NTSB Chairman on CNN’s State of the Union: “We hope to interview the pilots in the coming days”
NTSB Chairman Deborah Hersman joined CNN’s State of the Union with Candy Crowley today to provide an update from the plane crash at SFO and discuss the investigation. A transcript of the interview is after the jump.
THIS IS A RUSH FDCH TRANSCRIPT. IT MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CROWLEY: We will get to the NTSB chairman in just a moment, but I want to bring in our CNN senior international correspondent Richard Quest.
Richard, I know you’ve been looking at the flight tracking data and you’ve learned more about the speed and the altitude of the plane just before the crash, which all of the passengers what do you know?
RICHARD QUEST, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, if we look at the profile of the descent that Miguel was just talking about there, what we are now learning, Candy, is we know how, we don’t know why. This plane was descending a mile or two out when it should have been much shallower, it was still descending at 1,000 — 900 to 1,000 feet per minute. Way, way more steeply than one would have expected.
The speed was bleeding off extremely fast. It’s down at 125, it goes down as low as 109 at one particular point — knots.
So we know that this was too steep. We know it was too slow. And if you look at the data, like at the last minute, you do actually see the power going back on again as he tries to take the plane back up again.
But we don’t know why.
We know, for instance, that the San Francisco airport on the evening, the instrument landing system was inoperable for runway 28 left. But we know that the navigation lights, the so-called poppy lights, were working on the left of the runway. So there was plenty of reason for him to know he was either too low or too high. And that’s going to be where the focus of this investigation will be.
Why was this dependent profile so unorthodox? Was there a reason that we don’t know about, which obviously the investigation will get to grips with. That’s going to be what it’s all about.
This is too steep, it was too slow.
CROWLEY: OK, Richard Quest, thank you so much for that new information.
We are looking, I want to tell our viewers, that live pictures of what is left of that plane. And this now, I want to bring in the chairman of the NTSB. She’s in San Francisco now, Deborah Hersman. Thank you so much for joining us.
I know that you will look at everything. But I also know that when investigators get on the scene, some things catch their attention. What has caught your attention?
HERSMAN: Well, you know, when we went out there last night and took a look at the aircraft, I will tell you, you can see the devastation from the outside of the aircraft — the burn through, the damage to the external fuselage. But what you can’t see is the damage internally and that is really striking. And so I think when we look at this accident, we’re very thankful that we didn’t have more fatalities and serious injuries and we had so many survivors. It’s really very, very good news as far as a survivable accidents, which many accidents are.
CROWLEY: And was it miraculous or was it the result of something that so many did survive?
HERSMAN: You know, I would say much of this is the result of the hard work of the aviation community taking accidents, taking lessons learned and plowing them back in, whether it’s the design of aircraft or training of crew members and even passengers. And we can’t stress this enough, many accidents are survivable. It’s about knowing where those exits are and listening to the flight crew in an emergency situation, very important.
CROWLEY: And let me ask you, I hope you heard our Richard Quest who reported that the flight data that he has seen shows a plane that it coming in too steep, the angle of it, and too slowly for that runway. What does that tell you?
HERSMAN: Well, you know, we’re going to have to corroborate a lot of information — the radar data, the ATC information, and the flight data recorder parameters and also interview the pilots, which we hoped to do in the coming days. It’s really important to put all of the pieces of the puzzle together, to not just understand what happened, but understand why it happened so we can prevent accidents like this from occurring in the future.
CROWLEY: Sure. I can understand that it would be less important that the pilot may have been come in at too steep a angle and that too slow of a pace And you need to know why that is so?
HERSMAN: Sure. And you know what, stabilized approaches have long been a concern, safety concern for the aviation community. We see a lot of runway crashes, either landing short or landing long, runway overruns, runway excursions. A very significant threat in the aviation environment. We want to understand what was going on with this crew and this air plane so we can learn from it.
CROWLEY: On this plane and on many planes, are there not redundant systems that would have flashed — if everything were working well that would have flashed and said too steep, too slow? Wouldn’t there have been — would that have been in place?
HERSMAN: Well, you know, there are a lot of systems that help support the pilots as they come into airports especially busy commercial airports like this one at San Francisco. There has already been a discussion about that glide scope being out of service. But there are a number of other tools available to the pilots, some less sophisticated like the lights, the precision approach lights that they were talking about that show you if you are too high or too low coming in, but also some things that are more technologically advanced, things on the airplane that can give you GPS information.
CROWLEY: So something — if the plane were working correctly would have told him that the path was too steep and too slow, if indeed that’s the case?
HERSMAN: Well, I know a lot of this is not necessarily about the plane telling them, it’s also about the pilot’s recognition of the circumstances and what’s going on. And so for them to be able to assess what’s happening and make the right inputs to make sure they’re in a safe situation, that’s what we expect from pilots. We want to understand what happened in this situation.
CROWLEY: Will you be talking to the pilots today?
HERSMAN: We hope to interview the pilots in the coming days. Of course after an event like this, our first concern is for people’s health and well-being. We have talked to law enforcement officials who spoke to the pilots last night. And we hope to interview them soon.
CROWLEY: OK. NTSB chairman, we thank you so much Deborah Hersman. Hope to be back to you throughout the week.
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