tv Death Row Stories CNN March 27, 2015 8:00pm-9:01pm PDT
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inappropriate and suggestive of the conscious of guilt. she of course kconfessed, sort f confessed in accusing this individual lamumba of being the killer and suggested that she was there and had a knowledge of the crime, and once again, that may have been a factor of relating to her immaturity, so she has grown tremendously being in prison for four year, and experiencing the horror of wondering whether she is going to be in prison and she has matured and this is what has helped her with the court in the end. >> thank you, paul, and everyone for helping out with this, a nd it started out in 2007 in an apartment in italy, and a 21-year-old british student meredith kercher slashed at the throat, and accused her and her boyfriend, and now the highest
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court in italy saying that she is out of the water, and they overturned her murder convictio conviction, and we will continue to follow that as well as the details of flight a320. stay with us. thank you. and the tragedy of a320 began to today with details that the co-pilot had been hiding a medical illness. the times cited unnamed autor tis said that he had a mental illness, and the "times" said that he went a bit further saying it was depression. but the newspaper said that he had suffered a serious depressive episode at the time he he took a break from his pilot training in 2009. and now, investigators are trying to figure out the pilot's state of mind a major part of the efforts thus far, because maybe, maybe it speaks to motive, and more now on the
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investigation and motives now with this report from pamela brown. >> reporter: tonight, the german investigators are searching the co-pilot's apartment bringing out boxes of evidence, and left without a word to reporters. we know inside of andreas lubitz' apartment, they discovered torn up medical leave notes in the trash can and including one for the day that the crashed the flight 9525 into the french alps. >> we have found a letter that indica indicated that he was declared by a medical doctor unfit to fly. . >> tonight, the german prosecutor's office says that it appears that lubitz was trying to keep the condition a secret. >> we have reason to believe
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that he was hiding the illness from the company he was working for. >> reporter: according to the "wall street journal" he was being treated for depression, and being treated by a neuropsychologist for a period of time including the day of the crash. this is dusseldorf medical clinic and we know that andreas lubitz came here to be treated for a condition in february of this years, and recently march 10th, but the clinic would not say what that was, but they made it clear it was not for depression. those who saw lubitz here running a marathon in 2013 said that he did not lead on anything was wrong.
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>> reporter: lubitz's medical history and what germanwings and lufthansa knew about it will play an important role in the investigation. >> every pilot learns during his training and i always say as an aviation doctor, there's anything wrong with you, please contact me. do not hide physical or psychological illnesses. >> pamela joins us from dusseldorf, and it seems that there is a lot that we don't know. >> reporter: absolutely, anderson. a lot of unanswered questions. publicly, officials are only saying so much. as we say in the report, they're not specifying what this illness is, as we know, there are reports out there that he was battling a depression, but we don't know if there was something else, if that is true, we don't know what was the imp pe tus of that. and there are questions about his training.
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and questions about his training back in 2008. why did he take a few months off from training and then go back and as we know, complete it. was something going on there? lufthansa will not say why his training was interrupted, but say he was is 100% fit to fly and no reason to think other wise. anderson? >> this solidifies what was until now merely educated guesses. let's get perspective now from chief medical correspondent sanjay gupta who joins us. the new york times, wall street journal all reported the co-pilot treated for depression of some time and then this report back in 2009 when he left training that there was a major depressive episode. could depression alone result in someone doing something like this? there's certainly a huge number of people out there who struggle with depression, have struggled with depression and don't end up taking their own life or killing others. >> it is unlikely that depression alone would lead to this sort of behavior, to answer your question directly, anderson. people who have major depressive episodes, if they are going to be violent in any way, if they're going to hurt somebody in any way, it's usually hurting themselves and if there's loss of life, usually because of
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suicide, not homicide. that's what we know from depression alone. if there was a personality disorder that was superimposed on top of this, you have to think there was something else sort of going on here. so we just don't know and as pamela was just saying, what sort of precipitated all this over the days and weeks before this event as well, those are very, very important details to try and figure out what may have happened, but, you know, caution and i've talked to some folks who do this sort of work. they say, look, at the end of the day, there may not be a satisfactory answer. there's a real desire to say, hey, this is the cause, this is what happened. but it may not be that neat and tidy when all is said and done, anderson. >> lufthansa said all pilots are examined once a year and this co-pilot was in their words, 100% flight worthy without any limitations. obviously, that is not the case. they maybe have believed he was 100% flight worthy.
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might have been hiding the information from them but could it have completely gone unnoticed? >> i think it could have gone unnoticed. even some of the video recording in the cockpit prior to earlier on, it sounded like there were conversations that were pretty par for the course that were taking place. even within the immediate time period before this happened, it seemed like there weren't clues people picked up on. i wonder what the weeks and days before that. how was he sleeping, caring for himself, the nature of his relationships at that time. those are questions investigators are trying to figure out now but there may have been clues in that time period. but even then, it's hard to know. how many times have we talked about these sorts of things and the aftermath of some mass homicide and people always say, well, were there clues? perhaps. maybe not.
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it just sometimes is very difficult, even when you look back in hindsight. >> was there a precipitating event, a break-up of some sort, a major life change that would have sort of plunged him into a deeper depression or made him suicidal, but again, making that leap between suicidal and homicidal, particularly mass murder at this scale, this is a huge leap indeed. sanjay, appreciate the update. thanks. >> thank you. once again tonight, a lot to talk about. try to make sense of. joining us is safety analysis and former faa investigator and author of "flight 370" and why it's a matter of time before this will happen again," david
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soucie. richard quest, justin greene. richard, this reporting that the co-pilot hid his medical condition and we don't know the details on what it is from his employer, it still does not indicate motive. >> no. it doesn't. if you're looking for a cast iron, motive, looking the put to a jury, not that you would, but you can say open and shut case. no, it doesn't. we don't know what the medical situation was. we can extrapolate. we can speculate. the notes were ripped up. he was meant to be flying on that very day. had a note saying he was unfit to fly. it doesn't go to motive but it does give us a very good idea of the state of mind that this person was in who was knowingly going into a highly stressed job where he'd been told he was unfit to fly. >> it's unclear what the medical condition was. >> there are so many rumors. concerning whether it's physical. whether it's mental. if it was a psychological condition. how serious or severe. in what way? we don't know but yes, we will find out. >> david, lufthansa policy requires employees to disclose if they have a condition to affect their ability to fly but there is a real incentive for
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pilots to hide it. i mean, essentially, if you are grounded for a year because of depression or because of medicine you're taking because of depression, that can destroy a pilot's career. >> that's the rub. there's another thing that can take their career down. that's making a severe error in their flight pattern and reporting it on their voluntary reporting, putting it in front of a board and they have to decide, are we going to ruin this guy's career permanently? that's a record and it's on his record. so there's a lot of things the pilot faces in this realm. if you have this record, it goes directly in the face of safety. it has to be open and voluntary information. >> there's so much stigma in this country around the world not only for any kind of illness but mental illness in particular. we don't know if that's what this co-pilot had, a mental health issue but it's understandable. i mean, it's a difficult situation.
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it's understandable of employees, hide all the time if they are suffering from depression. don't want their employer knowing that kind of detail. pilots have this incredible responsibility. the lives of so many passengers in their hands. >> pilots are athletes in a way. physical well being and mental well being directly connected to their job. a lot of people with mental illness and physical conditions are practicing, p wu but pilots are not one. if they, if it comes out that they have that condition. >> to get back, once you've been off for a year, to get back in the cockpit, to convince your
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employer and also, your fellow colleagues, i imagine. that's an uphill battle. >> i had a whole, a lot of friends whose practice is devoted to representing pilots who have their tickets, their licenses pulled and are fighting to get back in the cockpit. it's a major hurdle to get back in the cockpit, if you have a medical issue that has pulled you out. >> we can't really fully understand the magnitude because most of us are not in jobs that frankly, if we did have a medical condition, a physical condition or a mental psychological condition that would be absolutely devastating to the future of our careers, that would grind it to a halt. i've had cases where i've known of somebody who has been diagnosed with something and the doctor said, you stop flying now. today. if you don't, i will report you. and your entire career comes to an end or potentially comes to an end. >> how well do pilots know each other? does word get around that this person is struggling with an issue, this person has an issue? is it a small community in that way? >> it's a small community to complicate that or make worse, you might fly with your pilot for a month and then come in with someone else. probably not even that often. might be a day or two.
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so each time you do that, spend five or six hours in a close area. there's a lot of dialogue because there's waiting with the autopilot on and that person goes to the next one and to the next one. in some respects, it's less than you might assume. in other respects, it's more communication line. >> just in the liability issue, we know obviously lufthansa is giving some money to families, which is common in this kind of a situation, help families through this emergency period. but in terms of liability, there's really two distinct kind of regions. either an airline is found at fault or not at fault. if the airline is not at fault, what's the liability? >> if it's not at fault, the airline has a limited liability to passengers. they have to offer them about $160,000. >> this is under international conventions. montreal conventions. >> yes.
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provable damages. if they have $3 million worth of damages based on earnings, they get $160,000. >> if they're at fault and a strong case against lufthansa if one employees was hiding something, it's unlimited damages, potentially based on the what kind of career the person had? emotional distress? >> it's unlimited provable damages under the law but lufthansa has to prove it was without fault. not the plaintiffs don't go into court and say you're negative, did this wrong and that wrong. >> that's right. justin, thank you very much for being with us. david soucie as well, richard quest. a lot more to talk about. coming up next, an up close look at just how daunting conditions are at the crash site high in the french alps and later, an idea getting more traction putting cameras in the cockpit. we will look at the advantages and why some pilots are fighting tooth and nail against that.
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all the interest in the co-pilot's mental state, we want to focus on the mental anguish he caused. germanwings have set up a center for counseling sessions to start tomorrow. in the meantime, more families arrive today at the crash site. nic robertson is there. he joins us now. what's the latest? >> reporter: well, in all of this, it's hard to say good information, anderson, but at least it's a help for the families.
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we understand from the recovery teams now that they've identified 16 of the victims as being done in dna labs. the lights you see behind me, police headquarters, they're working through the night here. behind that, the recovery teams are processing the bodies as they bring them up. we also understand they're bringing in biometric equipment as well to help in the process of identifying the bodies. this will include fingerprinting equipment and we also understand when the families come here, the french authorities as we know given the opportunity to go as close as they can to the crash site, but they're also taking dna samples from the families as well. and again, all of this to sort of speed the process by which they can make these very difficult identifications, anderson. >> horrific process. clearly seems communication is much better with family members than we have seen in prior mysterious plane crashes. updates as the news comes in? >> reporter: the families have been given a lot of space.
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you have lufthansa bringing them into the country and the french authorities sort of picking them up and helping them after that. what we have seen, this i think, was exemplified when we saw soon after this crash, german chancellor angela merkel, french president francois and coming here as well, the spanish prime minister, and they came together. it was a message of how well they work together and that seems to be the case continuing now. the german lufthansa, the french authorities getting people and the briefings do seem to be happening. so there's a lot behind the scenes that we don't get the details on, anderson. >> nic robertson reporting from staging ground. nic, thanks. more now on how challenging it is to be in those mountains in these hard conditions. karl penhaul found out firsthand
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today. >> reporter: swinging on the wire, they recover the remains. hundreds of feet below, emergency crews cling to the mountainside, just so they don't fall. just so they don't fall. investigators say the speed of the crash pulverized plane and passengers. the recovery operation they say is bit by bit, bag by bag. you can just pick out the small red flags, rescuers dig into the earth when they discover new fragments. and that looks like a scorch mark. the french prosecutors said the plane hit the mountain, bounced off and then disintegrated. it's a tough hike through steep valleys. a while before dawn but we're going to a trail here. in order to understand why some rescuers describe this as their biggest ever challenge, we try to get closer to the crash zone. there's a little bit of frost this morning and now the sun coming down.
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certainly no sign of snow just yet. [ speaking foreign language ] >> translator: few people except shepherds live here. >> reporter: trees and grass. you can see why they have to fly anything out. the crash site by helicopter. the rotor blade helps pinpoint. we see teams work with expert mountaineers. high winds make flying treacherous, and saying farewell is never easy, but perhaps those grieving could find consolation among these crags.
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authorities say the co-pilot did crash on purpose killing everyone on board. it defys comprehension and goes against every instinct in their dna and we will sew you what it took for this co-pilot to take the airbus a320 to descend as low as it could go, and what it looks like with the alarms triggered. kyung lah shows us firsthand. >> lock the physical door. it will totally lock out that door. >> reporter: so begins what is the likely descent and the a320 simulator. >> just dialled in. got the airplane going down.
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>> reporter: the motion of hitting 100 in this situation is unthinkable for you? >> absolutely. why would i do that? it goes against every grain in my body. there's no reason why i would do that. >> reporter: you know the consequences of that action. >> absolutely. >> reporter: if you had to step in this young man's mind, do you think he understood? >> it's a very difficult subject for a pilot because we are, again, here, to keep our passengers safe. to keep the airplane safe, to keep our crews safe, so to go where this young man went is hard for me to go there. by saying i'm fit to fly, that means i'm good to go. i'm ready to take on this airplane. >> reporter: and all the lives in the back. >> that's right. >> reporter: approximately 9 minutes later -- >> up. so now we would pull up and react. >> pull up. pull up. pull up.
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>> this the worst situation i've been in. >> reporter: what happens to your hands after that crash? >> they're sweaty. you can see it. in all the years i've been flying a simulator, never seen an airplane hit the ground. we recover the airplane before that happens. >> reporter: so that was unthinkable. for you. >> yeah. hard to see. >> reporter: roger takes us through a manual scenario explaining the germanwings pilot likely did not do this based on the control descent. >> pull up. >> reporter: it's uncomfortable. >> pull up. >> let's just come out of this. get out of this. >> pull up. >> no need to take it. >> reporter: even in the simulator in a scenario we've asked him to do for the purposes of this story, this pilot cannot stand it. does it exceed pilot instinct? is it human instinct to pull up the stick at that point? >> yes, i'm thinking about the safety of my passengers, my
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crew, and the plane. that's what i do as a pilot. >> reporter: is that why this incident has so disturbed the people in your profession? >> it's unthinkable that a pilot would take an airplane and drive it into the ground. it's not something we would ever think about. >> reporter: kyung lah, cnn, las vegas. >> joining me again, cnn aviation correspondent richard quest and with us, ron stock and airbus a320 captain. ron, it's interesting to see that pilot in the simulator couldn't even bring himself that close to simulate crashing an aircraft. just against every instinct pilots have. >> even in the simulator, i can assure you, there isn't a pilot out there that wants to allow that to happen. allow the airplane to hit the ground. we practice those maneuvers. it is called controlled flight into terrain. we practice that maneuver in the airplane purposely so that if we do get a warning like that, terrain, terrain, pull up, we know what to do immediately. and nobody, even though we know
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this is a simulator, we don't allow that to happen. >> richard, you and i were watching that. you had the same situation in simulators. >> the instructor will not even countenance the idea. they don't even want to think about it. don't want to try it. not only that, there have been times in the simulator i got into trouble and the instructor won't just switch it back. he'll take the controls, and they'll fly it out. it's a mental blockage. they dare not go to the idea that this isn't real. >> ron, it's interesting. is it possible once the flight data recorder is found, i mean, if this co-pilot in the last seconds attempted to pull the plane back, to pull the plane up, would that record in the flight data recorder?
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>> absolutely. that should record control surface, control input. control surface movement. numerous parameters. yes, i would say that that would be, that data would be there. >> and, you know, again, there's a lot we don't know about this co-pilot, exactly what the illness he was facing is, that he was trying to hide. if a pilot is intent on hiding something, on hiding thoughts they're having or hiding an illness, if they don't self-disclose, if they're not getting treatment, if they don't want their employer the know, there's no guarantee that i suppose something like this couldn't happen again. there's no structure in place, at least in lufthansa that unless they self-report, that it's going to be discovered. >> i think this situation is so remote.
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i have known numerous pilots over 30 plus years that have relinquished their medical certificate for medical reasons. we take our medical certificate or medical license very, very seriously. every time we fill out the form 8500, the faa form, to get a medical, you have to self-disclose 20 some items on there. mental as well as physical. and actually, in the bottom of the form, it states that if you don't supply this document, you can be imprisoned for up to, i believe, it's five years and fined $250,000. you have to report if you go visit a doctor for any reason on that form. >> i didn't realize that. that's incredible. ron stok, thank you very much. richard quest as well.
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just ahead, the deliberate crash of 9525 reignited the debate over cameras in cockpits. why aren't they required and what difference might they make to safety even if they don't stop the crash, they wouldn't have been able to stop the crash on 9525 but would they make a difference for the investigation afterwards? details ahead. it's not likely to go away on its own. so let's do something about it. premarin vaginal cream can help it provides estrogens to help rebuild vaginal tissue and make intercourse more comfortable. premarin vaginal cream treats vaginal changes due to menopause and moderate-to-severe painful intercourse caused by these changes. don't use it if you've had unusual bleeding, breast or uterine cancer, blood clots, liver problems, stroke or heart attack, are allergic to any of its ingredients or think you're pregnant. side effects may include headache, pelvic pain, breast pain,
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if crash of flight 9525 that french authorities say was deliberate is prompting changes in airline policy. for the first time europe's aviation agency is recommending that two people always be in the cockpit during flight and some european airlines including lufthansa already begun implementing that guideline. the crash reignited debate over something else many believe should be in airline cockpits at all times. we're talking about cameras. randi kaye has that angle. >> reporter: a 3,000 foot tumble from the sky.
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that's what happened to this ses cessna plane carrying nine people. >> it's very obvious the aircraft path was near vertical. >> reporter: why this plane dropped straight down killing everyone on board back in 1997 baffled the ntsb. no black boxes were recovered to call for cockpit video cameras. california based physics corporation delivered dozens of cameras though none to major airlines. >> they have the camera facing to the door behind the pilots. you can have a camera behind the pilots. depending on the type of lens chosen for the camera. you could have wide field of view or narrow field of view. >> reporter: they're designed on the instruments, the pilot's hands or even their feet. not necessarily on the pilot's faces. they can record up to 32 hours and the company said they can survive a crash. withstanding heat.
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>> it will stand at 5,000 pound static crush load. >> reporter: like black boxes, has a beacon that lasts up to 90 days allowing time to locate them. >> you can actually see when people took actions and what they took, what the settings were, you can read that through the flight data recorder to some degree. >> reporter: but still, not everyone sold. >> i'm very much against it. i just feel like we have pretty much the situation covered between a cockpit voice recorder which records every sound of any kind. >> reporter: concerned pilots argue it's an invasion of privacy, suggesting conversation about a supervisor or an argument with a spouse could end up on youtube. still, the ntsb argues cockpit cameras could show investigators what happened in those critical moments before a crash. did a pilot have a heart attack? was there smoke in the cockpit?
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or did a dangerous passenger manage to get inside? the airline pilot's association rejects the idea of cameras, which could cost up to $100,000 each. the group told us resources should be focused on enhancing current systems, as opposed to video images which are subject to misinterpretation and may lead investigators away from accurate conclusions. randi kaye, cnn, new york. >> joining me now, aviation attorney and former military pilot justin green and cnn aviation analyst and pilot miles o'brien. i think most non-pilots, when they hear about the idea of putting cameras in cockpits say, well, look, that's a no brainer. whether it's data that's stored in a third kind of black box or whether it's streamed to ground control, it just seems like a sensible idea now. >> it is a sensible idea. and i think a lot of the kind of
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reluctance of pilots to embrace the idea is based on a mistrust of how the information will be used. >> distrust of management prying on their privacy. those sorts of things. pilots are as invested in safety as anybody perhaps more so because their lives are on the line as well as the passengers. so i think there is a real mistrust and that's the basis of the pushback. >> miles, i mean, there's obviously the cost associated with this kind of thing. the video footage could lead investigators away from accurate conclusions. to me, that seems counterintuitive. if you have the technology to stream video and whether it's watching in realtime or just record it somewhere on the ground, if you have a crash, that's one piece of data that you can immediately go to before you even find the voice data recorder and you find the other data recorder. >> this is all in the realm of common sense. of course it's better.
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of course it is. there's no need to debate this. it's not really a matter of cost. it's an inconsequential cost in the grand scheme of things and when they were talking about putting the voice recorders in cockpits, it was the same argument. this won't do us any good, of course it does good and it will do good. the idea that somehow these video pilots meeting their demise will end up on television is a complete red herring because we don't even listen to the recordings. we see the transcripts. so i think pilots are making a mistake here but i understand why. there is this idea of mistrust and has got to go away. the airline management and pilots have been at odds for years. management getting givebacks, work rules, taking away pensions, on it goes. there is this huge climate, adversarial climate which is absolutely runs against safety in every shape and form.
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>> it does seem like there would be ways to address some of the pilot concerns with having video out there. just as miles was saying, access to this voice recorder is limited. you were saying when we were off air that in a lawsuit against an airline, you have to go through court for attorneys to even get access to it. you would think there would be ways to address the concerns of pilots and still have video streaming. >> i think the experience they've had with the cockpit voice recorder. it will make pilots live easier with videotaping and as i said. off the air, pilots are taped from the moment they drive up to the parking lot through the terminal and i think they're used to being on video surveillance, all of us are than we used to be. >> obviously, improvements are
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made on airplanes often after a crash. do you see 9525 as the catalyst to get cameras finally in the cockpits? do you think this is the turning point? >> i don't know the camera would have changed the events. >> sure. >> unfortunately. but put it into the context of putting the cockpit in the cloud, if you will. the camera, having the cake ability of streaming data to a satellite when something goes awry in a plane and then turning it around. having two-way capability of communication. why shouldn't someone on the ground when they realize there's trouble like this be able to open the door for a pilot who's locked out? the only reason the airlines won't do it, i know nasa looks at early studies for single pilot operations. you would need this kind of connection to the ground to make single pilot operations work. the airlines do that because it saves them money.
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>> miles o'brien, good to have you on. justin green as well. the voice data recorder offered crucial clues on the crash. this is where investigators heard the pilot banging on the cockpit door. investigators are still trying to find the flight data recorders. we said in hope it will answer more questions, but keep in mind, sometimes so-called black boxes don't actually help. we'll have that story coming up. help on experian.com. d kaboom... well, i just have a few other questions. >>chuck, the only other question you need to ask is, "what else can you do for me?" i'll just take a water... get your credit swagger on. become a member of experian credit tracker and find out your fico score powered by experian. fico scores are used in 90% of credit decisions.
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sometimes the recorders don't provide all the answer. families and investigators, everyone are left to wonder exactly what happened. once again, here's randi kaye. >> reporter: this is the sound of a pilot in trouble. >> swissair one-eleven. >> reporter: that was the pilot of swissair 111, talking to air traffic control minutes before he crashed into the atlantic ocean in 1998. everyone on board was killed. when crash investigators found the plane's black boxes at the bottom of the ocean, they were stunned. >> both the recorders stopped recording about six minutes before the aircraft actually hit the water. >> reporter: leaving investigators to wonder why they suddenly lost control of the plane. it was a fire they later found in the jet's entertainment system which also caused the black boxes to fail. but it took putting the plane back together, all 2 million pieces of it, to figure that
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out. bottom line, the so-called black boxes aren't perfect. and they're not black either. they're usually orange. on an airplane, they're tucked inside an insulated case and surrounded by stainless steel. built to withstand temperatures high as 2,000 degrees fahrenheit and catastrophic impact. after twa flight 200 went down after 12 minutes after takeoff from new york's jfk airport, the plane's black boxes were recovered, but they offered little. >> both the voice recorder and the data recorder terminated their operation within a nanosecond of each other. when the explosion took place. >> reporter: regardless, they figured out a fuel crash caused it.
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on 9/11, 64 people died on board american airlines flight 77 when it slammed into the pentagon. fire crews spent days trying to put out the flames. the two black boxes were found in the wreckage, but the cockpit voice recorder was too charred to offer anything of value. >> it flew in with such force and the fire was so intense that nothing could have survived that impact. >> reporter: but the cockpit voice recorder on board germanwings 9525 is already yielding clues that the co-pilot intentionally brought the plane down. the hope is now the second black box, the flight data recorder will be recovered. so investigators can learn even more about this doomed flight. randi kaye, cnn, new york. up next, we take a look at the other aviation mystery. where is malaysia flight 370? it has been one year, and the
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search is still on, and still no sign of the 239 people who were on board. our safety analyst, david soucie, warns this could happen again but crucial changes are already in place due to that disappearance. insight into the mystery coming up. "ride away" (by roy orbison begins to play) ♪ i ride the highway... ♪ i'm going my way... ♪i leave a story untold... he just keeps sending more pictures... if you're a free-range chicken,
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one full year later there is no sign of the boeing 777, and no sign of the people on board. imagine what is it like for the families e despite an extensive search in the indian ocean. no sign. the analyst, david soucie, joins us. "malaysia flight 370: why it disappeared and why it is only a matter of time before it happens again." you answered a lot of the information and went back through it all, all the data. at this point, do you have a theory about what happened to the plane? >> i do have a theory, but it's just what i would call the most prominent theory. there's several theories. what i did is used an algorithm i've used for years in aircraft investigations. in that theorem, what we do is take all the validated assumptions, which seem contradictory, but validate and use all of the assumptions and
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look at which ones are true and which ones aren't. we had 125 facts as validated assumptions. typically, we have 2,000 or 3,000 in an accident. >> interesting. >> while it was conclusive in my mind the delta teen in-flight fire or mechanical failure and someone taking over in the cockpit or abducting the aircraft and overtaking the pilot, the delta between those two was not significant enough for me to say conclusively this is what happened. but nonetheless, one of them came out ahead of the other. >> so many people had different theories. you go through all the predominant ones and the ones there's a likelihood of. >> right. and they're ultimately, the read er can go to the web site and use the data to make their own assumption about things. it's intended to be something that is a working tool moving forward in the search and
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rescue, and once we find it, and i think that we will find at least some debris from it. >> you do think something will turn up? >> i certainly do. i certainly do. think of it this way. one of two choices. an entire aircraft sitting somewhere. on land, it will be found eventually. on the other hand, if it broke to as many pieces, we look at this accident this week and all those pieces, they're in the water somewhere. >> have lesson been learned? >> this is the most important thing to me. for the first time, the airline industry and now even asa is taking actions on their own to improve things without waiting for the accident investigation report. in a way, the fact that the airplane craft hasn't been found is motivating action in a speedy action. so now we have regulations that we wouldn't have otherwise had. >> congratulations on the new book. david soucie, thanks. >> thanks, anderson. authorities investigating germanwings 9525. one undeniable if crash fact. soon hope investigation.
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so much more to work with than mh 370. still a mystery. up next, much more on what happened a year ago and what's been happening since. the cnn special report, vanished the mystery of malaysia flight 370 starts right now. a routine flight begins. a safe aircraft. a trained crew. and then -- >> there are reports of a passenger plane crashing in the french alps. >> the plane descending 27,000 feet in nearly 8 minutes. >> the aircraft obliterated. >> there's no piece of the aircraft larger than a small car. there's no sign of life. >> a tragedy that soon grows worse. >> the crash was not an accident.
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