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Authorities Examine Pilot's Flight Simulator; New Details Emerging about Missing Plane; Delta Plane Loses Part of Wing in Flight; Father Fears Worst for His Son

Aired March 16, 2014 - 23:00   ET

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

DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR: Good evening, everyone. I'm Don Lemon. Getting very close to the top of the hour. This is CNN's special live coverage of the disappearance of Malaysian airlines flight 370. It is the Boeing 777. It has missing for ten days now with 239 people on board. Here is what's new tonight in the search for this plane. And at the same time, the search for clues, any clues.

So far, there are not many. And they don't point to any solid conclusion. Where the flight originated, Malaysia. Officials are finding out all they can about the pilot and the co-pilot. They were in control at takeoff. But then something bad happened, intentionally or not. Police are also interviewing airline mechanics, even cleaning crews, anybody who touched that airplane before it left the ground.

That's back in Malaysia. On land, the area where the aircraft could be is enormous. Twenty-five countries have sent search planes and ships, but considering all plausible theories, that 777 could literally be anywhere on earth by now, anywhere.

The U.S. Navy is out there searching the Indian Ocean. Stay there. I'm going to talk to an officer on board the USS Blue Ridge, just a few minutes here on CNN.

But first, to CNN's Jim Clancy in Kuala Lumpur right now. Jim, tell us about this extra-close look that those two pilots are getting. What specifically are they looking for, and what have they found so far, Jim?

JIM CLANCY, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Because it is believed that it is only the pilots that could have disabled the communications system and then switched off the transponder, they are the primary focus of investigators. It is true every single person on that airplane who touched it is going to be re-examined, but the focus really is on the pilots. The police searched the homes. Some dispute now, had they gone into the homes a little bit earlier in the week? That really irrelevant right now.

We do know that they took the flight simulator that had been built by the pilot, Zaharie Ahmed Shah, age 52. They took that out of his home. They are examining that more closely. But they say so far, what they saw was entirely normal for a flight simulator program, the ability to take off and land in various weather conditions that someone might set. Their friends are being interviewed. People are talking about it. There's been a lot of speculation. But thus far, no solid evidence of a real motive from either of these men. They become just two more people missing from Flight 370, until and unless some really hard evidence surfaces -- Don.

LEMON: So Jim, given what you just said about that simulator, then why the intrigue? Why are investigators -- why do they fear to be -- I mean, appear to be fascinated with the simulator now?

CLANCY: I talked to one of the people who was close to the investigation, who said they are operating on one theory. And they have many. That perhaps the pilot or the co-pilot had someone else who was on the plane to try to help them. There's no indication that these two men in any way coordinated, you know, their assignment together on the flight deck that night. It was entirely at random. And so people are thinking about, is it a possibility that somebody else was on the plane to help them?

But as they do that, then they would wonder immediately, well, how would they learn about a 777? That's where the simulator comes in. Certainly, the pilot and probably the co-pilot didn't need a simulator. But that's just a theory at this point that investigators here in Malaysia are following up on -- Don.

LEMON: All right. Jim Clancy, stand by. And I may bring you in as part of this panel. I want to talk about the search and what clues international investigators have to go on at this point.

We're joined now by Mary Schiavo, CNN aviation analyst and former inspector general of the U.S. Department of Transportation. Rob McCallum is a 30-year veteran of ocean exploration, whose specialty is deep-water searches. And Seth Kaplan is managing partner of "Airline Weekly," an industry trade publication.

So Mary, I'm going to start with you. With the limited information that investigators have, what should they be looking for now? Where should they be looking?

MARY SCHIAVO, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Well, I think they need to look back at the airline. They need to look at the pilots. They need to look for motives. They need to look for clues as to where they might have been headed, what they might have been doing. And if they even have the right suspects in mind.

Then, those clues would probably help them to narrow in -- hopefully, will help them narrow in the search areas. Because, without motive and some kind of indication of what they were really planning, it's difficult as everybody is realizing, to search the earth. I think that will help.

LEMON: The Malaysians appear, at this point -- they're getting a lot of criticism -- to be less than forthcoming about this investigation. Have they hampered their own investigation?

SCHIAVO: Well, it's difficult to say what they have done up until now. I have to say I was personally surprised that they waited to look at the pilot's home and search the pilot's home and get his flight simulator. And we haven't heard much about the co-pilot either but, you know, in the United States, for example, after 9/11 that started immediately, every passenger, everybody that touched that plane, the security, they were all considered suspects until they were basically proven innocent.

LEMON: OK. I've been wanting to ask you this since, you know, this all started. And the longer this goes on, I am just flabbergasted that nothing -- where is this plane? It's unbelievable that it's been almost 11 days and nothing.

SCHIAVO: And nothing and no tips, no clues, no sightings, no callings. You know, after 9/11, things were just flooding in. You just couldn't even keep track of so many clues and people having seen something or heard something or heard somebody say something or noticed something in the airport. Nothing. The silence is very -- it's odd. It could be frightening or it could be indicative of something.

LEMON: Does the silence speak anything? People say usually silence speaks volumes. Does that speak towards anything? Does it speak towards the possibility of terrorism? Does it speak toward the possibility that the plane is just in some place and we haven't found it? Anything?

SCHIAVO: Well, to me, I mean, it's one extreme or the other. I mean, I think the one extreme is that there wasn't a plot. Something happened.

LEMON: Right.

SCHIAVO: Or there was -- somebody had a plot in mind, but it wasn't fully hatched, and they just put the plane in the water.

The other end is more terrifying, in that it was a plan so well- established and so well-executed that it's in total silence, total blackout of information. They certainly didn't do that on 9/11. So it would be frightening.

LEMON: I don't know if Rob is flabbergasted by this, Rob McCallum, because you -- you know, you do deep-water searches. You're an expert at ocean exploration. If that jet is in the Indian Ocean, searches are up against -- I mean, that's a big thing to be up against. And maybe we shouldn't be so surprised.

ROB MCCALLUM, DEEP WATER RESCUE EXPERT: Yes. I mean, for us, as -- you know, searching the sea floor, it's really important to narrow that search area down as much as possible. When you're searching from an aircraft, you're searching at something like 200 knots. If you're searching by ship, you're searching at a tenth of that speed. And if you're searching with sonar, you're searching at a tenth of that speed. So the size of the search area is critical to our success.

LEMON: Even if the jet has been in the ocean now for ten days, how does that impact this investigation, Rob? MCCALLUM: You know, from our point of view, not a great deal. We are not bound by time. When the aircraft, you know, crashed. We have found aircraft and ships, submarines, military hardware that's been in the ocean for, you know, decades. Obviously, there's a drive to find out what happened to the aircraft. But from our perspective, it's better to be accurate rather than fast.

LEMON: Seth, I want you to give me some scenarios. We've been talking about different scenarios, different theories about what happened. Is there a chance that a jet that large could have landed somewhere on land without any country detecting it, or is that just implausible?

SETH KAPLAN, MANAGING PARTNER, "AIRLINE WEEKLY": It's highly unlikely. This idea that a plane like this, certainly, a plane, in addition, that was in some sort of trouble could have landed, let's say, unscathed on some remote island, going undetected, very unlikely.

Could it have crashed somewhere on land? Well, you know, we draw a circle using the radius of where it could have traveled during all those hours that we don't know where it was. And certainly, plausible that it could have been somewhere on land but more likely in water, only because there is more water.

Again, if you just sort of look at where the plane could have gone down and because much harder to have something like that go undetected.

But to appreciate the scale of the mystery here and the -- and what the investigators are facing trying to find it, consider that Air France 447 went down off Brazil. We knew more or less where it went down. There was debris floating not long after. The plane had emitted distress signals. You didn't have anybody trying to obfuscate where the plane was. And yet, it took nearly two years to find a lot of that wreckage on the ocean floor.

LEMON: Yes. Seth, but I'm going to pose this question to you. Had I told you -- if I had you on this show two weeks ago or three weeks ago, and I said, "You know what? I'm going to give you this scenario, Seth. There's a plane that goes missing in the middle of the night, and we won't know what happened to it for 10, 11 days," you would say, "No way, Don. That would never happen."

KAPLAN: Not that we would know this little. Again, if you -- I mentioned the Air France crash. So many others where certainly, in that case, it did take really two years before we had some good idea, once the voicing data recorders was recovered and then another year, more or less, to narrow it down.

So there have been crashes that weren't obvious within a short period of time. But yes, that we would have this little indication, there's not a whole lot of precedent for it.

LEMON: Yes. I'm willing to guess that you would say -- I'm willing to bet that you would say that we would not be in this position where we knew absolutely nothing, virtually almost nothing about what happened.

KAPLAN: Take that bet (ph).

LEMON: I want to go back to CNN's Jim Clancy in Kuala Lumpur. And I think it's apropos that that Jim and Mary Schiavo should have a conversation right now, since you know, we've been talking about the investigation here. Jim, go ahead.

CLANCY: Mary Schiavo, I've been watching and listening to you. And I've got a lot of respect for your experience. One of the people close to the investigation is telling us they believe the airplane may have been taken up to a high altitude, perhaps 40,000 feet or more, in an effort to render the passengers unconscious. But is that even possible? Wouldn't the overhead oxygen have automatically deployed?

SCHIAVO: Well, yes, they would have. But just taking the plane up to 45,000 feet wouldn't have automatically depressurized the plane anyway. I actually worked a case a number of years back where they took the plane up to 42,000 feet.

In fact, the biggest risk was that your engines couldn't handle it, that the engines -- you have to climb at a slow rate of speed, particularly at that altitude. And what happened in that case was there was a dual engine flame-out. And so the engines couldn't handle the 42,000-foot height and the rate of climb.

And so at 45,000 feet, unless the plane depressurized, the oxygen masks would fall. And they have the little canisters, everyone knows what they look like after the ValuJet crashed. They were very much an issue. But there are little canisters that generate the oxygen, and so that would not have -- have killed the passengers. And they would have had oxygen for the period of time that the canisters will supply it.

CLANCY: Is a catastrophic mechanical failure completely out of the question now, in your point of view?

SCHIAVO: Well, it would be if we had any other clues whatsoever. I still find it difficult that we could have what clearly must be a multi-national plot to deliver a plane somewhere else. They certainly didn't land it in Malaysia. And there is a complete total information or news blackout.

And the suicide theory doesn't make sense yet either, because we don't have a motive. and maybe it's because the police haven't finished their investigation and haven't really investigated the pilots. But in any crime, motive is just as important as opportunity. So we don't have a motive yet. And I don't understand the seven hours. If it was pilot suicide, why fly for seven hours? If you're deciding whether or not to do it, presumably, the co-pilot and others on the plane would have picked something up.

So to me, no, I'm still not willing to rule out entirely the possibility of a catastrophic mechanical failure, because we still know the transponder, they're saying, has been turned off. We just don't know why. LEMON: Yes, it's very interesting. Most people think if it had been some sort of terrorism plot, someone would have said something by now. Thanks to everyone. Thanks to Jim, Seth, Rob, and to Mary. We'll get back to some of you throughout this broadcast.

Coming up, the ping from the underwater beacon ends in 30 days. What happens then?

Plus, frustrations, and tensions are rising over the investigation. Did Malaysian authorities botch this and waste valuable time? That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: All right. This is developing news into CNN tonight. And it involves a plane, another bizarre situation involving a commercial aircraft.

A Delta 757 losing part of its wing while in the air tonight. A flight from Orlando to Atlanta, Georgia. The crew declared an emergency. The plane landed. We're told everybody is OK. We're also told that the incident did not impact the jet's ability to fly. No word yet on a cause. A Delta spokesman calls the situation highly unusual.

And again, they're saying the plane reported that an access panel had come off the plane's wing while in flight. Can you imagine being on that plane? A flight from -- Atlanta, Georgia, from Orlando, Florida.

The crew followed procedures we're told, declared an emergency. The plane was able to land, offload passengers without incident. Since we have Mary Schiavo here, Mary, that is quite lucky to be in the air and to land.

SCHIAVO: It's lucky on a couple fronts, because it's a 757. The engines are on, of course, the wings. On a plane with tail-mounted engines, of course, that could have been a fob that got into the engines and injured the blades and have been much more catastrophic.

But on the wing, on a 57, and it's a tough old plane. And they are very old planes now at this point. So that might play into it, as well. Once a plane hits 20 years, it's supposed to have an aging aircraft protocol, meaning to pay tender, loving care to them.

So it's very fortunate the kind of plane it was. It was certainly, probably, not very comforting to the passengers on that side of the wing. It would have been a very strange sight with the panel gone. You would have seen, you know --

LEMON: The parts.

SCHIAVO: -- the parts, the struts.

LEMON: The inner workings of the -- right.

SCHIAVO: Right. Could have been a little disconcerting. LEMON: Yes, but it's good that the parts and the struts and everything inside of that panel were working, because they were able to land safely.

SCHIAVO: That's right.

LEMON: Let's get back now to our special coverage. And we want to talk about this desperate search, right, for Malaysian Airlines Flight 370.

I want to show you a brand-new video. OK? This reportedly shows a pilot and the co-pilot of Flight 370 walking through security at Kuala Lumpur's international airport. Again, this is new into CNN. It reportedly shows a pilot and a co-pilot walking through security at Kuala Lumpur's international airport before the flight took off ten days ago. We don't know again exactly. But they said it was before. Obviously, this was before. We don't know exactly when the video may have been taken.

Families of the 239 people on board are waiting in agony for any word on their loved ones. As the investigation shifts to the pilots, the crew and the passengers, police are examining a flight simulator that the captain kept in his home.

I want to bring in our national security analyst, Bob Baer, plus aviation analyst Mary Schiavo. You just heard from her a second ago. And technology analyst Brett Larson, who's been giving us information about -- great information about the technology here.

So Bob, is Malaysia botching this investigation? China is getting furious. India suspended its search in frustration. What's going on here?

BOB BAER, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Oh, I think they completely have completely from day one. I mean, the plane flew over Penang (ph). It was picked up on military. The military very early on alerted the government They did nothing with it. Let the Chinese look in the wrong place. They let us look in the wrong place. And now, apparently, they're not letting us into the -- into the passenger list completely. They're not sharing data.

I mean, they, on their own, cannot trace all the passengers and the crew. The FBI needs to do it; and the CIA and the National Security Agency would have the most complete files. And they're not letting this through.

So I mean, you know, they are -- they're in denial. One of their own pilots, possibly the co-pilot or somebody, a citizen hijacked this airplane. They just don't want to admit it.

LEMON: OK. Well, Bob, I'm glad you said that, because as we talked about, they're looking from every -- at everyone, from the pilot to the co-pilots to the passengers. People are saying, "You know what? That is disrespectful to look at those passengers, those poor people who are on board." Absolutely I agree with that. But they have to look at every single scenario, every single possibility. Background checks on the passengers. What are they looking for that hasn't already turned up?

BAER: Well, more people with stolen passports. I mean, you'd have to have that complete list of passport numbers. You'd have to be able to check it against Malay databases or Chinese databases.

But if you're going to wait a week, ten days, you're losing track of this airplane completely the longer they wait. And as for India, you know, what did they pick up on their radar? Did they pick anything up? They have very sophisticated military. I think they would have seen something. But I have yet to hear anything.

But what disturbs me most about this, is there's been no chatter of any sort suggesting this was terrorism. You'd think somebody would come up on a phone call and say, "Hey, it worked." Anything, you know. Nothing has come up so far.

LEMON: Brett Larson.

BRETT LARSON, CNN TECHNOLOGY ANALYST: You know, I think this brings up a lot of interesting points and a lot of interesting angles, a lot of interesting looks at technology.

LEMON: When he says no chatter, he's talking about technology.

LARSON: Exactly. And you know, we've gotten a lot of scrutiny for our NSA and what they're doing and how they're tracking all of us. But I think when we -- when we step back and take a look at this, we have to understand that we're not dealing with -- you know, this isn't an accident that happened in our country. This isn't an accident that happened in Europe, where they have more of these systems in place for things like this to go wrong.

These are disparate countries that are spread out that have vast rural areas, that don't have the technical resources that we have, where if something like this happened off our coast, we have the best technology in the military, and we're there. And we could have found this -- any sort of leads, we would have traced them down a lot quicker.

LEMON: Bob, you bring up a -- you brought up a very good point last night when we were having our discussion, where you said, listen, you know, the tracking systems, the satellites, what have you. And that part -- we were talking about that northern track, you were like, we shouldn't be so sure that that plane would be picked up in those particular areas. I want you to talk about that again. Why? I thought that was very important that you brought that up.

BAER: Well, Don, I spent a lot of time in central Asia. In fact, that was my last assignment, the CIA, I was in charge of that and the Caucasus. And you have the entire military infrastructure in that part of the world is decayed. It doesn't work. I mean, there's nobody even manning the sites, let alone manning them in the middle of the night.

It would be very easy to get a jet through that air space. The problem would be hiding it once it got on the ground. So you know, if it wasn't picked up in Central Asia, it doesn't surprise me at all. Even Kazakhstan's a fairly advanced country, but even their radar isn't very good.

LEMON: You want to discuss that, Mary?

SCHIAVO: Well, you know, it depends. I mean, I'm reluctant to pick on other countries of the world, because I'm remembering back to September 11, 2001. And you know, we've had the same problems.

I mean, I have worked cases, not terrorism cases, but I have worked cases in the United States where air traffic controllers fell asleep. I've worked cases where controllers aren't paying attention, where the radar is basically not being monitored. So it's very easy --

LEMON: That's in the U.S.?

SCHIAVO: In the U.S. It's very easy to get complacent and especially at night. And even in the U.S., we shut down towers; we shut down certain facilities at night. That's just what we do. And we do it to save money, and I imagine other countries do the same thing.

LEMON: I want to get this answer quickly if I can from you, because I'm up against a break. But we did say we would talk about whether time is running out with the pings. And thirty days, is that correct?

SCHIAVO: It's 30 days on the battery for the -- for the pingers, as they call it, the nontechnical term. But other things are dissipating. For example, if there were -- was any ex explosive residue. If there's parts of the plane that can show what happened to the damage. The wave action -- I remember on Alaska 261, we worked on that one. It was important to get a jack screw was rejected from the plane. It controls the horizontal stabilizer, and it was important to get that fact to see if there's any grease on it. That was an important clue in the case.

So the ocean water can work a toll and so can a jungle, if it's there.

LEMON: Yes. Yes. Thank you, guys. Brett, I want to talk to you about crowdsourcing. We'll get to that possibly in this broadcast, if not next week as we continue to look for this plane.

But thanks to all of you. Stand by.

Coming up, you're going to hear from a dad of one of the passengers and the pain he is going through. We must remember the family members here. What he would tell his son, next.

Plus --

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: 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.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEMON: How crews are using satellite information and the jet's final ping to pinpoint its last location.

This is CNN's special live coverage.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: I'm Don Lemon. In case you're just joining us here on CNN, this is just in: another bizarre situation involving a commercial flight. A Delta 757 losing part of its wing while in air tonight. A flight from Orlando to Atlanta. The crew declared an emergency. The plane landed; everyone is OK. We're told the incident did not impact the jet's ability to fly. No word yet on the cause of this, but a Delta spokesman calls the situation highly unusual.

Two hundred and thirty-nine on board with a stunning lack of information. It seems the passengers and crew of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 have at times been reduced to just a number. The agonizing wait for any information is almost too much for some families.

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

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ATIKA SHUBERT, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): For family of the passengers on Flight 370, the wait is excruciating.

GURUSAMY SUBRAMANIAM, SON ON FLIGHT 370: (SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)

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

Gurusamy Subramaniam is waiting for his son, 34-year-old Puspanakam (ph), an I.T. specialist who was 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, only God knows. It is 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 am wearing. Whatever country he was in, he would call. And once a week, he could come see us with the whole family. He really took care of us."

SHUBERT (on camera): He was telling me that the two younger children didn't want to see their father go to Beijing. So they clunk to his legs and refused to let him go out the door until he promised to bring them chocolates and presents when he came home.

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)

LEMON: You know, it is hard to imagine the pain of having a loved one on a missing airliner. Can't even imagine it.

Let's talk about the issues now with Wendy Walsh. She's a psychologist and a human behavior expert.

I'm so glad we're doing this segment. Thank you so much. We have to remember these families, my goodness, what they're going through. Time is passing by now, Wendy, but we have no wreckage, no debris, no evidence of any kind. Should these families hold on to any bit of hope as long as there's no evidence, no obvious sign that the plane is gone for sure?

WENDY WALSH, PSYCHOLOGIST/HUMAN BEHAVIOR EXPERT: Well, I think human nature is such, Don, that people do hold out hope for as long as they possibly can. And they cling to stories of maybe kidnap victims that are found decades later, and these ideas. Because it's really hard to have closure when you don't know, when you're really coping with this idea of not knowing.

LEMON: Yes. One of the -- I watched Piers Morgan's show the other night. And there was a young lady whose husband had taken off, going to Mongolia. And he said to her, "I'm going to leave my wedding band, and I'm going to leave my watch; and if something happens, I want the older boy to get the band, the wedding band. I want the younger boy to get the watch."

And she said, "Come on, silly. Don't -- don't talk that way. You're going to come back." And she said, but right now, there's no finality. There's no word. She -- she wants to hear something. She's holding out hope, but she wants to hear something, Wendy.

WALSH: You know, it's interesting these stories of premonitions that come up whenever there's tragedy. On one sense, you could think that, you know, a certain proportion of people generally are afraid of flying. And we have a lot of separation anxiety when we leave our families. So maybe that's all that was.

But you know, other people and plenty of psychologists believe that the unconscious knows all. And that, on some level, he might have known that this would be his last flight.

LEMON: Yes. I -- I completely believe in that 100 percent.

We have to consider the idea that the plane could be gone and passengers are gone. But that we simply may not find any evidence for such a long, long time. If it becomes apparent, at what point do loved ones have to accept the worst here?

WALSH: Well, Don, it's going to be different for everybody and every family. You know, they may hold on to keeping someone's bedroom intact and all their clothing there for years while they're waiting to hear.

I think that it is really too soon for anyone in the family to lose hope at this point, because they're -- they're hearing all this speculation about things that could have happened, that maybe the plane landed somewhere. So I think there -- you know, to begin grieving right now, is probably too early for most of these families.

LEMON: This is an odd question. But I have to ask you, when we're talking about finality, is it worse? What's worse, holding out hope and not knowing or having some finality knowing, like, OK, there was a terror situation or there was -- that it crashed? I mean, what --

WALSH: Well, people grieve in different ways for different lengths of time. And of course, once you finally are able to get through the grieving process and put some closure in, of course, the big healer is going to be time. For all of these people, the further they get away from this tragedy in the future.

Others may hold out hope for a really, really long time. But definitely, psychologically, being able to get through the grieving process within a year, for instance, is healthful. But if they're still holding out hope or a year from now, it just extends the pain for a very long time.

LEMON: Yes. Yes. You answered that perfectly. Thank you, Doctor. Appreciate it. Coming up --

WALSH: Good to see you, Don.

LEMON: Good to see you as well.

I'm going to speak live with someone on board a U.S. Navy ship. And right now, they are searching for Flight 370. Stay right there.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: Twenty-five countries have joined the search for that Malaysia Airlines 777. The United States is one of them. A Navy destroyer with specialized helicopters on board is in the northern Indian Ocean. Military jets with recon equipment flying mission day and night. But so far, like every other search group over the past ten days, they have found nothing yet.

So on the phone with me now is a spokesman for the U.S. 7th Fleet, Navy Commander William Marks, on board the USS Blue Ridge. Commander, as I understand now, you're in the South China Sea. Tell our viewers how the Navy is searching for something that you're not even sure is there? COMMANDER WILLIAM MARKS, U.S. NAVY (via phone): Thank you. It is quite a challenge. Honestly, it is something we have really never seen before, something like that.

Right now, we have the USS Kidd, our first-class destroyer, moving a little bit north in the Andaman Sea. They went through the Strait of Malacca two days ago. They're now moving north for Burma, searching. They search about 1,000, 1,500 miles, square miles every single day. On board, they have two NH-60 (ph) search-and-rescue helicopters. They'll fly continuously throughout the day about 3 1/2 hours each.

Each time they fly, they'll search an area of a couple hundred square miles, come back, refuel, change out the air crews, and right back up. They keep that going throughout the day.

I also point out we have two fixed-wing control aircraft. Those are land-based, flying out of Kuala Lumpur, called a P-8 Poseidon and a P- 3 Orion. And they fly -- their aim is well over a thousand miles. And then, once they get there, they have another four hours on station search time and then fly back.

So yesterday we had a P-8 fly all the way to the Bay of Bengal, do a four-hour search and then come back. But like you said, we have not found anything. Although, we could definitely see things on our radar. We see small debris, wooden crates, trash, but nothing from an aircraft.

LEMON: Nothing from an aircraft. Can you talk to me a little bit more about the methodology there? Is it sort of a grid system or are you just taking particular areas and you will fly out: We're going to go out this far in this direction this day or this direction this time? Talk to me a little bit more about the methodology.

MARKS: It does start out as a sort of general grid system. You have to remember, we're actually now up to 25 countries who are contributing. It started out nine, then ten and then moved up. So even though you have a grid system, there is quite a bit of flexibility.

So, for example, the P-8 yesterday, they had another couple hours of search time. They had to make a decision. Do they search an area that has not yet been covered, or do they go search an area where they saw a little bit of return coming on their radar? They wasn't -- they weren't sure where it was.

They made a decision to go ahead and search the area with the radar return. It turned out not to be anything. But there is a lot of flexibility, especially when you consider the size of the area. But we have some very intelligent pilots and air crew out there. And they are making the best of it.

LEMON: Commander William Marks, thank you. We know you are very busy. We appreciate you taking the time out of your busy schedule to come here on CNN. We want to bring in our meteorologist, Chad Myers. Chad is in the CNN severe weather center down in Atlanta. Chad, this search area just keeps expanding, doesn't it? CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: It does. And I wanted to ask Commander Marks. He's here in the South China Sea. The Kidd is up here. And none of them, either one of those ships is really where the arcs are. And I was kind of wanting to ask him why that they're not where Malaysia thinks the plane was because of the last ping. So maybe we can get him back tomorrow or the next day. Because they're going to be very, very busy.

Also, I wonder if those helicopters can fly over land, or do they have to stay over -- over the water?

Commander, I hear you're still there. Can you hear me?

MARKS: I'm still here. I listen to you guys on the news all the time.

MYERS: Thank you. I have the map of where the Malaysian government, with the help of Immarsat, has put these little arcs. I'm sure you've heard about it. You've seen them and all. But your ships are not near the arcs. Are you searching a different pattern? Or are you doing something completely different, or do you have other information?

MARKS: The two arcs, the northernmost arcs you see, goes over land. We're not really flying over land. We do have permission from Malaysia to fly over their territory. And any time you fly over anyone's land, you need their permission. So right now, just up, Malaysia, the southernmost side, where really no one is down in that area.

To be honest, with our P-8, it will get out there, 1,000, maybe 1,200, 1,400 nautical miles from their base in Kuala Lumpur. But if you look, that only gets you halfway to the Bay of Bengal.

MYERS: Correct.

MARKS: It's just such a huge area. No one has really even begun to look in that southernmost track yet.

MYERS: How long will you be out there searching?

MARKS: Great question. You know, when we started out in the Gulf of Thailand, it was a very defined boundaries. And it had a defined parameter in there. Normally, in the U.S. Navy, what we do is the first 72 hours, that's critical to finding people and survivors. And the first thing we do is launch a helicopter. That's what we do immediately in the end. But you have a central point, you have a starting point to look. And your helicopter starts there and slowly works its way out.

Well, now, we have a whole ocean. And quite frankly, it's a pretty unprecedented scenario. I can't tell you how long we'll be out here. We have 300-400 sailors right now. We had 700 at one point in this operation. And they're doing a great job. And this is a 24-hour business for them out here.

MYERS: Good luck to you, sir -- Don.

LEMON: That's just unbelievable. I mean, thank you. Thank you, Commander. When you look at the size of the Indian Ocean, they're in the South China Sea right now. But even the South China Sea, I mean, just -- it's overwhelming to think about the amount of area that they have to search.

MYERS: It truly is, buddy. I mean, we have now -- I added this up. Because I can do an area search on a Google map. And we're looking at about 2 million square miles. If you only go 200 miles one way or the other off this last potential ping. And if you weren't with us earlier, I don't have time to get to why we have this red arc here and this red arc here, but trust me, it's part of an complete GPS locater. We only get one ring here. And the plane was somewhere along here at 8:11. And if you go 100 miles either side of that, you get something almost two-thirds of the size of the United States to search for one airplane.

LEMON: Chad Myers, appreciate it.

Coming up, I'm going to speak with a military and survival expert who says we should hold out hope. We should hold out hope that everyone on board that flight is still alive. He says it's very much possible.

Plus, more on our breaking news. A Delta flight here in the U.S. losing part of its wing while in the air tonight. That's next.

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LEMON: Hello, everyone. I'm Don Lemon. In case you are just joining us, another bizarre situation involving a commercial flight. This is just in to CNN.

It is a Delta 757 losing part of its wing while in the air tonight. In the air. A flight from Orlando to Atlanta. The crew declared an emergency. The plane landed. We're told everyone is OK. Also, told the incident did not impact the jet's ability to fly. No word yet on the cause. A Delta spokesman called the situation highly unusual. We'll continue to follow this as we get more information.

Now to more on the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. I'd like to bring in now survivalist E.J. Snyder, whose popular series, "Naked and Afraid," begins tonight. He says there is still hope that the passengers and crew members are still alive here. So what makes you such an optimist about this, E.J.?

E.J. SNYDER, SURVIVALIST: Optimism and a positive attitude will get you through anything in life. You've got to stay positive. And for the loved ones, even more so. And you never want to give up hope. You give up hope, then you've already lost. So until you have definitive answers on where these people are at, where the plane's at, you never want to give up hope. You have to stay positive.

LEMON: E.J., you have a similar situation. Is there a case where people have survived anything like this? SNYDER: There are historical cases where people have been shipwrecked on islands, like those on planes that have gone down. And, you know, it's the actions on the ground and those that rise up to greatness that are the leaders of the situation of chaos, that are calm, that get people through it and keep them alive.

LEMON: E.J., I'm not sure how much -- how well you know the area that they're talking about, these two different arcs, right? So considering where the flight may have landed, 370 may have landed, even crashed, are -- is there a legitimate survival possibility, even 10 days later?

SNYDER: Ten days can be a long time, but you know, the human spirit is an amazing thing. And it can endure a lot of things in very difficult situations. You know, it's up to those that are on the ground to assess the situation right up front, take care of casualties, you know, separate the dead and wounded, unfortunately, if there are dead, and then start taking action as a survivalist would. Take action to extend your period of life, your survivability and chances of being rescued. And there's a certain order that we do those things in. Shelter, get fire. Everyone is going to need water, especially those injured, and start setting up signal fires and ways to signal search -- the rescuers, whether they be by air, foot or in the boat.

LEMON: Let's hope your optimism is right. E.J. Snyder, appreciate you joining us here on CNN.

You know, it's one of the biggest aviation mysteries ever. A plane and all of its passengers disappeared over Lake Michigan. More than six decades later, crews are still searching for that plane and their families still waiting for closure. That's next.

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LEMON: Millions of people around the world are asking the very same question. How can a plane big enough to carry so many passengers simply vanish without a trace? In fact, it has happened before. Tonight Kyung Lah has a story of Northwest Orient Flight 2501, a story that still has no ending.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KYUNG LAH, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Sixty-four years later, and the plane is still there for Darlene Larson. When she was just 5 years old, her father, Leo Wooler (ph), was flying home to his wife and seven children after a business trip. On June 23, 1950, he boarded Northwest Orient Flight 2501 heading to Minnesota. It never made it, vanishing somewhere over Lake Michigan.

DARLENE LARSON, FATHER DISAPPEARED ON FLIGHT: I was awakened by my father crying. She did her best to try to tell me what had happened, that my father was gone and would not be coming back.

LAH: Flight 2501 was at that time America's worst aviation disaster. The plane, except for some bits of human remains, was never found. The cause, never determined. The 58 passengers never recovered.

LARSON: It's hard to concept, because you don't have something to hold to, if you -- like a funeral or a casket or a grave.

I was certain that he was wondering around the streets of Chicago with amnesia and he would one day realize where he was and come home.

VALERIE VAN HEEST, AUTHOR: Therein lies much of the mystery. Why was this plane so far off its course?

LAH: Author Valerie Van Heest has interviewed more than 200 family members of the passengers from Flight 2501.

VAN HEEST: They don't understand that it really happened. It's hard to conceive of an accident killing a loved one if you don't have their body. The mystery to 2501 is a mystery that's plagued these people for now 64 years.

LAH: Haunted by the families' stories, Van Heest and a search team have been hunting Lake Michigan for the plane's debris.

VAN HEEST: Ultimately, finding that plane on the bottom of the lake would provide the final answers. And that's what we hope can happen with the Malaysia Airlines accident. We need answers.

LAH: Answers that the families of Flight 2501 never got.

Darlene Larson and her six siblings grew up without their father. Her mother never remarried and asked that her ashes be spread at the suspected crash site in Lake Michigan, so she could find her husband in death.

A single grave site where some of the unidentified human remains are buried marks the loss of all aboard the fateful flight. The living still coping.

LARSON: It's an eerie thing just wondering, wondering and just not knowing what actually happened.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LAH: So while most of us are riveted by the mystery of Malaysian Airlines, Darlene Larson can't bear to pay attention or watch the news. She says it is simply too close, too familiar.

Kyung Lah, CNN, Los Angeles.

LEMON: All right. Kyung, thank you very much.

I'm Don Lemon. We're going to have much, much more on the search for Malaysian Flight 370 throughout the evening right here on CNN and, of course, on CNN.com. Thank you so much for joining me tonight.