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Malaysian Officials Denies Cover-up in Investigation; U.S. Officials Says Malaysian Air's Left-Hand Turn Deliberate; U.S. Official: Increasing Focus on Those in Cockpit; Mystery of Flight 370

Aired March 15, 2014 - 21:00   ET

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

DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR: Much, much more to talk about here on CNN. More of our breaking news coverage right now.

Good evening, everyone. I'm Don Lemon. Breaking news tonight in the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.

Malaysia's defense minister saying just moments ago that there has been no cover-up in the investigation. A very defensive official tonight saying the Malaysian government has put aside national security to share information with other countries involved in the hunt.

CNN's Jim Clancy in Kuala Lumpur joining us with the very latest.

Jim, what's going on here?

JIM CLANCY, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, you know, the Defense Minister, the prime minister and others have said that very line. We have put this investigation in front of our own national security.

What are they talking about? They're talking about their radar data. Their military radar data that really revealed -- and CNN reported this on Wednesday -- that this plane made a hard left turn and left the South China Sea never to return. It was heading to the Indian Ocean. It was gone. And everybody knew that.

Now they said that they couldn't prove that that was actually this flight. The people inside the military, high-ranking officers told CNN that indeed it was.

And now we're looking at another scenario as they investigate all of this. We're looking at the possibility that one of the pilots, the senior pilot there, Zaharie Ahmad Shah, who had the simulator, may have been working with somebody else who didn't know how to fly the plane.

Remember he had a simulator. He didn't need any lessons on the 777. He already had almost 20,000 hours flying aircraft. But maybe somebody else did. That's one of the lines of investigation that the Malaysians are taking this morning -- Don.

LEMON: Jim, let's talk about some of the theories. A lot of them going around. Theories as to what happened including from the government that there was -- what are the latest theories there?

CLANCY: Well, you know, they're leaving all options open. Right? It could have been somebody that came into the cockpit and took over the plane. U.S. officials don't think that's likely because, you know, one of the main communication systems that reports back the position, the heading of the altitude, all of those things, was switched off.

Even before they left the Malaysian peninsula. Heading into the South China Sea on their flight path that was going to take them to Beijing. Then the transponder going off. All of it seemed a little too quick after takeoff for the U.S. investigators. But here, you know, they're looking at political motives of the pilot. Unfortunately, because politics is so highly charged right now, a lot of this centers around Anwar Ibrahim and -- a very popular politician with some, a very disliked politician with other. You know, it's the kind of a political spat. You have to really watch how -- how you're trying to read that.

It was said that the pilot, Zaharie Ahmad Shah, was a strong supporter, even attended the trial, went to see the trial of Anwar Ibrahim in the days before this flight took off.

LEMON: Jim Clancy, leading up our reporting here as well as Barbara Starr.

Jim, I'm sorry, say again? Yes. Jim, stand by here, We have some other breaking news I'm being told from our producers in the control room that I need to get in here because a U.S. official is now telling our Barbara Starr that the U.S. intelligence community is increasingly focused on, quote, "Those in the cockpit of the flight," as being deliberately responsible for the missing jet.

Plus the same U.S. official telling CNN that a search is now focused in the southern Indian Ocean. And remember officials had previously said that there were two possible paths the plane might have taken. U.S. military and intelligence are scouring their satellites for clues to this, but they haven't found anything yet.

Now this as ABC is reporting that the abrupt left turn that the plane made off its original flight path was actually preprogrammed. That raises a whole lot of questions tonight about whether this was a rogue pilot or a hijacker in that cockpit.

So I want Jim to stand by. I'm going to bring in Barbara Starr, who has been working her sources nonstop on this story.

Barbara, a lot of significant developments here. First those in the cockpit being deliberately responsible. What more can you tell us about that?

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Good evening, Don. This is a theory that U.S. officials across Washington are working off of. There's not enough data in any of this to come to any facts or conclusions. But it is a theory, and one of the reasons is, as Jim Clancy was just saying, they don't think that it was a hijacking, per se, they don't think some passenger got out of their seat so quickly and moved to take over the aircraft. Because those systems were turned off, because the plane made that very deliberate left hand turn in between the air traffic control of Malaysia and Vietnam, so nobody really noticed right away that it made that left-hand turn towards the Indian Ocean.

And the passengers, by all accounts, perhaps remained in their seats for some time. They would have realized they weren't headed north to China which was their destination. Why did they remain seated? Did something happen in the cockpit? Did the pilots maybe come on the intercom system and give some reassuring message?

So it's these clues that they're putting together as they begin to rule certain things out. It's sort of what they're left with on the table right now. And right now it's beginning to shape up as one of the major theories that Washington is looking at -- Don.

LEMON: So, Barbara, you know, we have heard about these two possible paths that the missing jet could have taken, one to the north, in the border of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, to northern Thailand? And then another towards the southern Indian Ocean. My question is, why are officials zeroing back on the Indian Ocean because -- and with the new reporting, what you're reporting, does that northern track, is it even significant, you think?

STARR: Well, there -- you know, you're still going to see some searching going on up there. But when you put the map up, just look at those countries that are along that northern track. You know, China, Thailand, Pakistan, India, Myanmar. These are all very well- established air defense areas.

What I mean by that is they're militaries, they're civilian air traffic control radars. All of that is pretty substantial in that region of the world. And as you move into Central Asia, Kazakhstan, the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan. These are airspaces that are -- China -- very closely watched.

Any one of these countries would have seen, would have observed the crash of a 777 in their airspace. So that, again, theory, none of these countries have reported any crash. None of them have found anything. U.S. satellites which watch that region have seen no evidence of an explosion or a crash.

So, again, you begin to rule things out. It seems like nobody's got any evidence. Something happened in that area. Though it is technically possible the plane flew that way. That is what is directing them back to the Indian Ocean, back to the southern region once the plane flew out into the ocean that it perhaps made that southerly turn.

LEMON: And we're going to drill in a little bit more, Barbara, with our panel later on in the show about the air defense system there and the radar systems. Many people don't agree. They're thinking that some of those systems are outdated.

In the meantime, though, Barbara, stand by. Jim, the search that began last weekend now involves 14 countries, 43 ships, 58 aircraft. We've heard the information. Then it gets debunked. It seems like a pattern. Is the government there handling this situation right? There's been a lot of criticism about that.

CLANCY: Listen. There's no doubt everybody's made mistakes. All right? They have had one report after the other. Look it, we knew as early as Wednesday that the plane is gone from the South China Sea. But the reports continue to come in. We've spotted oil slicks. We've spotted debris. We heard a seismic event on the ocean floor.

All of this stuff comes in, more ships are sent out. They check it out. That's all past. The problem that has been here, there was a lack of organization. Let's face it. Malaysia had to confront a global crisis. People wanted to know, what happened to this plane? A 777 doesn't just vanish into thin air on a calm, clear night. They wanted answers.

So they were searching for them. Then you've got the domestic politics here. There's been some competition between the various agencies. If you listen to the civil aviation chief, he'll say, I'm in charge of this investigation. Then comes the defense minister acting transport minister. He's in charge of the investigation.

And just yesterday we listened to the prime minister. And he made it very clear, I'm the one -- you know, everybody is in charge.

LEMON: Right.

CLANCY: There's competing roles to play here. It's just a problem. We admit it.

LEMON: That leads me perfectly to Barbara.

Barbara, the U.S. government, I mean, has the U.S. government been involved, as involved as they want to be? Would they have handled this, you think, differently, had they been in charge from the very beginning?

STARR: Well, look, if this happened in U.S. airspace or with a U.S. airliner in the United States, the Federal Aviation Administration, the National Transportation Safety Board, the FBI, all of these agencies have decades of experience in investigating airline crashes. I don't think you can really -- I mean, we wouldn't really necessarily compare the U.S. or any of the major western countries to some other areas because there's so much experience with it.

The FAA and the NTSB very quickly sent some of their experts to assist the Malaysians in analyzing that technical data, but there is no question there's been some frustration on the part -- significant frustration on the part of U.S. investigators who are working this problem because early on, they weren't getting that key critical data cooperation from the Malaysians.

That got resolved a couple of days ago. It's gotten better. But, you know, it's a tough problem when you have so many countries working together, and different cultures and different ways of approaching major governmental problems and challenges.

LEMON: Barbara Starr, Jim Clancy, appreciate your reporting. Spectacular reporting. Thank you very much.

Next, more conspiracy theories as the investigation focuses on what happened inside the cockpit. Is it possible, is it possible passengers played a role?

Plus the latest communication from Flight 370 was more than seven hours after takeoff. Could it have reached land?

And another theory is that this could have been pilot suicide. Why some are comparing Flight 370 to the Silk Air -- the Silk Air crash of 1997.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: Welcome back, everyone. Continuing our breaking news coverage on the disappearance of Malaysia Air Flight 370. Tonight, Malaysia's Defense minister says that there has been no cover-up in the investigation. No cover-up in the investigation. He says the Malaysian government has put aside national security to share information with other countries involved in the hunt.

Also, tonight, a U.S. official tells CNN that the intelligence community has now increased its focus on those in the cockpit. We also know the last communication from the cockpit. Someone saying, "all right, good night." It came after some of the plane's systems had been shut down.

All of that leading investigators to take a closer look at the pilot and the co-pilot. Today, searching both their homes.

CNN's Rene Marsh has a complete timeline of what we know so far.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

RENE MARSH, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Takeoff from Kuala Lumpur 12:41 a.m. local time last Saturday. Flight 370 headed north along its planned route to Beijing. But then two communications systems stopped working within minutes of each other. And investigators now believe someone almost surely turned them off.

At 1:07 a.m. near the east coast of Malaysia, the system known as ACARS stops transmitting information about the plane's operating condition. And that was before the last radio transmission, "all right, good night," indicating everything was normal.

1:21 a.m., the transponder which identifies the aircraft on radar stops transmitting. Was someone trying to hide the plane? We also now know blips then seen on Malaysian military radar were, in fact, Flight 370 headed west, and authorities say there's every indication someone was in control.

NAJIB RAZAK, MALAYSIAN PRIME MINISTER: Until the point at which it left military primary radar coverage, this movement are consistent with deliberate action by someone on the plane.

MARSH: Still unclear whether it was a pilot or hijacker. CNN has confirmed the plane made erratic changes in altitude and was flying what officials describe as a strange path. At one point, it appears to have climbed to 45,000 feet, well above its approved altitude, then descending to 23,000.

Now a new analysis of satellite information shows the plane kept flying more than seven hours after takeoff. Much longer than previously thought. A satellite searching for operational data from the plane detected the aircraft every hour in a so-called handshake, but no data was transmitted.

Its last contact, 8:11 a.m., somewhere along this ark that stretches as far north as Kazakhstan and as far south as the Indian Ocean, west of Australia.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LEMON: Keep that ark. Those two paths in mind. Thank you very much, Renee.

I want to bring in now our panel of experts. Arthur Rosenberg is an aviation engineer and attorney. Evy Pompouras is a security and threat assessment expert. And Jeff Wise is the author of "Extreme Fear."

OK. So we're looking at that northern path and that southern path. I want to play you something that our security analyst, Bob Baer, a former CIA, said to him when I asked him about specifically flying north, why they're looking south now. Flying north. Why some people are saying that may be insignificant but you guys believe it is because of the tracking systems. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROBERT BAER, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: I've been in those radar sites. They've fallen apart. There's not much there. You know, U.S. radar helping pick something up that the locals wouldn't necessarily see it. Kazakhstan's not much better. There are fields in Kazakhstan where you could land conceivably, abandoned military fields, put it in a warehouse. But that's just so fantastic, I just would find it difficult to arrive at that conclusion. But, you know, you can't rule it out.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEMON: Jeff, that is a direct contradiction of most of the reporting that's going on.

JEFF WISE, AUTHOR, "EXTREME FEAR": Yes, what we're seeing from a lot of officials this idea it had to have taken the southern route because the northern route has too much military radar. Now we're seeing reports from Reuters and elsewhere that, in fact, these military radar systems are often shut off in the case of India. It's only turned on when they feel it might be a threat. The real elephant in the room that is relevant here, the big question, the thing we really care about is, are the passengers alive? Now if this plane went on the southern route, it wound up ditching in water. It possibly could have landed on some tiny island with one airstrip. But we certainly would have found it by now. So basically northern route, the passengers might well be alive. The southern route, they're almost certainly dead.

ARTHUR ROSENBERG, AVIATION ENGINEER AND ATTORNEY: Yes, I agree with that. I think the northern route also stands for the proposition that they had an intent to use this plane for some possible nefarious use --

(CROSSTALK)

LEMON: That's so fantastical, he says it is fantastical. But you can't rule it out in the realm of possibility.

ROSENBERG: Yes, I think -- exactly. I think everything we're talking about tonight, all these scenarios can touch on the border of the fantastic. But let me just finish. So if you come to the fork in the road, I think the game plan was head north. Try to find an airfield. Do whatever you have to do. If you go left, I think now you're talking about if we focus on the flight crew that this was a suicide. Because there's nothing out there in that ocean. It's just a black hole. You're going to run out of fuel.

And those are -- that northern route and that southern route, the end of those arcs represent the last amount of fuel in that airplane. That's when those planes would have run out of fuel. The most northern and the most southern. So north, you got a chance. The passengers have a chance. South, I think you're looking in the water.

LEMON: Yes. But given the size of the Indian Ocean, if a plane goes down, don't you think you would have seen something? Some sort of debris? Some sort of oil slick, smoke? Something picked up by someone?

(CROSSTALK)

WISE: There's a device called an emergency locator transmitter.

LEMON: Right.

WISE: And you would expect that --

LEMON: It works under water.

WISE: Well, what happens is like you expect some life rafts to eject and there's transmitters on those life rafts. That didn't work in the last case that was similar to this in 2009, Air France 447 which went down also under very serious circumstances at the time. That also didn't work. So it's a big, big ocean. And it could take a long time.

LEMON: Yes. And I think it's -- should we say six times the size of the United States if not more, or seven times the size of the United States?

ROSENBERG: And I think you're looking at a million square feet in search area within the northern arc and southern arc. But I just want to -- just one comment. If this plane went down in the southern route, it really would depend on how the plane came in contact with the water. If this plane landed like Sully Sullenberg did in the Hudson River, there wouldn't be an explosion.

LEMON: Yes, but when you're looking at the Hudson River, the Hudson River is pretty -- it's pretty much flat. It's placid. And it -- you know, it's placid, I should say, nothing is going on pretty much. But when you're looking at the Indian Ocean, don't you think that it's way more turbulent, there are much more waves? Something would have happened.

ROSENBERG: Absolutely, but if this plane ditched toward the end of its fuel, then there would not be an explosion.

LEMON: Yes.

ROSENBERG: The plane may have hit, it may have broken in pieces, it may have sunk. And that's why if you want to -- if you want to bet on America, there are 50 ships, the U.S. Kidd, a $2 billion destroyer which is used in anti-submarine warfare, plus the Poseidon, the most modern technologically airplane capable of finding things in the ocean, submarines, et cetera, is there.

And that's where those assets have been launched. So a lot of important people in the administration have made the decision and are betting on the southern route, but for reasons which we've discussed here tonight, it seems to me if I'm going to commandeer an airplane, I'm heading north.

LEMON: As what you said --

I have to say, like, the whole --

LEMON: Quickly. Quickly.

EVY POUMPOURAS, SECURITY AND THREAT ASSESSMENT EXPERT: The whole north thing doesn't make sense because now you're getting into an area, people have cell phones. If the plane's descending, people's cell phones are going to go off.

LEMON: Right.

POUMPOURAS: Now you could say to me, OK, they took everybody's cell phone. But a lot of us have two cell phones. So I'll be like here's my one cell phone. These are 239 people on that plane. Aren't you going to take your cell phone, maybe turn it on, dial a number? At some point you're going to hit some type of cell phone coverage. That's why I just -- it does not seem to me logical that this thing landed and that people are alive.

LEMON: There's nothing logical about this. As you pointed out at the beginning of the segment, this is -- everything is fantastical. Who would have thought an airliner the size of a 777 could go missing and no one has heard a word from them in nine days?

Stand by, everyone. More on our breaking news coverage of the disappearance of Flight 370. Next, the last communication from the jet came more than seven hours, as we have been talking about, after takeoff. Could it have reached land?

Plus, an investigation focuses on a, quote, "deliberate act inside the cockpit." Was it a rogue pilot? Was it a hijacker?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: Welcome back to our viewers here in the United States and around the world. I'm Don Lemon. The breaking news is on the search for the missing Malaysian jetliner that went missing more than a week ago. Officials are now telling CNN that investigators are zeroing in on the southern part of the Indian Ocean. And remember, officials had said there were two possible paths. Two possible paths. Now they think one is far more probable than the other.

Chad Myers is here. He's our meteorologist and he joins us now to talk more about this. And to explain to me and our viewers the arcs, right?

CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Yes.

LEMON: These are not the flight paths. So how investigators are coming up with these directions?

MYERS: It's a ping from a satellite that's called Inmarsat. It's an in-flight entertainment satellite or sat phone that pinged the plane and it found the plane somewhere along an arc at 8:11 a.m., Don. That's it. The plane started out, Banda Aceh, turned left over here. It probably flew here. And then turned on up toward Bangladesh. All it had to do to get to that line is get to that line at 8:11.

It could have been here, it could have been here, it could have been anything. This was not how the plane flew. It only had to get somewhere along this arc there or along this arc there by 8:11 a.m. That's all it means. It could have been here, it could have been here. Somewhere along that arc.

How -- why do we think that? Well, OK. Here's how it all went. There's the satellite out in space called Inmarsat over the Indian Ocean. It pinged the plane. It found the plane at 8:11 a.m. but it doesn't have triangulation. It just knows how far away the plane was. And so it knows what angle the plane was away. If I erase this little dunce cap here, it turns into the circle. That circle is on the globe itself.

So now we know the plane is somewhere on that circle. Well, now we can start eliminating a couple of things. We eliminate this side of the circle because literally the plane couldn't fly there that fast and it probably didn't have enough fuel to get there. So now we've got rid of half of that circle. That's great. Now we get back over here toward Banda Aceh and toward Malaysia. We're going to get rid of all this right through here. That's gone because there's radars in there.

So now all we have is this and now all we have is this. And so they know that it's either on the northern side or on the southern side. Doesn't mean it flew that path. It means that somehow at some point in time at 8:11, this plane got there, got there, got there, or somewhere along that path.

Now what they're talking about more likely, down to the southern path. And I believe the U.S. on this because there's probably more than one ping. If there was an 8:11 ping, there was probably a 7:11 ping, there's probably a 6:11 ping, a 5:11 ping, and they could follow those pings as the plane moved. Not convinced, we don't know yet. They're still analyzing the data.

If we had more than one satellite, this would be over, done, over, absolutely no problem. If we had two satellites, three satellites you would have triangulation and we would know that that plane is exactly right there. But when you only have one satellite, you don't have GPS. You just have "G." You don't get the other two. So, you can't get a good, solid spot.

It's when your car can't find yourself because you're in a tunnel, your GPS doesn't work.

LEMON: I have a question for you, which sort of came up then it cements it because I got it from a CNN producer. Thank you very much. Julian Cummings says you have to ask our panel this, one of our experts.

If they went south and ditched a plane, why wait seven hours to do so, if this plane was a ditch and suicide plan, wouldn't it have been done much sooner or right away? I think that's a very good question.

MYERS: I just don't get it. They flew the plane left. They made an evasive maneuver. They were trying to get out of radar site. They were going high. They were going low.

You know, radar only goes in a straight line and earth doesn't. The earth curves away. Radar goes straight out. By the time the plane was 200 miles from a radar, that radar was shooting way over the top of that plane and they knew it.

These guys, whoever were flying that plane, were experts. I don't believe this was on any random auto pilot, whatever. Somebody in here knew what they were doing to evade these guys, to evade the radars, to evade the military, to evade the secondary radars by shutting off the transponder.

I believe we're going to find this plane in one piece.

LEMON: You do?

MYERS: I do. I do, somewhere (ph).

LEMON: As far as the fantastical and speculation theories from someone who I respect very much said, you know, I have a perspective to share with you, Don. The whole fantastical scenario could also be applied to a lot of things that happened, including 9/11. Nobody thought flying planes into a building could possibly happen until it happened.

MYERS: And what would this plane be used for if it is in one piece and in the hands of some bad people?

LEMON: Yes. Chad Myers in Atlanta. Appreciate you, sir. Thank you very much.

More on our breaking news on the disappearance of Flight 370. Next, the last words heard from the cockpit, "All right, good night", who uttered those words? Was it a rogue pilot, or possibly a hijacker?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: Continuing our breaking news coverage on the disappearance of Malaysia Air Flight 370.

We're following several new developments tonight. Malaysia's defense minister says that there has been no cover-up in the investigation, a very defensive official, saying the Malaysian government has put aside national security to share information with other countries involved in the hunt.

Also tonight, a U.S. official tells CNN that the intelligence community has now increased its focus on those in the cockpit. We also know the last communication from the cockpit, someone saying, "all right, good night" came after some of the plane's systems had been shut down.

And ABC News now reporting that the abrupt left turn at the plane made off its original flight path was actually preprogrammed, raising a lot of questions tonight about whether this was a rogue pilot or a hijacker in that cockpit. Take a closer look now at the pilot and co- pilot of Flight 370.

Joining me now to discuss that, CNN's Richard Quest, an aviation analyst Mary Schiavo, and Jim Tilmon.

Richard, I want to go to your first. I want you to just take a look at what we know about this co-pilot. OK?

The pilot, what we know about the pilot here. The pilot is captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah. He's 53 years old.

He lives in gated community outside Kuala Lumpur, 18,000-plus flying hours. Joining the airline in 1991. Married. Three children. One grandchild, supervised some of the pilot planning for Malaysia Airlines.

Let's talk about him and then we'll talk about the co-pilot.

RICHARD QUEST, CNN HOST, QUEST MEANS BUSINESS: Extremely experienced. He was a training captain. He was put with the co-pilot that we're going to talk about because the co-pilot was very inexperienced on the 777.

But this is a man who, according to our reporter, who's been to talk to his neighbors, been to the area, he was involved in helping children and various local charities. Yes, he did have a flight simulator in his home because he loved flying so much, and we've often seen the picture of him in that.

LEMON: The investigators are going over that flight simulator now.

QUEST: They've gone to the simulator. They've gone to the home, they looked around. All of which is entirely normal and to be expected in the circumstances.

LEMON: OK. But it's also taken them now almost nine days into this to do that.

QUEST: Yes, and that is somewhat extraordinary that in such a situation where, frankly, from the get-go, pilot questions were raised. So it's not as if this came out of the blue.

LEMON: The reason I wanted to wait to talk about the co-pilot, because you've actually flown with the co-pilot. It's a bit of information with him.

His name is Fariq Ab Hamiz. Twenty-seven years old, joined Malaysia Airlines in 2007, 2,700-plus flying hours. Was in the process of transitioning to the Boeing 777-200, meaning he was the younger, less experienced officer onboard the plane.

He lives with his parents and some of his four siblings. Again, you flew with him just a month ago.

What can you tell us about him?

QUEST: That picture there -- I mean, we've obviously, because it's not relevant, but obviously cropped me out of the picture. That's me off to the -- that's me to the side there. Yes.

And he was charming. We sat in the cockpit. He was -- he didn't seem at all nervous to have a CNN crew.

LEMON: Let's see you together. Roll the video of you two together.

QUEST: He didn't seem at all nervous. He actually loved flying. He talked about going from the smaller planes to the larger planes.

This is sort of me taking the old picture in the cockpit. And it was -- when we landed, he did the landing. He was the pilot flying. And the captain who was there then said, "Perfect landing."

LEMON: Mary Schiavo, I want to talk to you about this. Is there anything, when as I was describing the experience of the pilot, the co-pilot, anything that raises any sort of red flags or stands out to you?

MARY SCHIAVO, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Well, I have three red flags. And, you know, I like hard data. I like evidence. I like seeing the, you know, going over the wreckage on the hangar floor after their recover it.

But three things don't make sense here.

One, and now they're reporting the ACARS, the messaging system was turned off. An experienced pilot in his last message had every opportunity to either use the airline hijack, verbal or operational code or squawk, the hijack code on the transponder. That didn't happen.

Two, the preprogrammed waypoints could only be done by the flight crew. You have to have an alternative, you know, but your alternative to Beijing would not be these waypoints.

And three, if you were going to deliver this plane over the Himalayas, you would put on extra fuel because this plane can set distance records, and it had apparently only fuel for seven or eight hours.

Did the pilots order more fuel or the pilot? And if not, then I don't know if we can reasonably say they were planning to deliver this plane over the Himalayas somewhere in the stands. It looks like a mission to the ocean.

LEMON: That is known -- no one has ever raised that. Is there any indication from anyone that they asked for extra fuel asset?

QUEST: No.

SCHIAVO: I don't know.

QUEST: No. I don't know. But I think we've heard about it because obviously there would be a question why they would be asking for such a seriously large amount of fuel.

LEMON: Yes, very good point.

Jim, NBC News reporting the simulator was taken from the house during the search. You heard Richard and I talk about it here. Does that raise any sort of red flags to you? Because apparently he's very experienced. Why would he need a simulator?

JIM TILMON, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Well, unless he was practicing going into an airport he was not familiar with, a lot of guys who do have simulators use a simulator for that purpose so when they go into an unfamiliar airport, they feel very comfortable. Or if he had a plan, a plan to take advantage of all his knowledge of the aircraft and using his simulator to take the airplane someplace that it wasn't planned to go.

I believe that this was a very well thought out plan from the beginning. I don't know whether the captain or the co-pilot were in on it and just got taken by somebody else, but there was somebody that really understood the airplane, really understood the ropes out there and wanted to do what they did. And here's what they did. They ran us all in circles. We were all just coming up with a different story each day for what may have happened while they were running their plan. And their plan included moving the airplane where they wanted to move it and we were always behind the fact.

We still are. We don't even know where the airplane ended up. We don't have a real clue for that.

But it took a lot of skill -- a lot of skill and maybe substantial practice to do what they, in fact, did. Got it tell you, somebody on that airplane was pretty smart. Not very nice, but very smart.

LEMON: Jim, Mary, Richard, stand by.

More on our breaking news into the disappearance of Flight 370. We have all the angles covered for you. Why the timing of the last words heard from the cockpit may mean something very sinister happened on that plane. One theory is that it could have been pilot suicide. Why some are comparing Flight 370 to the Silk Air crash of 1997.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: We are back now with breaking news coverage of the disappearance of Malaysian Airlines Flight 370.

U.S. officials telling our very own Barbara Starr that the U.S. intelligence community is increasingly focused on, quote, those in the cockpit of the plane. They believe one of those people was deliberately responsible for the missing jet. Could terror have been a motivation?

Back with me now, CNN's Richard Quest, CNN analyst, aviation analysts Mary Schiavo and Jim Tilmon.

I want to pose this to everyone, but specifically, Mary, I want you to answer first. I got an e-mail from someone who I believe is a pilot here, former military, says, "Malaysia Air, southern arc into the Indian Ocean has one interesting possibility, Dan. There's an airport nearby there, probably also fuel may be an option."

What are the chances?

SCHIAVO: Well, if it's in the range for the fuel that was onboard in the plane, which the aircraft has a range of 7,250 miles. If that airport is there, then it's an option. But remember, to refuel the plane, it's 45,000 gallons of Jet A. So, it would have to be an airport with a big jet fuel tank.

But, you know, if it's within that range, then they could make it.

LEMON: So, listen, to that term, someone else who's a military friend of mine says, Don, you should tell your graphics guy to overlay common shipping lanes and aviation routes in the Indian Ocean which goes along with what this person is saying. QUEST: Yes, there are a lot of those strips. Mary, you know this well and you do as well, Jim. There are a lot of those strips that were built by the U.S. authorities, Second World War and post after the war for, before you had long-range aircraft that could go the distance and you had particularly across the Pacific, similar in the Indian, where your waypoints and way stopping airports.

But to my knowledge, we sort of -- none of us are going to be hostage to fortune by saying one thing or the other, but it does take us into certain realms of unreality to actually think about landing in one of these areas.

LEMON: Jim, you want to respond to any of this?

TILMON: Well, here's my thinking about it. Whoever's doing this is too smart to just all of a sudden say, oh, gosh, my bad, I guess I did the wrong thing.

There had to be an end game. They had to have something on the end of their plan about where they were going to go. Was that too one of those strips, refuel and be completely out of the area? What was the plan?

What was really going on inside the cockpit? Was there a pilot with a gun in his ear? That's the only way he was going to do what they did?

I think the questions that we're going to end up with at the end of this night are going to be pretty close to the questions we had last night.

LEMON: OK.

Richard, we now know that the last voice of communication in that cockpit, we heard, it is, all right, good night. This is after the ACARS system was turned off and the transponder were turned off.

So, again, this is pointing investigators into some nefarious behavior it wasn't a catastrophic mechanical failure.

QUEST: Well, yes, because very simply put, the "all right, good night," if you -- if the plane was in extremist, there was something seriously going on with the aircraft mechanically, you wouldn't be saying, "all right, good night, Malaysia 370," having on the next thing --

LEMON: Is that common term? Is it just, "roger" that?

QUEST: No, no, no, because you don't know what he said before. He may have done the official bit beforehand. "Malaysia 370, contacting whatever, at 174.3, good night. All right, good night." That last bit is a nice little courtesy. You don't get it in much aviation space where it's very busy. And you're going into London Heathrow at 8:00 in the morning, all right, good mornings. It will be very fast.

But otherwise, but what we do from prime minister said is that clearly, whatever was happening was happening at the time we had all right good night.

LEMON: Mary Schiavo, you are agreeing here. I hear you.

SCHIAVO: I agree. I mean, it was -- it was apparently calm. And they've analyzed it, and it's one of the pilot's voices. So, you would know if your ACARS had malfunctioned and gone down. If you're having malfunctioning at that point -- you would -- if you are a pilot on top of your game and apparently these people were, the no problem indication after you had an indication of problem signifies that you don't think you're being hijacked and you're not reporting any problems. I can't get around those two facts. I wish I could.

LEMON: Jim, you are a retired pilot how long for American Airlines? Correct?

TILMON: Yes, I was, about 29 years.

LEMON: And when you are listening to what you hear from this, the reporting of what happened in the cockpit, "all right, good night" and so on, what is your assessment?

TILMON: I don't think it means anything. I mean, I think -- I could tell you that I've heard a hundred different times pilots that don't acknowledge clearance properly, by properly repeating their frequency or whatever else instructions. They just do it, particularly in the middle of the night. They just do it.

(CROSSTALK)

LEMON: Everyone is leading -- when you look at what the prime minister said, they are leading towards -- a hijacking or possible terrorism when he says this is done on purpose. That's what I'm asking.

TILMON: Oh, yes. It was done on purpose. I think everything from the takeoff was done on purpose. Wherever that airplane is right now was on purpose.

It's -- there was no -- I don't think they got many surprises. They were too skillful and too carefully planned out to have that happen. If and the event that their end game was not going to work, then that's scary, because if they began to get desperate, they may have committed suicide.

LEMON: Ten seconds.

QUEST: In 10 seconds, I'm just going to stick with the prime minister's words -- it's deliberate. But he refuses to say hijack.

LEMON: Thanks to all of you. More of our coverage into the disappearance of Malaysian Airlines Flight 370. Next, could this be a case of pilot suicide? Why some are comparing Flight 370 to the Silk Air crash of 1997.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) LEMON: Tonight, we're continuing our breaking news coverage of the disappearance of Malaysia Air Flight 370. The U.S. officials now telling CNN that the U.S. intelligence community is leaning toward a theory that those in the cockpit, the pilots of the Malaysia Airlines flight were deliberately responsible for whatever happened to the vanished aircraft.

Now, given this new development, many are drawing parallels between the missing flight and Silk Air flight 185 that crashed in 1997.

That flight heading from Indonesia to Singapore suddenly dove vertically into the Musi River, killing everyone on board. The National Transportation Safety Board concluded the pilot committed suicide.

Kyung Lah now with the story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KYUNG LAH, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): December 1997, the mysterious plane crash of SilkAir Flight 185, the Boeing 737 with 104 people aboard suddenly nose dived into this murky river. The entire drop happened in about one minute, breaking the speed of sound. Nearly all the bodies were torn to pieces.

Adding to the grief of the families, the National Transportation Safety Board would conclude all this was the act of one man, a pilot who wanted to commit suicide.

THOMAS ANTHONY, USC AVIATION SAFETY AND SECURITY PROGRAM: It ended up crashing here in the Musi River.

LAH: Thomas Anthony remembers SilkAir 185 clearly because he was the FAA Civil Aviation Security Division and was part of the SilkAir investigation. A pilot intentionally downing a passenger plane is still hard for him to think about.

(on camera): How horrifying is that? As someone who is investigating this?

ANTHONY: It's something that most of us should never consider because it is so extremely rare. It is beyond -- almost beyond imagination.

LAH (voice-over): And still disputed Anthony points out, Indonesian investigators said the cause remains inconclusive and in civil trial, a Los Angeles jury decided the crash was caused by a failed part of the plane's rudder.

The victims' families never got a clear answer, just like another crash Egypt Air Flight 990. The NTSB ruled the pilot intentionally caused the 1990 crash. Egyptian authorities say it was caused by mechanical failure.

ANTHONY: It's like a jigsaw puzzle. A jigsaw puzzle in which there are thousands of pieces and not all those pieces are at the bottom of the ocean. LAH: Could someone in the cockpit have done something to Malaysia Airlines Flight 370? These two young women say the co-pilot of the missing plane invited them to ride in the cockpit on a previous flight and did.

Retired American airlines pilot Mark Weiss believes based on prior history, someone perhaps with the crew intentionally cause this plane to vanish.

CAPTAIN MARK WEISS, FORMER BOEING 777 PILOT: Whether it was one of the pilots that maybe had a meltdown or wanted to do something nefarious to the airplane or uninvited visitor or perhaps an invited visitor or another crew member that was bent on perhaps committing suicide or doing some destruction on the aircraft.

LAH (on camera): There is an intense focus on the wreckage because many of the answers lie there but not all of them. In the case of SilkAir, about 75 percent of the wreckage was reassembled, was pulled out. Yet, three different entities, a civil court here in Los Angeles, U.S. authorities and Indonesian authorities, all came up with a different reasons for why this plane crash. They were all looking though at the exact same piece of evidence.

Kyung Lah, CNN Los Angeles.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LEMON: Kyung, thank you very much.

So many different scenarios when it comes to this. What we do know -- it has been nine days. Tomorrow, it will be 10, that the plane has gone missing. It cannot fall off the face of the Earth. That's why we'll continue covering this until we find out exactly what happened.

Make sure you join us tomorrow morning at 6:00, "NEW DAY SUNDAY". Until then, we'll come back on the air if we need to.

I'm Don Lemon. Thank you so much for joining us.

"Death Row Stories," next.