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Some Striking New Developments on Missing Malaysian Airlines Flight 370; Crimean Officials Counting Referendum Votes; Did Someone on Board Divert Missing Plane?

Aired March 16, 2014 - 16:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Hello again. I'm Fredricka Whitefield.

The intensifying search for flight 370 that is our top story this hour. Right now military personnel from dozens of countries are searching vast areas of deep ocean, land and expanding 11 countries looking for any kinds of signing for that missing Malaysian airlines jet.

Here is what we know right now. Pakistan's foreign ministry says the jet did not show up on its radars. It said even had it would have scrambled its military in response. And "the Times" of India is reporting that India's military is also saying there is no way that the plane flew over its territory without being spotted. A top military official in India said that country has temporarily, however, ended its search for the plane while Malaysia reviews deployments.

And France is joining in the investigation on the ground in Malaysia. It is sending a team to Kuala Lumpur right now to help review any evidence. And the search area on land now includes extremely remote regions. Crews are looking along corridors, one to the south, the other to the north reaching all the way up to Kazakhstan.

Satellite signals picked up on the flight 370 for seven hours after the last contact with the pilots. But Malaysian officials announced today it is possible the last satellite contact could have come from the plane on the ground. A U.S. official tells CNN U.S. intelligence is leading to work the idea that the pilots are s responsible. Authorities are examining a flight simulator taken from the home of the pilot.

Chad Myers is here to give us a sense just how big this search has become.

It's just giant. It is hard to find like a beginning point.

CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: It is. It is almost impossible to figure out and get your hands around this because your head roll is because you just can't, the lack of data is so incredible. I think that we just have one ping from a satellite that was kind of a communication satellite that they didn't turn off.

Now, I believe that it is likely that there are other pings that we don't know about as the public. But this is the corridor we are talking about, not that the plane flew this way, but that it flew across it. And at 8:11, it pinged right there or this way. It is not a flight path, but then, there is something else father than the south. The same kind of thing is here. It could have flown across this way and pinged here.

Australia -- we haven't seen this thing, or right across here. It could have flown there and pinged here. This is all part of a very bad plan because there is not GPS sent from the planes down to the ground. This is one ping of a satellite. That is a big circle right there. Let me show how that circle gets there.

There is a satellite in space there. It saw and heard the ping. They call it the hand shake back and forth. Are you there? Yes, I'm here. And that found out that the distance from the satellite and the angle would have put that satellite somewhere that plane, somewhere along that ring.

Well now, we have to start eliminating the ring. We eliminate by saying it never could have got to this side of the ring. It didn't have enough fuel plus it wasn't fast enough to get there. It was moving from right here. So now, we have this all the way to there.

And then they are saying at this point in time. But you know what, we have great satellite coverage right through here. Great radar coverage. It couldn't be there. So we would have known if it was here.

This is all we have left. That is the northern corridor here and there is another corridor down to the south. Those are the only options for this plane to have at this point in time at 8:11 a.m.

I'm assuming that this thing pinged for one hour at every hour. So, it is 2:00, 2:11 a.m. There is a 3:11 a.m. There is a 4:11 a.m. ping. And if they now where those pings are and they know how those pings in the circle moved, they can draw some conclusions from that.

WHITFIELD: My God. It is an incredible, you know, search here. And the kind of technology, I guess, that is at the fingertips at the investigators is going to be really paramount here. But then, just as the availability of that technology is important, we are also finding that perhaps there is a lack of resources, right, that could, I guess, further hamper this investigation.

MYERS: Well, you know, all of the sudden, you have sovereign countries here that don't want you flying over and looking at things. They have to do it themselves. And so, there is a lot of cooperation.

I found it interesting today that the Malaysian government, this is what I heard on CNN, asked for help from these countries up here. Because yesterday, they didn't have help from these, really, not extensive help. But now they may be believe that this northern arc isn't so farfetched we'll have to say.

WHITFIELD: Right. All right, Chad Myers, thank you so much.

All right. Let's look now a closer look at some of the developments from today. We begin our live coverage with justice reporter, Evan Perez in Washington, CNN safety analyst David Soucie, correspondent Andrew Stevens in Kuala Lumpur and Mary Schiavo, CNN aviation analyst.

So Evan Perez, you first in Washington. There has been a lot of criticism by way of the Malaysian officials that they haven't handled this properly. We are in day ten now. And it would seems that there is an awful lot of frustration that is being exhibited whether be in China or even in Malaysia. How about in Washington? Has there been a lot of frustration in the way in which this is moving?

EVAN PEREZ, CNN JUSTICE REPORTER: Well, you know, Fred, there is some frustration especially from some of the lawmakers who would think the FBI should be more involve in the investigation. There are a couple of thing that people have to recognize. Obviously, this is a foreign country. The FBI doesn't have jurisdiction. It just can't just marched in. It needs to be invited in.

An you know, the number of passengers on this aircraft, the majority were Chinese citizens. So the Chinese probably have more of an interest than the U.S. does. The U.S. has some people there. The FBI has a couple of people from the region. There is legal attache from the embassy who is there and is getting information back to Washington. There is a limit to how much the Malaysians have shared initially. I'm told that some of that has improved in recent days.

But right now, there is no plane to look at. There is no wreckage. So the FBI is sort of limited anyway in what they would be doing on the ground. So, you know, there is a mix of frustration, but also, some recognition of, you know, as Chad described.

You know, there is a lot of facts that just aren't known yet. So, when we have then perhaps you will see some more involvement, Fred.

WHITFIELD: OK. So no wreckage, no clear flight plan, that's why there is so many different theories that everyone is trying to exhaust and, you know, better extrapolate. So let's talk more about some of those things that we do know if we can, David, just to try to remind us the things that we do know because we can go in all kinds of directions about the potential of this investigation where this plane it. We do, at least know, that the transponder was turned off. We know that Malaysian authorities think that that was deliberate at the communication system was turned off. And we know about this last comment, all right, good night, according to Malaysian authorities. Is there anything else, David, in your view that we do know?

DAVID SOUCIE, CNN SAFETY ANALYST: Yes. We know that the ACARS system, the communication recording system off the aircraft was turned off prior to the transponder approximately 14 minutes. Whether that is significant or not, and I have some theories about the, but I really can't comment on it at this point. But 14 minutes before, so there was, to me, there was an intelligence, some intent, some purpose as to why and what order the things were turned off.

The pinging is something that is extremely important and as was mentioned before, I think as the public, we don't know how many pings they were. It would be with the information of all the pings, it would be a lot simpler to try to narrow that down as there are 16 satellites, geo spacious satellites that are saving those signals and those pings around the world.

So, as those pings happened and calculated the overlay, it was very nice graphic before, but I will calculate the overlay to determine whether that aircraft might be. It is going to be very helpful information.

WHITFIELD: All right, and Andrew Stevens in Kuala Lumpur, when we hear the defense minister say that they are going to search more land, are investigators willing to say in which direction they are going? What land are they talking about?

ANDREW STEVENS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, the land would up to the northern corridor because initially the entire southern group is over at the one of the emptiest parts of any ocean in the world into southern Indian Ocean. So, we are looking at if that arc is indeed correct, we are looking at places like western China and took (INAUDIBLE) Kazakhstan and going up there into central Asia.

Now, these are, obviously, is going to the sensitive areas for Malaysia to work with. Because Malaysia is asking countries, there are 25 nations involved, Fred, is asking countries for satellite information, the radar information. Now, a lot of that would linked back to the military capability of some of those countries.

Now, getting that information now, there have the countries like China, even though they have a 150 nationals onboard that flight, it is going to be problematic. So, that is the delicate diplomatic maneuvers they had to undergo to get that sort of information. But that is the air. That northern area, that would be the land aspect of this.

WHITFIELD: And Mary, how concerned are you that there is a need of cooperation in an area that is very sensitive in order to conduct this kind of comprehensive land search?

WHITFIELD: I think they are going to get it because there are so many countries interested and so many people are trying. Especially if you have to get cooperation out of China, even if it is an ethnic area, you will get it. I mean, I have traveled extensively in parts of China and make no mistake, there is still a Chinese authority there.

So depending upon where they have to go to collect various evidence, I think the governments are going to be the ones that deliver the cooperation. The cooperation that I'm surprised that hasn't come yet is, you know, the word-of-mouth, the leads, the tips, you know, the rumors, the reports.

WHITFIELD: Somebody saying I saw a plane land in a weird spot nothing and everyone, it seems globally, has a cell phone or has some way, even in the most remote of areas some way of conveying a message to someone.

SCHIAVO: Exactly. WHITFIELD: All right, we are going to continue this conversation a moment. We are going to take a short break for now. A big part of the investigation zeroing in on the pilots in addition to searching lands. What happened in that cockpit? Our panel of aviation experts, more from them next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WHITFIELD: All right, ten days of searching for that flight 370 and still no plane, no crew and no passengers.

Back with us now to talk more about this theory, silent, CNN aviation Mary Schiavo and CNN safety analyst David Soucie. He is an aviation safety expert and the author of the book "why planes crash."

And Mary, you earlier saying what really troubled you about this investigation is this eerie silence. And the fact that there has been no words from no one nowhere. Tell me more about how that impairs an investigation of this magnitude.

SCHIAVO: Well, whether you are investigating a drag ring or, you know, a suspicious and downing of an aircraft. You know, prosecutors and investigators, you know, FBI, you name it. You have to rely sometimes on cooperation of witnesses and you snitches and informant and people who come forward and people who have seen something and that is how law enforcement works. And, you know, you come to rely on that. You know, unfortunately, did you have to. But it is an incredibly important stream of information in any criminal investigation. And it is possible that is there that we just are not hearing about it. Maybe the old Malaysian authorities already have many of these people who have come forward to tell what you have seen. But ordinarily, you do hear about it. And you have some stream of information.

And so, of course, they can be examining that, you know, both their eyes are in the pilots and they will be looking at their finances, you know, their personal lives, was it lost a bunch of money. They will be doing all of that. And if that all comes up negative. I'm concern that they don't have anywhere else to go which can be -- can mean two things. There really wasn't a plot or the plot and plan was so good that they have eluded us. That, of extremely frightening proposition.

WHITFIELD: And David, how, you know, unsettling is if it in your view that it doesn't seem as though there is any other evidence that is leading this investigation. We only know those concrete things that we spoke up earlier. The transponder, the communications being turned off. That last communication from the pilots, all right, good night. And it would seem that if this plane did land in water by now, surely, there will be some floating debris, granted, you know, all these bodies of water are very huge, but someone would have seen something somewhere. How do you hide a big plane like this?

SOUCIE: Well, let's go back first of all to the all right, goodnight comment. And I have spent hours and hours and hours in the cockpit observing pilots doing their jobs. It is not uncommon at all to hear that comment from pilots as they are transitioning from traffic control center to the other which was the case in this, they were exiting to Vietnam aerospace.

So, to hear all right, good night, I don't find a lot of clues within that so, it is not uncommon to hear that. The other concerning thing like Mary have pointed about not having the information which she expressed concerned about that second alternative which is that this was so well planned, that no one did see it. No one did see anything of this and they master the aircraft so well that not even anyone who could possibly have seen it fly over did or reported that.

I have had some communication with people that are using the digital globe Tom -- I think it was Tom-something crowd sourcing and that crowd-sourcing information can only work if people are using it, first of all. But secondly, the concern I have with that is there is a lot of dense jungle in that area. It could be possible for that aircraft to be done and some of that desk jungle and not be seen by satellites or especially in deep water, if there wasn't a lot of break out. If there was a successful ditching and subsequently sank, then it wouldn't be any surface, much surface debris.

So, it is perplexing, but again, as Mary pointed out, the most difficult thing for me to accept is that this had been planned to a level of which we can't find it. And that is very concerning to me.

WHITFIELD: OK, David and Mary, keep it right there. We are going to resume this conversation after short break. I'm anxious to learn from you at what point do investigators say we exhausted all that we can at this juncture, now we got to take a new turn n the investigation perhaps scale back the resources? When does that happen? All of that when we come right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WHITFIELD: All right the search for flight 370 is now covering thousands of square miles, more than two dozen countries are taking part in the search. And we also heard Pakistan say today that flight 370 did not cross it's radar.

Back with us now with CNN aviation analyst Mary Schiavo, CNN's safety analyst David Soucie and Tom Fuentes, our law enforcement our analyst.

So, to all of you a bit knew information today coming from Malaysian authorities today including the fact that they will be focusing more now on land and authorities have also seized the flight simulator from the pilot's home and will further evaluate. And apparently, officials are saying that it did not appear as though the pilot and co-pilot coordinated, working together, and that no added fuel was added to that plane before leaving Kuala Lumpur.

So knowing that, back with us Tom Fuentes and Mary and David, what does this tell you, Mary, this new information about the direction of this investigation now what they are ruling in and what they are ruling out?

SCHIAVO: Well, this both feed of information, it looks like they are focusing on the Malaysian air pilots. But they will be able to go through that information relatively quickly. They will examine his life and family, his finances, his health, and you know, does he have a gambling habit? Does he not do it? Did he have instability what so ever. They will be through that information very quickly. And if they have exhausted that and they have exhausted examining the airline, they are going to have to look elsewhere if they still think that it was sabotage, hijack, commandeering, et cetera. They are going to have to start looking for other information.

And the way they did it in Pan-Am was very interesting. You know, they were kind of short on information too and they did all sorts of things to get people to come forwards including at one point, they put information about a very large reward on matchbooks and they circulated them out in parts of the world where they thought people might know things and eventually that did lead to tips.

So, just because they reached the dead end in Malaysia, doesn't mean there are other parts of the world where they might be able to scare a very useful evidence.

WHITFIELD: So, Tom, it sounds like investigators will have to become inventive because over time, we are on day ten now, overtime there won't be the resources available. The money is going to dry up, assets will have to be redirected. But people want answers to this plane. Where are the passengers? Where is the crew? So, how inventive and at what point will investigators say OK, we have to shift gears now. It is day 20. It is day 30. You know, what are those markers?

THOMAS FUENTES, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Well, I think, Fred, at the current time you still have family members in anguish at the airport or nearby hotels in Beijing and Kuala Lumpur. And as long as that continues, they are not going to call this off. And as long as the media stays, you know, paying attention to every word that the officials say during his press conference, I mean, as long as there is this much attention and this much mystery, I don't see this being called off anytime soon. They can't go on forever, that's true. But I don't think for even near point where anybody is really talking about at the fact that India pulled out was just, I think, based on they really had no information that showed the plane going to India or nearby.

But as far as the rest of the country is involved, especially the principle countries of Malaysia and China, and you know, the U.S. with all the support being provided, I can't see that being called off at all.

WHITFIELD: And David, you know, obviously, all countries are being, in that region, asked to re-evaluate their radar. And thus far, it appears Pakistan says that plane was not in our air space. India says has also said that it doesn't believe that the plane has been in that area. How long will it take for these other neighboring countries to say yes, we'll cooperate and look at that radar information that they might have?

SOUCIE: We can only hope that they will. Again, these are countries that are certainly not used to working together. And I have actually been impressed with how well they have worked together recently on this investigation because, I wouldn't have expected that. And early on, you could see that it was not coming together very well. But for Malaysia to reach out to the FAA, the NTSB, and ask our experts to go there and assist, I think that is a huge development. And I think it is very, admirable on their part. So I think that the other countries will follow suit and start working together on this.

WHITFIELD: All right, David, Mary and Tom, hold it right there. We are going to be right back with more of this conversation and this investigation to the disappearance of flight 370 after this.

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(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WHITFIELD: We'll have more on Flight 370 in a moment, but right now we are getting some preliminary results from Crimea on a controversial referendum to join Russia. Officials in Crimea say, with 50 percent of the votes counted, the results indicate 95 percent of the vote is in favor of joining Russia. Crimea's prime minister tweeted just moments ago Crimea will sign an official request to join the Russia Federation tomorrow. The Crimean parliament is holding an emergency session tomorrow, and then a delegation will travel to Moscow.

The prime minister also said Crimea will move to the ruble in April.

Chief international correspondent Christiane Amanpour is live for us now in London. Senior international correspondent Nick Paton Walsh live from Simferopol, the capital of Crimea.

So, Christiane, to you first, we have talked, you know, about what Russian gains. We're talking about, you know, land mass, as well as the regional political power increasing for Vladimir Putin, but what does Crimea gain by joining the Russian Federation?

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (via phone): Well, it's very hard to tell right now, especially if sanctions are put on against Russia, and that obviously, if Crimea is part of Russia, that will affect Crimea, as well.

Plus, what's really been interesting in the lead-up to all of this crisis and to this referendum, you have heard quite a few people reported in the Eastern Ukraine area even in those areas where there are, you know, a good healthy dose of Russian-speaking Ukrainians, as there are obviously Russian speakers and ethnic Russians in Crimea. They have gotten very used to independence and much more freedom and a certain amount of democracy and press freedom. And they do not know what they're signing on for to get back into Putin's Russia.

Many have expressed rather, you know, alarm at going into Russia and the state that it is right now, which is, as you know, not politically free, and it restricts the media and all of that kind of stuff.

So very hard to know, obviously, the -- the obvious answer is that many of them ethnic Russians, and they say they want to be part of the motherland. But since this has all happened at the barrel of a gun, and under very heavy state-controlled propaganda coming from Russia, again, it's hard to know.

But what's certainly happening on this end is that, as they celebrate in Crimea and in the Kremlin, here in the United States and Europe, they are getting ready to put sanctions on, and that will be announced tomorrow. A certain number of sanctions against targeted people will go into effect: asset freezes, travel bans and the like.

And then everybody's waiting to see, does Putin annex Crimea? And what happens with Eastern Ukraine?

WHITFIELD: OK. Let's go to Nick now in Simferopol. So Nick, does it seem to matter to the people there that there would be these sanctions by the U.S. and European leaders, that both are saying this is not a legitimate vote? NICK PATON WALSH, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: No, in fact, Russia has made it quite clear it thinks it can mirror the damage inflicted on it by imposing its own measures against the West, in the event that sanctions are brought forward.

And the real issue, I think, is how tough they really are. We're supposed to hear something on Monday, John Kerry suggested. E.U. leaders meeting, as well, then. But also in that failed last-ditch meeting between John Kerry and Sergey Lavrov in London on Friday, John Kerry, in fact, extended the potential for the day they play their hardest-sanction cards until the moment that Vladimir Putin decides to accept that request you just heard Crimea will extend to the Russian Federation for it to join up in full.

But the crowd here, really, many of them impassioned, have been posing with the Russian flag behind me. For some here, it's a historic moment. There's a lot of pro-Russian feeling here, some of it historical, because they're an ethnic majority here, the Russians, certainly.

Some of it whipped up by a lot of the misinformation propagated by Russian media channels here, who are in the monopoly, suggesting the new Kiev administration is somehow out to get them, somehow fascist or extremist and unable to tolerate their Russian-speaking way of life here.

But above all, we have to look for the days ahead to see quite how this new government here, de facto as it is, emboldened, it seems, with this referendum on its side, how it treats the minorities who didn't vote, who didn't campaign at all in this particular referendum. The ethnic minority Tartars, who are deeply worried, and the pro- Ukrainian vote has been completely silenced here, as well.

One important thing to remember, Fredricka.

WHITFIELD: Yes.

WALSH: This isn't a normal democratic process. There are 21,500 Russian soldiers here, who made this whole process possible. So we simply haven't had the conversation you'd normally expect in a democracy about whose opinion's better. It's been about endorsing, frankly, Moscow's dictated opinion upon the local parliament and de facto prime minister here.

WHITFIELD: Yes. Under -- under circumstances that many have described as that of intimidation. All right, Nick Paton Walsh and Christiane Amanpour, thank you so much.

All right, straight ahead, the latest on the search for Flight 370, a search that now covers thousands of miles.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WHITFIELD: The mystery deepens this hour into the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. Ten days ago the flight with 239 people took off from Kuala Lumpur for Beijing, China, but it vanished. Pakistan's foreign ministry says the jet did not show up on its radars, and "The Times of India" is reporting that India's military is also saying there was no way the plane flew over its territory without being spotted.

A Malaysian prime minister says that the plane's course is due to apparent deliberate action taken by someone onboard. And that is leading the U.S. intelligence community to also believe the pilots could be to blame. But some wonder if terrorism played a part.

Homeland Security Chairman Peter King said today there is no indication of that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. PETER KING (R-NY), CHAIRMAN, HOMELAND SECURITY COMMITTEE: Well, there's been no terrorist chatter. There's nothing out there indicating it's terrorists. It doesn't mean it's not. So far, nothing has been picked up by the intelligence community from day one.

I still have questions about the two Iranians who are on the plane, but again, that -- that could be a side issue. The fact is, nothing has come up indicating a terrorist...

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WHITFIELD: So again, today it's day ten. Tomorrow at around lunchtime here in the U.S. the search will head into the 11th day. And as each day goes by, it seems there is so much more land and sea in which to cover.

Back with me again is aviation analyst Mary Schiavo; our safety analyst, David Soucie; and CNN law enforcement analyst Tom Fuentes.

All right. So it took two years to locate that Air France plane that went down in 2009 on a flight from Rio to Paris. This search area is vast. We're talking about the Indian Ocean, with incredible depths, as well. How likely is it that that data recorder or the plane could possibly recover if, indeed, it went into the Indian Ocean, David?

DAVID SOUCIE, CNN SAFETY ANALYST: Well, one of the things that I had hoped we'd know by now was some altitude information, and I haven't heard anything about that. With altitude information, we could really restrict that flight area, because of the fact that, if that aircraft was flying at a lower altitude, it uses a lot more fuel. It's really made to be flying at the high altitude.

So to escape radar, it would be common to try to fly under the radar. So I would suspect if they were trying to avoid radar, they would be at lower altitudes. But without that information conclusively, we -- I'm sure they have to keep that investigation area and the search area as large as it is now.

WHITFIELD: And Tom, we're talking about when we still are dealing with the arcs in which -- you know, once that plane took that left turn, after leaving Kuala Lumpur, then possibly it went north up to Kazakhstan or it went south into the southern Indian Ocean. When we talk now about the search of land or sea, Malaysian authorities say they're going to search more land. But meantime, it doesn't mean ignoring the search for sea. If this plane were to go down in the Indian Ocean in water, trying to locate that black box, which is usually in the tail end of the plane, trying to find any semblance of that plane, is going to be a very difficult task. How do they go about doing that? The Indian Ocean is huge.

TOM FUENTES, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Well, when they're trying to find the flight, a flight, let's say, that goes down in water like that, the key indicator is if they have the transponder providing a location of when it quite and that's the crash site, very close to where it quit, that helps. Then the next thing is to find debris in the water. That helps as an indication. They can study the currents and wind and study what that...

WHITFIELD: At this point, though, 10 days later, if it is a matter of looking for debris, that debris might be separated from the wreckage by many miles simply because of the currents, right, Tom?

FUENTES: Exactly right. So now the debris becomes even more difficult, if there even is any major pieces of debris still floating.

And so then that leaves you the black boxes themselves. When they go into the water, you're going to have them sending a beacon signal, but only for about 30 days. And the other problem with that is that you really have to be very, very close in the water to that beacon. So, they can't be 1,000 miles away and looking, you know, anywhere along that arc. They've got to be close to where that black box beacon is in order to find it. And you've got 20 days left before it goes out.

WHITFIELD: And Mary, you want to add to that?

MARY SCHIAVO, CNN SAFETY ANALYST: Well, I think at this point it's the beacon. It's the -- it's the pinging from the beacon, if you will, and we are down to -- you know, under 30 days. It's 20 days now.

You know, and keep in mind. Remember ValuJet Flight 592 in May 1996 went down in the Everglades, and eyewitnesses gave a very interesting report. They said the plane literally disappeared into the Everglades.

WHITFIELD: Yes. It was just swallowed.

SCHIAVO: It went completely into mud. And it was -- but they knew where it went.

The same thing with -- a similar thing with Air France 447. They knew where it was, and still it took two years to get the black boxes. And Silk (ph) Air, the debris was a 260-by-260-foot area. That's it.

So at this point we've got to -- we've got to use this data to find the pings.

WHITFIELD: All right. And not to simplify, but that is -- that constitutes kind of the search in water.

When we come right back, I want to ask all of you about what it's going to take to conduct this search on land, since now the defense minister in Malaysia says they want to concentrate more now on land. All of that when we come right back.

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(END VIDEOTAPE)

WHITFIELD: All right, more now on that missing airliner jet. Malaysian authorities, in fact the defense minister, saying earlier today that they will now search more on land for that missing jet. What does all that mean?

Back with us now, CNN aviation analyst Mary Schiavo, CNN law enforcement analyst Tom Fuentes, and CNN safety analyst David Soucie.

OK, so Mary, to you first. You know, we exhausted, in a succinct way, in three minutes, you know, what the search would mean at sea. But now the search on land. What does it mean to search more on land? What's it going to take?

SCHIAVO: The way they do it back in the olden days, we used to have the Civil Air Patrol, and we would use, literally, pilots would volunteer to go back and forth across the countryside, looking for wreckage. That's how it was done in the old days.

And, you know, nowadays, of course, we have satellites that are -- that are much better at combing the earth. And you would have to reposition them or direct them to where you want to search and, you know, from the fact that we could read Osama bin Laden's driver's license plate, I think satellites might give us the best chance. But we still -- you know, in mountainous regions of the United States, for example, the Civil Air Patrol, the Coast Guard and others still fly back and forth looking for people. It's not -- that's not a lost art.

WHITFIELD: And Tom, how do you see this investigation on land unfolding?

FUENTES: Well, I think Mary is right. You're going to have to have aircraft go back and forth. But you know, you still have possibility, because so many of those countries have thick jungle on the ground, that you know, if it crashed into one of those jungles and was under the trees, it might be very difficult to see from above.

You know, Indonesia has not been mentioned much in this, about their radar systems. They know that their islands, they have 17,000 islands, most of which are uninhabited. We're familiar with the big ones. But you know, that's a vast number of islands that many of them, no police or public presence. So if you had a plane crash on one of those, no one would hear it or know. And again, if it's under the treetops in the jungle, it might be very, very hard unless you knew it had to be very close.

So until you can refine the search, and that's the problem with -- you know, the satellites can read a license-plate number, but they have to zero in on that license plate. And right now, they'd be trying to look at a broader area. But the more confined the search, the less area they can do at one time.

WHITFIELD: And we're talking about day ten now, so David, if that satellite imagery has not been made available, there is no pinpointing of that aircraft anywhere on land or even at sea, by way of satellite imagery, do you feel like at this point that's just not going to happen? There are going to have to be other means in which to locate a plane, if it is, indeed, on land?

SOUCIE: Well, there's a lot of ways to locate an aircraft that we haven't talked about yet, which is heat signatures that are captured by satellites all the time. There are 16 geospatial satellites, as I mentioned before, that are taking information about the emergency locating transmitter, which we haven't talked a lot about.

That's not the same thing as what's coming off of the black boxes. The black boxes I'm not sure are going to give us a whole lot of data anyway, because of the fact that they only record data for about two hours of useful information, voice speaking and things on the box. So even if that was to be recovered at this point, we know that that flight went much longer than that. So I don't think we're going to get a whole lot of information out of the black box when we do.

But the other thing about the ELT is the emergency locating transmitter system is very sophisticated. It's the same one that we use for ships that are lost at sea. Emergency beacons are constantly being able to send signals if an aircraft -- or excuse me, if a ship or an aircraft goes into the water. These beacons have saltwater sensing. If they're in the saltwater, they go off. Then there's 16 satellites constantly monitoring this.

So the fact that that ELT hasn't gone off really surprises me, and that would give us, obviously, an exact location where it is.

WHITFIELD: What does that...

SOUCIE: So that's one thing, and the satellite temperature sensor, as well.

WHITFIELD: What does that potentially -- what does that potentially mean to you that it hasn't gone off thus far?

SOUCIE: Well, it means to me that there -- that there wasn't -- that goes off if there's a jar. Either the ELT failed, which is a possibility. In the history of the ELT, it hasn't had a good reliability rate. When it was early on, it was only 53 percent reliability rate. Then it went to 83 percent when we went to 243 megahertz. Now we're over 400 megahertz, and the reliability has been very, very high, which is what was on board this aircraft.

In fact there were two of them onboard the aircraft: one in the front and one in the tail of the aircraft. So the chance that both of those suffered an impact and didn't signal, and we can't pick that up, is very, very disturbing to me. That's a piece of information, a clue that I think gives us a lot of speculation about what might be going on there.

But I -- if we were to say that they functioned properly, then I would say at this point that the aircraft did not suffer a heavy impact. So that could be that it was a successful ditching attempt that occurred. But even at that, the saltwater sensing of the ELT in the water, should it have gone down, would have triggered the ELT, as well.

WHITFIELD: Wow. It all only gets more fascinating and more perplexing, too. David Soucie, Mary Schiavo, Tom Fuentes, thank you very much. Some of you will be continuing on in the next hour, as well. Appreciate that.

And we'll have more news, including some news coming from the White House when we come right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WHITFIELD: As preliminary results on Crimea's vote today trickle in, Russian President Vladimir Putin and President Barack Obama spoke on the phone. Reuters is reporting that, according to the Russian government, Putin told Obama that Crimea's vote to join Russia complied with international law. The U.S. has called the vote illegal, however.

The Russian government also said the two leaders agreed that they need to find ways to stabilize Ukraine.

All right. That's going to do it for me. We've got much more straight on Ukraine, Crimea, as well as this mysterious plane, still missing. I'm Fredricka Whitfield. The next hour of the CNN NEWSROOM begins right now with Jim Sciutto in New York.