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New Developments on Missing Flight 370; Pilot's Flight Simulator Investigated; Families Angry in China; Veteran Pilot Not Convinced Malaysian Airliner Crashed; Focus Turns to Pilots, Crew and Passengers; Crimea Becomes Russia; Father Fears the Worst for His Son

Aired March 16, 2014 - 18:00   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.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: You are in the CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Jim Sciutto in today for Don Lemon, and we are attacking two very important stories today that the world is watching.

A controversial vote today pits Russia against much of the world. We have early results from Crimea's referendum on possibly joining Russia. Crimea's leaders say Crimea is going home to Russia. World leaders say not so fast. President Obama and Russia's President Putin talked today about the tense situation in Ukraine.

Plus, we are tracking every angle of the mysterious disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 and there are new clues emerging. Right now, 25 nations are searching for the missing plane and coming up short so far. The airliner disappeared some ten days ago, triggering the aviation mystery that's baffled the world.

Here are the latest developments as we have them. Pakistan says no trace of the missing plane ever showed up on its radar systems. And Pakistan says the plane would have been treated as if it was a threat if it did show up on radar. Right now, police are examining a flight simulator taken from the pilot's home. Harsh new scrutiny is bearing down on both the pilot and the co-pilot.

Plus, the search for the missing jet airliner is getting even bigger. Now authorities are scouring ocean and land. You will hear why some believe the plane may have landed before its last satellite contact. We are bringing in all our experts to track the unsolved mystery of Malaysia Flight 370. But first, as daylight breaks in Malaysia, it's another day without concrete answers. CNN's Andrew Stevens is there again. He's been with us a number of times from Kuala Lumpur.

Andrew, as Malaysia authorities, are they giving any details about what they've found as they've done these searches inside the pilot's home as well as searching this flight simulator that the captain of the plane had in his home?

ANDREW STEVENS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, pretty much as for this entire investigation so far, facts are very few and far between on the ground here, Jim. No, we don't know officially what was on that simulator. It was taken in by police from the pilot's home yesterday, so they have had it for a good 24 hours.

There is a story being quoted on Reuters saying that there is a -- a program which tells you how to fly through different type of weather conditions. But we should point out that's not uncommon on a flight simulator. Obviously people who use flight simulators are very interested in flying and learning about all different sorts of conditions.

So the investigation is though very, very focused at the moment on the pilots and the co-pilot. And that's really after, A, the prime minister yesterday said the plane was deliberately -- the flight was deliberately disrupted and the communication systems, the two communication systems we've been talking about, the ACARS and the transponders, were both deliberately turned off.

On top of that, now with the timeline, looking at the timeline, it shows that the pilot or whoever was in the cockpit speaking to ground control at the time, that line, "All right, good night," came after the transponders, the ACAR system, I should say, excuse me, the ACAR system was switched off. That suggests that whatever was happening, whatever plot was - that had been hatched, was already in play when that final statement came from the plane. "Good night, all right."

Now, this investigation isn't just on the two. There's no presumption of guilt here. There is -- this is a solid investigation looking at eliminating suspects, if you like. And that includes the other 227 passengers and ten other crew members on the flight, Jim. So they have to get information from 15 other countries as well on some of these passengers. So not expecting any early developments in passengers and who may be hiding what.

SCIUTTO: Well, I'm glad you made that point because they are checking out every eventuality here, every possibility, but they don't have hard evidence that the pilots were involved. They just have indicators that the pilots would've - or someone who could fly the plane well - would have to be involved. And some signs that the pilots were still in the cockpits based on last communications.

Looking at the search now, it is huge. And it was looking in the wrong place, we now know, when it started on those first several days to the east of the Malay peninsula. How much did searching in the wrong spot then hamper the search today and as it goes forward?

STEVENS: Well, it must have been a significant problem to be searching -- basically so for eight days, the real search into where we now know, or at least have a good understanding of where the plane may have gone, those areas weren't being searched for eight days. And just to give you an example, the Indonesian, the deputy ambassador to Malaysia here, has told the local reporters that we have been sitting in Indonesia, which is only a couple of hundred miles away from where we're at the moment, for eight days because we were being told that the primary search area was in the South China Sea.

In fact, that plane may well have flown across Indonesian air space, out into Indonesian waters, and then into the Indian Ocean. So that is damaging and it makes the task of investigators even harder. Just listen to what the transport minister, the defense minister, it's the same person, two jobs, what he has to say about the search.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HISHAMMUDDIN HUSSEIN, MALAYSIAN TRANSPORT AND DEFENSE MINISTER: The operation has entered a new phase. The search was already a highly complex multinational effort and has now become even more difficult. The search area has been significantly expanded and the nature of the search has changed from focusing mainly on shallow seas, we are now looking at large tracts of land crossing 11 countries as well as deep and remote oceans.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

STEVENS: And Jim, just to put that in perspective, this search is now looking at some of the deepest places on the planet, under the ocean, plus some of the highest places, the Himalayas. It gives you an idea of just how difficult this is going to be.

SCIUTTO: No question. By land and by sea and some pretty big chunks of land and sea. Thanks very much to Andrew Stevens live for us now in Kuala Lumpur.

Joining me now to discuss these developments, we have Arthur Rosenberg, aviation lawyer, engineer and pilot, John Hansman, professor of aeronautics at MIT, and Tom Fuentes, CNN law enforcement analyst, also the former director -- assistant director of the FBI.

John, I wonder if I could start with you, because we have a lot of new information over the last 24 hours about the potential of a pilot's involvement in this, that it was a deliberate act, that it required turning off systems. There's some radar indications of a steep ascent and descent, possibly flying through radar zones to avoid radar.

That requires a level of skill and I wonder, with what you know, would that have to be a professional pilot who could do something like that or could someone learn up, in effect, to control the plane in such a way? I mean, we saw in 9/11 that you had nonprofessional pilots fly those plane to great damage. Could a non-professional pilot make all those moves and fly this path that they're looking into this?

JOHN HANSMAN, MIT, PROFESSOR OF AERONAUTICS: I think with someone who had a pretty good knowledge of the systems, just turning off the ACAR system itself is not an easy thing. It's kind of like resetting some setting in your computer. You have to know which pages to go to. And the fact that was done before the last -- the last sign-off communication, and whoever answered the radio on that last sign-off communication at least knew the sort of normal terminology. So someone who either was a pilot or was familiar with the procedures.

SCIUTTO: Arthur, if I could go to you now just as well. We have talked about the flight simulator being taken in. And that struck a lot of people when that first video of the pilot - in fact, he was on the web talking about something completely different, I think home repair, and behind him was the flight simulator. You have investigated a lot of crashes. How significant of a clue is that to you? ARTHUR ROSENBERG, AVIATION LAWYER & ENGINEER, PILOT: Well, the flight simulator could be a very innocent, innocuous thing. He could a pilot enthusiast, which he obviously is, and has a flight simulator. A lot of pilots do. Or it could be an effective tool for learning certain precise skills.

So what do we know? In this case the plane took off around 12:30 from Kuala Lumpur. It was en route for about 45 minutes. We know now from a variety of sources that the transponder was turned off, the plane basically became invisible to radar. And the ACAR system, before that was turned off, and then the next communication we have is, "All right, good night."

Now, we don't have to get into the communication, whether it was proper or improper. We do know the plane turned around and then we know the plane flew a very strategic route back over Malaysia and evaded with - by only being able to picked up with primary radar -- evaded military radar and precluded the Malaysian Air Force from intercepting. They have F15s, they have F5s. That simulator could have been the tool that taught the pilot what to do and to become very proficient.

SCIUTTO: And they're going to look for signs of that now on the simulator now that they've taken it into their possession.

Tom, if I could come to you. 239 people on board that flight. How do investigators prioritize as they look through every one of them and then begin to narrow down who the likely candidates for being involved in this?

TOM FUENTES, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Well, first of all, Jim, they would try to verify that the identifications used to obtain the tickets is accurate. You know, obviously with the two stolen Iranian passports, that information was inaccurate. And when they went to the home of the one Italian gentleman, he said, hey, I'm alive and well, somebody stole my passport a year ago in Thailand.

So you have the other travel documents that may not have been stolen, but if you had somebody using counterfeit documents with phony addresses, that would be really hard to figure out who exactly was that person that got on the plane if more than one person got on the plane.

Another question you'd want to look at is all of the ground crew and the catering service and the housekeeping service that cleans the airplane and, you know, you would have in addition to the passengers and crew, you would have hundreds of other people that have a hand in touching that aircraft or loading what goes on the aircraft including food and luggage and gasoline -- or fuel I should say.

So, you know, there's just so many people to look at and so many ways that you could look at them. Now, they provide all that information to the FBI, who have been involved in the case from the beginning. That comes back to Washington and the various databases here in the United States. But that doesn't help with people that maybe never came here or whose names never come up. You've got individuals or nationals from 14 other countries so those countries have to look at the backgrounds on their people. It's just a massive undertaking to try to identify every person, and not to mention one last thing that hasn't been brought up --

SCIUTTO: Tell you what, Tom, hold that thought because we are going to come back after the break. I do want to get into it. But you make a great point there. As the search area expands you have the investigation expanding the number of people who could have touched that plane. Not just the people on the plane, but maintenance crews, luggage handlers, a great point. We're going go get to more of that after this break.

The youngest is just two, the oldest is 76 years old. 239 passengers were on board Flight 370. Next, why their families are starting to believe that no news could be good news. Right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK).

SCIUTTO: 239. Amid the void of information on their fate, it seems the passengers and crew of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 have at times been reduced to just a number. CNN's David McKenzie joins me live now from Beijing. David has been interacting with the victims' families as they go through these frustrating, agonizing ten days. David, can you tell us how they're doing, how they're managing through all this?

DAVID MCKENZIE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Jim, of course it's extremely challenging and difficult for them. And with all this information coming out over these days and different conflicting accounts of what happened, it certainly is traumatizing for the families of those passengers.

You know, the one interesting thing now, Jim, is that with those two arcs way up to the north and way down to south there, though the anger is boiling over at the airlines from these families, here in Beijing in particular, the hope is also there for them. Many people I have spoken to se seem convinced that this plane was hijacked and that it landed somewhere and then perhaps their family members are OK. And that goes for several different nationalities I have spoken to, not just Chinese, Jim.

SCIUTTO: David, we have seen some finger pointing, some anger from China, particularly driven by those emotions of the family members of the more than 150 people on the plane. That's been directed at Malaysia but also the U.S. A Xinhua editorial talked about the U.S. as an intelligence superpower, why isn't it using more of that power to track where this plane is? Where is that coming from? Why point the finger at the U.S. as well as Malaysia?

MCKENZIE: Well, it's a good point. I think Malaysia is an easier one to answer, Jim, because China hasn't had much love lost with Malaysia over the years. And in this case they're kind of dependent on Malaysia to lead this investigation like everyone else is. And so when you have all these family members here in Beijing who have very real ties of course to this plane and this mystery, China wants to look like it's doing something about it even thought it can't really show it's leading any investigation. On the U.S. side, it's more intriguing in a way because China has this enormous military budget second largest in the world, wants to be seen as a growing superpower in the world, but it doesn't have nearly the intelligence capabilities of the U.S. So many analysts I have spoken to say, you know, the finger pointing at the U.S. in a way is to show that, you know, if China can't do its own job to protect its citizens or investigate what happened to its citizens to the same degree as the United States, they're going to point the finger at the U.S. for not doing enough.

So there's a lot of geopolitics here and very awkward and angry scenes here in Beijing with the families. This is potentially going to become very messy indeed for the countries involved, particularly China and Malaysia as this drags on and we try unravel this mystery. Jim?

SCIUTTO: No question. It also raises the question did Chinese radar out there on the northern arc of this potential path, did it miss the plane too? So that would be a sensitivity too. Thanks very much to David McKenzie, live in Beijing.

We're going to go back to our meteorologist Chad Myers, joining us. Cahd, no one knows the satellites better. Can you give us a perspective now as we're looking at that search area, how big is it? What can we compare it to to get sense of, well, just the task at hand now for all those ships and planes involved?

CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: If you take just the line -- I'll show you that arc in a seconD - just that line of arcs, those two arcs, and you say 100 miles either side, you're talking 1 million square miles. That's Alaska, Texas, and California added together.

And I'll tell you why we have that problem, is because GPS likes to work on three or more satellites. You have got three pings here. There's one, two -- if you're in your car, the car would say you are right there because all of these satellites cross right there. That's the only place you could be. That satellite sees you in this ring. This satellite sees you in this ring and this one in this. And the only place they cross is right there.

Well, we don't have that. We only have in fact one satellite here. So we have a circle. We have the one circle and nothing else crossing that circle. So as the satellite found this ping at 8:11 a.m. the day the plane disappeared, this is what we have. This is where the plane right now could be. It's like having one ping, one ring, one satellite on your GPS. You're not going to know where you are. The GPS in your car won't even work.

Well, let's start whittling it down. We whittle this side down, Jim, because this is too far. The plane couldn't get there in time. There wasn't enough time, there wasn't enough speed and likely not enough gas or fuel for the plane to actually get that far. And we also whittled down this. We whittle down this area right there because the government says, you know what, we have really great radar coverage right there. We would have seen that. So all of a sudden, we have this arc and we have this arc. Big arc. A million square miles, just 100 miles on both sides of that line all the way through here to search that area and to search this. Alaska, Canada and California together. That's only 100 miles.

Now, this plane could have flown on for a while after 8:11 a.m., so you may have to stretch that to 200 or 300 miles, and then you do the multiplication yourself. One more satellite ping off of a different satellite would have made all the difference, because once three cross, you know exactly where that plane is and we do not have that. And I'm not sure we're going to get that at all. This is going to be a long, arduous search, I'm afraid, Jim.

SCIUTTO: Yes. One small clue and they need more clues. You have been tracking some of the ship traffic in that area particularly down in the southern part of the arc, the Indian Ocean. Is that a potential help here to the search? You have a lot of commercial shipping through there.

MYERS: You certainly do. In Banda Aceh here, a lot of ships going back and forth, and likely someone on watch looking for debris. So that helps a lot. We don't have just one destroyer, a couple of helicopters out there -- all of this commercial traffic as well. There's Banda Aceh all the way down through here. The plane probably flew somewhere through here, and all these ships moving back and forth through the day and through the night helping out in the search as well, Jim.

SCIUTTO: And now you add to that the more than 50 ships and planes and so on from the 11 countries taking part in the search. Hopefully they will find something. Thanks very much to Chad Myers in Atlanta.

This search for a missing airliner is changing gears to include land and ocean, as we said. Malaysia asking more countries for sensitive information. We're going to break down the tricky politics behind the desperate search for Flight 370.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SCIUTTO: The search for missing Malaysia Airline Flight 370 is taking a dramatic twist to cover both ocean and land. Nations including Afghanistan, Pakistan and Australia are being asked for any information they can provide. The Boeing 777 jet disappeared ten days ago and no new traces of the missing plane have yet shown up.

Joining me now to discuss, John Hansman, professor of aeronautics at MIT as well as Tom Fuentes, CNN law enforcement analyst and former FBI assistant director. Tom, if I can go to you first, just because when we last spoke a few moments ago, you were bringing up a very important point that we haven't heard on the air before. And that is as they check the passengers on board this plane, as well as others involved with maintenance on the plane, et cetera, against U.S. terror database, that would only touch people who've traveled to the U.S., is that right? So there could be people involved with this plane who would not be on that list? FUENTES: Yes, that's possible, Jim. And the one other category I was trying to add was the idea that somebody could have scaled the fence at the airport and gotten to that aircraft from the ground and posed as a mechanic or some other person.

Now we just had an aircraft three weeks land here in Washington at Dulles Airport. It was a South African airline plane was having trouble with its landing gear, the reason being, when the engineers looked up in there, they found a dead body. Someone had stowed away and ridden on the plane, froze to death when it was at a high altitude.

Now, there had been other flights where individuals posing as a mechanic got on the aircraft and were able to hide, you know, find one of these -- you know, lower compartments where they have equipment and actually ride on that plane, which means that that person even if they didn't stay on the plane, could introduce any form of contraband -- explosives, firearms, knives, flammable material -- that would be waiting for another partner to get on the plane and actually make use of it. So in other words, all passengers could clear through the magnetometers and the search of the hand carry-on luggage knowing that when they get on the plane there's weapons waiting for them on the flight, so at a later time, they could take over.

So there's a number of other possibilities that could involve individuals whose name won't show up on any list whatsoever.

SCIUTTO: And it's a good point to make, Tom, because we're focusing - -we know that U.S. officials are focusing on the pilots but they pilots aren't the only individuals who could have done something like this.

John Hansman, I wonder if I can go to you, because there's another possibility. We live in an age of cyber attacks. They can happen remotely. They can happen by wirelessly. Is a cyber attack on a plane system at all conceivable to take over the plane or to somehow control it or disable systems from afar? Is that a plausible possibility?

HANSMAN: There's no -- the way these airplanes are designed, there's no way to from the outside get into the systems in remotely control the airplane. It may be possible you could interfere with the systems, put a bug in there so some component would fail. But I can't see anything that would cause the sequence of events that we have seen. So I don't think that's any type of external cyber attack.

SCIUTTO: OK, fair point. Tom, I wonder if I could ask you, because we've been getting a lot of questions in via Twitter. Some of them are things we hadn't thought of.

This one comes in from T.J. Johnson. And he asks about this ascent that the radar data showed, the 45,000 feet. Assuming 45,000 feet altitude data is accurate, could this have been done to incapacitate the passengers and crew? It brings up a number of possibilities. Is that something you could find conceivable? Is that a kind of path that investigators would be looking at now? FUENTES: Jim, I have had the pleasure of meeting about 50 aviation experts in this greenroom this week waiting to go on the. Asked that question to many of them, they said that they don't think that that would work because they weren't at that higher altitude long enough. And the passengers could have awakened later when it went down.

And others have said that the drop that's indicated by that data of going from 45,000 feet to 23,000 feet in a minute, the plane couldn't do it, that the wings would be ripped off from the G-force and the plane wouldn't be able to sustain that kind of a supersonic drop in altitude.

So I don't know. I'm not the aviation expert, but I have talked to many this week to try to find out myself if that's possible.

SCIUTTO: John, if I could ask you just one more question before we let you go. This idea of landing the plane somewhere, hiding it for later use, this sort of thing. Is that something that would be possible in light of the world that we live in today where there are satellites all over the place looking down and trying to take pictures of exactly those things for military use or even for civilian use? Is that a plausible possibility in light of the fact that Malaysian authorities said that last ping came from on the ground as opposed to in the air?

HANSMAN: It would be tough. The shortest runway you could get this plane onto is about 5,000 to 6,000 feet long. So you'd need a big runway and then a place to hide it once you land it, so you would need a hangar or something like that. And there aren't that many big runways with big hangars that aren't in highly populated areas, so you'd also have to do it in a way that people wouldn't have noticed it, and this is the biggest mystery in the world. So if that happened, it would be hard to see how that secret would be there.

So I think it's unlikely. But it's theoretically possible if it could have been hidden.

SCIUTTO: Well, John and Tom, it's great to have you on because there are so many theories, so many hypotheticals out there. And it's good to have your help, possibly eliminating some of them that's just less plausible than others. And we can imagine this is what the investigators are going through right now as well.

John Hansman, Tom Fuentes, thanks very much.

Now most airline experts fall into one of two camps. Either they believe somebody flew that 777 away somewhere or they believe it crashed. In a moment, I talk to a veteran airline captain and crash investigator who says, no, no crash. Why he's so certain, coming up next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SCIUTTO: We never imagined a week ago that a commercial airliner would still be missing without a trace, but that's where we stand amazingly today. It's an enormous task to search this much of the planet with urgency for something as relatively small as a passenger jet.

Airplanes, ships and satellites representing some 25 countries are now looking for it. Considering every plausible theory about what happened to that Malaysia Airlines 777, and to its crew and its passengers.

The United States Navy is helping the search. American authorities are putting the most weight on the scenario that the plane crashed into the ocean outside of the reach of radar, somewhere south of India.

We have Bill Savage with me now. He's got a lot of hours behind the controls of a 777, exactly the kind of plane involved here with Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. Thirty-five years flying one aircraft or another. He also helped investigate some of the most mysterious air disasters during those years.

Bill, I understand you're not convinced that this plane crashed into the ocean which is the leading theory I should mention of U.S. officials. Why is that?

BILL SAVAGE, FORMER 777 PILOT, ACCIDENT INVESTIGATOR: Well, I'm not discounting it totally. There's no absolutes here because until you find that aircraft, we're not going to know. But a highly experienced 777 captain could land that airplane in the shorter distance than the gentleman just talked about. Somewhere between 4,000 and 5,000 feet is plausible.

Where you would hide it and what would you do with 239 people is the next question. So you would have to have a lot of help in, you know, wherever you did put that airplane. But it's not implausible. And if it went in the water where is ELT signal? And when the ships do get out there in that -- in the deepest areas of the Indian Ocean, the ELTs, there are two of them on board the aircraft I think would still be working at this juncture.

So without -- without that electronic information being put out by the ELTs and no reason to suspect the pilots per se, in an organized plot, a conspiracy, I'm just -- I'm baffled. I don't understand why the ADIZ of several countries, the Air Defense Identification Zones, I could understand one of them missing it but not two or three.

And, you know, the Asian airlines tend to be very, very good at radio procedural correctness. Whereas the Americans tend to cut things short as we heard, "All right, good night." That tends not to be the habit of all of the Asian airlines. They -- they correctly check on and check off with their identifier. And --

(CROSSTALK)

SCIUTTO: Well, we do know in this case --

SAVAGE: -- the fact that none of the traffic controls --

SCIUTTO: We do know in this case there was at least one missed handshake, right, when it went from the Malaysian radar system to the Vietnamese radar system. When there was a goodbye but not a hello on the other side. A missed signal there.

I wonder if I could ask you a question that a lot of viewers have been sending in tweets now. And I'm just going to mention one of them now. It's Jeff Russell who asks, "Why should pilots have the ability to turn a plane's communications off? Why is -- do commercial airlines need stealth in effect?"

Why is that ability inside the cockpit of the plane, to turn off the systems, the ACARS system, the transponder. What's the safety reason or the operational reason for that?

SAVAGE: Well, all appliances have an on/off switch. The transponder being something under our control. We would not turn the data link systems off or the ACARS off. The maintenance people use the ACARS as well when the airplane is on the ground for their purposes. So we don't turn it off. So that leads one to suspect that either these pilots or somebody else in that cockpit knowledgeable enough to find the circuit breakers for that equipment disabled the equipment. So it -- but it's implausible that the pilots did this.

From the standpoint of somebody -- if you notice the time between the circuit breakers being pulled, if it were circuit breakers and the transponder going off is a few minutes. That's the few minutes that someone has to look at the overhead panel, find the line that the circuit breakers were on, identify it and read it in the dark, with either flashlight or cockpit lighting, the printing is very small. And pull those circuit breakers.

So, you know, the excursion from 45,000 to 23,000 tells me that's where the struggle was going on. Because pilots even when they're making off with your airplane wouldn't do that excursion to that high altitude. The point about --

(CROSSTALK)

SAVAGE: The 45,000 to incapacitate people, manually that system, the pressurization system can be overridden and the cockpit or the entire aircraft depressurized which would have rendered the folks incapable of breathing, but it would have dropped the mask as well. And so that's fairly implausible as well.

SCIUTTO: Well, you make --

SAVAGE: That's just done to incapacitate 239 people.

SCIUTTO: You make some great -- you make some great points having flown this 777 no one knows that cockpit better than you, so we appreciate that, Bill Savage. Thanks for walking us through what's possible from the cockpit and what's plausible as well.

We are also following another big story today. The referendum in Crimea. The votes are in and the counting is underway. Next, we head to Crimea for the early results.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) SCIUTTO: To the surprise of few, Ukraine's Crimea region today voted overwhelmingly to join Russia. With thousands of Russian troops this Crimea, the outcome of today's referendum was never in doubt. Crimean officials say preliminary results show more than 95 percent of the ballots favor leaving Ukraine and becoming part of the Russian Federation.

CNN's Michael Holmes is in Crimea.

Michael, we just got some details from a call between President Obama and President Putin. We're told that in that call President Obama told President Putin the results of this referendum will never be recognized.

Do you think that warning makes a difference where you are there? Has it spoiled the mood at all? Are people worried about consequences?

MICHAEL HOLMES, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Absolutely not on the ground here, Jim, no. Here in Simferopol, the Crimean regional capital, it's been quite a night of partying. There were thousands of people, the party has just broken up. And the remnants remain. They'll have some sore heads tomorrow.

But earlier on, several thousand people were hand. They were chanting, meaning Crimea is Russia. And they sang the Russian national anthem with great gusto, and the fireworks went off. As you said it was the most unsurprising referendum result you can imagine but it is a result that really is only recognized by Crimea and Russia. Everyone else in the world said it is invalid and nobody is going to take much notice of it.

Now the next steps are pretty crucial. The Russian Duma, the Russian parliament, votes on the 21st, just a few days from now, on whether to accept this application via referendum to join the Russian Federation. Now, if they do, then you can see some sanctions starting to hit home. We're expecting sanctions in the next day or so. Probably going to target initially the Crimean parliament, the de facto prime minister, and those who put this into action.

Now, if the Duma passes it and says yes, you can join the Russian Federation which everyone expects it will do, then you can see those sanctions start to hit at the Russian economy and at particular individuals as well. And those individuals are friends of Vladimir Putin. It's going to be interesting to see how hard they bite -- Jim.

SCIUTTO: And Michael, the promise from the Russian side to respond with their own sanctions. So preparing for an economic tit-for-tat could be very costly for both sides.

Michael Holmes, joining us from Simferopol, right where those celebrations have been taking place.

Now the FBI is one of several U.S. agencies investigating the disappearance of Flight 370. After this break, we head to Washington for a closer look at what investigators are focusing on right now.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SCIUTTO: Welcome back. I'm Jim Sciutto in New York. There are some who believe that the focus of the missing plane should have been on the pilots from the start.

Joining me now from Washington, justice reporter Evan Perez.

Even, we know Malaysian Police are looking very closely at the pilots, searching their homes, they've confiscated this flight simulator. And we also know U.S. officials focusing on the pilots as well.

What exactly are they looking for now?

EVAN PEREZ, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Jim, I think it's the same thing as the Malaysian authorities. It's just, you know, by process of elimination, I mean, they have been looking at the passenger manifest. They found no indications, no nexus of -- to terrorism as you and I have both been reporting in the last few days. So whatever happened they think has to have happened inside the cockpit.

And so what they're doing now is going back and looking through any information they can find on the two pilots. To make sure that there's nothing they have missed to see whether or not perhaps there's some affiliations or perhaps there's some signs that they might have given in the last few weeks, last few months perhaps, to indicate that they had some plan to do this. So far, they have found nothing.

But, you know, the problem is, you know, there's so few facts, there so few -- there's so little information that they have right now. They're doing some of the same guess work that you and I are doing and some of our viewers are doing, trying to figure out what possibly could have happened to Flight 370.

SCIUTTO: And you mentioned what intelligence officials have been telling both of us. They'll constantly say there's no nexus, there's no connection to terrorism. No established link yet.

PEREZ: Right.

SCIUTTO: But they're still interested in the signs that it would require the pilot or someone with a pilot's knowledge to make the moves in the plane that were necessary. So that's the key, right? They haven't established that they have a previous link.

PEREZ: Right.

SCIUTTO: They're looking at behavior.

PEREZ: They're looking at behavior. And I mean, you have to look at this aircraft. I mean, it's not -- it's not a -- it's a very sophisticated aircraft. And so to pilot this thing is not something that just anybody can do.

And also to turn off some of the electronic systems, the communication systems, the transponder, these are all things that you kind of have to have some knowledge to be able to do. And then to fly the thing for several hours thereafter. These are all things that point towards something happening, again, they're not saying that they have ruled out all other theories but it just I think is prudent to just take another look at those two people in the cockpit and see if there's something that could explain all this.

SCIUTTO: Right. And in fairness, we shouldn't call them suspects. It's things that they are looking into because they have questions about them.

PEREZ: That's right.

SCIUTTO: OK. Thanks much very, Evan Perez, covers justice for us in Washington.

Now the families of those on Flight 370 are waiting in agony for any news about the plane.

Coming up, the story of one man whose kids begged him not to get on that flight.

But first a quick note from the sports world, the NCAA Men's Basketball bracket is set and kicking off the annual office pools and nonstop speculation known as March Madness. Sixty-eight teams that will work their way through early rounds, regional to final four and finally the national title game on April 7th.

Virginia celebrating their victory in the ACC Tournament is a number one seed. Florida, the winner of the SEC tourney also number one. Arizona, Wichita state claimed the other top seeds. The tourney begins on Tuesday night.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SCIUTTO: The agonizing wait for information about Flight 370 is almost too much for some families to bear.

Our Atika Shubert talked to one father, waiting for news about his son. Sadly, he remembers the image of his grandchildren begging their dad not to take that flight.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ATIKA SHUBERT, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: For family of the passengers on Flight 370, the wait is excruciating.

"If I had two or three," this father tells us, "I might be able to accept it. But this is my only son."

Gurusami Subramaniam is waiting for his son, 34-year-old, Puspanahtan Subramaniam, an IT specialist who is headed to Beijing for a new job.

"Surely they must find the plane," he says. "That's all I hope for. The whole world is out looking for it."

But I ask him, what if they don't? He answers, if not, well, only god knows. It's in god's hands. It's fate.

He tells me he worked 20 years as a security guard to put his son through college. And at home, a wife and two young children also wait for him.

"He was responsible for everything," his father says. "Even these clothes I'm wearing. Whatever country he was in, he would call and once a week he would come see us with the whole family. He really took care of us."

(On camera): He was telling me that the two younger children didn't want to see their father go to Beijing. So they clung to his legs and refused to let him go out the door until he promised to bring them chocolates and presents when he got home. So that has to be -- it's very sad.

(Voice-over): Before we leave, he tells us to call any time with any news we have. He hardly sleeps he says. And now he never turns his phone off. Not even for a moment.

Atika Shubert, CNN, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

(END VIDEOTAPE)