Update on Flight 8501 Search
LEMON: It's already late morning Tuesday in Indonesia. Let's get an update on the search for AirAsia flight 8501 in the Java Sea. CNN's Gary Tuchman is live for us in Surabaya. What's the very latest on the search, Gary?</s>GARY TUCHMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Don, so far search conditions are relatively good, perhaps the best that we've seen since we've been here. But every day around midday, and right now we're closing in on midday, it starts deteriorating. But importantly, divers are in the water as we speak. That's very crucial because, we are being told this is not a surprise, but we have just been told that the feeling is they are not going to find many more bodies on the water. They believe that most if not all of the remaining bodies are still strapped to the seats in the aircraft on the bottom of the Java Sea and the feeling is that only divers will be able to get to it. It's only about 100 feet deep down, but the problem is when divers got down this weekend they said the visibility was zero. They're hoping the visibility is better today, and we should have a report as the day goes on if divers have been successful not only finding those bodies but also finding those black boxes, which so far have eluded them.</s>LEMON: CNN's Gary Tuchman. Gary, thank you very much. Joining me now David Soucie, CNN's safety analyst and author of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, and also Mary Schiavo, the former inspector general of the Department of Transportation, she's now an attorney for victims of transportation accidents. David, I want to get your reaction to what Gary just reported, they don't think they'll find any more bodies, they believe most of the bodies -- remaining bodies are strapped still inside of the aircraft.</s>DAVID SOUCIE, CNN SAFETY ANALYST: We could make a conclusion on that. Actually, what I think is going on is that the bodies are still down there strapped in the seats. What they tells us is the aircraft may still have a large piece down there as opposed to if it had broken up into many little parts we'd have fewer -- or more bodies on top and fewer trapped down below. So, that may give us a clue as to what they should be looking for under the -- under the ocean.</s>LEMOMN: You -- you know, I had you on here last week, David, and you said that the search and rescue teamed said that they found the plane by sonar, but now teams are still looking. So, what happened? What do we know about the portions of the plane that have been found?</s>SOUCIE: Well, one is just the ability to get down there and verify what it is, Don. But, as that night we talked a little bit about this -- that Dave Gallo had mentioned to us that, we need to be cautious about what we say is down there because there's a lot of debris in this area of the ocean. There have been -- there have been wars fought there, there are ships that are sunken. Aircraft actually that have been downed in that area as well. So, just saying that we've seen a large piece of metal could just be just another piece of another ship from years gone past.</s>LEMON: Yeah, and we warned the viewers about that last week. Mary, you were here with us as well, your reaction to Gary Tuchman's news.</s>MARY SCHIAVO, FORMER INSPECTOR GENERAL OF THE DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION: Well, and -- you know, it's kind of a repeat, there was a number of years ago, Adam Air Flight that went down in the Java Sea, and that too was very difficult to find. And in fact, pieces of the plane and remains, other parts of the aircraft washed up on the shore. And then that helped them many, many weeks afterward to help trace back. So, while it's more shallow than other places where searchers are used to looking, it's proved to be somewhat elusive in the past as well.</s>LEMON: As I've been watching the reports throughout -- since we have been on last, there's been some, you know, consternation about whether the pingers are working or not. Whether they're getting signals from the pingers, from the black box. What's going on, Mary?</s>SCHIAVO: Well, you know, in -- in many cases, I think there's an estimate of about a third of the time pingers don't work for various reasons. Sometimes the battery malfunctions, sometimes the pingers are damaged or knocked off in the accident sequence and sometimes they're just positioned under wreckage such that they don't pick up the sound unless they're literally right on top of it. So, it could any a factor of any of those or they just haven't gotten to the part yet. But when they get to the big piece of the plane, hopefully they'll still be there. But, in many accidents they just don't work. LEMON; Yeah, and just -- you know, and finding the bodies, of course, that is their first priority. But this black box, I mean, that's the most important, David, outside of finding the bodies, that's gonna tell them what happened to this plane.</s>SOUCIE: That's right. And the combination of the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder together is what paints the whole picture because you see not only what happened to the aircraft but you get a glimpse into what was going on in the decision-making of the pilots, and that can give you a real benefit as far as looking forward and trying to prevent these accidents in the future because, now you can start to understand the psychology and help the pilots understand things better as they get into difficult situations like this and thunderstorms.</s>LEMON: David, Mary, thank you very much. Coming up, the bizarre billionaire sex scandal, Britain's Prince Andrew and now Alan Dershowitz, facing accusations of sex with an underage girl. They both vehemently deny the charges. And tonight, an angry Alan Dershowitz is here to defend himself.