Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsroom

Mystery of Flight 370; Lithium Batteries Previously Blamed for Aircraft Fires Stored in Missing Flight's Hold

Aired March 14, 2014 - 15:00   ET

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

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, everyone, Don Lemon here. It's the top of the hour.

We are going to start with breaking news. It's information that could change everything for the search for missing Flight 370. The question is, did lithium batteries take down this plane? CNN has just learned that they were stored in the cargo hold. Why is this significant? Well, they have been blamed as the cause of previous airline -- airplane crashes.

The piece of the puzzle is now being examined by investigation -- investigators. Of course, if the batteries being carried on the plane caused a fire, this still does not fully explain other anomalies, like why the plane may have changed course.

An explosive new report suggesting that something very sinister happened in the cockpit of this plane -- not only did Flight 370 possibly keep flying for hours. Reuters is citing unnamed sources reporting the plane flew in established corridors, deliberately following so-called waypoints Andaman Islands.

And it puts the jet or what's left of it well into the Indian Ocean and to the west of Malaysia, this area soon to be searched by a U.S. destroyer.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JAY CARNEY, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: The Malaysian government is in the lead in this investigation, and U.S. safety -- air safety officials are in Kuala Lumpur working closely with the Malaysian government on the investigation.

This is a difficult and unusual situation, and we are working hard in close collaboration with the Malaysian government to investigate a number of possible scenarios. we are in communication across agencies and with international partners to provide any appropriate assistance we can in this investigation.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEMON: That was just moments ago at the White House in the Briefing Room. And then there is this. Look at this picture you're looking at now. 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-and-a-half after the plane's last definitive sighting on radar.

But this happened on the east of Malaysia.

Let's start a report now on the lithium batteries. We want to get straight there.

We want to bring in now aviation lawyer, pilot and aviation energy Arthur Rosenberg.

You know about planes. You know about lithium batteries. You know about -- you say that they can trigger fires and you talked about the weight. We have been discussing that. This is someone's BlackBerry here in the newsroom. This is a lithium battery. That is what powers our phones.

ARTHUR ROSENBERG, AVIATION LAWYER: It is. That is.

LEMON: This is the best form of energy, the best battery that we can get, right, for the longest amount of time that is lightweight. That's why they use them.

ROSENBERG: This miracle of modern technology pound for pound provides the most bang in energy for the weight and the buck.

But, now, the lithium batteries that are in airplanes, lithium batteries that are, for example, in the 787, they are huge by comparison. You are talking about something which is probably two feet long by a foot-and-a-half wide by maybe a foot-and-a-half tall.

They are a lithium battery on steroids with...

LEMON: This on steroids.

ROSENBERG: With a different chemical composition.

And the benefit that you get is you get an incredible source of energy for a long periods of time. It's reliable, but with every benefit, there is a drawback. And the negative side of it is they are extremely temperamental. When they go bad, they go bad quickly. They burn. They burn at thousands of degrees. They can easily burn through the hull of an airplane. They can easily burn through aluminum, through wiring, through hydraulic pipes.

LEMON: Why do we use them? Because that's the latest technology?

(CROSSTALK)

ROSENBERG: We use them -- well, we use them mostly -- in any airplane design, weight is a very important consideration.

And with the amount of electrical energy that we need in modern-day airplanes, this is the battery of choice. Now, could you design an airplane which would use a lead acid battery like we find in our car? Yes. It probably would be about 10 times as big and weigh about 10 times as much. For the most part, the lithium batteries are safe. They're safe and reliable source of electrical energy.

LEMON: Until?

ROSENBERG: But when something bad happens, their destructive force is a quantum greater than a lead acid battery or perhaps even another form of lithium battery.

LEMON: The negative is just as big as the positive.

(CROSSTALK)

ROSENBERG: I would say the positive certainly outweighs the negative, but the negative has such destructive capability, that it has to be contended with.

LEMON: OK.

Now, again, that's the report that is coming out of Washington. Let's talk about there's a Reuters report suggesting that the plane was deliberately flown, that was it was flown off course and could possibly have been hijacked, this 777 airliner.

Could it land somewhere in a remote island like the Andaman Islands? Is that -- without being detected?

ROSENBERG: Well, i have been following the CNN coverage.

And the short answer to that question is, yes, it could be landed. Could it be landed without being detected? I'm not sure what that means. The Andaman Islands have airports. There's at least two that I know of that have over 10,000-foot-long runways. A 777 to land probably needs about a mile-and-a-half, a mile, something in that neighborhood.

To take off, depending on the gross weight -- I think this was an E.R., extended range, version. This plane weighed about a half- million pounds. It needs about 10,000 feet to get off the ground fully loaded. The short answer to the question is, yes, it could.

LEMON: Likely?

ROSENBERG: Could technically land, but -- but some of the coverage has been, well, we didn't see anything, we didn't hear anything. This was in the middle of the night. Airplanes come into airports all the time.

It's not -- these engines are not loud, contrary to some of the reports that I have heard. They are huge fan engines. They are ducted engineers. They are relatively quiet. Could the plane get in, land without anybody taking special notice to it? I would say yes.

LEMON: You would say yes. So, explain that. Let's do it in layman's term. You said huge ducted engines, meaning what? There is a tamper on them, so they're not so loud?

ROSENBERG: I'm old enough to remember the day when airliners were carried by turbo jet engines.

LEMON: Yes.

ROSENBERG: And they -- I live in New York. We live in New York. We have JFK and La Guardia.

When those airplanes came overhead, they were loud and screaming.

LEMON: Right.

ROSENBERG: These ducted engineers are not pure turbo jet engines. The center core of the engine is a turbo jet, but around the outside, it's a fan like you would have running in your house blowing air over the core. And that muffles the sound of the jet engine.

Bottom line is, when we see jets flying over our head today, half the times, you go, wow, that's really quiet.

LEMON: Yes.

Tom Foreman, if you are listening in Washington, can you work up something on that for us, about the difference between a ducted engine and you said a...

ROSENBERG: And a pure turbo jet...

(CROSSTALK)

LEMON: And a pure turbo jet engine. We would love to see that, because you're saying these are much quieter.

(CROSSTALK)

ROSENBERG: Much quieter engines, absolutely.

LEMON: Yes. Good information.

I know we have to go to break, but if we can just do one more thing, because I want to talk to you. Can I talk to you about -- these cores, right, also the waypoints, right? It took off here, right, Kuala Lumpur, and then it gets here to the waypoint.

Does this mean that someone plotted a course? Does this mean that the plane was just pinging off of these towers? What does that mean?

ROSENBERG: Waypoints are like exits on like highways on a road.

Let's say you are driving down a road and you see an exit you want to get off. A waypoint is really just an exit to another air route. They are definitively defined points in space.

When we start talking about an airplane that was steered to a waypoint, that takes an intentional effort on the part of a flight crew. And the fact that we have one, two, three, four waypoints means that, bottom line, someone or an autopilot that had been preprogrammed to fly this route was flying this airplane.

You do not get what we see in terms of flight path of the airplane going from point to point to point to point unless it's an intentional act. That I think bodes well for the proposition that this aircraft was certainly under control and certainly being flown deliberately to those points in space.

LEMON: Will you stick around? I have learned so much from you. I have learned about the batteries. I have learned about the engines. This is the first time we have heard that these engines are quiet enough that maybe this plane could have landed without causing a lot of notice. It's very resting. The waypoints as well. Someone had to steer this plane into the waypoints.

Best information we have gotten today. Thank you. Please stand by. We will get back to you. Arthur Rosenberg is here.

There is still a big search going on, on the ocean. Sea conditions are also playing a role in tracking the missing Boeing 777. The waves' positions and the current circulation all factor into where the plane could be if it crashed into the water.

Joining me now via Skype is David Gallo. He's director of the special projects at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts.

So, David, what factors need to be taken into consideration during this particular search?

DAVID GALLO, WOODS HOLE OCEANOGRAPHIC INSTITUTION: Hi, Don.

The first thing we have got to figure out is where to begin the search. The search area now, if we take it at its fullest, is bigger than the entire North Atlantic. That's difficult enough above the water, but under the water, it's a lifetime undertaking to search that kind of an area.

But the one thing I think we should be doing now is looking in the Gulf of Thailand, if there is still interest in the search there, because knowing -- at this point, knowing where the plane isn't is important. We can check that off. We don't need to spent more time on the surface if it's not on the floor of the Gulf of Thailand.

The other thing we need to know now is need to start collect meteorological data, the wind, the waves, because if we do eventually find in the water some bits of floating debris, that has to be backtracked to give us that X marks the spot on the sea surface.

LEMON: What are the conditions right now? Explain the conditions to us in the Indian Ocean this time of year. Does that affect the search in terms of where the possible debris would be found? I would imagine it would. Right?

GALLO: Well, not so much. You have everything from monsoonal winds to the normal every day. That's a big area. You have got a little bit of everything inside there, fairly calm seas, I'm sure, fairly rough seas too. It all depends again on where we are talking about.

You have everything from the shallowest water and islands to the deepest ocean trenches, from zero feet down to two, three miles. From the point of view of my profession, the people that look beneath the sea, if we are getting ready to mount an expedition to find the black boxes, if they are in the water, boy, you don't where to begin. You have to be ready for just about anything.

LEMON: David Gallo, much appreciated. Thank you very much, sir.

GALLO: You're welcome.

LEMON: Coming up here on CNN, Malaysian officials announce they are now expanding the search for Flight 370. But is it too little too late for Malaysian authorities? We are live in Kuala Lumpur. That's next.

Also, it is turning into one of the biggest mysteries in aviation history and there a lot of theories about just what happened to the plane. We will break them all down for you coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

LEMON: I'm Don Lemon. We are following breaking news here on CNN.

U.S. officials say investigators are looking at whether lithium batteries in the cargo hold blamed in previous crashes could have played a role in the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.

As the search for the plane expands, multiple reports are coming in about where the plane disappeared. The plane's last confirmed location was between Malaysia and Vietnam, but now efforts have stretched west into the Indian Ocean.

CNN's international -- CNN International's Andrew Stevens, I should say, joins us now from Kuala Lumpur to help us piece together the latest on this investigation.

Andrew, what do we know at this hour?

ANDREW STEVENS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: This hour, just been talking to a Malaysia Airlines official about that lithium battery issue.

Don, he is not commenting at the moment. He's saying he will get back to us. But it's interesting. You talk about this search expanding into the Indian Ocean and into the Andaman Sea. At the press conference today, it was much more a case of we're expanding out there because we have searched other areas and haven't found anything at all. We are broadening the reach, rather than we have specific information which would take us out there.

All it does is shows just how difficult it is for the Malaysian authorities to release what information they have. We know about the story which is being quoted in Reuters that the fact that the plane may have been heading towards the Andaman Sea, that a trained pilot or trained -- someone who could actually fly a plane was on board because it was using these navigational waypoints we have been talking about, also the fact that the communications may have been deliberately turned off.

Those issues have come and been raised at these press conferences and we get nowhere. They just keep on saying we are not going to say anything until we have verification. You remember 24 hours ago the pings we were talking about that have been picked up by commercial satellites which may or may not have shown the plane heading in that direction as well.

I asked about that specifically just to confirm did they have that information and they couldn't confirm they had it or they said they were aware of the reports. Ultimately, quite frustrating here. And as far as moving the story on officially at least, and finding out a little bit more about what has happened officially on the ground here in Kuala Lumpur, it's still very, very difficult. We are not that much further forward than we were 24 hours ago.

LEMON: Andrew Stevens with CNN International reporting from Kuala Lumpur, Andrew, thank you very much.

Malaysian officials say 57 ships, 48 aircraft from 13 countries were involved in the search on Friday. It is now early Saturday morning in Malaysia.

CNN's Tom Foreman joins me now with a virtual look at the search efforts.

Tom Foreman, hello.

TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hello, Don.

It is just getting bigger and bigger, isn't it? Let's widen out here and bring in our maps to talk about this a little bit. The search area which we thought would be kind of small in the first place has now just gone bigger and bigger and bigger. Remember, the plane took off here. It flew this way, so you orient yourself to where you are in Malaysia and then it vanished less than an hour in about here.

Since then, the search areas have exploded. We had the initial search area here, which you would think would make perfect sense, but then as these other reports came in, it started spreading across land and out into other areas over here. And now the Andaman Islands way out over there -- the Andaman Islands are actually a string of islands. They stretch for about 500 miles.

They are only about 32 miles across, but about 500 months north to south, about 500 islands out there to. And one of the big questions you have been asking, Don, that I think is a good one to ask is, is it possible, even if all this stuff came together as these bits of information come in, even if it were true and the plane went that way, could it do so unnoticed and could it wind up somewhere, except in just another part of the sea? Look at this, if you will. This is a satellite image from out on the Andaman Islands. There are two airfields in the Andamans that are big enough for a plane like this to land. This one is largely looked after by the Indian air force.

The other one I want to bring in is from a different airfield. This is from an area called Port Blair, and this is largely supported by the Indian navy. This is an 11,000-foot runway. A plane the size of a 777 needs about 4,000 feet to land and needs about 6,000 feet to take off. Could it do it from a runway like this?

Yes, of course, it could. But look at all the planes around here and the fact that the military is involved. Do you get a big plane like this 200 feet end to end and 200 feet side to side into an area like that and land it safely with nobody noticing?

I don't think you do. And you were talking about short while ago about the engines, the relative engines? Even if you talk about these turbo fan engines on a plane like this, turbo jets, they are quieter, they are certainly quieter than engines were 40 years ago, but that's in the realm of jet engines.

They are still pretty noisy. This is not something that sneaks through the neighborhood like a stealth fighter. This is a big commercial jet. So, the idea that you fly into a place like that or over an area like that and nobody notices, I don't think it's happening.

Now, that said, most of the Andaman Islands are uninhabited. They are small. Could a plane like this pass over an area like that and then sadly go into the ocean? Sure, it could do that and maybe would notice, assuming it got past Malaysia without being noticed in the first place.

LEMON: OK. Tom, stand by. Don't go anywhere.

I want to bring in now Arthur Rosenberg.

Arthur, he makes a good point. They're still going to make some noise, these engines that we're talking about.

ROSENBERG: Right.

I think what's interesting is, when you look at that runway, as he pointed out there, it looks like there are homes were on either side of the runway. But this was in the middle of the night. And these people are used to hearing airplanes land.

So what would distinguish this 777 from any other plane that lands there? It's a long jet runway. It's almost two miles long. Certainly, it could handle 777s and they land and take off there. So, within the realm of scenarios, turbo fan engines are a quantum quieter than turbo jet engines. The people could be sleeping.

It certainly is conceivable that this plane could have landed on that runway and was headed in that direction. Whether in fact it did is something that remains to be seen.

(CROSSTALK)

LEMON: Where is it now then, right, if it did land on that runway? Then we would have some evidence of it, wouldn't we?

ROSENBERG: Right. And the scenarios that we are all discussing, we are discussing because the primary radar points and the ACARS ping points that were plotted put the plane moving in that direction.

Within the realm of foreseeable scenarios, that is certainly something which should be considered. It's a little bit like medicine. When you are coming up with a diagnosis, all reasonable diagnoses have to be included in, until they're expressly ruled out.

LEMON: Yes. Would ACARS work underwater?

ROSENBERG: ACARS would not work underwater. It would not. It would not work under -- it's an electrical system. It's a radio. It's a transmitter. You get it wet, it's not working.

LEMON: Tom Foreman?

FOREMAN: Don, I don't -- when you talk about what's reasonable, I guess that's where I would sort of differ here.

I don't know that it's reasonable, because even if people didn't notice it here, this is a big jet. This does not fly in with one person and leave with one person. If it is there, there a lot of witnesses to it, one way or the other.

In my experience in the news business for years, if a lot of people know about something, people talk. It always happens. And they sure talk after seven days. There is no way, in my approximation, that this plane could land at a place like this, the only place it could land safely, and nobody has said anything about it or noticed it or passed on word or mumbled to a relative or something.

That always, always happens and that happens with things as small as a stolen car, let alone a missing airplane.

(CROSSTALK)

LEMON: That's what I said. If it landed there, there would be some evidence of it, wouldn't it?

ROSENBERG: I think that's the bottom line. If it landed, if it landed, where is it?

LEMON: Right. Exactly.

ROSENBERG: This is a monster machine. It's out of its environment. And where did it go?

LEMON: Great discussion. Tom, thank you. Arthur, thank you.

We will get back both of you gentlemen.

And still to come here, new reports raise new concerns about what was going on inside the cockpit of the missing plane. CNN's Martin Savidge actually inside a Boeing 777 simulator with a look at what the pilots may have been facing.

Take it away, Martin.

MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Don, until 370 is found, we don't know for certain what has happened. But this could be the next best thing to try to understand what led up to the disappearance -- the view from the cockpit coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: All right. We are following breaking news right now on CNN.

Are lithium batteries to blame for bringing down Flight 370, if it in fact was brought down? CNN has learned that they were stored in the cargo hold. Why is that significant? Well, they have been blamed as a cause of previous airline crashes.

This piece of the puzzle is now being examined by investigators, and, of course, even if -- even if the batteries being carried on the plane caused a fire, well, this still doesn't explain other anomalies that we have been talking about and that have been discussed, like why the plane may have changed course.

An explosive new report suggesting that this plane was deliberately, deliberately put down. We know that the transponder on the plane stopped sending information 14 minutes after the data transmission stopped.

CNN's Martin Savidge live in a 777 simulator for us now.

Martin, it is fascinating watching you in that simulator. You are flying the exact route of Flight 370 on the simulator, correct?

SAVIDGE: Right. That's exactly right.

We took off from Kuala Lumpur. That was some time ago. We scheduled this flight to go to Beijing. We are actually still on that flight path. Let me show you something that is rather interesting.

We are past BTOD (ph). That is this little mark here on the navigation map. BTOD (ph) was the last known official spot at which this aircraft actually reported in, before it disappeared. That was where you got the "All right, good night." We are just beyond that.