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Missing Plane Mystery; Vast Search for Missing Jet; Focus Shifts on Pilots and Crew; Families Waiting in Agony; U.S. Rejects Results of Crimean Vote; What Happens Next to Crimea?; Missing Plane Trending Online; Looking at Past Flight Mysteries

Aired March 16, 2014 - 20:00   ET

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

ANA CABRERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Digital Globe which launched the crowd sourcing campaign on Monday says every pixel has had eyes on it at least 30 times. So far more than 745,000 features have been tagged. Right now experts are working to determine if those tags are real clues.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I have not seen anything of any particular, you know, interest at this point. We'll just keep searching.

CABRERA: (INAUDIBLE) has looked at the equivalent of about 4,000 city blocks himself and refuses to give up.

Ana Cabrera, CNN, Denver.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN Breaking News.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: You are in the CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Jim Sciutto in New York.

And we are tracking two major stories that the world is watching today. Tensions between Russia and the U.S. may be hitting new highs not seen since the Cold War. The flash point, today's controversial vote to return part of Ukraine's fragile nation to Russia.

President Obama and Russia's President Putin spoke today by telephone. Sanctions could start as soon as tomorrow.

Plus we are tracking dramatic twists in the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. The airliner disappeared 10 days ago now triggering the aviation mystery that's baffled the world.

Here's what's new today. Pakistan says no trace of the missing plane ever showed up on its radar systems. New scrutiny is bearing down on both the pilot and his co-pilot. Right now police are examining a flight simulator taken from the pilot's home. The last words ever heard from the cockpit, "All right, good night," came after the plane's communications systems were switched off.

Plus, the search for the missing plane now includes thousands of miles of land. You'll hear why some believe the plane may have landed before its last satellite contact. We have all of our experts here to track the unsolved mystery of Malaysia Flight 370. But first as daylight breaks in Malaysia, it's another day without concrete answers.

We have CNN's Jim Clancy live in Kuala Lumpur.

Jim, it's generally bended in the morning there. You have a press conference. The authorities -- announced the latest. Are there any indications of where their investigation is leading today?

JIM CLANCY, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, I think what they're doing today, first, before that press briefing, of course, they search all day, they hold discussions all day and then they come out. Actually it's the evening hours here that they have it -- morning your time. But they're trying to reboot this entire investigation. Yesterday they met -- where we are near Kuala Lumpur International Airport where some 50 diplomats or technocrats that represent 25 different countries that are along those two arcs where satellite data has given us an idea.

Just a rough idea of where Flight 370 might have been at 8:11 in the morning on December 8th. The day that it disappeared. Because now, of course, we know that that plane was still -- had its power. Was probably still in the air up until that point. That was the satellite handshake that told us that the plane was still active.

Now we have 25 countries involved. They are all being asked for their data records. What you just reported there about Pakistan coming back and saying it's showing up nowhere on our records. Other countries are being asked to do the same and they are being asked to surrender that data so that it can be submitted to an international board that's going to be looking at this aircraft.

Remember, we do have an idea of where it might have been right at that time. So people want to see, was anybody able to track the aircraft when it disappeared from radar here after 2:00 in the morning. Now putting it into perspective, is the Defense minister, the Transportation minister, this is what he had to say last night about the changes that are underway.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HISHAMMUDDIN HUSSEIN, MALAYSIAN ACTING MINISTER OF TRANSPORT: The operation has entered a new phase. The search was already a highly complex multinational effort and it has now become even more difficult. The search area has been significantly expanded and the nature of the search has changed. From focusing merely on shadow seas, we are now looking at large tracks of land, coasting 11 countries as well as deep and remote oceans.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CLANCY: Meantime right here on the ground as you noted, Jim, they have searched the homes of the pilot, the co-pilot. They are going down through the passenger list. Rechecking everyone. They're checking ground staff, maintenance staff, people, the food service, anybody that touched that plane is going to be examined a new. Some of them have already been cleared by international agencies. That there is no terrorist on the list.

That is one of the reasons why the investigation is focused back on the pilots. Because according to U.S. investigators there where you are, it appears that whoever was at the controls was familiar with the Boeing 777. This puts a lot of the pressure on the pilots.

They've got the flight simulator of the main captain of the aircraft. They're looking at that to see what information was on it. Last night they said nothing unusual, just what you would expect a flight simulator that allowed you to take off and land in various weather conditions. But that's going to be scrutinized more closely.

And you know, Jim, the problem that we have is that there is not one shred of evidence of a motive. We don't have any manifesto, we don't have any demands, we don't have a motive. And that's making this investigation just as mysterious as the disappearance of Flight 370.

Back to you.

SCIUTTO: No question, Jim. And as you described, the search area expanding and also the list of people who need to be explored expanding. Not just the people on the plane but the people who touched the plane.

Jim Clancy in Kuala Lumpur.

Joining me now to discuss these developments, we have Tom Fuentes, CNN law enforcement analyst, also former FBI assistant director, Bob Baer, CNN national security analyst, a former CIA operative, and Seth Young, director of the Ohio State University Center for Aviation Studies.

Tom, if I could start with you. 239 people on the flight. Several others, dozens, perhaps others who touched the flight, baggage handlers, engineers, et cetera, how do you coordinate the search now, the investigation of all those different pairs of hands among the different countries that might have intelligence on them?

TOM FUENTES, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Well, the police, the Royal Malaysian Police Force would be in a position to be in contact with all of the countries that had citizens from their country listed as being on that aircraft. As well as all of their own citizens and be able to do the data checks there.

Also supplying that all those lists of personnel from day one to the FBI who are working in that command post from the very night the plane disappeared so that they could go to the U.S. embassy and securely communicate back to the U.S. and check all of the U.S. data bases, National Crime Information Center, and all the no fly lists and terror watch list and of course, all the Interpol data bases would be queried.

So, you know, that would be ongoing with all the different countries that may involve people that had a hand in either being on the aircraft or servicing the aircraft. SCIUTTO: Bob Baer, if I can ask you. One of the key developments over the weekend was just this revelation in the last 24 hours that the first communication system was switched off several minutes before the last communication from the cockpit. And this is one of those indications that the pilots were involved. It was intentional, it was deliberate as Malaysian authorities have said. We don't know the circumstances.

You're a CIA -- former CIA analyst. You have to piece things like this together. What do we know about the possible motives. And we looked at the past. Why people have tried to hijack planes or pick them up or crash those planes. What are the possible motivations as investigators look for what one could be?

ROBERT BAER, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Well, you know, right away, they're going to suspect it has something to do with the Islamic fundamentalism. There is a large al Qaeda presence in Malaysia which has never gone away even after 9/11. There has been a lot of rumors out there that al Qaeda was trying to or did recruit a Malaysian air pilot. Those weren't substantiated.

You know, the CIA will be doing its own database searches. So will the National Security Agency. But more than that, you can count on it that everybody in the CIA stationed in the world will be out there going to its sources. It doesn't matter where they are and asking them what they know. This is a horribly frustrating time consuming effort. But you can count it, there is not any station that's not working on this right now.

SCIUTTO: It is a huge, it's an international effort. 25 different nations contributing.

Seth Young, Ohio State University Center for Aviation Studies, I just want to bring a question to you that came in via Twitter. And I just think it's one that I might have as well. It came from Mike Graham. And the question is, "Would they have had air marshals on board the plane? Is the U.S. the only country that would use air marshals or do other countries around the world use that as well in the years following 9/11?"

SETH YOUNG, DIRECTOR, OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY, CENTER FOR AVIATION STUDIES: Well, first of all I'd like to say that it's actually an amazing experience to see that the world is gripped on this. And the fact that we have people using Twitter to ask questions and other folks looking at satellite imagery to help aid in this huge mystery is just an amazing thing in this day and age.

As far as air marshals go, air marshals and other security folks are sporadically used on flights internationally throughout the world. We don't know right now whether or not there were air marshals on this flight and I think that goes to the coordination of this entire effort looking at the passenger manifest, whether or not there may have been air marshals on this flight or on any other flights that may have had some incidents.

SCIUTTO: Tom, as this develops over time, and you and I have the benefit of -- have repeated conversations, you know, as the evidence has come out. What direction is the latest evidence leading you towards commandeering the plane, the idea was a deliberate act, the switching off the communications before the last communications from the cockpit. What direction is that leaving you?

FUENTES: I think the same direction they've been in for a while here, is to try to get to the bottom of who was at the controls of that aircraft. And that's a difficult thing to determine. You know, the investigators are relying on the technicians. And you know the experts that say that they have the flight on radar. They have the flight pinging, satellites, and that type of thing. So there is a heavy reliance on the technical information which is what the Malaysian authorities are basing their opinion that a human being flew that plane off course and took westerly direction away from going to Beijing, China.

So, you know, that -- the continued search then is who was at the -- who had their hands on the yoke of that aircraft to make it go in that direction. Could it be either or both of those pilots who didn't expect to fly it together that particular night? Which is another -- you know, if they were training together to do this as a joint effort, they didn't even know they'd be together. You know, so I think that's still the direction, still -- the authorities are still at the captain's flight simulator to see, is there anything in that that would indicate he was practicing to land at some remote air field somewhere else.

You know, just all of that data. Plus again the usual work on the pilots and everybody else. Phone records, financial records, Internet -- cell phone contacts, conversations, friends, neighbors, colleagues, checking on his financial security. The mental security, depression, marital problems, other kind of problems, all of these would be considerations for anybody that may have been at the controls of that aircraft.

SCIUTTO: Yes. A massive effort in profiling now. Not just to the pilots but other people on board that plane or who touched that plane.

Thanks very much, Tom, Bob, Seth. Stay with us because we're going to continue our discussion after a quick break.

Also ahead, we're going to meet one father who hasn't slept or let go of his phone for the past 10 days. He's waiting to find out what happened to his only son. A passenger on Flight 370.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SCIUTTO: The desperate search for Malaysia Flight 370 is getting more difficult with every passing day. The airliner vanished 10 days ago.

I want to bring back Tom Fuentes, CNN law enforcement analyst, former assistant director of the FBI, Bob Baer, CNN national security analyst, former CIA operative, and Seth Young, director of the Ohio State University Center for Aviation Studies.

Bob, I wonder if I could talk to you first because we've talked a bit before the break and earlier in the program about how this is an international effort now. The Malaysians finally, you might say, reaching out for help, asking 25 nations to examine satellite data. They got 11 nations searching on the water and in the air for signs of this plane.

But you have two tensions here kind of pulling that coalition apart, right? You've got frustration with the Malaysian government, the Chinese sniping, the Indians withdrawing their search, and then you have sensitivities in this area of countries not wanting to reveal their capabilities. How good their radars are. How extensive their satellite coverage is.

How much do those tensions pull apart that coalition and hamper the investigation, do you think?

BAER: You know, you hit the nail on the head. Some -- a country like India is not going to want to give up its radar screens, show the resolution, the real-time capture of images. They just won't -- don't want to do it. What they're going to say is we're going to take a look and we'll tell what you we find. And if we do, we'll give you something.

That's not good enough. Look at the Malaysians. That plane flew right over a radar site near Penang and it took them how many days to come around and tell everybody? No wonder the Chinese are furious. The Chinese for so many days were searching the ocean. South of it. And it wasn't there. So we've lost a lot of time. There is a lot of mistrust. And for all we know this plane has landed somewhere. I doubt it but, you know, people have to get on board with this and start giving up stuff.

SCIUTTO: Seth, I want to ask you because Bob brought up that point, the landing. We have some new information today that that last ping, the final satellite ping from the aircraft could Malaysian authorities say have come from the ground. And we know that that northern arc, the potential path leads it entirely over ground, heading up to north Asia.

You've studied up on this. Are there landing sites there, runways, et cetera, flat areas of the earth where the plane could set down?

YOUNG: Yes, so as an airport planner we typically look for runway lengths between 6,000 and 8,000 feet for a safe landing for a 777, although in an emergency that plane could land safely on 4,000 feet of pavement.

There are numerous sites in that large region where that airplane could make a landing within 4,000 feet. The issue, though, is those air fields, whether they're civil or military, tend to be surrounded by pretty good radar coverage. So it leads to the possibility that an airplane made a safe landing in any of those air strips is a little bit less.

SCIUTTO: Right. It would need cooperation or it would need cooperation on the ground. But that makes it more complicated, I imagine. Tom, as you look at this, that possibility, and there are a number of possibilities they're looking at, and I know that U.S. officials have said it's more likely that the plane is on the bottom of the Indian Ocean. But you've investigated a lot of things like that. Is that a farfetched possibility? The idea that someone commandeered this plane and took it somewhere successfully and landed it?

FUENTES: I think the idea that, Jim, is that I would say yes, it's farfetched. I would -- I would not call it impossible. So it's something that theoretically could be done. But to do that means that there are more people involved in a wider conspiracy. And that's going to usually lead to somebody somewhere talking, bragging, more -- chatter if it's a terrorist group. They're going to want to tell their peers, their colleagues how great they are and how they pulled this off.

And then of course when the plane is on the ground, now what do you do with it? You're going to have to cover it, hide it. Not to mention you have 230 some other people on that aircraft. What do you do with them? If you take them hostage, you've got to feed them and house them and try to keep them quiet, and hope they don't have a hidden cell phone or some other device.

So there are just so many more complications for the people if that was part of the plan, to take the aircraft, land it and do something beyond with the aircraft itself.

SCIUTTO: Right. The more people involved, the more difficult and more chances to leak, I suppose, the plan.

Thanks very much, Tom Fuentes, Bob Baer, and Seth Young.

More than two dozen countries are involved in the search for Flight 370. Up next, we'll take a closer look at the massive area they need to cover. Please stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SCIUTTO: It's been 10 days since Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 vanished. Right now crews from some 25 countries are searching for the missing plane in the skies, the water, even from space. Where that jet actually is remains a mystery.

We're going to bring meteorologist Chad Myers back in.

Chad, you've done a great job for our viewers of explaining exactly not only how large the search area is but how investigators came to define that search area with what little information they had. Really, that one satellite blip. I wonder if you could do that again. Explain to people. You make it very clear.

CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: You know, if we had three satellite blips, this would be less than the size of a city block, Jim. But we have one, which is a ring. Think about like Olympic rings. You have a circle and then another circle, and when all three of those or five of those, or three come together, that one little cross is where the plane would be. Just like your car. Three satellites at least, sometimes six or seven. It will even know your elevation if you have four.

Where they cross, that's where your car is. It even knows how fast you're going. 70 miles an hour. Whatever the speed limit is. We have one ping. We have one handshake from one satellite that happened to ping that at 8:11 a.m. That ping is along the line right here from about the South Asia, all the way back here into about Kazakhstan.

Now why isn't a circle? It's not a circle because it couldn't get there. It wouldn't -- well, probably get there because it didn't have enough fuel but it couldn't get there because it wasn't fast enough to get to this side of the circle from the time it left here. It couldn't fly all the way over here and be part of this.

So that's why they've eliminated this part of the circle. They've also eliminated this part of the circle because there's pretty good radar data there. And they think that, you know, if that plane was there in that radar area, we would have seen it. So that's our arc here. This is our arc here. Part of one ring of one satellite of one GPS ping.

It is only 8:11 p.m. The plane may still have been moving. So if the plane let's just assume moved another 200 miles this way or this way, this is not a path. The plane did not fly that path. It just happened to be right there or there or there or there at 8:11. So let's say it kept going. This is about 1500 miles from here to here. 400 miles wide. Same story here. That's 2.3 to about a million miles, square miles.

You've got up to Alaska, California, and a couple of Texases in there whether it's on water or on land to look for this lost plane.

SCIUTTO: Well explained. And one reminder to our viewers, as you get into all those countries there that they're looking in, there's a lot of competition between there for influence there, between their militaries and a lot of sensitivity about how much information they share. It's another hurdle. The size and the challenge of all those countries involved.

MYERS: Look at all the names here. Now this is not the flight path. This is the -- this is the ping line. But all the way through western China. In the Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, and this is about right here where the plane couldn't go any further. It wouldn't have any more fuel and it also couldn't get there because it would have just been going too slow to get there.

It wouldn't -- it wouldn't go 700 miles per hour. It only goes about 560 to 580 miles per hour. So back here would have been impossible for the 8:11 ping. But we don't know whether that was the last ping or not. So far that's all they're telling us. We assume that there are other pings too but we the public don't know that yet.

SCIUTTO: Well, thanks very much, Chad, piecing it together on the map. And it's a very big map.

MYERS: It is.

SCIUTTO: As they hunt for this plane.

The agonizing wait for information about Flight 370 is almost too much for some families, understandably.

Atika Shubert talked to one father waiting for news about his only son. Sadly he remember the image of his grandchildren begging their dad not to take this flight.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ATIKA SHUBERT, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): 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, 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)

SCIUTTO: Investigators have now searched the homes of the pilots on Malaysian Flight 370. Up next, a closer look at what we could learn from clues the two men left behind.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) SCIUTTO: Investigators are now taking their search for the missing plane in so many different directions. One main focus is the two men inside the cockpit when the plane took off from Malaysia 10 days ago. The captain was a flight simulator in his home and the co-pilot. Police have searched both men's homes and they've confiscated that simulator. No word yet on whether they found anything valuable in that investigation.

The reason for the scrutiny on the pilots is this. Malaysian officials believe the plane could have been on the ground when it made the last satellite contact. That means somebody would have had to land the plane. Somebody with a pilot's training and experience.

Also, the search areas being shaped by countries that are ruling out any chance the 777 entered their air space. India, for example, said they definitely would have seen it. Crews from 25 countries are searching for that plane from the sky, from the water and from space using their satellites.

I want to bring in now Evan Perez. He's in Washington where several U.S. agencies are now helping in that search.

Evan, you know, the FBI, the CIA, the NTSB, so many agencies involved with a lot of experience in investigating crashes. What is the dominant U.S. position or theory as to what happened to that plane now?

EVAN PEREZ, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Jim, I think the dominant theory is that whatever happened to Flight 370 happened in the cockpit. Whatever the cause of whatever happened in the disappearance of this plane began in the -- in the cockpit. Simply because all the other theories just don't make sense at this point.

The plane was on its route through the -- over the Gulf of Thailand and then turns west and disappears. So that's where the authorities here are focused on simply because nothing else makes sense at this point.

SCIUTTO: Now looking -- there are a number of inquiries that they're looking at right now. But one thing we learn today, Malaysian officials saying that a few countries have yet to clear all of their passengers, the passengers of those nationalities on -- who were manifested on the plane.

Why would that take so long and what kind of information could we still hope to learn from those passengers that haven't been checked out yet? Because we know, for instance, that the U.S. has already run by its own terror watch list, the 239 people on the plane.

PEREZ: That's right. And you know, one of the things that the Malaysians are for is to find anything that might indicate someone had any kind of nexus to terrorists, any kind of affiliation to a group perhaps that could cause some kind of suspicion. This is being provided by the various countries -- whose citizens were on this flight. China is the biggest number. About 150 passengers were Chinese citizens. So the U.S. is also very much interested in any kind of information that the Malaysians can gather on this. Because as you know, they want to make sure that, you know, if there is any sign that any of these people have traveled to the United States, for instance, or traveled anywhere elsewhere, where they might have some information, that could perhaps shed some light into what happened here.

SCIUTTO: Now if some countries haven't cleared their passengers yet, I mean, you got a lot of countries involved. So many nationalities.

PEREZ: Right.

SCIUTTO: Is that likely to be because, you know, they're looking deeper on something, or is it just because other countries might not be able to work it through the system as quickly as, for instance, the U.S. can?

PEREZ: You know, I mean, after 9/11 the United States set up this very robust system whereby, you know, they have this watch list, as you know, they have several of these watch lists and they've been running the checks on all the -- every name that is associated with this flight. Other countries have not -- have not had any kind of any cause to build lists like this. So that might be one of the explanations for why this might be taking so long.

As you know, having been in the region, there is a little bit of distrust between Malaysia and the Chinese so perhaps that might be the cause for some of the delay as well.

SCIUTTO: Yes. A lot of distrust between a lot of the countries involved.

PEREZ: That's right.

SCIUTTO: About their capabilities. Thanks very much to Evan Perez in Washington.

As we just mentioned, airline security changed drastically after 9/11. Earlier I talked with California Congressman Adam Schiff and I asked him if this missing plane mystery could affect airport security here in the U.S.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

REP. ADAM SCHIFF (D), CALIFORNIA: It's possible that it could lead us to even greater scrutiny of the crew of our aircraft if it turns out that that was the problem here. But most of the vulnerabilities that we have seen thus far are thing that we have already taken action to correct in terms of making sure the people are not traveling with stolen documents. So I don't think we're likely to see a lot of changes here at home.

The hope may be that we see improved airline security around the world as well as perhaps a better way of tracking aircraft. We'll be looking at some of those systems like the black box and trying to determine whether we need better safeguards so that pilots can't turn off the communications so that perhaps the black boxes can transmit signals rather than having to find them under an ocean. So those kind of changes are possible but I don't think you're likely to see then manifest in longer lines at the airport.

SCIUTTO: And I'm glad you brought up that point because I've been getting a lot of questions over Twitter. Why is it that pilots are allowed to switch off those communications systems? And it's interesting you mentioned that as a possible change. Maybe that you're saying might change down the line.

SCHIFF: There could be I think technological changes that airlines incorporate with the feedback of the NTSB that will make it easier to find aircraft. That would also make it easier to get information about what happened in the last minutes in a cockpit without having to try to retrieve a black box from 15,000 feet under the water. So those kind of changes could happen over time.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SCIUTTO: There is already one country that has changed in response to the Malaysian Airlines flight. We're learning now a report out of Israel that in light of the possibility that this plane was hijacked, it is now asking planes entering Israeli air space to identify themselves earlier so one response there in Israel already to what we're learning about the Malaysian Airlines flight in Asia.

Now Representative Schiff says that if all airlines around the world did check their passenger manifest with the stolen passport list, a major security weakness, at least one could be fixed as well.

There is much more coverage ahead of the Malaysian Airlines Flight 370, but next we turn to the other big story of the day. The landslide results in that referendum in Crimea.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SCIUTTO: We're going to have much more on the missing plane ahead but first we have this breaking news out of Ukraine.

Today's referendum in Crimea to join Russia is dead on arrival as far as the U.S. is concerned. President Obama telling Russian President Putin today that the U.S. and international community would never accept the vote as legitimate.

Crimeans voted overwhelmingly to quit Ukraine and become part of the Russian Federation. The Russian national anthem sung in Simferopol's Lenin Square to celebrate.

Senior international correspondent for CNN Nick Paton Walsh explained what's ahead.

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Jim, what happens next for Crimeans here, well, certainly we've had long advertised a tight timetable ahead. Sergey Aksyonov, the de facto prime minister here, said he is going to send a delegation to Moscow to address the practicalities. We've heard suggestions they'll adopt the same time zone as Moscow, that's one hour difference from the rest of Ukraine, adopt the Russian ruble. Of course there's infrastructure questions ahead. The Ukrainian mainland may choose to isolate them. They'll have to then work out their own water, electricity, Internet, phone supplies from the Russian mainland.

But also to the question, what happens to those -- Crimeans here who did not support the idea of joining up with Russia? That's the pro- Ukrainian groups who frankly we've not heard from at all during this electoral campaign here. Very much a one-sided contest.

And the other question, too, the 10 percent ethnic Tatar minority here, Muslims, they've been deeply concerned. Boycotted the vote, many of them. Many worried quite what will happen when pro-Russian forces take a stronger grip of the peninsula here but very troubling days ahead. There are still Ukrainian traps on Ukrainian military bases here holding out despite pro-Russian militia swirling around them.

Many hope that they will perhaps either melt away bloodlessly in the days ahead but also, I think, this really tight timetable that Crimea has put forward, they'll need to see a rapid endorsement from Vladimir Putin in Moscow for Crimea joining the Russian Federation for that to be able to put into effect -- Jim.

SCIUTTO: Nick Paton Walsh in Crimea, thanks very much.

With us now to help explain what's next in the Ukrainian crisis is Russian expert, Cliff Kupchan. He's a former State Department official in the Clinton administration. Now serves as head of Eurasia Group's Russia and Eurasian Teams.

Cliff, I want to ask you, the U.S., Washington, President Obama, they have put up a number of warnings here over the last several weeks. The promise of sanctions, the promise to declare as the president did today in his phone call with President Putin that the U.S. and the West would not recognize the results of this referendum.

Russia has sped and broken rights through them. Is it in effect a fait acompli that Crimea is going to become part of Russia?

CLIFF KUPCHAN, DIRECTOR, EURASIA GROUP'S RUSSIA AND EURASIAN TEAMS: I think it is. And we and our European allies are in a very difficult situation right now. We've got to push back. We have to sanction Russia. We're left with no choice. And as we do so, it's going to cost a lot of pain on a lot of people. U.S. business, Russian business, and it could force Russia into a very geopolitical trajectory. So we're in a very dangerous perch right now.

SCIUTTO: This is really -- it's something, you know, that 20 years ago with all the hope after the fall of the wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, new cooperation in a number of international crises, right? Where Russia and the U.S. worked together in Russia and Europe. And certainly, you know, arguably more importantly, those close neighborly relations in Europe between Russia and Eastern Europe. You know, how sharp away from that direction is this turn? I mean, people have talked a lot about the Cold War returning.

You know, you're not going to have the U.S. and Russia battling it out in, you know, Africa and Latin America, et cetera, but in Europe it looks remarkably like the Cold War.

KUPCHAN: It does look like a Cold War. But I think it's going to take a different shape. I mean, Russia is not a global power like the U.S. is. So we're not facing off against an equal anymore. But Russia could become, if this continues on to a trajectory that it seems to be on, a country that is outside the international trading system. A country that is certainly not a partner of the United States.

A country that could veer much more towards China and even Iran. Now Iran is hard enough a crisis right now. So I mean, the Iranian nuclear issue. Think what it would be if we're facing off against a nuclear armed Russia. One of the largest producers of energy in the world. We're facing a real, real potentially dangerous realignment in international political system.

SCIUTTO: You mentioned an issue there, because we noted today that Ukraine has taken some steps to secure its natural gas facilities because Russia has used that pressure tactic before. I mean, they've even shut off the gas to Ukraine a couple of years ago, a few years ago. That is a real stranglehold on Europe if you're talking about a tit-for-tat with economic sanctions.

KUPCHAN: Well, what we saw in 2009 was the Russians in effect turning off the gas to Ukraine, Ukraine turned around and siphoned the gas so there was a shortfall to Europe. Now given the debt situation with Ukraine's gas company, we could well see that again. So that's just yet another risk that we're facing here which is that the Europeans in a matter of months run out of gas and our E.U. allies face a cold winter next winter. So again this is a multidimensional problem we're facing and a big one.

SCIUTTO: I have a final question for you.

KUPCHAN: Sure.

SCIUTTO: If Putin succeeds in Crimea, how likely is it that he crosses that border into Ukraine proper -- eastern Ukraine?

KUPCHAN: Well, I don't think it's on balance likely. I've met the guy a number of times. This is personal for him. This Ukraine issue is personal for him, it's visceral. He feels like Ukraine belongs to Russia. But at the end of the day scenes of bloodshed on Russian TVs, Slav on Slav killing each other. The -- if Putin realizes it, and I think he will, the amount of damage that we can call the Russian economy I think at the end of the day will stop this guy from going -- from taking that very, very, very, very fateful step.

SCIUTTO: Yes, Slav on Slav. I mean, we have a precursor, right? You think the Yugoslavia war in the '90s. Similar tensions, right, in Europe.

Thanks very much to Cliff Kupchan of the Eurasia Group. A very sobering read of the seriousness of the events today in Crimea.

Coming up, we return to the mystery of Malaysia Air Flight 370 with a look at how this story has transfixed the world and taken over social media in the process.

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SCIUTTO: The missing airliner is dominating Facebook and Twitter. Our Nick Valencia has been looking at how the mystery is trending worldwide online.

Nick, what did you find?

NICK VALENCIA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hey, Jim. Yes, good evening. This is a very popular story online. It's transfixed much of our audience and our readership here at CNN.com. It's been the number one story since the news broke. You see on the Web site it's still the number one story here.

This is numbers comparable to one of the most popular stories in the history of CNN.com. That's right up there with the inauguration of U.S. President Barack Obama and the death of Michael Jackson. On social media we're also seeing a strong interest in this story. Let's talk about Twitter.

Though the story is not trending anymore on the U.S. side of the -- of Twitter, it is in Malaysia and India. Remains among the top stories. We've seen it go from the number two trending story, Jim, to sort of more down towards the top five stories. And people are using this hash tag here for those at home that want to follow along. It's #mh370.

That's really a -- you know, builds a community of people that are fueled by speculation. A lot of people have their own theory.

And it's not just people that are on social media. It's also on your browsers. Here, Malaysian Airlines, one of the top stories on Google News when you go to that Web site. Lots of interest in this story. Not just from those that are directly impacted on this that have perhaps a family member or loved one or friends on that plane but also just people that really want to know, what happened to this plane and the mystery of where this plane could be, Jim. Lots of people very, very interested in this story online -- Jim.

SCIUTTO: No question. We've gotten hundreds of questions via Twitter and thanks very much to our viewers for questions. We were able to answer a few of them. But more to come no question.

Nick Valencia, in Atlanta.

Now the disappearance of Malaysia's Flight 370 isn't the first time a plane has vanished, apparently without a trace.

Our Randi Kaye looks at other flight mysteries and how they turned out.

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RANDI KAYE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Air France Flight 447 was on its way from Brazil to France when it plunged into the Atlantic Ocean, killing all 228 people on board. That was June 2009. And like Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, the plane vanished without a distress call.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We really need to know what happened on that night in this middle of the ocean.

KAYE: Finding out what happened would take time. Five days of intense searching before floating wreckage was found. And another two years before the aircraft's voice recorder and flight data recorder were pulled from the ocean floor.

JEAN-PAUL TROADEC, BEA DIRECTOR (Through Translator): We can only be happy at this stage that two years after this accident we have hope.

KAYE: But why did it crash? It took a year for France's Bureau of Investigation to release its definitive report. The conclusion, pilot error. In an attempt to recover from ice crystals affecting their speed sensors, the pilots pointed the nose upward rather than downward.

Thirteen years before that crash there was TWA Flight 800. Conspiracy theorists believe we still don't know the truth. Was it a bomb, a missile, or mechanical failure that brought the jet down just 12 minutes after takeoff from New York's JFK Airport?

It was July 17th, 1996. All 230 people on board the Paris-bound 747 were killed. Four thousand interviews later claims that a U.S. Navy ship had accidentally shot down the airplane. Finally, four years into it, terrorism and a friendly fire missile strike were ruled out.

JAMES E. HALL, FORMER NTSB CHAIRMAN: We've determined that the probable cause of the TWA Flight 800 accident was an explosion of the center wing tank resulting from ignition of the flammable fuel air mixture in the tank.

KAYE: Another great mystery, U.S. Air Flight 427. It left Chicago's O'Hare International Airport on September 8th, 1994, bound for Pittsburgh. Just six miles out while passing through the jet stream of another plane, Flight 427 began to shake. It rolled upside down, spiraling 300 miles per hour toward the ground, 132 passengers and crew were killed.

BILL WALDOCK, EMBRY-RIDDLE AERONAUTICAL UNIVERSITY: It involved two full public hearings and several million dollars' worth of testing trying to duplicate the failure. The findings were never 100 percent conclusive because they couldn't duplicate the failure.

KAYE: More than a decade earlier, Korean Airlines Flight 007 from New York City to Seoul was blown out of the sky, September 1st, 1983. It turns out it was shot down, killing all 269 people on board. The race was on for answers inside the black box beneath the sea.

GEORGE P. SHULTZ, FORMER SECRETARY OF STATE: The world is waiting for the Soviet Union to tell truth.

KAYE: The truth ended up being that the pilots had set their auto pilot but it failed, taking them directly into Soviet air space.

Looking at the erratic flight path of Malaysia Flight 370 that scenario seems unlikely, but we may never know for sure.

Randi Kaye, CNN.

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SCIUTTO: I want to give you the headlines at this hour on the mystery of Flight 370. Investigators in Malaysia are continuing their hard look at the two men who were inside the cockpit when that still missing 777 took off 10 days ago. The captain who has a flight simulator in his home and his co-pilot. Police have now search both men's homes. No word yet on what was found.

Also today, Malaysian officials believe the plane could have been on the ground when it last made satellite contact. That means someone would have landed the plane. Somebody possibly with the pilot's training and experience.

I'm Jim Sciutto in New York. Our continuing coverage of the mystery of Flight 370 and the crisis in Ukraine continues one hour from now and always on CNN.com. But first the original series, "Death Row Stories," that begins right now.

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