through obama care. it is possible. >> all right. we'll see what happens. thanks very much. that's it for me. join us again tomorrow right here on "the situation room." you can watch us live or dvr the show so you won't miss a moment. outfront. what caused the plane with 150 people on board to fall out of sky? 45 minutes into the flight of cruising altitude the plane plunged nearly 27,000 feet for eight straight minutes. tonight a cnn exclusive, ted cruz is fight to repeal obama care. he just admitted he's signing up for it.

let's go outfront. good evening. the breaking news the mystery crash of flight 925. we know the german airbus with 150 on board plunged tens of thousands of feet in just eight minutes. the plane is obliterated to use the word offense as of a local official. debris and pieces scattered for miles. the question is what caused this deadly crash. one of the black boxes has been recovered hours after it crashed into the french alps. it was on a short flight going from barcelona, spain. it was cruising at 38,000 feet. the weather good. the plane had just been inspected yesterday. within minutes it went into a steep drop and disappeared from radar. it crashed. if it took a full eight minutes to drop why was there no

distress call from the cockpit. no comment from the cockpit at all. fred is outfront live where the plane was scheduled to land earlier today. almost half of those on board were german. what are officials saying about the cause of this crash now? >> reporter: at this point in time they're saying a mystery is probably the best way to describe it. as you said this was a plane that was very modern and was in very good condition at least a according to the technical specialists. also the plane was cruising alt constitute altitude and the weather was not averse. the big problem is that it's in an area that's very hard to reach. it's mountainous terrain. it's very rugged terrain. they're having trouble trying to get the remains of those killed out of the area now. they haven't started looking at

the debris at the wreckage yet. one of the positive things that's happened is the black box has been found. one of the things that we have been looking at is possibly safety records of the this plane might have had before. there was some speculation there might have been technical issues with the plane in days leading up to this crash. that's something that's been confirm confirmed. there was an issue with the front landing gear of the plane. they say this has absolutely nothing to do with what happened today. they say there was a strange noise coming from there but technicians had looked at that and the plane has flown since then as well. it's unclear what caused this crash. the they very much want answers. >> tragedy and such a mystery. no distress call at all with so many minutes going by.

the cause of the crash still another mystery. we're learning details about the crucial final moments. the moments that led up to the flight plunging from the sky and crashing in such a remote area of the french alps. >> reporter: german wing flights 9525 an airbus with 144 bass jer passengers and a crew of six on board. leaving 30 minutes late. approximately 10:45 a.m., the plane is cruising at 38,000 feet when something goes wrong. >> translator: the airliner left this height and went straight down. >> reporter: the flight dropped nearly 27,000 feet in eight minutes. >> if it was in controlled dissent it seems like they were in control for at least a portion of that. >> reporter: 10:53 a.m. the plane disappears. the crew never makes a distress

call. one reports hearing a low rumble like an avalanche. the plane described as obliterated. the largest pieces no bigger than a small car. all 150 people on board believed dead. among them 16 german teenagers, classmates traveling with two teachers and two infants. the mountainous location is slowing rescue operations. hundreds of first responders are being gloenflown in. to get there they may have to ski. the plane's pilot was experienced and worked for the company for more than 10 years. >> translator: the model airbus was flown with over 6,000 flight hours. >> reporter: grieving families reported to await word of their loved ones. most of the passengers were from germany, spain or turkey.

>> she married flight 9525 just before it crashed. thank you for being with us. it fus the so hard to process what's happened today. what did you hear? >> it was 11:00 this morning we heard noise and we think it was an avalanche but it wasn't. you know it's the first thing you think in a mountain. i called the captain of the police and he asked me social security an air crash. we don't know where it is. we don't have anymore information at this moment. >> your husband saw the plane. you heard it. what did he see? >> in fact he was on top of the ski resort. he saw a plane and say it's not high. >> did your husband see any

smoke? did he notice anything wrong with the plane other than the fact it was flying too low? >> no nothing. >> what was the weather condition? we keep hearing that it was perfect flying weather. the weather was good. what was it like where you were on the ground? >> this morning wasn't bad. no wind. no. nothing. >> all right. thank you so much. >> you're welcome. >> safety analyst david is outfront. the word used by an official is obliterated to describe the condition of the plane. you heard the witness say the weather was fine. there was not any visibility on the issue. officials said this. can we rule weather out? >> you know you can rule weather out as far as being a direct cause of the aircraft of the accident.

it's just so peculiar that the aircraft would have made this controlled dissent. there was no smoke coming from the aircraft nothing like that. it's called a smart transponder. when the engines lose power it sends out a 77 squawk saying the engine has lost power. that didn't happen. it seems like the aircraft was intentfully driven down this perfectly straight and controlled path. >> you talk about intentfully the straight and controlled path. you use the word peculiar. it plunged from the sky for eight straight minutes in a controlled intentful manner. there was no distress call. the pilots never communicated with the ground. what do you make of that? >> what i would classify it as a controlled flight into terrain meaning they know they are flying but they don't know they

are flying into the terrain. it is controlled situation. this happened a couple times the last one of serious accidents of all times was back in miami out in the everglades when in 1972 an l-1011 was diverted and flying around looking for the cause of this landing gear that wasn't coming down properly. the flight crew was so fixated o on trying to figure out why this wasn't working they forgot to maintain and look out the aircraft and see why theyere they were flying and it slowly dissented. they got the proximity warning. to me it appears this is something that is a possibility in this. obviously, we don't know enough to make that conclusion now. these are the types of things that the investigators will be investigating. >> david, i know you'll be back with us later in the program to go through the debris field on

what happened to figure out when and how this plane broke up into so many pieces. thank you very much. next, we have more on the mystery of the flight. this plane was inspected one day ago. it was flown been an experienced pilot by a well regarded airline. how could it suffer the failure? the jet dropped nearly 30,000 feet in matter of moments. what was it like inside that plane? so controlled what was it like for those passengers. we'll show you the startling images from the crash site. the wreckage from the airplane. our experts will tell you what they think happened today.

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breaking news investigators are going through one of the black boxes recovered from the dead my plane crash. all 150 on board believed dead. the airbus a-320 was quote, obliterated. the question tonight is why did this plane, which was at its cruising altitude of 38,000 feet make such a sudden dissent. it plunged to 27,000 feet in only eight minutes. there was no distress call. what are you learning about this

plane tonight and it's may not nans record and when it had been inspected? >> reporter: it depends who you ask pd when we asked they held a couple of press conferences, they're trying to tell us this plane was in perfect shape. it ended service edntered justice in january of 1990. the vice president came to this afternoon and said there was a routine maintenance check on the plane yesterday. it was grounded yesterday in germany because of a door that closes around the nose landing gear.

he said he didn't believe this problem was a safety issue. he suggested it was rattle a noise on that door. the plane departed 26 minutes late. we have been asking since this morning why did your plane leave 26 minutes late? was it a technical problem. was it a timing problem or a passenger issue. they said they don't know what the problem was. that was the response from the vice president of lufthansa. they are still insisting as far as they are concerned their plane was in good shape and had a maintenance check yesterday. >> thank you very much. live from barcelona tonight. what could have caused this plane to make the dissent? it took off. it went you have to its cruising altitude. everything seemed normal. the steep plunge started. tom foreman is out front. how might this have felt for

passengers. while it was so steep, i think the one thing that's been shocking to learn as we even been starting to cover this disaster is that it was not uncontrolled and it was not as steep as it may seem. >> yeah it might not have really felt like much of anything. we talked to a pilot who flew these kinds of planes a long time ago. he said this number of feet being lost in that amount of time few might have felt like nothing more than a steep approach to an airport. nothing to excite people until this cabin until they happen to look out the window and saw they were among the mountains instead of flying over them as they had hoped. that would have excited an awful lot of alarm there. that's what it would have felt like. that also tends to do away with the theory there was a catastrophic collapse. a certain gradual dissent here. it suggest it didn't happen. it also makes you wonder if they had a fire in the cockpit or

something that disabled the grew that they started the plane down but they passed out. it's possible that could be the case but again they have oxygen masks right there. those things suggest the first theory. the idea of a catastrophic event doesn't seem so likely. then you start looking at other possibilities like what if they had a problem and they thought they could handle it. that would account for this long slow approach here. many of the analysts have said this looks like a crew trying to bring a plane in very carefully. get it down lower and control it maybe a lower altitude and they ran out of time and real estate to get it all done. is that the case? could be but again if they were doing this why didn't they swerve off after way from the mountains and try to hit one of several airports that would have been probably within range if they had turned for them. maybe not but they could have tried. there's no sign they tried at all, erin. >> there's no sign they tried of

no distress call. >> exactly. >> we don't know what's on the voice recorder from the cockpit yet. we don't know what the crew were doing. they were incapacitated or focused on fixing a problem. we don't know. it's pretty interesting there was no distress call. >> it is. it raises another possibility, a third one, which is called controlled flight into terrain. c-fit is the term you hear in aviation circles. it's a common term because it's something that does happen. a crew is getting some kind of false reading or there's something that gives them false into their altitude. crews become so fixated on dealing with some smaller problem they lose their situational awareness. where they are in the sky. by the time they realize they have flown into the mountains or lost the altitude they have no time to correct it.

people say, can that really happen? this is the reason why we urge people not to text and drive because it's hard to imagine that simply looking at a phone would make you miss a truck in front of you and yet people do it all the time. there's a version of this which happens to pilots and it's calledcall called c-fit. that's one of the other things they have to consider. >> thank you very much. a licensed commercial pilot, re retired pilot and our aviation correspondent, richard quest. richard, you heard this one of the things that stand out, there's many things that are strange, but what appears to be a controlled dissent, steep but controlled. not overwhelmly stream but no communeication with the ground no effort to find another airport. nothing. >> that's what's going to be the perplexing part as we cover the start.

story. you can come up with any scenario. none of them fully explain the situation. good reason here yes, there was no distress signal in this eight-minute dissent but add air traffic control. >> this is very densely packed. >> you have a lot of airport and a lot of plane. >> it's not like they were just wandering their way through. they were being called out. they were non-responsive in the cockpit cockpit. even if they were fixated on solving a problem they didn't respond to any of the calls coming in and that's really interesting. >> dan, what do you make of that? they didn't respond to calls, what does that open up to your mind? were they really in control of the plane or was auto-pilot was in control. were they incapacitated? >> we'll have a lot of investigation to tell us that. i feel like they might have been

incapacitate incapacitated. a lot of things you have been taking about, it was a controlled dissent. you would have turned toward an emergency airport. you want to get away from the mountains. if you had a depressurization problem, you might have turned away. your procedure is to land at the nearest airport. there must have been some sort of incapacitation of the crew. were they focused too much on the problem or they were overcome by a smoke or something like that. it's real good question to tonight out the answer. >> we have not raised the question yet, which is a crucial one, could something nefarious have happened? >> i think it's real possibility. certainly, we don't know.

incapacitation seems to be the leading theory right now. the pilots didn't react in a way that would be considered normal in a circumstance such as this. what you have on several possibilities, criminal intent by passenger or crew member. the other possibility is some catastrophic failure. the pilots are trained to dawn those masks. at 38,000 feet you have mere seconds to get that oxygen mask on. could the problem have been so great and startling and physically overcoming because an explosive decompression is a physical event on the body. it feels like you're being kicked in the stomach. >> i agree with you. we're talking about an event that happens after the planes finishes its climb, 38,000 feet.

there's a small window. whatever happened they were able to initiate the dissent. thereafter they become incapacitated. they are in a position to begin the dissent. >> dan, what's your take on this? the possibilities that something that this wasn't just a random act. the possibility this could have been something nefarious? >> i think it's too early to say but they did initiate the dissent in a controlled manner like you would expect and the airplane performed exactly as you would expect it to perform. >> thanks so all three of you. i appreciate it. snow and fridge ids temperatures are moving in on the crash site now. the window for recovery operations is closing. we'll show you the wreckage spread across inaccessible terrain. they can't get to it. we'll show you. yesterday ted cruz announced

he's running for president. today he admitted he's signing up for obama care. fair to say that's pretty shocking, right.

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more on our breaking news story. the mystery of flight. we do not what caused flight 9525 to dissend. the debris field that's the final resting place for 150 human beings was described as a picture of who. in a moment we'll talk about the pictures and talk about what they tell us about what might have experienced. i want to go to nic robertson. he's live in france. he's seven miles from the crash. search efforts are expected to resume when it gets light. i know they say weather was not an issue but it is an issue now for the recovery. >> reporter: absolutely. it's raining here right now.

the anticipation is higher up it's going to be snowing. right now we're at a round about three and a half thousands feet. you're below freezing. the rain will be sfloenow. that's the concern. it will be falling on what's already difficult terrain making it difficult not just for the recovery but to even see what's on the ground. see where the debris is. see where the victims of this crash are and the concern is if during the daylight hours it stays below freezing than any of the recovery teams will need specialist equipment not just because the terrain is steep but because the ground will be frozen and icy and dangerous and we're told the only way in to this sight at the moment is to go in by helicopter. there isn't reliable land

access. very remote area. >> nic, they are sure it seems there are no survivor or there were no survivors, initially even. >> looks like he didn't hear that question. i'll put that to my panel here. david, to this question of any possibility of anyone surviving the initial impact. the image, the single clearest image we have of the debris field, let me show it to you. what do you see in this in terms of what happened? in terms of whether anyone could have survived the initial impact? >> you can see how widespread it is just from this view. you can see some of the pieces the largest pieces about the size of a small vehicle, a small car.

the biggest pieces are most likely the center parts of the wings. most of the debris that's in colorful pieces the pieces that have red are from the tail of the aircraft. they are painted in manner that has color on the tail. those are the ones that survived which is typical of an aircraft this type. >> david, you hear about the size of the debris itself and what happened. is it your belief this plane crashed in air or broke up upon impact with that mountain and if so did everyone in your view die on impact quickly, suddenly? >> yeah at this point it looks as if it was from the impact of the ground. there's two scatter points which would indicate it hit once and broke into two, a second section. the second section had a second scatter point.

the fact they're all small pieces indicates it did hit all one place in a solid hit and when that happened the debris comes back out at you. it's kind of a ricochet effect because the ground is frozen. it's like hitting concrete and the parts come back. as they come back as the rest of the aircraft is going forward, it literally takes all those pieces and makes them into small pieces. it's not just a rapid explosion that you might think. it's as it hits and comes back. it's all instantaneous. this is in less than a second all of this happens. the passengers would not be aware of anything that happened at all. it would have been so surprising and shocking. they would have had no idea. >> that's the only thing to be grateful for in all of this. we may never know what they knew. there's some larger pieces. the size of a small car and it was a european official saying that. we're talking about small pieces

was the largest piece. we have one piece, a fuselage with four windows. three seem to be intact. you have four windows. three seems to be intact. what does this picture say to you? >> david could speak a little better to this. this might be the last impact area of the airplane. this is a spot that didn't take a lot of the damage. this looks like the interior of the fuselage. >> perhaps towards the back of the plane which would make sense if it hits nose first. that's where you see the bigger pieces. david, we have a picture of plane. you talked about the way the german wing planes are designed. there's not much color. you have some red. we have some red, just piece on the ground. what are we looking at? what does this tell you, this entire piece?

>> this appears to be the left side of the tail or the rudder of the aircraft where there's an orange and red stripe that goes around to the back there. that's what this would be. the tail is the last thing to arrive at the accident scene. most of the marge has been absorbed by the aircraft and the destruction of the aircraft. it would be typical to find larger pieces of the aircraft towards the aft. >> les, what would it have felt like as a pilot? what would it have felt like to passengers? >> let's address that. this airplane didn't plunge. i think david spoke about it to some degree. this seemed as if it was a controlled dissent. >> sharp but not terrifying. >> it wasn't even that. ooifd i've done that rate to begin our arrival into a particularly airport. the passengers would have felt a

slight nose down attitude. their ears would sense they would were starting to dissent. nothing that would have alarmed them. >> until they saw mountains around them. thanks very much to both of you. i appreciate it. next the plane that crashed today was an airbus 320. this is used by a lot of airlines in the united states. we'll look at its safety record. tonight, ted cruz you know he's made his cause in life repealing every bloody word of obama care. guess what he's signed up for obama care because he lost coverage from goldman sachs. our report is coming up. google search: bodega beach house.

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breaking news. technical advisors from airbus are on route traveling to the accident site. an airbus with 150 on board,

inex inex inexplicably crashed into a mountain. it's plane model used across the word. it takes off for lands every 2.5 seconds every day. >> reporter: worldwide, more than 3600 airbus a-320 are flown at more than 400 airlines. eight american carriers combined have more than highway a-320s in thinker fleet. among the biggest jet blue with 130. united had 97. delta and u.s. airways 69 each. in the short to medium range world it's second only to the boeing 737 which is delivered nearly 8,000 of its ultra popular medium size planes. every 2.5 seconds a plane from one of its 320 family is taking off or landing somewhere in the world. the plane identified as german wings flight 9525 had been in service since 1991 when it took

off from barcelona. airbus said it had 58,300 flight hours in some 46700,700 flights. the jet climbed to 38,000 feet and dissended until its signal was lost at about 6800 feet. no distress call was ever heard. >> this plane was 24 years old. it was being maintained on a very strict schedule even an enhanced schedule for older planes. >> reporter: three months ago it was a similar story with air asia flight 8501. that plane was just six years old and logged about 23,000 hours in the air. shortly after taking off from indonesia the pilot asked air traffic control if he could ascend to 38,000 feet. the request was denied. in it's history there's been 12

a-320 crashes that were deadly resulting in 980 deaths on the planes or ground. the first crash shortly after the plane started service in 1988. air france flight 296 skimmed the top of trees during an air show demonstration flight. the cause, the flight by wire system and pilot error. in 2007 flight 3054 crashed on landed in brazil. a reverse thruster had been deactivated. it crashed into a cargo terminal. 187 passengers and crew died plus 12 on the ground. the deadliest crash for an a-320. cause likely mechanical error. the plane collided with a flock of geese. both engines failed. capital sully landed the plane

on the river. all on board survived. >> richard quest is joining me. you say this crash is very disturbing to you for a couple of specific reasons. >> absolutely. first of all, it's a first world airline. german wings part is one of the most respected airlines in the world. it's flying into the most sophisticated air space in the world. air traffic control. everybody is watching it. finally, it's in the safest part of the flight. the crews. we had numbers last week which show most accidents happen take off and landing. they don't happen in the crews. put these factors together and you end up with this incident which is deeply troubling. >> and on top of it air traffic control seem to be on top of it. they noticed the plane was coming down. they kept saying why are you coming down and they got no response. >> from barcelona, heading up

towards germany, if you deviate from you flight plane you can cause chaos because of so much air traffic. >> what about this issue of the plane. there's been questions about it's so automated. they're so proud of it. it was that automation maybe that was part of the problem. are the planes too automated? do the pilots know how to fly when something goes wrong? >> where the difference is is that the airbus will do things in it feels you're doing it wrong or you're going into an unsafe environment. the plane just won't let you codocodo it. >> when things go horribly

wrong, how can you trust the plane? >> the core question is are planes too automated and are today's pilots not trained to hand fly the aircraft in extremes? the truth is they're not. i know several ceos that are saying we will add hand flying into our regular training and upgrading of pilots. a couple of ceos have said it they're doing it every single time they go into the flight similarulateor simulator. >> when you need it you don't have time to think. >> you need to be able to fly the plane yourself. the one thing pilots have not learned to do is to fly at altitude and speed and hand at the same time. >> thank you very much. that's pretty terrying. 16 german teenagers returning home from an exchange program in spain. two hours away at from seeing

their families. senator ted cruz makes a starting admission to cnn. >> you will be getting obama care? >> it is one of the good things about obama care. i'm brian vickers, nascar® driver. i'm kevin nealon comedian.

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program in spain with another school. where the families were supposed to land. they were an hour away on scheduled time. fred that is a town school. all the children on the same plane, they are devastated. >> reporter: yeah. i mean absolutely devastating. and you know erin the more we find out about the identities of the people who were killed on that on that plane, the more we we discover the true magnitude of the tragedy that took place here in on that flight. as you said, there were 16 students who were on the flight. they came back from a week long exchange. they're in spain, just on the way back. two teachers as well. and the community that they're from is place called haltern. it's north from where i am. and the entire community is absolutely devastated. they went out today, nominated a

spokesperson the mayor of the town he gave a press conference where he had a lot of trouble holding it together because the entire town there is really in a state of mourning. there's flowers that are being laid down in front of that school. there are people who are obviously coming by, lighting candles. it's something that has gripped that entire community, and it's really only just some of the many tragic things that we're finding out. there's also two opera singers who were also on the flight. one of them was traveling with her small baby. one of two babies who was killed on that flight. the more we piece together the identities of those who were killed more of the magnitude of what happened on that flight becomes real and it has plunge that country, germany, into a state of shock tonight, erin. >> a state of shock. each one of those stories shows you how significant every single human life is. thank you so much fred. next, ted cruz. you know he's called obamacare the most unpopular law in the

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so tonight, ted cruz signing up for obamacare. do you think i live in an

alternate universe? the newly announced presidential candidate who rose to fame in the senate for railing against is now on the president's health care plan. how do we know? dana bash asked him and here's what he told her. >> you and your family have ben getting your health insurance through your wife's job. her company has been goldman sachs. she has now left that to help you with your campaign. so where are you getting your health insurance now? >> so she's taking on unpaid leave of absence. we're transitioning with new health insurance and presumably do it through my job in the senate so we'll be on the federal exchange like millions of others on the federal exchange. >> so you will be getting obamacare, effectively? >> it is one of the good things about obamacare is that the statute provided that members of congress would be on the exchanges without subsidies, just like millions of americans. so there wouldn't be a double standard. >> he calls it the exchanges. interesting. he didn't want to use the word obamacare when it came to

himself. how surprised were you? >> i didn't know how he was going to answer that question and so the answer is i was surprised and you could tell that i was by the way i followed up. the irony is just kind of unbelievable that you have made your name fighting against obamacare and you now are going to sign up to get your insurance through that very process, obamacare. >> listen it was the case before obamacare that federal employees could get health insurance through their jobs. that's not a new development. so yes, i'll get my insurance through my job like millions of other americans. that's not a shocking -- >> you take a subsidy from your job which is the federal government? >> we will follow the text of the law. i strongly oppose the exemption that president obama illegally put in place for members of congress because harry reid and the senate democrats didn't want to be under the same rules as the american people. >> that means you are going to

take a government subsidy? >> i believe we should follow the text of the law. >> the law that you want to repeal? >> yes, i believe we should follow the text of every law, even laws i disagree with. >> that was amazing. i was obviously very surprised he answered that way, but i should also give you a little bit of a post-script, especially in that last answer. i was trying to get out of him whether or not he was going to accept i call it a subsidy, you can call it an employer contribution like we have working for a big company. those who work for the federal government get it as well and, but there's from taxpayer money because they work for the government. many republicans who oppose obamacare on principle say i'm going into the obamacare exchange but won't take the employer contribution. he didn't have an answer for me there but afterward, the spokeswoman said the answer is no. if in fact he goes into the obamacare exchange he's not going to take it. >> he would return the subsidy. but interesting what he had to say he'll follow the law even

though as you point it he so adamantly wants to repeal. >> it is. the other thing that the cruz people are sort of pushing back on and something that i kind of understand about is that a lot of republicans who oppose obamacare take it because they effectively don't have any choice because it's the law of the land. >> it's a fair point but of course it's tough when you're the face of repealing obamacare. dana bash, thank you so much. and anderson starts now. good evening, thanks for joining us tonight. new information we are just getting in about the crash of an airliner flown by millions of people every day all around the world. the information that could shed light on the crash today of german wings 9525. as you probably know it went down in the frefrnl alps on a flight from barcelona to dus l dusseldorf germany. the plane descending 27,000 people fooet in nearly