One Flight 8501 Black Box Found
DAVID SOUCIE, CNN SAFETY ANALYST: I don't think so, Carol. There's no evidence that shows anything about any kind of explosion. I think what they might be referring to if you look at the sides of the aircraft, it appears as though the top of the aircraft was opened up from the inside out, which would be indicative of a very hard, fast landing and it could have hit the water, thereby the differential pressure between the aircraft on the inside and the outside would have caused a rupture and rupture would be a much more adequate term to use than explosion certainly.</s>CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: So the air pressure inside the plane could have built up and that would have caused a rip in the fuselage?</s>SOUCIE: Well basically, if you think of any hollow object hitting anything very hard, that hollow object is going to change its pressure and kind of rupture on the top. That's kind of what I think they are referring to here. We don't have the black boxes. We don't really know how it hit the water yet. We can speculate a few things. There's been some investigators that have said that it looks like it did a steep spiral and may have exceeded the V&E which is the velocity not to exceed on the aircraft on the way down. If that happens, then the aircraft would have lost specific parts of the aircraft on the way down like an engine would have come off that sort of thing if it exceeded V&E by too much.</s>COSTELLO: Right.</s>SOUCIE: So they are speculating from that that the aircraft then hit the water. Some people are saying that it skipped across the water. I don't see that. I think that all the parts of the aircraft are located within about a mile of each other. And had the aircraft skipped across the water, that wouldn't explain how close they are together. To me it looks as thought it was a steep, hard impact and that thereby rupturing the air frame.</s>COSTELLO: Another investigator said the left side of the plane disintegrated. If that's true, what would that tell you?</s>SOUCI: I'm not sure I would go down that road. There are parts of the left side of the airplane that are there. What it appears to me is left side of the aircraft buckled and you can see that evidence on the aircraft as you look below the windows. You can see that the aircraft buckled. Now, it's too early to speculate on that because it appears to me also that that's the type of damage you might see in retrieving the aircraft improperly or getting in too much of a hurry to lift it out of the water. Because as you do that, if it's not supported properly, it can cause damage as aircraft comes out of the water. So the people that are saying that this happened or that happened at this point is premature because we don't know if that damage was caused at impact or if it was caused during the retrieval process which is something that can happen as people get a little overzealous at trying to pull the aircraft out of the water it can cause some damage if it's not properly supported as it comes up even just from 100 feet.</s>COSTELLO: I heard what you said about the body of the plane. You expect it to be about a mile away from where they found the tail section of the plane. The families are very concerned that investigators haven't been able to locate the body of the plane but they pulled up the tail. They found one of the black boxes. So why can't they locate the biggest part of the plane?</s>SOUCIE: Well, that's a really good question -- Carol. There are still some questions in my mind as to why they haven't found it. I believe it's nearby. Investigators I'm speaking to on site have told me that they have confidence that what they are seeing right now is the rest of the airplane. They are still dealing with murky waters down there. They are hesitant to put out information that our sonar definitely found anything because as you remember before they said that and it turned out it was a ship wreck from before. There's a lot of other debris in the ocean. They are very hesitant to put anything out saying this is definitely what we have. They are pretty confident that they found something so it's a matter of some optimistic thoughts about it. But I think really at this point it's just -- they are being hesitant about being confident about anything until they literally see it and it's hard to see in those murky waters.</s>COSTELLO: Understandable. David Soucie, many thanks as always. I appreciate it. Still to come in the NEWSROOM, stand strong or get out. Some members of the Jewish community in Europe think it's time to go. The offer the Israeli prime minister is making next.