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At This Hour

Found Debris Could be MH370; Boeing: High Degree of Confidence Wreckage is MH370. Aired 11-11:30a ET

Aired July 30, 2015 - 11:00   ET

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

[11:00:00] CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: There's a partial number that corresponds to a 777 part according to -- that's according to a source close to the investigation. Despite the confidence in the statement, investigators from the U.S. want to see the part. They want to see if the part is believed to be this flapper on a part on the wing that opens and closes before they make a final determination. Of course, we'll keep you posted.

I'm Carol Costello. Thank you so much for joining me today.

Berman and Bolduan starts now.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: It is one of the biggest mysteries in aviation history. Right now, more than a year after flight 370 disappeared, a major lead has washed ashore and, at any moment, we could get information that this piece of wreckage may belong to the missing 777.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: People on this island are being asked to look out for more debris. Hear why this debris could tell investigators what happened in a plane's final moments. All of this as the families of 370 wait for answers.

This is CNN's special live coverage.

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

BERMAN: Hello, everyone. I'm John Berman.

BOLDUAN: Hello, everyone. I'm Kate Bolduan.

We are following breaking news at this hour in the search for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370. Our Rene Marsh is being told by her source that is Boeing investigators now have, in their words, a high level of confidence that the debris found on Reunion Island comes from a Boeing 777 jet. And that's not just because of the photos that they've been analyzing but because of a part number that corresponds to a 777.

BERMAN: Now, they are confident, but they still want to get their hands on it to take a closer look to make the final determination. That piece you're looking at right there, it is a flaperon. It's a piece that appears on the wing of a Boeing 777. Again, a high degree of confidence it comes from a 777.

Why that's important, no other 777 has gone down in the Indian Ocean. So if it is from a 777, you can reach the conclusion it is most probably from MH370.

Malaysia Airlines right now dispatching a team to the site to investigate, though they're sending them through Paris and depending on seat availability they won't arrive at the island until tomorrow.

Our Robyn Kriel is already there on Reunion Island. CNN has the only television crew reporting from that island.

Robyn, why don't you give us the latest.

ROBYN KRIEL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes. We're hearing that Malaysia Airlines officials should be arriving tomorrow and investigators will be part of that group. We're also -- we understand that Malaysia plans to send a vessel to this area to try to patrol up and down these seas to try to see, John and Kate, if there is any more debris inside or at least just off the coast of reunion. That piece of wing flap, a flaperon it's called, discovered yesterday by people who were clearing the beach of rubbish or trash. They found that piece of debris. They brought it ashore, they let the authorities know. Those authorities then distributed the word that they'd found something that looked to be a part of an aircraft, and ever since then the news has been coming in that, yes, it does look like a Boeing 777. The prime minister from Malaysia stating it is highly likely to be a Boeing 777, the Boeing 777, and we have just learned also that images of that aircraft washed up on the island here, Reunion Island, do match schematic drawings for the right wing flaperon from a Boeing 777 aircraft. A photograph of the interior of that part published by a French language Reunion Island news site here in Reunion Island shows that stenciled component number that's almost like a VIN number for vehicles.

BOLDUAN: Robyn Kriel, thank you so much, laying it out for us.

A lot to get through, a lot breaking regarding the confirmation, the verification process of figuring out that Boeing 777, that this part is likely with high degree of confidence coming from a Boeing 777.

We're going to take a closer look at what that means, but first, let's take a closer look at this part of debris.

Our Tom Foreman is taking a look at that.

Tom, you have been looking at where this part of debris could be coming from and what we're learning more about this. Tell us more.

TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: What we have really is a case of evidence stacking up about this piece of debris ever since it showed up. It's roughly the right size that it ought to be. We have some idea now if we look at this piece of equipment and we compare it to a model of this plane, which is essentially what the engineers are doing because they know it very, very well, they're saying if you rotate it around, it would fit very nicely along the back edge of one of these wings like this. It's where it would normally fit. They see other details to tell them it fits there. If we went through a list of criteria here, why is anticipation so high? It is the right type. It appears to be something that belongs on a 777. It is the right color. It is the right condition meaning it's all covered with all sorts of barnacles, which would be consistent with floating in water for close to 500 days. We're talking about these numbers right now. They have part numbers that are partial identifiers but every piece on a big airplane ultimately has a serial number on it. This is a seat cushion from another plane. You can see the numbers there. If they can find the serial numbers on this piece that they have found, this new piece of the wing or what seems to be a piece of the wing, if they get that and it matches the 777 that is missing, that's the end of it. All the speculation that the plane landed on island or was hijacked should be over -- Kate?

[11:05:45] All right, Tom Foreman, I will take it right here.

Our breaking news, officials at Boeing say they have taken a lock ok at a component number on this flaperon, on this wing flag, and with a high degree of certainty, they believe it's a 777.

That reporting coming from our Rene Marsh, our aviation correspondent, in Washington. Rene joins us right now.

Rene, what more are you learning?

RENE MARSH, CNN AVIATION & GOVERNMENT REGULATION CORRESPONDENT: John, this is different than what we had yesterday. Yesterday, a source close to the investigation saying that based on the photos, in appearance, this piece looked like it was a part of a Boeing 777, but now we're seeing the bar raised a little bit here today. A source is telling me a couple minutes ago that based on these photos, investigators or engineers at Boeing now say that -- and I'm quoting from this source -- "There is a component number that corresponds to a 777 part." So that ratchets it up a little bit here, their confidence level obviously a bit higher, because now we're moving from saying this appears or looks like the design of a Boeing 777, a portion of the wing. And now we're at the point where Boeing engineers are now saying they believe they see a component number that may be a match to a Boeing 777. So obviously that's a more tangible, that's stronger evidence that perhaps this could belong to a 777.

Of course, all of that being said, they are simply looking at photos at this point. What they want to do is look at it with their own eyes so that they are 100 percent sure that the numbers they're seeing in this photo is actually the true numbers indeed. But, again, the headline is it's not just about appearance now. They are looking at specific numbers that leads them to believe that this is indeed a part of a Boeing 777.

BERMAN: Rene Marsh for us in Washington.

All signs pointing to this being part of a 777, including now component numbers on the wing. They want to take a closer look.

Let's bring our aviation attorney, Justin Green; and CNN safety analyst, David Souci, a former FAA accident investigator and author of "Why Planes Crash."

Justin, you're here with us in studio. It has a number, a component number. They say that corresponds to a Boeing 777. If it is a part from a 777, almost has to be from MH370, yes?

JUSTIN GREEN, CNN AVIATION ATTORNEY: That's absolutely correct. After I left you this morning, I spent the morning talking to the families who I represent from the crash, and what they want to know is 100 percent accuracy. That's what they're waiting on.

BOLDUAN: After all of the raising of hopes and dashing of hopes they've gone through, I think that's absolutely understandable.

David, on this breaking news that Rene is bringing to us, they're talking about the difference here between a component number, the fact it's not the same as a part number. It's stenciled inside the interior of the part. Can you lay this out? When you're investigating a crash, what are you looking for and what does that indicate for you?

DAVID SOUCIE, CNN SAFETY ANALYST: Well, the term component really indicates that it's part of an assembly. Now, the assembly is something that is serialized. Each of the component parts, each of the small parts that put together this assembly or make up the assembly have part numbers on them and those part numbers start with 113w. So it's very finite. It's not like there's 15 different numbers and maybe you can't read this or maybe you can. This is going to be a very specific thing they're looking for. They have already confirmed the dimensions or they wouldn't be flying out there. So it's very significant they have come to that conclusion and they're going out there to physically look at it. I think this is just a matter of course, a matter of process at this point.

BERMAN: Justin, you have talked to the families and, of course, the investigators say they want to see it with their own eyes and touch it with their own hands, but are these families beginning to accept the reality that this is a piece of the plane?

GREEN: I think that they're facing that they have to. I don't think that they're there yet. For 500 days, they have been holding out hope for a miracle. And I don't think they're going to give up on their hope until the official word. And I think it will probably come in a couple days.

[11:10:00] BOLDUAN: In a couple of days is the time period you're thinking of.

David, when you're looking at this part, not only is it important to get the news from Boeing investigators that they think this is part of a Boeing 777, I'm sure you're also looking at from your vast experience as a crash investigator looking into what this debris can tell you, the tears, if there's burns or the way it has warn down over time. What do you see in the picture or what would you be looking for if you got your hands on this debris?

SOUCIE: The most significant thing you can see just from the photographs and the fact that the leading edge of this component or this assembly is not significantly damaged. What that tells you is that the front edge of the wing did not have an abrupt stop as it would have if it went in nose first and hit the water quickly and at a high rate of velocity. What would happen is this particular component would be shoved forward into that wing and would have caused damage along the front leading edge of the part. So that gives you a lot of information as to how this aircraft may have entered the water.

BERMAN: All right. David Soucie, Justin Green, stick around with us. We have a lot more questions.

Again, our breaking news just into CNN, representatives from Boeing say they have taken a look at the component number inside this piece of debris on Reunion Island and, with a high degree of confidence, they do say it's a 777. A major development.

Stay with us. Much more coming up next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: Our breaking news, just moments ago, Boeing representatives say the pictures they've looked at of this debris, there's a component number inside that flaperon that coincides with the part from a Boeing 777. They believe with a high degree of certainty it is a 777 part.

[11:15:00] BOLDUAN: They want to see it in person, get their hands on it, the verification process continuing, but a major development and a big step forward in trying to get answers for all of the families of MH370.

We're joined once again by aviation attorney and former military pilot, Justin Green; as well as CNN's safety analyst, David Soucie, a former FAA accident investigator.

Justin, as we're looking at this breaking news again, you were saying to us in the commercial break that really everyone is going to rely on Boeing investigators on the brains at Boeing to confirm if they think this is their part or not.

GREEN: And the NTSB, for example, would have Boeing as a party representative to the investigation, and Boeing's role is as the expert on this airplane is to help the investigators. So Boeing is the people that's going to really decide -- not decide, but determine whether this part is the same --

(CROSSTALK)

BERMAN: But if it is a Boeing 777 part, when Boeing says, yes, how hard is it to make the leap from that to MH370? Are there more numbers in it that would lead to them that?

GREEN: I think they could try to match the serial number. Whether that's possible, I don't know, but clearly process of elimination. I think you have one missing part and you got one 777 part that's found. I think it's pretty clear it would have to be MH370.

BOLDUAN: David, now we have this piece of debris. Authorities on Reunion Island are putting up helicopters in order to comb the coast to look for more debris. Does this surprise you, at this point, that just a single piece of debris has been found, that other pieces of debris aren't nearby? Does that tell you anything?

SOUCIE: You know, it's counterintuitive to think there wouldn't be parts everywhere right there in that location but if you really look at the distances traveled in doing the studies we've done years and years ago back with the air France investigation even when parts surface, they disburse really quickly. It's not surprising to me individual parts would show up miles and even tens, hundreds of miles away from each other rather than grouping together. That's just not the way things float in the ocean.

BERMAN: So, David, this part, it could tell us definitively the plane wept down in the Indian Ocean. It could tell you some things about how the plane tore apart, but there are still some things it does not tell you.

SOUCIE: There's a significant gap between what this part tells us and what it doesn't. There are so many questions that will still be out there. At best this just gives us that conclusion that the aircraft did go down in the Indian Ocean, that there was some break apart. What it does tell you though is that the break apart, the impact into the water we would know a little bit more about whether it was a significant impact, in other words a straight in or if it had some sort of a ditching approach to the water, but people are already drawing conclusions about that but that's not even definitive. There's no reason to know, for example, that if it was a ditching, whether it was under control of human hand or not. That's just not possible to determine, especially when we just have this one part.

BOLDUAN: Absolutely.

But as many experts, as you have been pointing out, Justin, this piece, if it is a flaperon, it seems largely intact, and from your perspective as a pilot, walk us through what a flaperon does, which is what you think it could lead us to understand about what was happening at the time it went into the water.

GREEN: A flaperon, everyone is familiar with the flaps that go down when an airplane is landing. People may or may not be familiar with a device called an air lawn which helps the airplane turn. A flaperon is kind of both of those devices. It does features of the flaps when it's landing, but it also helps control the airplane in yaw and stabilize the airplane during flight.

BERMAN: Now that they have this, is there any reverse engineering that can go on? How helpful is it that it's 2300 miles away from where they're looking?

SOUCIE: The reverse engineering as far as the drift patterns, I don't think there could be anything conclusively derived from where it's located. There were two major, major storms in this period of time that went through this area and could have disrupted even what you would think of as the currents and because it's floating as well, even the wind currents can change the direction of the drift, which we may or may not have real specific idea of where those winds were during this time. I put a very low probability on whether this would help us in determining where that aircraft actually is resting on the bottom of the ocean.

BOLDUAN: That's fascinating, David.

Gentlemen, thank you so much.

Stick with us. We'll have much more on our breaking news in a moment. Boeing investigators now have a high level of confidence that debris found on Reunion Island, because of a component number inside of it, they believe it does come from a Boeing 777.

Much more of our special coverage after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:23:23] BERMAN: At this moment, officials are scrambling to find out if the debris found on the coast of Reunion Island is part of MH flight 370. And it could be just 48 hours before they know for sure. Right now, the images appear to match schematic drawings from the right wing of a flaperon from a Boeing 777 aircraft.

The big question is, how could it get 2300 miles away from where the search teams were looking for it? Let's take a look at it right now. The plane took off on March 8th, 2014, went off radar an hour into the flight. At this point, the search stuck right around Malaysia. Satellite company, Enmarsat, communicated the plane communicated with the systems for hours after that and they predicted the plane might have gone down here in this arc so they moved the search closer to Australia.

BOLDUAN: Crews were searching this area, making a detailed map of the ocean floor to try to locate the plane, but nothing but false alarms have turned up until today. In order it get to Reunion Island, the debris had to travel from Australia or Malaysia on the Indian Ocean gyre, currents that spin counterclockwise.

To talk about this, because we're clearly not the experts on it, Tim Taylor is a sea operations specialist and submersible specialist, joining us to explain how this works.

Tim, in theory, I can understand it, but still we are talking about a huge distance it's going to have to have traveled. Do you think it could have made -- covered this distance in 500-plus days.

TIM TAYLOR, SEA OPERATIONS SPECIALIST: I think easily, it could have. In the news locally here in the states, it's been children that were lost off of Florida, they're looking for them off of Georgia and it's five days. So currents move things. This piece of debris is -- has buoyancy so it floats, but 99 percent of it is like an iceberg, under water, so the currents are the major pushing factor. So if it is moving one knot an hour, that's 24 knots a day, 24 nautical miles away. 500 days away, it's 12,000 miles.

[11:25:23] BERMAN: Easy enough to get it over to here.

TAYLOR: Yeah, and it probably could go around the gyre once or twice. It's a potential it could make a loop. And as storms come in and move it around, you don't know exactly how it got pushed through there, but it's a big vortex going around.

BERMAN: They've been flying helicopters over this island for the last several hours to see if there might be more debris associated. What is the likelihood this is the only piece they find? Do you think there's more?

TAYLOR: I would think there's more. There's a lot of things that float besides big wings.

BERMAN: On this island.

TAYLOR: Right, potentially, on this island. If they take -- how long has this been on the island? That's the big question. It may not have got here yesterday. It may have got here six months ago. Those are things you might be able to find from the biological evidence, the shellfish --

(CROSSTALK)

BERMAN: The barnacles.

TAYLOR: -- the barnacles, how long they've grown --

BOLDUAN: That's one thing they thought was so fascinating. You can see it on the picture, you can see them growing off of it. Everyone saying you might be able to use the barnacles to try to understand where this piece has traveled. Is that true?

TAYLOR: You can find out how long it was in the water and how long it has traveled. If this hit land -- obviously, we don't have a close-up look at this ourselves, but the professionals will look at it. The shell is dead, how long have they been dead? Are they alive? Did it just come ashore? It just came ashore 500 days later and it's been moving around, I guarantee it didn't make a direct course there, so it's been moving around in a gyre, and eventually spreading out and blowing out and landing on the island. So, yes, there's more debris and it could potentially be on a lot of different islands but this will give us a starting point.

BERMAN: We talked to David Soucie about reverse engineering. If it is from MH370, is there any way to track back to see if you're searching in the right area for the fuselage off the coast of Australia?

TAYLOR: You would think we could mathematically model that but it's been so long and so many factors involved we can't put into a database, the weather, everything that happened in the giant Indian Ocean. I would find that problematic. You can get some generalizations if you find more data but tracking it down to help the search site is just not possible.

BOLDUAN: One thing David Soucie said, there have been two major storms that have blown through since. What is the impact -- if you're trying to calculate where this thing traveled, what is the impact of a storm on this current flow? TAYLOR: Storm will last a few days. Current lasts every day. It

will have an impact. It will move it one way or the other but it's not going to be the major impact. It's a temporary thing. Even a hurricane is a temporary event, where the gyre is permanent, ongoing, every day thing.

BERMAN: You're a search expert. You still think they're looking for the fuselage in the right place on the bottom of the ocean?

TAYLOR: I would think this is -- everything points to that area. This being where it is, across the ocean, is not uncommon. It's 500 days later. Things wash up from Japan in the tsunami. There's a lot more debris than from a small plane from the Japanese tsunami. But now you have an area you can focus. You know where you found one piece. It will be a little easier --

(CROSSTALK)

BERMAN: You also have a French air base on that island, so searching will be a heck of a lot easier than it was from Australia.

BOLDUAN: And it's hours and hours just to get to that search area.

TAYLOR: I don't think they will search the ocean. I think they will be scouring the beaches, because that's where it's going to be. They're not going to go out looking for small pieces of debris on the ocean.

(CROSSTALK)

BOLDUAN: Fascinating, after all that time, all those countries, all those flights, all that money, they may have found it from it washing ashore. That's how it happens in the past, too.

TAYLOR: Right.

BERMAN: Tim Taylor, great to have you with us.

BOLDUAN: Great to see you.

We'll have much more on the breaking news of the debris they have found off the shore of Reunion Island. Boeing investigators telling our Rene Marsh that the component number found inside that piece corresponds to a Boeing 777.

Much more of the breaking news coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)