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Malaysian Airline Plane Still Missing; Pilot Co-Pilot of Missing Malaysian Plane Homes Searched; Interview with Loved One of Former Plane Crash Victim

Aired March 15, 2014 - 10:00   ET

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

CHRISTI PAUL, CNN ANCHOR: It is good to see you. You know we're always grateful for your company. Good Saturday to you. I'm Christi Paul.

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN ANCHOR: I'm Victor Blackwell. It's 10:00 here on the east coast, 7:00 on the west coast. You're in the CNN Newsroom.

If you're just waking up this morning and you thought when you went to bed last night you knew the narrative of this missing Malaysian airlines flight 370 it has taken a dramatic turn overnight. We just learned in the last hour that the homes of both the captain and now as well the co-pilot have been searched by police. And CNN teams say they saw officials carrying out small bags from the copilot's house. But it's not clear now if they had those same bags when they went inside.

Now, let's put that into context, the searches, because overnight Malaysia's prime minister said the investigation is once again focused on the crew members and the passengers, as he suggested a hijacking is a possibility. He's now calling the flight's disappearance, quote, "deliberate."

PAUL: And the search area is focused on two quarters now. I want to show you the updated map here, as you can see it because it may be the first time you're seeing it today. This search is massively expansive. It goes as far north as Kazakhstan and as far south as the southern Indian Ocean there. The search in the South China Sea we know has now been called off.

BLACKWELL: Investigators are also focusing on the signals that the plane kept sending to an orbiting satellite for hours after it lost radar contact.

PAUL: They're trying to figure out how long and how far this plane flew before it stopped responding completely. That could be incredibly obviously hard to determine. We want to go to CNN's Jim Clancy who is in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. So Jim, investigators have vastly widened where they're looking. How is this determined, do you know?

JIM CLANCY, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: This was determined by a satellite that reaches out and handshakes, looks for that aircraft, tries to plot where it's going to be one time every hour. Now, the ACAR system that sends back data from the plane about, you know, it's bearing, its airspeed, its altitude, all those things, somebody had turned that off. But they didn't turn off the ability to the satellite going up in orbit trying to reach out and handshake with the airplane and say, where would I point my antenna if I really want to contact you? That's what they use to create that map. Anywhere along that line, that's where the plane could be.

BLACKWELL: All right, so we had technical issues with Jim Clancy. But as we look at this line here, you see that that is the northern corridor. You see northern Thailand into, I'm going to draw it again for you here, into southern Kazakhstan and northern Turkmenistan. And the southern corridor starts near Indonesia and then swings southwest all of the way up the western coast of Australia. So that is the new area that we heard from the remarks. Here we go, the drawing the line again, the remarks from the prime minister earlier this morning.

PAUL: The reason that -- part of the reason that it might look bigger to you as well is because, remember, now we're hearing not only did this plane fly for five hours but for seven hours, which is interesting because it would have taken eight hours and 15 minutes to get to Turkmenistan and 6 hours 45 minutes to get to Kazakhstan. So possible to Kazakhstan in that period of time.

BLACKWELL: And seven hours past the last point of contact. So not seven hours from, you know, liftoff, from takeoff, rather, from Kuala Lumpur, but from the last point on that waypoint. There are four words that are becoming important, those four words, "All right, good night." Those are the last four words heard from Malaysian Airlines flight 370. After that the plane just flew into the night and disappeared.

PAUL: What everybody wants to know at this point is who said those words, who turned off that transponder that transmits vital information to the ground? Our Rene Marsh is live for us in Washington. Rene, thank you so much. Wondering at this point in the investigation how is the U.S. helping?

RENE MARSH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Christi and Victor. And I just want to talk a little bit about that "All right, good night." It is actually a very common term that's used when you're moving from one airspace, and they're doing the switch over to go to the next. An as we understand, that happened as they were leaving the Malaysian airspace and going into Vietnam's airspace. So that makes sense. It's a very, very common phrase.

But more on the data and what we're learning. We know that more than 40 ships, more than 50 aircrafts later on this day eight of the search for missing flight 370, it has taken quite a drastic turn, and here's why. The NTSB and FAA are using technology never intended to be used for this purpose. They're analyzing satellite data that picked up the plane in the air more than five hours after the ground lost all communications with the plane.

Now, based on this new satellite data we have now a brand new timeline for the path of the missing plane. We already knew that the plane stopped transmitting data about the health of the plane, the engines about 25 minutes after takeoff. And 14 minute later the transponder shuts off. The two systems they went off separately. And Malaysian authorities said today they believe that that is an indication that it was a deliberate act. Had these two systems stopped simultaneously, that's something that we've seen before. It could be an inflight breakup, or in the case of TWA flight 800 when a malfunction led to the plane exploding midair, all of the signals were lost at once. So they're suspicious about that.

But more on what we know about the missing plane's flight path. There was question about whether it was truly flight 370 that made that turn west. Military radar picked it up. And today Malaysian authorities say they now have confirmed that was indeed the plane. And this new satellite data we're talking about NTSB and FAA, further supports that the plane was indeed heading west. It's the satellite that detected the plane in the air and detected up until 8:11 a.m. Now that is so critical because that means that the plane was in the air more than six hours after people lost all communications with this plane, people meaning the people on the ground. We know that the plane had some seven hours worth of fuel, so at this point, at that last point that the satellite picked it up, it was possibly close to running out of fuel or perhaps at some point it ran out of fuel.

PAUL: Rene Marsh, thank you so much for the update.

BLACKWELL: Let's bring in CNN law enforcement analyst Tom Fuentes. Tom, I want to look at this map. If we can put the map up with Tom so viewers understand the context of this question. We see these two paths here. The southern corridor, if this is where this plane was, the last ping we got from the satellite, if someone deliberately took control of this plane, it doesn't look like that path goes anywhere. So my question is, which one has more credibility? Which one is more probable, that it went south and someone deliberately took a plane nowhere, or that this went north but then you consider that there would be radar all over all of these countries? And you see where it ends, in a pretty dangerous neighborhood. Is there one that you give more credence than the other?

TOM FUENTES, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Hi, Victor. I have to admit personally I don't give much credence to any of this the way things have gone the last couple of days that had that plane going in so many different directions, up, down, and sideways. And we're relying on technical experts to tell us what they're interpreting from the satellite signals. I hate to be so cynical but it's almost like reading tea leaves. That plane could be on top of Mt. Everest in the Himalayas, according to that flight path, or it could be 15,000 feet at the bottom of the Indian Ocean, according to the southern flight path of that.

And I don't know how accurate these graphics are or what they're based on. That's the other side. Should that be a large circle that encompasses all the Indian Ocean, including eastern Africa? You know, could they have gone that far? Could they have turned?

You know, so how they're determining that exact northerly and southerly route and how wide that route could be or whether it could be a big circle, I think is somewhat of a mystery and we don't have enough technical explanation and we're relying on these, you know, descriptions by the authorities. And I'm not blaming the authorities. I'm sure they've gotten an array of conflicting technical information from their experts. I mean, this is like when your computer breaks and you call tech support, what's going on, and you get different explanations.

So that's the problem with this. And I don't know. Yesterday we had that definite y-shaped split between two aircraft. I said it was like an FBI fugitive case where the people tell you the bad guys went that way and north or south doesn't help. We still have the same problem. How accurate is this technical information as to how long that plane was in the air and what the possible area of the search needs to encompass. And I'm being literal, according to that northerly route, it takes it over the Himalayas.

PAUL: Tom, you bring us something I was wondering about because we're getting some very distinct verbiage from the prime minister today of Malaysia. He was saying that the transponder was switched off near Vietnam, that this is consistent with deliberate action by somebody on the plane. He said, we can confirm the primary radar contacts now do identify MH-370. But as we all know from the beginning, they've been saying that transponder on the plane was deliberately shut off. If the transponder which identifies the plane was shut off, how can they be so certain they were tracking 370?

FUENTES: Good question. I'm not certain that they're certain. I know he's saying it now, but for seven days in a row they weren't certain about much of anything. And I know now they have the best experts in the world looking at the raw data, including all the FAA and NTSB experts from the United States, which an enormous help. But they're relying on, you know, the quality of the machines that were monitoring this, the radars. Do we know how old the radar units are, the satellites, the pings, the handshake, the terminology? Much of the terms being used here are, you know, we're not used to hearing those kinds of terms and we don't know exactly what they mean.

And being sympathetic to the prime minister, you know, these gentlemen are giving these press conferences, English is their second language. So the terms that they use or the slang that they use, you know, could be something that their technicians, their tech support, is telling them trying to put it in layman terms of what's occurred or what they're analyzing.

So I just think that, you know, we have had a tendency over several day, even the beginning of this thing, to put things in very technical terms and say, this is what they have to do or this is -- it could have been this but probably was this. And I don't know right now if you can still say the direction for sure.

As far as the idea that that plane is being flown by someone, you know, that's something that has been considered from the first day. I think their only now -- I think they wanted to be in denial but I think only now they're saying, OK, I think what people have been saying all along may be true. That plane may have been in the hands of a pilot or two pilots that, for whatever reason, decided to take that plane off course and fly it away, or they were hijacked by someone else who got in that cockpit and did that.

BLACKWELL: Tom Fuentes, thank you for helping us understand this, and I use the term "understand," but it changes. We're in day eight and there have been conservatively eight theories about where this plane could be and where it went and who was in control. Again, Tom, thank you.

Malaysian authorities, although there are many changing theories, there are some new clues in the mystery of this missing plane.

PAUL: They believe as we said, that someone inside that plane deliberately diverted it. We're going to ask our experts really, what could have happened at the end of the day here?

Plus, how could a plane -- I know this is what you guys are wondering, how could a plane plunge tens of thousands of feet from the sky and nobody has a clue what happened? We're going the take you inside a Boeing 777 and show you what the movements of flight 370 may have looked like.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLACKWELL: It's now day eight of the search for the missing plane, flight 370. Even now investigators don't know for sure what happened to it.

PAUL: This morning officials, though, are saying someone in the plane deliberately turned it away from the flight path. That is coming from the Malaysian prime minister whom you see there. Everybody is wondering, but who was it? Why was it? Where was it going?

BLACKWELL: Joining us now pilot and aviation attorney Arthur Rosenberg. Arthur, good to have you this morning. You know, we heard from the Malaysian prime minister saying again someone deliberately acted in this case but stopped short of calling it a hijacking. Why?

ARTHUR ROSENBERG, AVIATION ENGINEER: Well, first of all, I think you have to take a look at what we know. We know that the airplane was en route to Beijing. And 45 minutes out, voice communication was terminated after the captain or the co-pilot said essentially, good night. Minutes later the transponder was turned off. Primary radar has the plane turning around towards the southwest.

And then what I talked about a little bit yesterday, what was the primary radar hits, without the transponder on, was still able to track the airplane to four unique waypoints in the sky, points in the sky where the plane was directed to. Those are all intentional acts.

Now, what we learned a little bit from yesterday was that we had these altitude variations, 45,000 feet down into the 20,000s of feet. But I don't give a lot of weight to that because the farther the airplane gets away from the source of the radar the less reliable the altitude variations are.

And what we get into the mix is in the satellite information which came to yesterday which gives us now that northern route and southern route. But I think what we can say definitively, consistent with the prime minister of Malaysia, is that this was an intentional act. This airplane was being flown. I think it's a little premature to say that someone broke into the cockpit, it could have been the flight crew, but we know that these acts of flying this airplane the way it was were done intentionally.

PAUL: OK, so let me ask you this, Arthur, because I've seen this question, I've seen it posed on my Facebook and Twitter accounts. If this was some sort of nefarious act, is it surprising to you at all, is it even possible, that not one text, you know, with everybody who has a phone and technology in the sky now and with Wi-Fi being available, is it odd at all that there would not have been one text from anybody on that plane relaying any information to somebody else?

ROSENBERG: Yes, the simple answer to that is no. First off, when the plane lost contact, if you look at that as the start of that, when things started to go bad, there is no capability for a cellphone signal to be picked up by any ground base facility. You're just out of range.

PAUL: OK.

ROSENBERG: And this particular airplane, unlike a lot of airplanes that we have in the United States, was not equipped with internet that can be binged down to planet earth. So these people may have been trying to text but there was nothing outside the airplane listening or able to receive that signal. So essentially they were texting unfortunately to deaf ears.

PAUL: That's good to know.

ROSENBERG: There was one other comment, if I may.

BLACKWELL: Yes.

ROSENBERG: I was listening to Tom. You know, the difference between the northern route and southern route here, you know, which would you think the plane most likely took. You know, I think we're making some assumptions that we have all the information that's out there. You know, militaries, the United States, Malaysia, nobody really wants you to know their radar capability, their forensic capability. But I would say where there's smoke there's fire. And if you look in the south Indian Ocean, we have the USS Kidd, a $2 billion destroyer, and a Poseidon aircraft, essentially a Boeing 737, that's out there listening, putting sonar bowies in the water, trying to pick up things from the digital flight data recorder. I would say that the focus of the United States assets in that area probably gives us the best clue of where that plane probably went. But that being said, if I wanted to use this plane for some nefarious purpose later on, I would head north, not south. But, you know, it's a work in progress.

BLACKWELL: Yes. And we're only working with the best information that's available, and after the news conference from the Malaysian prime minister, that is today's best information. Arthur Rosenberg, good to have you. Thank you for adding your voice to the conversation. PAUL: Thank you, sir.

ROSENBERG: Thank you for having me.

BLACKWELL: It's hard to comprehend really how big the search is. We're showing you the graphic, but the area for this plane now, it encompasses several countries, an ocean. It's huge. Chad Myers will map it out for us when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLACKWELL: The search area for the missing Malaysia Airlines plane has shifted dramatically. On the northern end we're talking central Asia. On the southern end, the southern Indian Ocean, west of Australia. It's huge.

PAUL: In the middle of nowhere, basically. This is such a vast area. I mean, obviously we're talking about the Bay of Bengal, as you said, Indian Ocean, several countries. Malaysian officials say the plane's last satellite communication was in one of two possible corridors. Chad Myers, thank you so much for being here, Chad. I know you are going to walk us through exactly what we're talking about.

CHAD MYERS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: We're talking about a ping that happened at 8:11 local time that is going to change this search dramatically, a ping almost like your GPS ping on GPS in your car. The way the car GPS works is by looking at a number of different satellites. Let's say one is here. Another one says you're here. And another one says you're here. If all three of those cross right there the GPS knows that's where you are.

What we don't have three, we only have one. So now we don't have an intersection, we have a line. And that line is a long arc. It's as long as the fuel of the plane, one way or the other. But at least now it narrows the width of the search. We're not searching boxes anymore. This is the original area here, box here, box here, box here. It was just getting bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger, just continued to go one day after another.

So what we had yesterday, we talked about this for just a second because this is interesting. Remember the Chinese said there was an earthquake hour and a half after the plane went missing? Well, the Chinese believed that it was right there, the earthquake, well, because it was only two seismic recorders. So now we with had two lines, didn't have three. So the Chinese thought it was there. But after the United States geological survey looked at this they said, no, we found another recorder, and now we know there was another arc right there, so that point doesn't exist, this is the real point. It's triangulation. It's all about the timing of this.

I'm going to go ahead and move this ahead because my graphic is not working for me here. This is where we're looking at now. The area would be anywhere here. That was the original area. That's not the case anymore because now we have an arc from a ping of a satellite. Matt, go ahead. Keep moving this because it's my clicker here doesn't seem to be working. So what we have. Let's talk about this. Here's the satellite in the middle of the ocean. It heard something at 8:11. This is its potential circle. Now at some point in time as we go back and look at all the other satellites at 8:11, we might find another ping. Another satellite may have found said, hey, there's something right there. If another one says, wait a minute, I found this, then all of a sudden we don't have a line anymore, we have a point. If we get one more, even one more would be so great right now because you have that. This is the potential line, and one more satellite would say, no, I heard that. That would mean here or here, narrowing the area so much.

What we have right now though is an area somewhere between because we know how fast electricity moves, how fast the ping moves, that's about where our search area turns into. I know it looks longer but, in fact, it's much smaller because it's only a narrow band, probably only 20 miles wide. We're looking for debris as well, but we're also looking for a plane that may have landed anywhere along that line. So that's something going for us today. It's different than yesterday.

PAUL: That is the truth. My goodness.

BLACKWELL: That, I understand.

PAUL: Yes, thank you so much.

BLACKWELL: All right, Chad, thank you so much.

MYERS: You're welcome.

PAUL: All righty. Stay with us because the two pilots of flight 370, the other news this morning is their homes have finally been searched eight days after this plane disappeared. The prime minister of Malaysia say the crew and passengers, they are now the refocus of investigation. We'll have more in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PAUL: So glad to have you with us for our coverage of the mystery of flight 370. Mystery is what it's become now on day eight. The signs today pointing to a deliberate act rather than some sort of catastrophic event. So with that known or believed, where does the investigation go from here?

BLACKWELL: Let's dig a little deeper here into what this latest development means. Jim Mathews is executive editor of "Aviation Week Intelligence Network." So what's your reaction to the comments from the Malaysian prime minister today that someone deliberately diverted this plane?

JIM MATHEWS, EXECUTIVE EDITOR, "AVIATION WEEK INTELLIGENCE NETWORK": Well, I think that might be more helpful at the end of the investigation to understand kind of the motivations and what was happening. In terms of the search, I think it helps to narrow down your search somewhat to the arcs that Chad described in the previous segment. But as far as the deliberate act versus the accident, the priority right now is to find the airplane, and all that really did for us was to give us those two arcs to work, with which does narrow the search area down.

PAUL: So Jim, we know that the prime minister also said they're refocusing their energies on looking at the passengers, the pilots, the crew that was onboard. One of the things that people have had questions about is the fact that the captain, Zaharie, had built a simulator in his home. Is that common?

MATHEWS: Well, look, I know lots of pilots that have simulators in their homes. I certainly wouldn't want to speculate or focus on that. That's up to the law enforcement authorities to decide if that's relevant or not. The search planners are including that in their box of clues, but they have probably cataloged over 1,000 clues right now and that's one of many that they're going to be running down the ground.

PAUL: I think the video we're seeing here is of earlier this morning when those crews finally got into the homes of both the captain and the co-pilot here. And this is a first today that we know they've been stationed outside the home for days. They finally went in and some did come out carrying some bags. But we don't know if those bags were --

BLACKWELL: Bags they carried in with them as well.

I want to know about this northern arc, this northern corridor, as the prime minister called it. Is it realistic at all to think that a plane could have flown over China, over the other country, military installations here, and there would be no record of it?

MATHEWS: It's plausible. It's certainly out there in terms of statistically likelihood but it is plausible depending on the conditions during the flight, depending on where the radar was looking, depending on their route of flight. At the same time, remember, one of the reasons you got that arc drawn there is because people have made the deduction that it is possible that that was the flight path that that airplane took. Part of that deduction has got to come from radar traces. So it's not necessarily indicative that it disappeared 100 percent. It's possible that we're drawing, connecting dots to come up with those two arcs. Not being in the search planners' rooms I can't say that's what they've done, but if I were the search planner that's what I would be doing.

PAUL: One of the things they were talking about, too, is that this -- if this 777 lost power, let's say, even though they're saying this was deliberate, there are five or six backups to the electrical system, there are eight backups to the hydraulic system. Can all of that be manually overridden by somebody in the cockpit?

MATHEWS: It would be fairly difficult. You know, the systems that we're talking about and have been talking about really overnight, those two systems can be disabled with some fuses. So that is quite plausible. But I don't think that's really what we're talking about. I mean, we're talking about the transponders. We're not talking about all of the systems being disabled simultaneously.

BLACKWELL: Considering what we know about the systems that were disabled, the transponders, just a few flips of the switch. We heard from the inspector general of the at the time of transportation, that she said in order to turn off ASCARS to get to the other system you would to go to the belly of the plane, it's not just reach for a button. From what we know do you believe that one person could have managed this or this could have been two or three people if that's, in fact, what happened?

MATHEWS: Well, look, to be honest, I don't have a personal theory. I know several pilots who believe that a competent and knowledgeable pilot could have disabled the systems just by undoing the fuses. I don't know necessarily have my own theory on that. I do know some pilots that believe that's possible. I don't think you necessarily have to get down to the belly of the airplane to do this.

PAUL: All righty, Jim Mathews, we appreciate your expertise. Thank you for sharing it with us today.

MATHEWS: Thank you.

BLACKWELL: Just a moment ago we talked about turn off the transponder, just a few flips of the switches there. Up next we're going take you inside a 777 simulator to we show you what it takes to turn off the transponders and all the other things that were flipped on and take you right to that moment when the flight 370 went off track, and then the last time we saw it eight days ago. Stay with us, we'll take you inside.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLACKWELL: We learn from reporting from CNN's Barbara Starr that investigators believe the Malaysia Airlines jet made three changes in altitude, climbing to 45,000 feet and then dropping to near 23,000.

PAUL: I can't even imagine. And it makes you go, is that even possible without the plane breaking apart or something? CNN's Martin Savidge demonstrates for us now what that would look like from inside a 777 simulator. Hi, Martin.

MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi Victor and Christi, good morning. What we're doing here is basically we've been taking all these different scenarios we've heard about as of late for flight 370 and working them through the simulator. In the simulator you can try anything but of course you're not going to get hurt because you're really not up in the air, but it's as close to being in the air and doing for real, as you're going to find and still be safe.

So the first thing we're doing is now with this 777 is fly it at 45,000 feet, which one reports said is way above where this airplane was designed to fly. It's extremely difficult to fly. Mitchell Casado, who is the pilot now, he's in manual. What's it like to try to keep it under control?

MITCHELL CASADO: It's extremely difficult.

SAVIDGE: You're talking about a plane here that's teetering between two extremes, one is we're nearly going too fast, but at the same time we're almost nearly going too slow. Either one of those would be disastrous.

Let's show you what else he's been talking about, which is this dramatic descent, something like 40,000 feet in a minute. It's not possible, but let's push this plane over the edge and you'll get a pretty good idea of what happens as far as this control. These are the first alarms that are starting to go off. What do they tell you?

CASADO: They're telling us that we're dropping at 20,000 per minute. We're accelerating almost to 1,000 miles per hour. The plane would be falling apart at this point.

SAVIDGE: This is really not physically possible. Pieces of the plane would literally be ripping off. The fact that after that reportedly the plane then somehow levels off, that's what's really hard to be believed. And then to try to even contemplate what's going on back in passenger section, the G-Forces, the extreme sensations they have, it can almost be lethal for passengers back there.

And then we start talking about other factors. The "Wall Street Journal" is reporting they believe there could have been two conspirators here, one who was flying the aircraft while another person actually went down into an electronics bay one deck below and begins to systematically dismantle communications devices. That's where you'd have to do if you were to dismantle them. But that doesn't necessarily mean you have two people.

CASADO: If you want you could have one guy up here just monitoring the autopilot or just put the autopilot on and just go down into the bay and do what he needs to do down there. The plane is on autopilot, and come back up and when he's ready take it off.

SAVIDGE: So it doesn't necessarily mean it had to be two people. It could be two people.

Let's talk about the transponder, because so much has been made about that, and that was the real indicator there was a sign of a problem. The transponder is right here, and apparently somehow it was either disabled or turned off. How do you do that? It's a simple as turning this three steps to the left, one, two, three, it's off. We're still on radar, but nobody knows who we are anymore. We're essentially flying blind. He would never do that, but apparently somehow on this flight it did happen.

None of this really tells us where the plane is now or what are the fate of the crew and passengers. It really only just adds to the mystery. Victor and Christi?

BLACKWELL: Martin Savidge, thanks so much. Yes, adding to the mystery indeed that would register those number and the plane would have fallen apart. We've heard from experts all morning that they don't too much credence in that because the farther the plane gets away from the radar the less reliable the numbers are.

PAUL: Exactly. And all of these different theories have got to be torture for the families. So stay with us, because we have one person who knows all too well what the families of flight 370 passenger are going through right now and she's made it her mission to help others survive as well. We'll introduce you in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PAUL: You know, Mark Jones has never let anything get in this way. The champion pool player survived a nearly fatal car crash more than 40 years ago. But the man known as "The Snake" wasn't going to let it stop him. Here's CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta with this week's "Human Factor."

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: And 65 years old, Mark "the snake" Jones has competed in the world wheelchair nine ball championships. He never planned on becoming a champion pool player, but it helped him overcome something that happened 40 years ago.

MARK JONES, WHEELCHAIR POOL PLAYER: I was asleep on the passenger side in a little Volkswagen beetle, and the rear wheel came completely off the car and the impact, my door flew open. I didn't have on a seatbelt, and I flew out of the car at probably 50 miles an hour and ended up breaking my neck, my back, broke me up all over.

GUPTA: He was paralyzed, no longer able to walk.

JONES: The able-bodied guys, my friends, you know, let's play some pool. I just sit there and watch them play. And I said, this can't be that difficult.

GUPTA: Friendly pick-up games turned into tournaments.

JONES: It's pretty much undescribable, you know, I just love it. You know, I just love it. Love the competition.

GUPTA: It's a feeling he wanted to share with others like himself, which is why he began working with the National Wheelchair Players Association.

JONES: It's not easy. I know exactly what they're going through. That's what our organization is about really, getting people back into society again and out doing things.

GUPTA: Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN, reporting.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLACKWELL: Most people, most of us can only imagine the agonizing that's going on for these families of those on board Malaysia Airline flight 370 as they wait day after day to learn the fate of their loved ones. And then there are some people who know exactly what they're feeling and how much pain they're going through, those who have been through it themselves.

PAUL: And with that we want to bring in Heidi Snow. She lost her fiance in the 1996 crash of TWA flight 800. Heidi, boy, thank you so much for being with us. We appreciate it. I'm wondering, as you're watching this and you have such a personal perspective on this, people want to do something but nobody knows what to do for these families. What can we say to them? What can be extended to them that helps in this moment of uncertainty?

HEIDI SNOW, LOST FIANCE IN TWA 800 CRASH: One of the most important things I found, which was what led me to found the organization that I run, is I had met a woman who had lost her fiance on Pan Am flight 103 that crashed eight years earlier. And being able to sit with her and talk with her and talk about him and be with somebody who has been there before, was tremendously helpful, which is what led me to found access aircraft casualty emotional support services, because we all, with almost all of our incidents, there is a waiting time.

For example, in my case I had to wait five weeks before my fiance's remains were found. During that time I did everything I could to keep him alive and I held on so much hope that somehow maybe me he didn't board that plane, somehow maybe he got rescued. And I was so critical in my process. But it was really helpful to talk to somebody else who had been there before. And now we have --

BLACKWELL: I'm sorry to interrupt.

SNOW: Now we have a --

BLACKWELL: Go ahead.

SNOW: And now in our organization we have over 250 grief mentors who all lost people in past air disasters who are on-call for these families and other people affected by air disasters to help them through this process because we all remember that waiting time. It was just so difficult.

BLACKWELL: And there's -- I was going to say there's a vast difference between sympathy and empathy, someone who feels sorry for you and someone who has felt what you are feeling. Will you reach out to these people who are waiting for this news?

SNOW: Oh, absolutely. I mean, we're here for them. And one of the things that we noticed when these incidents occur is we tend to get a lot of calls for help from people from past air disasters because it brings us all back to day one. And everyone wants to talk about what they went through and make the -- and they all empathize and really feel close connection to these families that are going through this process.

PAUL: It sounds like what you're saying --

SNOW: It's really --

PAUL: I'm sorry. It sounds like what you're saying is we need to let them talk. When you were in, you know, your moments and do you believe these people as they're in this moment, do they want -- do they have things to say? Do they want to be heard, do they want to talk? How do you keep them from wanting to isolate themselves?

SNOW: Right. I mean, I find that most people do want to talk about their loved one and keep them alive and in talking to people who call us so far they just want to talk about their loved one, and they don't speak about them being gone. They speak about who they are and that they're still alive in many ways. And that's -- that was a huge crutch for me, to be able to have that hope and I really need to cling on to that to get through the early weeks of this following flight 800.

BLACKWELL: What do you think the role in the healing process or coming to terms with it or keeping hope, holding on to hope? What's the role of all the different theories?

SNOW: I think in this case it's a very important part of the process. I mean, one thing I do remember is when their remains are finally found, it's like I had to start all over again with a whole new grieving process and new perspective. Accepting the reality was really difficult. By this time I really needed the ability and events to talk about him and do anything I could to keep him alive. And I just find that when we get our calls that's what everybody is doing, and everybody is clinging on to that hope. I think it's a really important part of the process. And later on down the road, depending on what happens, you know, we're there for them as well and have to revisit it from a different perspective. And that is difficult. I feel like there are two grieving process for me. One was the waiting time and making sense of it all and holding on to hope, and then when the reality set in I had to start all over again.

PAUL: Heidi --

SNOW: That is what --

PAUL: We just -- I'm sorry. We just wanted to thank you so much for sharing your voice, for sharing it with them, for sharing empathy. We know you're making a big difference. And we appreciate you taking time to talk with us today. Best of luck to you, and thanks again.

BLACKWELL: Heidi, thank you.

PAUL: We're so sorry for your loss.

SNOW: Thank you so much.

BLACKWELL: And that does it for us today. The breaking news coverage continues throughout the day. We want to be sure that you stay with us here over the next hour of CNN NEWSROOM.

PAUL: Want to turn it over to our colleague now Fredricka Whitfield. Hey, Fred.