one point, but after that the speed was maintained entirely throughout the flight including during the decent. So what that tells me is it was a controlled descent. So we're looking at 3,400 feet per minute downward, which typically the aircraft can speed up during that time. So it tells me that the controls, probably the auto pilots, the flight controls, there are seven computers on this aircraft. All are rechecking with each other to make sure everything is going well. So at this point it tells me that most likely those computers were operating normally or that the pilot at least was cognizant and aware of what was happening so that he could control that speed as you go down, because when you start that descent, the aircraft wants to speed up, of course. It wants to go fast. And so the fact that the air speed maintained while that descent went on tells me there was a lot of control, it was a controlled descent, and there was something that had gone wrong that he had no control over or he would have controlled it at that point.</s>CAMEROTA: We also know the pilot did know something was going wrong because somewhere after 10:30 a distress call was made from the cockpit. We understand what was said was, "Emergency, emergency" and then the flight lost contact with the tower at about 6,800 feet. And, of course, we also understand that the debris in that area of southern France has been found at 6,500 feet.</s>SOUCIE: Yes. The "Emergency, emergency" is a response. There's something going on. He knows obviously there's something wrong and that he won't be able to do much about it. The fact that there was no information -- if you remember just recently the Harrison Ford accident when Harrison said, you know, "I've got to go back to runway 22. I've got to make a return, return to the airport, I've got an emergency situation." You can see how much information is available to the air traffic controller at this time. In this case we didn't see that. It was just simply "Emergency, emergency," indicating that something very rapid, very quick that the pilot had to address and take care of. Also the fact that he didn't squawk an emergency. He didn't turn on to his transponder and squawk in 7700 and said, hey there, I have this problem, I need some help, because that means that he just -- all he had time to do was say I have an emergency. So whatever happened here, this anomalous thing that happened in the middle of this flight, which is incredibly rare to happen in the middle of the flight, that it happened then and that all he had time to do was say, "Emergency, emergency" yet controlled the aircraft, so that tells me he was focused on flying the aircraft, which is the number one thing when something goes wrong, you have to control the airplane. And he was making every attempt to do that from what we can tell of the information that we have at this time.</s>CUOMO: David, what is it that you always tell us about the priorities for a pilot in order, that it's navigate and then, you know, before communicate. What is the order?</s>SOUCIE: It's after aviate, navigate, and communicate. He was definitely aviating and navigating from what we can tell, as much control as he had over navigation, because at this point you're going to go down. You're just trying to look for a place to safely put down the aircraft. He was close to an airport but he obviously wasn't close enough. And so this is where I think also because it was a controlled move, I think that he had possibly been making an attempt to land at that Grenoble airport because he was very close to that.</s>CUOMO: We do understand that Grenoble airport is somewhat proximate to where this was. But again the terrain, largely mountainous, 6,500 feet is the latest report of where they found debris. And obviously there wouldn't have been a safe landing area there. The big concern, of course, the 148 souls aboard, this 142 passengers and six crew members. So let's get to Jim Bitterman now in Paris. We have more information about the breakdown of who was on this plane. What do we know, Jim?</s>BITTERMANN: Well, in fact from Madrid we're hearing that there were 45 Spaniards among the 148 passengers, crew on board the plane. So they are likely victims of this crash. We understand now that in fact a temporary morgue has been set up in a small town gymnasium, a school, a small town which is about 10 kilometers from the crash site. There are a number of helicopters in the air ferrying what we believe to be the remains and bodies of the passengers back and forth from the crash site to the school. So I think the officials are preparing for the worst. We heard from both the prime minister and the president this morning that they have in fact called a crisis meeting. This is the worst crash here, Chris, on French soil since the Concorde went down in 2000. There were 113 people killed out at Charles de Gaulle airport. And ironically, those passengers were mostly German. They were German tourists aboard the Concorde on an exploratory flight that caught fire right after takeoff. The plane tried to land but crashed short and all aboard were killed. So that is the worst crash that they've had in recent years here in France. I think for the government officials it's a real crisis. They are sending not only the interior minister but also the transport minister and the environmental minister down to the crash. We also hear from the German authorities that the German transport minister is on his way to the crash scene.</s>CUOMO: And at this point everybody is dealing with this as if it were an accident or something that went wrong with the aircraft. We've heard no credible reports of anything else. Lufthansa early on said they were hoping to find survivors. That is seeming more like an empty hope at this point because the French authorities have been increasingly setting the expectations very low, Jim, in terms of this being anything by the worst, true?</s>BITTERMANN: Absolutely. Where this took place is a mountainous region that's know if by anybody it's recreational hikers and whatnot because it's really a fairly bleak, remote area of small villages and whatnot up in the mountains. The crash scene we understand is somewhere around 6,000 feet up in the mountains, which would tally with the kind of altitude data that we have been hearing about from these various sensors aboard the aircraft. So it's a very tough area for anybody to work in, the rescuers, the other people that are on the scene have to hike in a fair distance as we understand it. So it's not an easy one, Chris. I should have mentioned, by the way, earlier when I was talking about the Spanish victims that the king of Spain is in Paris just coincidentally today on an official visit. Spanish flags flying up and down the Champs-Elysees here. And it wouldn't surprise me that either he would cut short that visit or that we would see him appearing with President Hollande here at some point. But at the moment there's been no sign of that.</s>CAMEROTA: Jim, we understand that German Chancellor Angela Merkel has actually spoken with the French President Hollande, and she is said to make a statement shortly, so we'll watch for that. I want to bring in another one of our aviation analysts and experts, Les Abend, who has become a familiar sight here on CNN. He joins us by phone now. Les, I'm looking at some information from the "Wall Street Journal" about the safety record of the A3-20 which is the plane that was involved in this crash there in the French Alps. They're talking about 0.08 crashes per million flights according to AirSafe.com. But it's also interesting, Les, this is the same aircraft model that was involved in the AirAsia jetline flight over Indonesia, 8501. We covered that here on CNN. And, of course, the Miracle of the Hudson back in 2009. Yet, this is a model that has a really good safety record.</s>LES ABEND, CNN AVIATION ANALYST (via telephone): Yes, good morning. Absolutely. I mean, there's no disputing the fact that this airplane, you know, as it's been stated, a workhorse. It's been very reliable. You know, that safety record is pretty exemplary. There's aspects, you know, about the airplane that are a little different than other aircraft manufacturers according to the electronics. But it, indeed, is a safe airplane. And they're just kind of echo Dave Soucie with reference to his explanation about it seemed to be a controlled descent with this airplane means that this crew was flying this airplane at least, you know, in a controlled descent situation, that we can speculate, but something went wrong for them to want to -- or have a desire to lose all that altitude quickly. It's not a rapid rate of descent which could be indicative of a potential engine failure. It could possibly be a slow depressurization. There's all sorts of scenarios that could occur. We're all speculating at this point in time, you know, why there is a sighting that we've been told by a helicopter that shows wreckage. Let's not jump to conclusions.</s>PEREIRA: No.</s>ABEND: It could be something else. So, you know, let's be certain that it is the airplane and let's tell the people that are listening to us across the world that there's always the possibility of survivors even in the worst circumstances.</s>PEREIRA: We always want to keep hope alive and we've told those stories of miracles here on CNN before to be sure. But we do know that there was a distress signal sent out. We talk about the rate the plane descended. And there was a rapid ascension and descent again. We heard about it going off radar at about 6,800 feet and then the grim proposal of where we're told debris has been found at 6,500 feet. A controlled descent into a mountain sounds like a very difficult proposition, Les.</s>ABEND: It is. I mean, this is -- this is certainly not the goal of any of us as crew members. What it says to me, although we've been getting reports there was no weather issues. After looking at the weather chart, there was -- there is a cold front that has progressed on its way through that area in Europe and it did indicate that there was some precipitation. So, there may not have been weather at altitude, however, at lower altitudes as they were beginning the descent their visibility may have been obscured, which is not -- not a really big or nonprocedural issue. But the weather may have deteriorated as they descended possibly being a factor. As we all know from the coverage that we've had here on CNN is that there are many factors --</s>PEREIRA: Yes.</s>ABEND: -- to an airplane accident.</s>PEREIRA: There are initial reports that weather was not a factor in this situation or at least weather was not reported in the area, Les. It bears repeating for those that are just tuning in now, is that you are a commercial pilot. I think to get your perspective on a situation like this and an emergency, we talked with David Soucie a moment ago about the importance of navigate, aviate and communicate in those moments when something is going wrong. Help us understand, too, what else are the priorities when something, it doesn't matter whether it's mechanical, structural, if there's an incursion of the cockpit -- talk to us about the mind set of a pilot in those emergency moments.</s>ABEND: Yes. The actual acronym is aviate, navigate and then communicate. Your main concern is flying that airplane. When something goes wrong the first thing you do is you have to recognize the situation. It's very important to know what you have in front of you. More than likely an electronic airplane like an Airbus, you'll have some sort of electronic warning. Whatever that warning was telling you, what does that mean to you? It has to register. And then what are your actions? Most likely, the actions are some type of emergency checklist that has to be found on the Airbus. They have an emergency checklist that's electronic that they will go through and literally click off what procedures have to be done for that appropriate emergency. So, your main concern is to make sure that that airplane is stable, under control, and, you know, it's flying properly. Then the next part of it is, let's navigate. And navigate is important because in the terrain situation, you want to stay on airways. There are certain altitudes on certain airways to maintain your clearance above the terrain so that's very important. Then, of course, once you have everything established, people are safe, airplane is safe, then the next step is let's tell somebody that we've got a problem. Now, these don't necessarily have to happen in those particular orders. It depends upon the priority and the severity of the emergency. But it appears that an emergency was -- something was declared. Some sort of distress occurred. How it was said is very important. The tone of that particular crew member's voice, whichever pilot reported it. You know, more than likely if it's a serious emergency, most likely, the pilot that's flying is first handling flying the airplane, and the other pilot is doing the checklist.</s>CAMEROTA: Trying to communicate. Sure. And we do know, Les, to add a little bit, that someone was able to say, "Emergency, emergency" to the tower before it crashed. Les, stick around for us for a second. Please stand by, because we want to bring in CNN correspondent Fred Pleitgen. Fred, this crash happened half an hour into the flight -- meaning that there were problem no friends and relatives yet at the airport at Dusseldorf. Perhaps they are waking up or turning on their television, I should say, and hearing the news of this crash on CNN or on their media. You have some information about what the airline is doing for family members right now.</s>PLEITGEN: Yes. It's interesting, Alisyn, because the airline itself says it's still trying to gather information, but it seems as though even with them, it's becoming evidently clear this is a big catastrophic event. So, what they've done, both the airline and the airport itself has started a hotline for family members of those believed to be on board the plane. There is one of Germanwings. Germanwings also said it's going to hold a press conference in about one hour and forty minutes from now. But there is a hotline that is in place right now. And some of the information I'm getting from some friends I have at German media, which is also concentrated in the Cologne and Dusseldorf area, where all this happened, they say that they have indications, that there are people who are showing up at the airport who might be family members or friends of some of those people who might have been on the plane because at this point in time, it is very difficult, of course, to discern. There have been tweets for instance from German politicians saying they understand that many people right now will be very worried about loved ones who they think might have been on this plane because it's absolutely unclear to many of them where their loved ones are at this point. Again, this plane was supposed to take off at around 9:30 local time. So, at that point, many of the friends and relatives will be at work. We're not sure whether or not these people have access to news. Certainly, we do know that in Germany and specifically that area, this is the top news story obviously at this point in time since as it's shaping up right now, it is at least for German aviation company, the worst airline disaster in their history, certainly in Lufthansa's history and any German aviation company. There was a big crash that happened in Germany in 2005 when there was a mid-air collision. That involved a Russian plane and a DHL aircraft that collided over the German skies. However, as far as German aviation companies are concerned, this is certainly shaping up to be the worst that's ever happened.</s>CAMEROTA: Fred, 142 passengers on board, six crew members. We do know that 45 of those passengers were Spaniards. Do we know anything else about the passengers?</s>PLEITGEN: Well, at this point we don't have the numbers. We do know that the French authorities have come out and said that they believe because of the destination of this plane, that most of the -- or the majority of the victims will be German. Of course, there's 45 Spaniards on board. That, of course, is something that also is very important. There is a lot of travel between Spain and Germany. Spain is by far the biggest tourist destination of most European countries or at least northern European countries, but of Germany, specifically. There's a lot of Germans that go back and forth. There's a lot of flights. And especially from this area, from Dusseldorf, from the Cologne area, most densely populated area in all of Germany, or on all of Germany, or at least Dusseldorf is the airport, the biggest airport within that most densely populated area. There's a lot of flights going back and forth. There are a lot of Spaniards who are living in that part. There were big waves of migration of Spaniards going to Germany incidentally in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and then again right now, because, of course, you have the economic crisis in Spain. Many people are seeking work in Germany. So, there is a lot of travel back and forth. It's also the beginning of the Easter holiday time which also, of course, is something that increases travel as well. So, it shouldn't be a surprise why there were so many people taking that flight this morning.</s>CUOMO: All right. Fred, we know you're going to jump on a plane to continue your reporting. We'll check in with you when you get situated. Thank you for being with us this morning. Let's bring in Mary Schiavo. And just to reset for our audience in the U.S. and around the world, we are talking about Germanwings Flight 9525. It has been reported to have crashed. It was supposed to go to Barcelona to Germany -- Barcelona, Spain, to Dusseldorf, Germany. And as you see, this was the intended path. It didn't make it. It crashed in France in the Alps. Mary, 148 souls on board. The French president came out very early, saying he did not expect survivors. Lufthansa, the owner of Germanwings, said they were hoping to find survivors. But now that we're learning this plane went down at about 6,500 feet in the French Alps, it looks like a very bleak situation?</s>MARY SCHIAVO, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Well, it is a very, very bleak situation. The information we have gotten over the last half hour or so about the mayday call, there was clearly something wrong, the information from the radar, that it make a steep descent but controlled descent from 35,000 down to 27,000 means something was going wrong with the plane, the control of the plane. You know, an Airbus did this last November, made a sharp descent and the plane did it itself. The crew was able to get it under control and land it. So, I'm sure that the airline is in contact with Airbus as they are sorting through what preliminary information suggests, but from that 27,000 level on down, it must have been a very quick event.</s>CUOMO: And we see on the tracking data here that that descent was over the course of just a few minutes in the middle of this flight. You've pointed out this morning that 95 percent of crashes happen either on takeoff or landing and, obviously, all of these points of curiosity but what matters most are the lives that may have been lost aboard the plane. We do have pictures now of family members and friends starting to gather around Dusseldorf airport in Germany. That was of course where this plane Flight 9525 of Germanwings was supposed to go, Mary. And when we start looking at these numbers to tell the story of what happened here, takeoff seemed to be fine. The takeoff time of this aircraft was delayed. But there could be a million reasons for that. Doesn't seem there was weather in the area that would have been a particular hazard.</s>SCHIAVO: No.</s>CUOMO: The course that seems like the long way to go going out east into the water before coming back we now know is the normal route that was taken, so there was no detour. But as we start looking at the data, which is available online as this flight was being tracked, we do start to see training things as you were referring to. What is the biggest point to you right now?</s>SCHIAVO: The descent. The biggest point of interest to me was the mayday call and the descent. And there you got clearly a pilot that still has control of the aircraft, but a very rapid descent. That descent is certainly a bracing one. It does not suggest that the plane had stalled and was literally falling out of the sky. When that happens, it can either fall like a leaf, or it can shudder and kind of fall off into a dive. I would suspect that would be much faster. In a controlled descent, I mean, if there was something gone wrong and the plane itself had put itself into a descent, that happened last November, November of 2014. I'm trying to remember exactly where in the world it happened, but an Airbus 320 like this did have a very rapid descent that the plane put itself into. There the pilots were able to get control. It appears they leveled off for at least a little bit according to the radar at 27,000 feet, so it looks like perhaps the pilots were fighting the plane or fighting to keep control of that plane, but at least at that point they were still able to communicate and to fly the plane. So, to me, it still suggests some kind of a mechanical with the plane. I would think if they got a mayday call out and they were on fire they would have said they were on fire.</s>CUOMO: And just to be clear, not the French authorities, nobody involved with the airplane, no credible reporting at this point is calling this anything but some type of accident that happened with this plane --</s>SCHIAVO: Correct.</s>CUOMO: -- in the air? There's no reason to believe anything else right now. When you start looking into this --</s>SCHIAVO: Right.</s>CUOMO: -- distress call, there is confusion about that on the reporting side but French authorities are saying they got one and it seems credible because it's coming from them and they know language that was used. Now, when they say the last words used were, "emergency, emergency", is that pilot jargon? Is that what is supposed to be said?</s>SCHIAVO: Well, yes, that can be -- that can be a huge clue, and what we need to know is -- what we need to confirm is what code they were squawking. Now, when I say squawking, there is an indication that they put some kind of a code on their transponder and there is a code for -- there is a hijack code. And we're not allowed to say what that is. That's secured information. But if we learn what the code they were squawking was, then we might know what was going on.