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Jet Flew Off Course; Boeing 777 Cockpit; Expanded Search Efforts

Aired March 14, 2014 - 14:00   ET

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

DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR: Wolf, thank you very much. We'll be watching you today at 4:00 Eastern on "The Situation Room," and 5:00 Eastern, I should say, but my goodness.

I'm Don Lemon, in for Brook Baldwin today. This is a special edition of the CNN NEWSROOM.

Where is this plane? It has been eight days - eight days after Flight 370 vanished without a trace. And we now have reports of activity from two entirely different oceans. This as fear grows that something very sinister happened on this plane. Was it hijacked? Here's what we're hearing at this hour. This is the very latest.

Not only did Flight 370 possibly keep flying for hours. Reuters citing unnamed sources, reporting the plane flew in established air corridors, deliberately following so-called way points toward the Andaman Islands. And it puts the jet, or what's left of it, well into the Indian Ocean to the west of Malaysia. This area soon to be searched by a U.S. destroyer.

But wait, Chinese seismic researchers say they recorded a sea floor event, a reading they say is consistent with an airplane crash. They're saying it happened about an hour, an hour and a half after the plane's last definitive sighting on radar. And that would put the jet back on the other side of the Malaysian peninsula.

So let's go to the west now where we're going to dedicate the next two hours to covering every single angle of this story, putting all these new reports to the experts. So let's start now with the report that Reuters is suggesting - that Reuters is reporting in suggesting the plane was had - was deliberately flown off course towards the Andaman Islands in the Indian Ocean. Most of those islands are uninhabited. India has a naval base there.

So I want to bring in aviation correspondent Richard Quest, and then also Haueter, Tom Haueter, who is a former National Transportation Safety Board investigator. He is in Washington.

So, Tom, to you first. Could a possibly hijacked 777 airliner actually land somewhere in the Andaman Islands without being detected? Is that feasible?

TOM HAUETER, FORMER NTSB INVESTIGATOR: I think it's highly unlikely to be undetected. It's a large aircraft with people on board. You'd need a large runway. I would be surprised. LEMON: You would be surprised if that happened.

Richard Quest.

RICHARD QUEST, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: I would be more than surprised. And also we've heard from the authorities in the Andaman Islands that they've got - on all the runways that are there, of the 36 inhabited islands that have landing strips, few or none of them would really take a 777 and there's been no untoward (ph) reports.

Now, as for those that are uninhabited, according to Indian officials, so far it was (ph) reported this morning there's been nothing reported out of the ordinary.

LEMON: Richard, there are reports that the flight was traveling over specific way points.

QUEST: Right.

LEMON: Talk to us about way points.

QUEST: Right. Well, way points are really nothing more than the junctions that connect the flight paths of the world.

LEMON: Right.

QUEST: You fly from one to the -- and then you turn and you fly to the next. And they're all given these names. And, look, here we have the map here. So the plane originally left Kuala Lumpur.

LEMON: Right.

QUEST: It headed north.

LEMON: Right.

QUEST: And it got to Agari (ph) way point.

LEMON: Right.

QUEST: Now at that point, it should have carried on, of course, further up.

LEMON: Right.

QUEST: But according to these radar pings from the aircraft, it seems to have gone west and then it made another change at Vampi. It made another change at Gival and Igratz.

Now, every pilot in the world is familiar with the way point. To the - to the uninitiated, think of an interstate where you're going from somewhere and you just have to get off at one junction and join the next interstate.

LEMON: Right.

QUEST: And then you get off at another junction. Those junctions in aviation world, they have names. They're called way points.

LEMON: Yes, but that would indicate that some sort of - that they were using some sort of, I guess, communication or guidance, right?

QUEST: Well, we don't -

LEMON: Maybe they - maybe they were using the onboard compass. Maybe the -

QUEST: I'm going to -- I'm going to pour a little bit of cold water on all of this because we don't know the strength of the story that actually says these way points -- we know that - we know that it was plotted and we know it looks like they followed this way point, but nobody has come out and actually - nobody officially has come out and said -

LEMON: OK, but I understand that. But from a layman -

QUEST: Right.

LEMON: You would think that, OK, the onboard navigation has gone out.

QUEST: Right.

LEMON: And what every single person I've spoken to, sat in the same chair that you're sitting, saying, listen, there is a compass on board. That is the last resort. If they're using a compass, it would seem feasible that that's what they would be doing -

QUEST: What it looks like -

LEMON: They would be going to these way points -

QUEST: What -

LEMON: To try to figure out how to get back to a runway.

QUEST: What it looks like is that somebody set a course to -- if this is true -

LEMON: Right.

QUEST: It appears as if somebody set a course which put the plane to change a direction at way point Vampi, Gival and Igratz.

LEMON: Stand by, Richard Quest. We want to get to the - we want to get to the White House. They're talking about the airplane right now. Let's listen in.

JAY CARNEY, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: And we are working hard in close collaboration with the Malaysian government to investigate a number of possible scenarios for what happened to the flight. Our hearts, of course, go out to the families of the passengers who are in this agonizing situation. Unfortunately, definitive conclusions still clearly cannot be drawn at this time. The U.S. government is tracking the situation closely and we are in communication across agencies and with international partners to provide any appropriate assistance we can in this investigation. We are also continuing to participate actively in the search efforts. We are consulting with our international partners about the appropriate assets to deploy, including to the new search area - search areas to the west. So I - you know, I - to the extent that you have questions about what happened to that flight, I can assure you that I don't have conclusive answers. I don't think anyone does. We are participating with an array of international partners in assisting the Malaysian government in the effort to find out what happened to the plane and where - where it is.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I know that you don't know any more than any of us where the plane is, but is it among the possibilities that investigators are considering that the plane may have landed somewhere?

CARNEY: I think for specifics about what we know and what we're doing in the investigation, I would refer you to the FAA and the NTSB and I wouldn't speculate about the scenarios that have, you know, been laid out there in the media or by people who are participating in the investigation, because I don't think any of us or any of them has been able to reach a conclusion as to the whereabouts of the plane or to what happened to it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Jay, the president has been saying for a long time that he doesn't have it within his power to further ease deportations. He's confronted hecklers. But he's said even as recently as last week that he's already stretched his administrative ability pretty far. Has the president changed his mind?

CARNEY: What we announced last night is that the president met with congressional Hispanic caucus chairman Rubin --

LEMON: All right, you're looking at Press Secretary Jay Carney giving an update there on the airplane, speaking to reporters in the briefing room, saying that they are participating accurately in the search. They are tracking it. The White House is. Administration officials are tracking it. They're saying - they're saying, and consulting with their partners on which assets to deploy, especially in relations to the new search area, meaning the Indian Ocean, which is a very big body of water.

I'm joined now by Richard Quest.

Richard, before we went to the White House and Jay Carney was giving us that update -

QUEST: Yes.

LEMON: You were talking to us about the way points. And you said it appears someone or some - someone had plotted a course using these way points and then we went to the briefing.

QUEST: Right. LEMON: What do you -

QUEST: I'd - but I'd also give you another scenario. The pilots involved with this plane, something could have happened on board and he knew he had to get back to land pretty quickly, so he just turns a heading. He just turns a heading back to ground and something else happens and the plane carries on flying a predestined path. There's all sorts of reasons why it will be flying towards these way points.

LEMON: OK. So, Tom, listen, when you look at these way points, right, that they are - that it appears to be plotted here, the latest information saying the plane went to these way points and that was the last they heard of them. What does -- does that - does that lend anything to your thinking or -- as to what might have happened to this plane?

HAUETER: Well, I agree, I'm not sure the airplane actually hit those way points. It may just pass near them. I all -- it's all very possible that the pilot put in a heading into the heading bug and the air -- became incapacitated and the airplane just flew that direction.

I think the biggest thing we have here now is that there's data probably that provided to the searchers saying to look to the west. And that's the most important thing right now. We've got a lot of speculation how it got there. But based on where they're moving U.S. assets and the cost and everything else, I suspect they have an area they want to search.

LEMON: Tom, did someone deliberately turn off the plane's communication systems?

HAUETER: We don't know. I mean it's very possible to have a cascading fire meltdown of the system, if you will, that you lose the navigation systems, you lose communications, you lost transponder. That's certainly within the realm of possibility and we just don't know.

LEMON: Let me - so - so we know the plane's transponder is shut down. Here's the timeline, 1:21 a.m. And then 14 minutes after the plane's data reporting system shut down, some experts say that that means that communications were shut down manually. That's why I ask you that question.

HAUETER: Not necessarily. I've seen failure modes, that things happen in an event. It's possible. You can't rule it out.

LEMON: Yes.

Richard.

QUEST: Tom, I just want to point out, to pick you up on this point, a very interesting point that, on way points, you're much more experienced. You've flown way points. You know there's as many way points out there as possibly you can imagine. You could all - you could pretty much plot any diagram and you'd hit a way point that's some - relatively close by. Is that true? HAUETER: You're absolutely correct. There's lots of stuff out there. It's easy to fly by and find something that would look like you hit a way point and it's just random occurrence. You don't know.

QUEST: One more - sorry, go ahead.

LEMON: No, that's all right. Go ahead.

QUEST: And one more thing. And talk to me more about this cascading failing system where one thing might fail, for example, the transponder, and then you're dealing with that, and the electrical issue or whatever, and then something else fails.

HAUETER: Well, it's possible, and we've seen this before -- it's rare, understandably, but you have an electrical event, an (INAUDIBLE), that's taking out racks (ph). And whatever sequence it's in. And so it's possible that you have a situation where you lose the transponder. You lose communications. You lose your ACARS.

So the thing we have here is a lack of data, quite frankly.

LEMON: Yes.

HAUETER: And I can put together a scenario to match about anything you want. And that's the problem we have. We have to be careful here of giving, I think, the victim's families false hope on what's going on here. Right now everything's possible. We need more data to pin it down.

LEMON: I agree, everything is possible. And the reason we're going over these scenarios, all of these scenarios, is because everything is possible. No one knows right now.

HAUETER: That's correct.

LEMON: And it seems that what you were talking about, Richard, here, is a domino effect. One thing gives out and then nothing and it causes stress and then nothing, and nothing, and nothing. I mean and another thing and another thing and a domino effect.

QUEST: I'm going to shoot my own theory down. I'm -

LEMON: Quickly though.

QUEST: I'm my own - I'm going to shoot my own theory down, and it's this, when the first item failed, unless it was the ACARS that failed -

LEMON: Right.

QUEST: It should have been the ACARS that told us that the first thing failed.

LEMON: OK.

QUEST: And we keep coming back to that. LEMON: Hold that thought.

QUEST: Right.

LEMON: Richard Quest.

QUEST: Thank you.

LEMON: Tom Haueter. Appreciate both of you. We'll get back to you.

And right now, 13 countries looking for this missing plane. The search involves nearly 60 ships and four dozen aircraft. I want to bring in now correspondent Andrew Stevens. He is tracking the new developments. He is in Kuala Lumpur.

Andrew, what is the latest on the investigation from -- specifically from the Malaysian authorities.

ANDREW STEVENS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, listening to the conversations where you are, Don, we've been hearing the same sort of theories down here. The same unsourced stories are floating around where I am here in Kuala Lumpur.

But as far as facts on the ground, as far as information we're getting from the Malaysian authorities, it's been long, it's been frustrating and ultimately it's been a fruitless day. We're no further forward really than we were 24 hours ago. There is a press conference every day. At this press conference the defense minister, who's leading the investigation, he was asked about the pings that you're talking about that these communicates -- communications satellites might have picked up. He said, yes, we're aware of media reports. No, we're not commenting on them. We -- yes, we're in the Andaman Sea looking. Yes, we're in the Indian Ocean looking. The -- so it's all what we know.

It is incredibly frustrating for everybody. But the Malaysians will not come out with new information until it's being verified, authenticated, you name it. A lot of the interest in today's press conference, Don, was on the pilot and was he being investigated. Yes, he is being investigated. Has his house been searched? We were told it had been searched. No, it hasn't, which -

LEMON: Yes.

STEVENS: Which is surprising to many of us here that the house of the pilot still hasn't been searched. So, bottom lines, Don, frustrating. Not a lot of movement on facts.

LEMON: No. Andrew, while I have you there, let's talk about the families of the passengers. And they have waited eight days now. No word on what happened to their loved ones.

STEVENS: Yes.

LEMON: Is Malaysia Airlines or anyone doing anything new to help these struggling families while they wait? As you said the, you know, the investigation, it appears to be limited. That, you know, how (ph) has it been searched. Didn't know about that. But what are they doing specifically, if anything, to help these families?

STEVENS: Well, specifically, they're putting anybody who would like to enter hotels here in Kuala Lumpur. They are offering counseling groups, support groups. There's Malaysian - there's a desk - Malaysian Airlines desk at these hotels to help people 24 hours. They can ask questions. What answers they're getting are frustratingly little, like we are, because Malaysia Airlines is part of this investigation but by no means leading it. It's being led by the defense departments, by the civil aviation department. So all the families can do is be together, they can be surrounded by people in the similar situation who empathize, who understand what they're going through and only they could really understand what's happening. It must be absolutely heartbreaking for them, Don.

And as you say, eight days on, they don't know, we don't know, nobody knows. Everything is still on the table. So for the families, they can still hold on to that tiny shred of hope that this may have been a hijack. We've been talking for the last 24 hours about the possibility of the plane landing. If -- when relatives hear that sort of information, it gives them hope. And that's what they're holding on to at the moment. That's their best hope, a hijack.

LEMON: Andrew Stevens, thank you very much. We appreciate it.

Listen, I want to tell you that this is what we're covering today with our special coverage. Basically these are the three headlines here. These are the main three things.

Reuters is reporting that a plane headed towards the Andaman Islands, we told you at the beginning of this broadcast, hijacked by someone possibly with knowledge of flying. Also two instruments that transmit data to the ground stopped 14 minutes apart and experts say that means it was probably manually done. China's also reporting that there was an event on the sea floor, a seismic event, the day the plane disappeared. Those are the new developments.

And I want to tell you that our special coverage here of the mystery surrounding Flight 370 is going to continue. Straight ahead here, we're going to take a closer look at the new search area in the Indian Ocean and the chain of small islands that that missing jet may have been heading towards.

Plus, transponders. You heard Richard Quest say ACARS, pings. You have heard us talking about different ways to track this plane. We're going to explain exactly how all these devices work and what happened on this plane.

And then our Martin Savidge live in a 777 flight simulator, taking a very close look at what could have happened in the cockpit.

Martin.

MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Don, we programmed in everything we know about Flight 370. We're actually flying that flight right now. There's a lot to understand about this mystery, still to come.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: We're back now with our developing story, the search for the missing Malaysian plane Flight 370. CNN has learned that two of the Boeing 777's communications systems were shut down and they were turned off separately. Reuters citing unidentified sources familiar with the investigation reports the plane was deliberately flown on a known route toward the Indian Ocean. And a senior U.S. official telling CNN, the plane is likely at the bottom of the ocean. That is where the search has been expanded.

CNN's Martin Savidge live a Boeing 777 simulator.

Martin, tell us about the communications system being turned off. What does that tell us and could that have happened by accident?

MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: All right, well, there's a lot to go over. So let me start with why we are here and what it's all about. We basically took all the information we knew about Flight 370 and we plugged it into the flight simulator. So we are flying Flight 370 in essence as it were.

We're right now currently at an altitude of 35,000 feet. We are not touching the controls because we're on automatic pilot. Outside, it's night. It was a night sky then. Everything replicating right down to the route, which you will see indicated in pink what they were flying, leaving from Kuala Lumpur, they were going to go to Beijing. Of course, they never made it.

They disappeared at a point right here, Vitod, v-o-t-o-d. We are 71 miles away, less than 10 minutes definitely, of arriving at that particular point in the flight. It was after that moment that communication officially was lot right after the line of "all right, good night." So, essentially that's where we are.

Getting to the communication, I want to show you something real quick. Deviating from the route, because now it seems clear the plane did changed course. Can it be done? Well, yes, it can. But I'm in automatic pilot. Let me show you what happens when I disengage it. There's an automatic alarm. In other words, no one's going to surreptitiously steer you off course. Let me shut it down, put the automatic pilot back on. There's no way to do this without the pilots being aware the plane is changing course.

Don.

LEMON: OK. So if the transponder was shut off, right, then how could that happen? Because you said that it makes a - obviously it makes a noise, right, when the automatic pilot goes off, transponders shut off, it makes a noise. So why can pilots - why are they allowed to be able to do that in mid-flight?

SAVIDGE: OK. But let me show you the transponder, because we didn't get to that point. That's right here, located right next to my knees. This very small - looks like a radio. In essence, that's what it is. But a very specific radio. It's sending out a signal and Mitchell Casado, who is the pilot with me on this simulator, he can tell you - what's it for? It's basically to identify us, right?

MITCHELL CASADO, PILOT TRAINER, 777 COCKPIT SIMULATOR: It is. It's to identify us in the air so that the folks on the ground, the air traffic controllers, can interrogate us and see what our parameters are, our altitude, our speed, our heading and keep us safe from hitting other airplanes.

SAVIDGE: You would never turn it off in flight, Don. You would never turn it off - let me say it one more time, you would never turn it off in flight.

But if you had to, if you wanted to, here's how you do it. It's just three simple clicks of a switch to the left. Now it's off. We're no longer squawking anything. We're still on radar, but now we're an unidentifiable blip.

LEMON: OK. So, Martin, the alarm then that you were talking about, that's for the -- the auto pilot. I'm a bit confused here. So the transponder -

SAVIDGE: Right.

LEMON: If the transponder's turned off, there is no alarm?

SAVIDGE: There is no alarm. However, immediately on the ground, according to protocol, Mitchell, what would happen if they see a transponder go out?

CASADO: If a transponder is taken off in flight, that's going to send humongous alarm bells down in the air traffic control centers. The Air traffic controllers are going to challenge us, they're going to call us, ask us what's going on, why is the transponder off? Do we have an emergency? It's unheard of to turn your transponder off in flight.

SAVIDGE: We don't know if that happened. We don't know if there was any challenge. But if they followed procedure, definitely once that plane went dark in a transponder, somebody should have been checking up on (ph) them going, what's happening?

LEMON: That is a very good question. We don't know that it happened, Martin. And we will certainly keep checking on that. Martin, great reporting. Thank you very much. We appreciate Martin. We appreciate Mitchell as well.

Still ahead, eight days after going missing, we have yet to find anything connected to Flight 370, no parts, no pieces, nothing. Now the search moves towards the Indian Ocean. We're going to take a closer look at a new search area that could unlock the mystery of the missing plane. And the Indian Ocean can pose some very unique problems for search teams if the jet is in the water. If it is in the water, it's likely not going to be in the same place for very long. We're going to talk live to an oceanographer about the strategies searchers are using to try to find this plane.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) LEMON: Welcome back, everyone, to our continuing coverage of Flight 370. The mystery that is Flight 370. And it's one of the really - the biggest mysteries in aviation history. What happened to this airplane and where are the 239 people who were on board? Are they alive? It is now day eight and U.S. intelligence, the Federal Aviation Administration, the National Transportation Safety Board, no one knows where this plane is. But there are a lot of theories out there, conflicting as they might be. A Reuters report citing unnamed sources said that whoever was piloting the jet was deliberately following an established route that would have taken the plane over the Andaman Islands. But an editor of the "Andaman Chronicle" newspaper says there's just nowhere to land such a big plane there.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice-over): There are no chances that such a big aircraft coming towards Andaman can be missed. Apart from these four airstrips, it cannot land in any other island.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEMON: So let's go over this information now as best we can with CNN's Tom Foreman. He joins us now with a virtual look at the search efforts.

What do you have, Tom.

TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: You know, Don, when you look at the geography of this area, I think that's pretty important right now because we have so many conflicting reports and conflicting bits of information. Remember, here are the basics. The plane took off here in Kuala Lumpur, flew for less than an hour and then up in this area it completely disappeared. And since then, because of all those reports, these search areas have grown and grown and grown. Of course you have the major search area around the wreckage site, that's pretty important, but now you have search areas over land, you have search areas further out west.

And because of some of these latest reports, now you're also talking about the Andaman Islands back there. There they are. The Andamans are actually a string of islands that go for about 500 miles. There are many islands involved. Almost 500 islands. And are there places there where somebody could land? Yes. Let me bring in some satellite images here. There are places that could actually handle a plane this big, but here's the problem. This is a big, long runway. Here's another one.