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Mystery of Flight 370

Aired April 05, 2014 - 19:00   ET

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

DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR: I'm talking about the deep search for Malaysian Airlines Flight 370, and the people in charge are now working out whether this new something is worth pursuing. This is what we know right now. A Chinese search crew earlier ship earlier today says their equipment caught some pings from the ocean bottom on a frequency mainly used by the flight data recorders.

Here's what the Chinese service reported it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REPORTER: This afternoon, the rescuers have heard a ping signal every second, and the signals lasted for one minute, one and a half minutes. However, the rescuers say that this kind of signal of this frequency is not exclusive for the plane's black box. So, there is possibility that this kind of signal from some other equipment. So, at this moment, they still cannot confirm the signals are from the missing plane.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEMON: OK. At about the same time that those pings were detected, a search crew in the air says they flew over some white objects floating in the water. The reported pings and these newfound debris are adding cautious new energy to a frustrating search that has lasted nearly a month. Military and civilian airplanes, 13 in all crisscrossed the area today, while 11 ships, some with high tech scanners worked on the ocean surface.

The aerial part of the search mission is being run out of Perth, Australia, and that's where our senior correspondent Matthew Chance is right now and he joins with us. And with us in Beijing, I should say, is CNN's David McKenzie.

Matthew, to you first. You know, just after 6:00 in the morning there, when do you expect to see the search planes wheels up?

MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, they should be coming off of the operation anytime now. I mean, obviously, this whole issue of the Chinese apparently finding those pings, outside the actual area that was being searched has thrown some confusion into the mix. What the Australian coordinators are saying is that they're looking for more information about what has exactly been found, what assets can best be used to help with that Chinese search, and then they will make the decision to deploy the assets. At the moment though, what everyone is stressing both in China and here as I understand it, is that there's no linkage or proven linkage found yet that has anything to do with the missing Malaysian Airliner, and they want much more information before they commit to saying next, Don.

LEMON: Matthew, is there a plan to hit this area where the Chinese reportedly heard the pings and saw stuff floating in the water?

CHANCE: Well, you certainly hope that there would be, I mean, given that it is the best potential development in the story, most hopeful developmental of the story that we've had in the several weeks. But if there is a plan to do that, certainly, the Australian coordinators at this point aren't talking about it. You know, you've got a sense that there is a degree of friction here, because this information is not from them, but from the Chinese, themselves, the Chinese kind of circumventing I think with the normal channels of communication.

There are eight countries involved in this international search, only one of them, China, refuses to pass the information through the regular channels, they go instead through Beijing, and that is a source of some confusion. So we don't really know what the news is going to be. It's Sunday morning here, very early. As you mentioned here in Australia, they're going to get together, the coordinators and decide what their course of action going to be, Don.

LEMON: All right. Now to David McKenzie.

David, what's the reaction in China to these new developments? Are people optimistic that this might be it?

DAVID MCKENZIE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, don, I think that people are quite jaded by this point. I mean, we've all been watching this search go on, and as Matthew said, it's been fruitless in the recent days. Certainly, family members of those on board who are stuck here in Beijing waiting for any credible evidence have told us that they want to see more. They said that they have been here before, and they have had these leads that have seemed credible, and then those leads have been dashed.

So I think that from the family members' point of view, they are just kind of holding out for more information, and hopefully to get some physical debris. That's what they've always told us that they want. From the media side, certainly two state media reporters on the Haixun vessel, the Chinese coast guard vessel which reportedly they say picked up these pings or at least these pulses as I describe it, these regular pulses that appear to be the most credible lead for some time.

But also here in China, both state media, and the government agencies are cautioning at this point that there is no conclusive evidence that it is linked to the missing plane -- Don.

LEMON: David, talk about the communication between the Chinese and the coordinators in Australia. There is some frustration that the Chinese are releasing information first through the state-run media. MCKENZIE: Well, it is unclear yet if there were private conversations that we don't know about before they were released on state-run media, but it is clear that the Australians knew about this news before it came out in Xinhua and CCTV and other state media outlets. It's unclear how they knew at this point.

But, yes, there is some frustration. It might be also part of how the Chinese do their business. It's a very top-down, you know, setup, and that all of the information that needs to come through Beijing, through the military leadership here, and then be disseminated to Malaysia and to Australia. It's unclear if there is a logjam in this information and where it went, and too, certainly, the Chinese do business their own way.

And it appears that they are not kind of using the same level of communication directly with the Australian authorities as others are. But certainly, they are putting a huge amount of effort into the search. More than 150 passengers on board, as you know, Don, were Chinese nationals. And so, it's clear they want to put every effort they can to get some clarity, some closure in this, because China obviously has so much vested interest in the search for those plane.

LEMON: All right. Thank you very much, David McKenzie, and also, Matthew Chance.

And for a month, it has come down to this. Find this pinger and then find the plane. So, could the pulses heard by a Chinese ship be the real thing?

I want to bring in now, retired Navy captain and sea operations expert, Art Wright.

Art, you say this signal heard by the Chinese ship probably isn't the black box? Why is that?

ART WRIGHT, RETIRED NAVY CAPTAIN: Well, it could be the black box, but it could be a number of other sounds in the ocean, also. That 37.5 kilohertz is very popular frequency for commercial fishing sonars, for mine (AUDIO GAP) sonars. If you look at the weapons systems in the world, you will find that there are several 37 kilohertz sonars out there.

And so, if somebody is testing one of those, and turns it on for a short period of time, you would get a number of pings separated by a second.

We need to know more about the signal, and then the search group in Perth can figure out what to do with it.

LEMON: And also, people should know that there is a lot of ship traffic, and sea life in the southern Indian Ocean, does that impact the ability to hear these pings?

WRIGHT: Thirty-seven-point-five kilohertz is a pretty -- a frequency that's pretty clear in the ocean spectrum. However, there are dolphins that can make clicking sounds, and I believe 37.5 kilohertz is one of their frequencies, also. So perhaps the people at Scripps ought to tell us about the sounds that dolphins can make.

LEMON: Yes.

Let's talk about the equipment needed to hear these pings, right? Is this something that the Chinese have, and they are using?

WRIGHT: I understand it's a system that's made in the U.S. It's a standard sonar crystal item that changes a voltage to the mechanical pulse that pushes out into the water, and once you have that crystal, you can fairly straight forward to make a pinger or a pinger receiver.

LEMON: Thank you, sir. I appreciate it.

You wanted to the say something else, Richard Quest?

RICHARD QUEST, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: Yes, I just want to --

(CROSSTALK)

LEMON: He's still there. You want to talk to him?

QUEST: Yes. I want to just quickly.

It's Richard Quest. I just wanted to ask, looking at the pictures that we have seen where you see the basically the fishing pole with the microphone being shoved over the side of the small boat, it doesn't look very sophisticated compared to what we have been led to believe from the Ocean Shield.

So, I mean, is it likely with such rudimentary methods they picked something up?

WRIGHT: It's possible. Simple is better, and if that signal can travel through the water and reach that hydrophone, you will get a response. And they have evidently think they have heard a response.

Also, any sonar that works out there that works at 37.5 kilohertz will see interference on their screen, too.

LEMON: Thank you, Art Wright.

Richard Quest, Les Abend, and also Michael Kay, part of my panel. We'll get to them shortly.

But, Richard, you wanted to get in on that, and I think it was appropriate -- a very great question. We'll talk more about that coming up in just a little bit.

Time is running out on the flight recorders or the black boxes. If their beacons can stop working, just how much harder does the entire operation get? We're going to discuss that on the other side of the break. Don't go anywhere.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: Well, the batteries on the pingers of the missing plane were only expected to last about 30 days, but the plane went missing on March 8. So, there are now less than 26 hours before the battery would expect to lose all power, if it isn't gone already.

Now, let's bring in our panel of guests to discuss here.

Art Wright is back with me, Michael, Les Abend, CNN aviation analyst, both of them are, Richard Quest, an aviation correspondent here.

So, let's start with you -- let's start with you, Richard. Richard, you said that you have new information you need to report to us.

QUEST: I do. It's just been announced from Perth, the JACC, that's the joint authority for the control of the search, the search coordinator, this is what they are saying today. The search and recovery continues, this is the Sunday agenda, what they are going to be looking at. Ten military planes, two civil planes, 13 ships will assist in the search. And they've set up three separate search areas. They haven't given us the coordinates on that.

But here's the important bit, Don. Reports overnight that the Chinese ship Haixun-01 has detected electronic pulse signals in the Indian Ocean related to 370 cannot be verified at this point in time.

They continue to refine the search area. What they are not saying here, and what they are not saying is that they are going to that area to see if it is anything there worth searching.

LEMON: They're not saying they're doing it, but that doesn't mean they're not.

QUEST: Doesn't mean they're not. But we need to see exactly what the three separate search areas are that they have established for today are. So, we need to get the coordinates for that, which we'll get in the next couple of hours.

LEMON: I was just reading on the e-mail that you have, same thing that you have.

Imagine it was the last bit of the ping left that they picked up, and you know, today is like the last day, right? That is pretty much it?

LES ABEND, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: We think so.

MICHAEL KAY, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: We know that it's 30 days, but we also have been told by experts that it could be 40 days, as well, and it's not cliff of it dropping off. It's a slow decline of the frequency and the amplitude of the signal.

LEMON: But also depends on how old the flight data recorder and when it was last serviced, what-have-you, the battery, or whatever.

KAY: Yes, what we're told is, we're told that the batteries are relatively new according to the Malaysian authorities.

QUEST: The Malaysian Airlines chief exec today said that the batteries were due to expire in June of this year, and they have a six-year life. And due to expire in June of this year, and the president of the company who makes them basically says that they are tested so that at the date of expiration, they are still at maximum thrust or maximum --

LEMON: So, Les, as a pilot, is this the part of the discussion, because you guys have to go through the training, and do you get testing every now and again --

ABEND: Regarding?

LEMON: Do you have to like re-up and re-certify as pilots?

ABEND: We have to go to recurrent training.

LEMON: So, do they talk about this, about new technology, about the old flight data recorders, and this is the old technology and this is the changing technology, blah, blah, blah. Do they talk about that?

ABEND: Don, if it's relative to our operation, they will talk about it. But this is not something that we get. We know that these black boxes exist, and we only get involved with them if we have an incident or accident of some sort. So, this isn't -- this is not necessarily an area that we would get into.

LEMON: But is there something, because obviously, when, as a pilot, you are the number one thing is the safety of the passengers, correct?

ABEND: Absolutely.

LEMON: Is there something that you would like to see done differently with the data recorderings? Would you like to see them the updated in some way, and maybe you don't know how, but you would like to?

ABEND: Well, we can always pull data off of this -- and as a matter of fact, my airline pulls the data off of it for safety purposes to discover trends before they become safety issues. That's off of the digital flight data recorder, but the best way to ensure all of this is to use what we do in the North Atlantic, to have constantly streaming data available to us. That is going to require a lot of possible security issues and things of that nature so that the right people get the right stuff.

LEMON: Mike, this is a whole different ball game if those pingers run out?

KAY: Yes. I mean, look, you can't get smoke without fire, and I can't think of any situation in contemporary history where you have found the black boxes before debris, and it is almost inconceivable.

LEMON: But nothing is conceivable about this story.

KAY: You're right. There is nothing orthodox about this whatsoever, but we've got to run with what we know. However, the search will go on if the pingers stop pinging, and they will do within the next 10 days, and the search is going to go on the look for the debris, but the big thing today is once again the credibility of the investigation being tested and if I were Air Chief Marshal Houston, who was the commander of the joint agency coordination center, I would be incredibly frustrated about the way this information has been leaked.

When we deal with this investigations in the military, it's all about opsec, operational security, where you don't have anything leaked, where nothing is open to misinterpretation, and you give information when you know it's unequivocal. If you have that, then you won't give anything else.

And that's why Richard saying, when he said, it cannot be verified at any time, Air Chief Marshal Houston would have told his team today and he'll stump on everyone and said, I want nobody talking to any media, and I want this information secure, and I'm going to be the chap (INAUDIBLE) released.

ABEND: But it's water under the bridge now, unfortunately. I totally agree with what you are saying, but it's water under the bridge. We've got to find out if this information is credible.

LEMON: I've got to run. Go ahead.

QUEST: Can I just apologize? If any viewer thinks that I am being rude to you, I am actually e-mailing --

LEMON: We've had this discussion, and you are always on the BlackBerry, and what he is doing is answering the viewers' questions.

QUEST: No, I am e-mailing our -- yes, I'm answering these questions, but I'm also emailing our correspondents and the teams in Kale (ph), in Perth to find out the details of any of the search areas are actually the same as the ones that are in the ping zone that the Chinese claim to have heard.

LEMON: You know, people think that the we don't like each other, because we are always going back and forth. That is just our relationship. We do the same thing off television, and by the way, Houston, Englishman, Houston, not Houston.

KAY: (INAUDIBLE) behavior.

LEMON: Thank you, Michael Kay. Welcome aboard as a analyst. We're glad to have you here.

Investigators looking at the simulator, Flight 370's pilot says there were some curious things they found. We're going to go inside our simulator and discuss some of those curious things. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: Welcome back, everyone.

So if the pulse signal does belong to Malaysian 370 -- and again, that is a huge "if" here. But if it is the plane's, what course did the airliner take beforehand?

Let's go to CNN's Martin Savidge and pilot Mitchell Casado in the flight simulator now.

So, Martin, what were you able to figure out of this reported pulse signals?

MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, it fits into at least what have been reported as the southern arc, and that is of course, the information that we have known for a couple of weeks, which are the pings that came every hour from reportedly flight 370, and through some very apparently extrapolated math, they were able to determine a possible route.

So when I looked at the map where the ping was heard, the line is very nicely with that.

MITCHELL CASADO, PILOT: Almost exactly to the arc.

SAVIDGE: Yes, it is off to one side.

CASADO: Off to the east a little bit, but it coincides with where the last ping is. I mean, it's almost identical, and right on that route.

SAVIDGE: I mean, what we would really love to know if we had more information on this, of course, is what were the exact locations and them, of course, if you knew the altitude that the aircraft was flying at and the fuel levels, we could plug it in, and technically say, can the simulator fly us to that spot with fuel or running out around that point, and would the simulator bear it out, but there more that we have to know.

And it also brings up the issue of the partial ping, the eighth partial ping, because it is always believed that if you knew where that came from, you had a pretty good idea, Mitchell, that is where the aircraft was in its final stage.

CASADO: That's right.

SAVIDGE: Yes. And it is probably going into the water at that point. So it fits is what we are saying, and still a lot of skepticism if that is really the ping.

LEMON: Les Abend has a question. What do you want to know, Les?

ABEND: Well, Marty, are you putting in a lat/long to go to that position at a particular altitude? I'm not -- in the FMC, I mean, maybe I should address that to Mitchell?

SAVIDGE: Yes, that's -- well, go ahead. We had discussed doing that very thing.

CASADO: First of all, I don't have the lat/long, and if I did secondly, on this particular FMC, I can't input it. The most I can do is to get the distance from Perth, and west in the case, 1,200 miles whatever the case is and just prior to that location.

LEMON: OK. Standby, and hold on, when you say lat/long, you are talking about the latitude, longitude, and when he says FMC and he can't do that, what is that?

ABEND: Well, the flight management computer, and he has to enter the specific coordinates on the chart that we are seeing today.

LEMON: That he can't put it. Is it different in the U.S. or --

ABEND: No, it's the same. He can enter it very easily, but you know, you have to know what the altitude in order to determine when the fuel would run out, and certainly, this is possible.

LEMON: Yes. You know, Marty and Mitchell, we are seeing these, and I am wondering if the investigators are doing the same scenarios that you guys are doing when they come up with where they found these possible pings today. I wonder if they do the similar scenarios to try to figure out how to hone in on a specific search area.

SAVIDGE: Yes, it's a really good question, and it's one I have been wondering as well. I mean, I would imagine they have access to just about any resource they would need at this point.

CASADO: Yes, those guys are going to be in the real level B simulators with the full functionality, and they have so many resources, and it is the government, and so they have resources that go on and on.

SAVIDGE: Yes, beyond what we have here. So I would expect that they would be doing as you say, plotting it out, and trying it out, and see if it works.

LEMON: Yes, I don't know why I have this idea that Marty and Mitchell are flying around even when I'm in bed just all over, everywhere. Sorry, guys. You have been in that simulator for so long.

Search planes are heading to three areas of the Indian Ocean on Sunday. But a brand new statement also says Chinese reports of hearing the pulses from the black box, quote, "cannot be verified at this point." We're going to give you the details straight ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: Let's get a quick update now on the search for flight 370. Chinese media reports that a Chinese ship detected a 90-second stream of pings consistent with an airliner's so-called black box. But Australia's joint agency task force overseeing the search, in a statement issued Sunday morning local time says "Those reports cannot be verified."

Earlier, I asked an engineer who designed flight recorders how a fading battery affects the sound of the ping. Well, someone else asks, I didn't.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JEFF DENSMORE, DIRECTOR OF ENGINEERING, DUKANE SEACOM: It does not change the frequency for the duration of the pattern, but what it happens is that it starts to emit less acoustic energy, and in other words, it starts to get more quiet. So if s the battery starts to die, the signal strength will become less, which means that the range, detected range will start to decrease.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEMON: Well, the Chinese also report that one of their search plans detected white objects floating in the ocean near the search area. No confirmation about what those items might be, but previous objects turned out to be trash or other debris.

And the hopes rose when we heard that a signal was detected but fell when we saw how the Chinese ship had stumbled across it, and the longer we wait for confirmation, the less confident we feel about it. So let's bring in our now to talk about all of this CNN aviation analyst, Michael Kay, CNN aviation correspondent Richard Quest, Les Abend, a CNN aviation analyst and a 777 pilot.

So Michael, we have heard experts say over and over that the black box needs to be found, and it would not be found until the debris is found. Do you believe the Chinese reports?

MICHAEL KAY, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: I'm treating the Chinese reports with extreme caution.

LEMON: Why?

KAY: For all of the reasons that we have been talking about today, because it has not come from the official sources. It has not come from the J.A.C.C.. It has not been corroborated and the equipment that was used to actually discover the pings, I would say is suboptimal and certainly when we looked at the equipment that's out there on the tylus (ph), on ocean shield, on HMS Echo, very sophisticated passive and active sonar systems that have all sorts of filtering.

We know in that part of the world, there is a lot of background noise, and so detecting that 37.5 kilohertz ping is difficult. We want to make sure it is actually that and it is not coming from background noise. So, you know, there are a number of factors that need to be corroborated before we start even releasing any information that might indicate that it is from 370.

LEMON: How does it get out there Richard? How do you confirm it? Is (INAUDIBLE) in any way unless the Chinese confirm it themselves?

RICHARD QUEST, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: Well, the Chinese have been trying to confirm it without any corroboration. So you're going to end up with the international cause, the JACCC -having to send out their own assets. What is striking is the silence from the JACC, from the (INAUDIBLE) that's where the Australians (INAUDIBLE), just this blunt statements cannot be verified. Because there isn't even a suggestion of we're very interested in this, we're going to have a look or we are looking further into it. There is nothing. It is almost like saying, what on earth is all of this about?

LEMON: Right. So that's my question, what on earth is this all about? QUEST: No one knows. No one knows. You got this bizarre situation of these Chinese say, going off in a small boat, putting a hydrophone on a pole over the edge and claiming to have heard a ping. And some experts say - David Gallo (ph) says it is just almost unbelievable that you would be able to pick a ping up from two miles down.

LEMON: That's the question. What do you make of this Les? Can you imagine a ship running across the path of a black box randomly like that with such rudimentary equipment? I know we just had someone on who said it could happen, but what are the odds?

LES ABEND, CNN AVIATION EXPERT: Well, I mean, the odds are maybe getting better by the simple virtue of changing the search area, and you know, maybe luck is upon these folks at this point in time, but just reading between the lines, just making an interpretation, like Richard, I am more doubtful than I was when I heard it earlier today.

LEMON: Richard Quest, I understand there is an app for that? You have it. Where's you app?

QUEST: Well, I was going to show you later.

LEMON: Well, show it now.

QUEST: Well, this is for the air traffic control.

LEMON: OK.

QUEST: This is for the air traffic control.

LEMON: Can you do it now?

QUEST: Well, give me, and are you slightly taken me by (INAUDIBLE).

LEMON: Well, I stumped Richard Quest.

QUEST: No. I would like to pick up on that.

LEMON: And no, no, no.

QUEST: And what is that?

Well, Richard, I am giving you time.

LEMON: He is helping you out here.

(CROSSTALK)

KAY: What I wanted to (INAUDIBLE) is on Richard's last piece when he said that it cannot be verified at any point at this time, and that is one extreme of the arc, and what it doesn't or what we should be cautious about is assuming that that means that they are not looking into it, because they could be, they just don't want to raise another false hope. So we just need to be very open about the way we interpret that statement.

LEMON: All right. Richard.

QUEST: This is all about the question of the air traffic control tapes with the pilots.

LEMON: Right.

QUEST: And why they are not released. Well, anybody who is a bit of an aviation geek will certainly be familiar with this. This is live ATC, and you can pretty much listen to the control tower on any major airport.

LEMON: And can you do it this way? Can you do it backwards? So they can see you do it.

QUEST: Yes. I'm just going to raise the volume a bit. This is Kennedy.

KAY: Something that you are familiar with.

LEMON: Well, it is not that loud enough, Richard.

QUEST: Right. This is Kennedy. Oh, it stopped.

Basically, you can listen to any air traffic control.

LEMON: Stop. Listen, play it. Maybe not

QUEST: It depends upon when the pilots are talking.

LEMON: It comes and goes, and you will see it on the little red light.

QUEST: There you go.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Take off, (INAUDIBLE) American 94, and left wing.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (INAUDIBLE) 31, left, American 94.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's a 452 (INAUDIBLE).

QUEST: Now across the world, there are people who are not only listening to this but they are recording it.

So, for example, how did we ever get the live, and how did we ever get the live audio from Asiana, live ATC. There is no live ATC from - there is no (INAUDIBLE) but nobody was recording it.

LEMON: I listened to that on United. There's a channel on the plane -

QUEST: Channel 9 on United. It has the same thing, yes, but this is - the number of people that you use live ATC around the world, just to listen, to get involved with -

KAY: That's a little bit (INAUDIBLE).

LEMON: Do you guys mind that people can hear that?

ABEND: Well, yes and no. It's subject to interpretation when people hear phraseology that they are not familiar with, but you know, maybe after the break I would like to get into some of the things that Richard is bringing up with reference to the families wanting to listen to these tapes.

LEMON: Do you think it will help them? You want to wait.

Well, let's wait until after the break. We'll talk about that. Don't go anywhere. We will be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: Back now with my panel of experts, Les Abend, you say you want to talk about something that hasn't been brought up and you think it's important to discuss.

ABEND: You know, I understand the family's desires to listen to the actual transmissions by air traffic control and we have to distinguish between these transmissions and the actual cockpit recorder, those can't be listened to, those are pretty much established as part of the investigation. And so let's not confuse those, first of all.

LEMON: Those are in bottom of the ocean, presumed.

ABEND: Correct.

LEMON: Correct.

ABEND: So the transmissions are subject to a little bit of - I mean, we read the transcripts. So there does not never seem to be anything abnormal about it, and we understand that we have had friends of the pilots listen to see if they can distinguish voices, but it is so difficult to be able to do that, even as a pilot, your voice sounds different on the radio.

I had my wife in the back of the airplane to listen to my P.A. announcement, and she had no idea that it was her husband speaking, and so your voice is different. And if you have ever listened to a cockpit voice recorder, it is still difficult, and it is a - it is not a pleasant experience.

LEMON: So what are you saying that -

ABEND: What I am saying - I don't see it being - the people that should be listening to these transmissions should be other pilots that know these folks, and have flown with these folks and are familiar with the slight distortion of air traffic control, because if you listen to this.

QUEST: And this is Malaysia air traffic control at the moment. (INAUDIBLE).

This is the sort of thing and it is not easy to understand.

LEMON: We will be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) LEMON: More on the search for flight 370 in a moment, but first in the CNN series "Death Row Mysteries" we unravel capital murder cases. John Thompson was convicted of murder in 1984. His lawyers spent years more than a decade trying to get him a new trial, but they began running out of options, all appeals for a new trial had been denied.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: On April 19th, 1999, the final death warrant had been issued. We had struck out. We had failed, and he was going to die.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The state set an execution date.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We drove over to Angola. John came into the room, and we didn't tell him that we had been coming, but he knew why we were there, and he looked at us, and he said, "what's the date?" And we looked at him, and we said, John, it is May 20th, which was basically a month off.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I have been around death row that time long enough to know what was going on. I was like, wow, this is my turn, my time, and so, you know, I was trying to be strong. I was trying to be like, understand what is getting ready to happen. I am getting ready to die for a crime I did not commit. And anxiety kicked in, and I did not know how to accept the reality that they were going to kill me.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEMON: It took unraveling a complex cover-up, and 18 years in prison. 14 of them at the infamous Angola prison, and it is no joke as someone from Louisiana. And before Thomson would walked free. John Thomson joins me now from New Orleans. There he is.

The moment police showed up at your home to arrest you, knowing it was a crime that they knew you didn't commit, what was going through your mind?

JOHN THOMPSON, EXONERATED FROM DEATH ROW: Hello?

LEMON: Yes.

THOMPSON: All right.

LEMON: You there?

THOMPSON: Yes, sir, I hear you now.

LEMON: Yes.

THOMPSON: Really, I was just, you know, shocked that they were saying murder, first-degree murder. It was like, unreal. Murder. Is you all serious?

LEMON: Yes. You know, John, at one point, your lawyers suggested that you plead guilty to a lesser offense and be released from prison, and what did you think after all of those years behind bars, why not take that offer?

THOMPSON: Because I was innocent. You know, I watched 12 men be executed, and watching that made me realize that I was just about to die for something that I did not do, and explain it to my sons and my family, and for me to come here under any circumstances to plead for my life to something I did not do, it was like, wow, it was killing all of the principles that I had within me, and so I had to stand dead long, and it was if this is god's will for me, this is what god's will may be.

LEMON: Yes. And also, the victim was from a prominent family, in Louisiana, and another prominent family, also was the district attorney who is Harry Connick, Sr., and in 2011, the Supreme Court decided 5-4 to overturn the case that you won against the district attorney's office who oversaw your case, and it was led again by Harry Connick Sr. basically saying that they were not liable for the failure to turn over evidence, and how do you feel about that?

THOMPSON: Wow. It is like, if you really think about what it all meant, it is what I feel about what they say, first off all they accepted three decision, and all three judges if my favor, and this is one they should not have been hearing at all, but the consequences are, of what they said, what it really means to us as citizens is what frightened me, because now here is a man in my particular case, and I'm going to name him, Jim Williams, he took a picture with six of us on the electric chair, a miniature electric chair.

And all six of us sentenced to death and all of us have been exonerated off death row. For you to tell us that an individual can just go after a citizen, placed him on death row, tried to kill him, commit murder, actually, try to, if you look at what premeditated murder mean, if this is not premeditated murder. I don't know what it is. You say you allow him to get away with allowing six killers to continue to run the streets and hurt other people and we don't find a reason to hold accountability to that, wow. You know? I don't believe that's what the people want. I don't believe that's what the American people want.

We want justice, and for him to take upon his own will, I can't believe that we're not investigating each and every one of his cases. Mr. Connick bragged on some things during my civil case as to him placing 12 judges over his years that's out of his office that became prosecutors that became judges. Through his abuse of his power, of his political power.

LEMON: Harry Connick Sr. was a very controversial figure as a district attorney in New Orleans. I don't know if many people know about that. They know his son, Harry Connick, Jr. who is a singer now but he's very controversial.

THOMPSON: He had a 30-year reign and in 30 years, he placed 12 judges with the same philosophy. You got to look at all the high court overturn from the United States Supreme Courts all the way to our supreme courts have overturned Mr. Connick cases, on robbery cases, on murder cases, on all -

LEMON: What do you think was behind it? Why you do think that you were railroaded? What do you think was behind it? What was the cause?

THOMPSON: It was money. It was who the victim were. It was the victim. Mr. Williams had a serious problem. If you look at it, like I say, every national case from mine to Curtis Cost (ph), (INAUDIBLE), all these cases happened in the 10-year span. He was really violating a lot of constitutional rights of everyone. We shouldn't even think about the. penalty in this country with someone having this kind of power. Why give someone the permission to kill us? That's what I don't understand.

And that's what I'm saying, when you say you support the death penalty, you're actually giving the state permission to kill you. So why are we allowing people with this kind of power that clearly show what he did, represent on the national magazine, he was on the front cover with his image of an electric chair of him. You know, if we allow that and say we're right with it and we question it, some of these people are still being questioned if they're guilty or not. Nobody's questioning what he did. You know,

LEMON: John Thompson, thank you so much. We see your passion. We appreciate it. Your story is unbelievable. And you can watch it here on CNN. Best of luck to you. And congratulations on your son. You said you son just graduated college or high school today?

THOMPSON: College. He went back to college, five years ago. Once he seen my work, resurrection after exoneration and working with the people and the things I do, he wanted to better his life. He went back to school. I'm happy.

LEMON: Great. Thank you. Congratulations to you and your entire family. The original series "Death Row Stories" you can watch it tomorrow all night at 9:00 Eastern right here on CNN.

You know, almost everyone has said in trying to find a plane in the Indian Ocean is like trying to find a needle in a haystack. But Richard Quest, you says it's actually more difficult than that. He's going to break it down for us right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: This week, Australia's prime minister called a search for flight 370, "the most difficult in human history."

CNN's Richard Quest shows us just how difficult by crunching the numbers for us.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

QUEST (voice-over): Proverbial needle in a haystack.

How do you find the wreckage of one plane floating in a vast ocean? At the end of March, the search area was roughly 123,000 square miles. Which is little bigger than the state of New Mexico. Now, let's say the plane is a rectangle. Nose to tail. It's about 209 feet. And wing tip to wing tip, it's 200 feet. So the square footage of a 777 is about 41,800 square feet. So to make this simpler, let's scale it down using mathematics and algebra. If the search area was, say, the Empire State Building, it's roughly like finding your wallet somewhere in the skyscraper. Or let's say that search area is a football field. Then it's like finding a pencil eraser.

Finally, to put this back in terms of water, let's consider that the search area is the same as an Olympic swimming pool. Then it would be like trying to find a large grain of rice somewhere in that water. Add darkness and ocean currents, and actually it's nothing like finding a needle in a haystack. It's much more difficult.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LEMON: So Mr. Quest -

QUEST: Yes.

LEMON: He joins us live. That's him right there. Your piece is based on 123 mile square trek, but the actual search is 150 mile track, right?

QUEST: That was at the beginning when they first started (INAUDIBLE). Because obviously it's a movable feast. But today's search area is 216,000 square kilometers. I'm going to have to turn to my fellow panelists who are more familiar with doing the conversion. What's 216,000 square kilometers in old money?

LEMON: Don't ask me to do math.

KAY: 1.6 kilometers to a mile, but I know it's not strictly that conversion when it comes to square miles.

QUEST: Right. It gives you an idea of -

LEMON: Everybody's like, what, math, huh?

KAY: Way beyond pilot math.

QUEST: Then it gives you an idea of just how difficult this is. To find it. And as a person, some way, Don, it also makes it clear what we're talking about with what the Chinese said we found overnight, becomes a little bit more more incredible. Virtually at the last day, in the runoff period of the pinger period, they're searching in an area that wasn't on the official search map for this day and they didn't report it through the JACC. It all just starts to become more difficult to follow through.

LEMON: Yes. Did we figure out how much? No?

KAY: No, but I will get on it in the commercial break and come right back to you. Les and I are on it.

LEMON: Thank you, guys. Appreciate it. Let's move on now.