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Nothing Suspicious Found; Flight Path Altered; Neighbor Speaks Out

Aired March 18, 2014 - 14:00   ET

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

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Wolf Blitzer, as always, thank you.

Great to be with you. I'm Brooke Baldwin.

News just into CNN, police have not found anything suspicious inside the homes of those flight 370 pilots. You know they've been searching, specifically that one pilot's at-home flight simulator. Nothing nefarious, this is according to our sources.

But we do have something concrete to tell you about right now. New radar evidence to bolster the belief that Flight 370 did, in fact, change course. This is the left turn we have been talking about and showing you on all these animations for days and days now. A reminder, at 2:15 a.m., the plane is last detected by Malaysian military radar hundreds of miles off course to the west and the Malacca Strait. Now fast forward to, what are we, a week later, we finally have another country confirming this radical change in route. The Royal Thai Air Force now says it too tracked that Boeing 777 through normal channels until roughly 40 minutes after takeoff at 1:22 a.m. when it vanished. Six minutes later, 1:28 a.m., the same Thai military radar detected an unknown plane heading in the opposite direction.

So that new information also gives more weight to the new information just confirmed by CNN which suggests that Flight 370's path was deliberately altered through the flight computer, making it likely that someone in the cockpit programmed Flight 370 to turn west. That sharp left turn. But the thing is, this is the big thing, no one knows exactly who entered the new coordinates or when or why. So the questions now, of course, was it a pre-planned hijacking move? Could it have simply been a response to some kind of mechanical emergency onboard this flight?

So we are dedicating the next two hours to digging into all of this for you and we begin with breaking news into the investigation and that flight simulator used by one of the pilots. Let's go straight to CNN's Evan Perez, who is breaking this news for us.

You have talked to your sources, and what are they learning about this simulator that this guy had in his home?

EVAN PEREZ, CNN JUSTICE REPORTER: Well, Brooke, this is very key, because one of the things that they've been wondering is, you know, whether or not there was an indication of perhaps a practice run on the simulator of this westward turn that we've been showing on air. And what I'm told is, you know, the Malaysians have shared this information with investigators from Britain, from the U.S., from France who are on the ground trying to decipher everything that they've got.

And so far they've found no indication that any of this -- of any kind of practice run or anything to indicate that this was pre-planned perhaps by the captain, who is the one that had this flight simulator on his computer. They've seized computers, they've looked at e-mail traffic, they've looked at everything that is on those computers and they've come up with absolutely nothing to indicate that there was anything nefarious being planned here.

Now, they've also gone through and checked, you know, any of the traffic discussions that the pilots had with air traffic control. And they've listened to those recordings. And then again, they've looked and they've found nothing to indicate that there was something amiss inside the cockpit. So, again, it brings us back to the mystery, what exactly was happening inside the cockpit and who did this?

BALDWIN: Evan Perez, crossing some theories off here, with new information. Evan, thank you.

And so, maybe it was mechanical. That's a big maybe. We don't know a lot right now. Investigators say that whoever did fly that plane off course for hours appeared to know what they were doing, but so far there has been no evidence to tie the pilot and this first officer to its disappearance. CNN's Kyung Lah spoke to a retired Malaysia Airlines pilot and a friend of the pilot on that missing flight who is certain human interference is to blame.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CAPTAIN NIK HUZLAN, RETIRED MALAYSIA AIRLINES PILOT: I know for sure. I flew these things (ph).

KYUNG LAH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: You flew the missing airliner.

HUZLAN: Yes. How many times. Yes, how many times.

LAH: And so what do you think happened, being someone who's actually been behind the controls of this plane?

HUZLAN: Yes, very, very strange because the -- the lack of communication is the one that's really, really (INAUDIBLE) the way, you know, the pilots could not communicate if there was an emergency. And I think from the second or third day, I've already come to my own private conclusion that there must be some form of unlawful human interference. It could be anyone on the airplane.

LAH: If you're convinced it's not the pilot -

HUZLAN: Yes.

LAH: Then does your attention turn to the co-pilot?

HUZLAN: Well, like I said, unlawful human interference says that a human is involved. So when we start going down (INAUDIBLE).

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: We now know that the aircraft's first turn to the west was carried out through a computer system. One that was most likely programmed by someone in the cockpit.

So, joining me now, Fred Tecce, commercial pilot and former federal prosecutor, also Seth Kalan, managing partner for "Airline Weekly," and Captain Timothy Taylor, president of Tiburon Sub Sea Services and an underwater robotics expert.

So, gentlemen, welcome.

Fred, to you here, because you've just heard the news, right, that there was nothing nefarious apparently with this flight simulator, according to our sources. But let's get to the bit about the computer. That we know that eight key strokes were made. And, forgive me, I don't know if that's even the right way of explaining this. What do you make of the fact -- what are reasons why a pilot would suddenly sort of change course?

FRED TECCE, COMMERCIAL PILOT: Well it's actually -- the technical term is push the buttons.

BALDWIN: OK. Thank you.

TECCE: So, but back -- to answer your question is this. You're welcome. The answer to your question is this, you could have -- you could have changed course because there was an electrical problem with the airplane and you wanted to divert to another field. But the other reason to change course is because you want to take the airplane someplace. And what has struck me about this thing from the get-go is that from the very beginning it was clear to me that those who were in command of this aircraft did not want people to know where they were going. The ACARS goes off. The transponders go off. The airplane makes wild fluctuations in altitude. And, quite frankly, until this airplane is found, we really don't have the luxury now of assuming that it's a mechanical problem. We need to start preparing for something a little more nefarious.

BALDWIN: I think they are preparing for x, y, and z and everything in between. But back to your highly technical term of pushing a button, Fred, is it possible that someone could have pushed that button, not from the plane but from elsewhere?

TECCE: No.

BALDWIN: No.

TECCE: Absolutely not. The onboard flight data -- this airplane has a flight director system that's down in the pedestal between the pilots. And it takes -- if you've ever looked at them, I mean they've got more buttons on them than you could ever possibly imagine. And it really takes a lot of time. When these guys transition into this airplane, they spend an infinite amount of time learning the avionics in these systems. They're very sophisticated and very complicated.

BALDWIN: OK. So had to be done on the plane.

Seth, what about the news from the Thai government that they have now admitted, yes, they tracked the flight, you know, after it vanished off their radar, got this blip of this unknown flight that maybe could be Flight 370. We don't know. My question and everyone else's question is, why are we just now coming into this knowledge eleven days later?

SETH KAPLAN, MANAGING PARTNER, "AIRLINE WEEKLY": Well, remember, first of all, that we're dealing with an aircraft that -- the person at the controls was trying not to be seen. So different from most other commercial flights. The whole point of a transponder is, you know, it's the airplane saying, here, I'm Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, here's the altitude I'm at. We didn't have that here. So certainly every country along the potential flight path is going back through its tapes, through military radar as well and saying, what might have been this aircraft.

And what we heard from Thailand is basically corroborating, very generally at least, what we've been hearing. The problem is, what happened next? And as you know, the fuel - the possibilities as far as where this plane is, even as we become perhaps a little more comfortable with the idea that it was, in fact, foul play, we know less than ever about where this plane ended up.

BALDWIN: There was a pretty amazing theory that, you know, it's very simple, that we'll get to in just a minute because I'm really curious to hear you guys talk about the possibly this could have just been a fire. We're going to get to that in a minute.

But Captain timothy Taylor, I was reading my "Washington Post" this morning and they quoted this U.S. aviation expert by the name of Ron Carr (ph), and he basically threw out -- he said, you know, the way the plane hit the water, if it hit the water, could determine if we ever find the plane. And so he threw out these three scenarios.

Scenario one, if the plane came in as though landing, it would float and then sink, so it would be really huge under water, which would be great for sonars to try to find it. Two, he said it could come down really, really hard into the ocean, you know, bursting into many pieces and then you would have debris potentially floating, which thus far we don't have. And then, three, this notion that the plane could have come in at this very steep trajectory, steep slope and it would have accordioned maybe upon impact, therefore it would be even smaller to find, right place, right time for these search crews.

So with those three possibilities, how would that even impact all these crews in the waters right now?

CAPT. TIMOTHY TAYLOR, PRESIDENT, TIBURON SUB SEA SERVICES: Well, I would believe that the debris field would be a much easier way to find this plane, if there was a debris field. When the French airliner went down, they found bodies, they found seats, they found everything. That narrowed down the search and still that took two years to find.

So if it did land like the plane on the Hudson and sink and everybody went down with it, it was just a --

BALDWIN: The miracle landing, right.

TAYLOR: Yes, the few tiny debris left, the fuel would have dissipated by now after, you know, over a week, 10 days, or close to dissipated. So it is a lump sum under the water, but there's no clue - or no clue found yet on where to look. And if you don't know where to start, it's a big ocean. It's -- I can give you numbers on what it would take to find that, but, you know, 12 square miles a day with one machine, you know, and you've got six million square miles of Indian Ocean, it's, you know, you're getting into, you know, 4,000 years with one machine.

BALDWIN: The number is just overwhelming.

TAYLOR: It's staggering. Staggering.

BALDWIN: It's staggering.

Fred, before we go to break -- and I'm going to ask almost all of you all to stick around and we're going to continue this conversation, but you're listening, you're watching the coverage, you're reading, reading, reading like the rest of us, what's your one question here, priority number one?

TECCE: Well, my one question is, why is it that this aircraft, which is not small, has not been -- was not tracked more diligently and more detailed on radar? It just boggled my mind that an 800,000 pound airplane has just vaporized.

BALDWIN: Why - why no more evidence on the radar.

TECCE: Correct.

BALDWIN: Stand by, because coming up next, I alluded to this a minute ago. This is what I really wanted to ask you about. This one expert is throwing out this stunningly simple theory, the left turn theory, he's calling it. This is - this is -- the fact that the pilot's first instinct was just to find a runway because there was a fire. That's it. This expert is pinpointing an exact spot. We'll break that down for you. Chad Myers will join me in that discussion to just show all of us what we're talking about.

Also, we have heard so much about the captain on this Flight 370. But a friend of the co-pilot is talking to CNN, coming to his defense. Hear his thoughts, coming up. Special coverage continues right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: And welcome back to CNN's special coverage of the disappearance of Flight 370. Let me bring back our guests, plus one here. Fred Tecce, commercial pilot and former federal prosecutor, Seth Kaplan, managing partner for "Airline Weekly," and Christine Dennison, ocean explorer and expedition logistics expert.

So, welcome back to all of you. And, Fred, let me begin with you, because this is a theory and I read about this first thing this morning from this 20-year veteran pilot originally posted on Google Plus. This is a fascinating read. I highly recommended for people who are following this as closely as we are.

So he suggests this theory is startlingly simple. So he suggests there was a fire and that this pilot onboard did what veteran pilots are taught to do, find the nearest airport in which this - this sort of large 777 could land. He explains that this dramatic left turn toward this airport, Palaw Langowi (ph), it was over water, no obstacles. This is where he says he believes this guy was going.

And he goes further to explain the loss of transponders and communications makes perfect sense in a fire.

How does that, Fred -- so simple. How does that theory sit with you?

TECCE: You know what -- well, you know what, I actually read that closely this morning because I was fascinating by his theory.

BALDWIN: Yes.

TECCE: Let me tell you, first and foremost, when you're a pilot and you have a fire onboard an aircraft and that what -- his premise is that there was a fire. The first thing you do is, you don't try to get to the airport. You need to put the airplane on the ground as soon as possible.

I'll point to two accidents. The Value Jet crash in Miami. That pilot, she tried to make it back to Miami and crashed in the Everglades because the fire burned so quickly. There was an MD-11 crash in Halifax, Nova Scotia. A Swiss Air flight crash. That airplane crashed because the pilots were trying to make it to an airport. They were actually trying to dump fuel.

So, rule one, you're better off putting that airplane in one piece actually in the ocean than trying to get to a fire. The second thing about what he says that doesn't jive with me is that --

BALDWIN: Wait, wait, wait. Hang on, hang on, hang on, let me stop you. You're saying better off to put the plane, instead of land it on land, you're saying you want to put it in water?

TECCE: If that airplane is on fire, you have no idea how long it's going to be before the fire burns through the flight control services and makes the airplane completely uncontrollable. That's the problem. That's what happened to Value Jet and Swiss Air. If there's really a fire onboard that airplane -

BALDWIN: OK. Forgive me for cutting you off. I'm no pilot, I'm just trying to wrap my head around what you just said. OK, so that's number one. Number two was what?

TECCE: Well, it's hard to wrap your head around. You think it's hard to wrap your head around for you. As a pilot, conditioning yourself that there's a fire, you're not going to try and go to an airport. That's a scary thought. One you never want to live with.

The second one is, is that if there was a fire, this airplane actually flew over some waypoints, some spots in the sky. That indicates to me that there was a working autopilot onboard the airplane, because those are the things that happened. And if he had a working autopilot and the airplane was flying those kind of tracks, that would not be consistent with a fire.

BALDWIN: OK, because his explanation in his article is that, you know, the reason why this plane would have been on autopilot, maybe everyone was discombobulated, maybe everyone was passed out because of the smoke and the fire was that huge -

TECCE: Right.

BALDWIN: And it just continued and continued until it ultimately crashed.

TECCE: Right.

BALDWIN: You don't necessarily buy that.

TECCE: Right. If there's a fire and - well, if there's a fire and electrical failure, you don't have an autopilot. That runs on electricity.

BALDWIN: I gotcha. Gosh, just when -

TECCE: Right, because -

BALDWIN: Just when you think you read something that makes sense.

Fred, I'm going to come back to you.

Seth -

TECCE: It made great sense to me. I thought it was a nice theory. I'm sorry it didn't pay off, but -

BALDWIN: Sure. Sure.

There are questions about flying for several more hours, as we were discussing. You know, suggests that the crew, as we mentioned, could have become overcome by smoke. What do you make of this possible theory, Seth?

KAPLAN: Well, the problem with that -- and how that doesn't exactly square with pilot sabotage, for example. This possibility that, you know, one of the pilots or both did something is that that would be very inconsistent with some of the other cases we've seen over the years of pilot sabotage.

The way that usually works, and there was an Egypt Air crash Flight 990 back in 1999.

BALDWIN: Sure. KAPLAN: Silk Air, (INAUDIBLE), and several of these. One pilot locks the other out of the cockpit and crashes the plane rather quickly. And so, quite honestly, although the simplest explanation right now might be pilot sabotage, and perhaps just one of the pilots, if in fact that happened --

BALDWIN: Wouldn't the simplest just be there's a fire onboard?

KAPLAN: The problem though is that that's very much a devil's advocate position. To be perfectly clear, we're missing a lot of data points here. So you can construct a case for lots of different things.

BALDWIN: Yes.

KAPLAN: However, the transponder being seemingly turned off, true, that we don't know that a person physically did that. The ACARS system going down separately and just all of these appearances that whoever was in control, and rather clearly somebody seemed to have been in some control of this plane, was not trying to make themselves seen, was not sending out distress signals. You know, Fred earlier talked about Air France 447. In that case, we had a pilot sending out distress signals in the middle of all of these terrible things that were happening.

BALDWIN: (INAUDIBLE).

KAPLAN: So it's very much the devil's advocate argument at this point.

BALDWIN: OK. I tell you, it's frustrating sitting here trying to navigate through all of this and listening to it all and trying to make sense because it's, quite honestly, impossible.

And then, Christine, to you, the next if, because that's all this is, this is ifs. If -- and I know your expertise is in rugged terrain -- you think it's possible the plane may have landed or maybe crashed in the jungle or in other, you know, conditions. Again, if that happened, how does one survive?

CHRISTINE DENNISON, OCEAN EXPLORER AND EXPEDITION LOGISTICS EXPERT: Agreed. It's all really if at this point. We just don't know. And every day there seems to be a new twist to it or a new story possibility.

I agree with these gentlemen in the sense that if you have a landing or a fire, or anything that caused this plane to come down, not over water, but in land or on land, rather, you have very rugged terrain. Following the trajectory that it seems to be showing, which would be going over Burma (ph), possibly towards Nepal, you've got very different elevations. You've got Burma, which is - it's all jungle.

So you've got very difficult terrain to try and really have -- if you're doing a search for it, you're going to have a lot of time that has to be spent really looking through jungle. And in rain forest and jungle, you've got different levels. There are different tree levels under the canopy. So you've got trees that start at 15 feet and go up to 120 feet. So it's very dense. And that would make looking for this aircraft or survivors very difficult. That would be sort of stage one.

BALDWIN: Uh-huh, looking for them, not to mention being the survivor yourself in these, you know, various locales and surviving all these now 12 days. We --

DENNISON: The conditions are very hard and very humid. High humidity, high heat in the jungle if, in fact, this would be one of the possibilities. There isn't that much time. You've got dehydration. You have a lot of the natural elements that people are already -

BALDWIN: Yes.

DENNISON: Whatever condition they're in, if it was a crash landing or any kind of landing, it's just going to be very hard.

BALDWIN: We just don't know.

DENNISON: Not impossible, just very difficult.

BALDWIN: Yes. We just don't know, do we? Christine Dennison, Fred Tecce and Seth Kaplan, I really appreciate all three of you for joining me. Thank you very much.

DENNISON: Thank you.

TECCE: Thanks for having me.

BALDWIN: And coming up, these four words we keep repeating, "all right, good night." Three words. Those were the last words of the co- pilot of Flight 370. His neighbor is now speaking out. He tells CNN why it was an honor to live next to the co-pilot, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: People who knew the co-pilot of Malaysia Flight 370 are coming to his defense. This next door neighbor of 27-year-old Fariq Abdul Hamid said he did not believe Hamid would play a part in the plane's disappearance whatsoever. CNN "New Day's" Kate Baldwin has more.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KATE BOLDUAN, ANCHOR, CNN'S "NEW DAY" (voice-over): The family of Flight 370's co-pilot, Fariq Abdul Hamid, reclusive since the crush of media attention flooded their home on Saturday.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Did you ask (INAUDIBLE) to go inside?

BOLDUAN: Their relative's now infamous last words from the cockpit, "all right, good night," are still shrouded in mystery. First Officer Hamid is seen here flying a 777. His reflection in the console just weeks before the Malaysia Airlines flight went missing.

BOLDUAN (on camera): How do you know the family?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I know about this family around five years, I think. Around five years.

BOLDUAN (voice-over): Along the streets of Shal Alam (ph), a suburb of Kuala Lumpur, the co-pilot's neighbor, a taxi driver, says he doesn't believe the 27-year-old co-pilot would play a role in the flight's disappearance.

"He is a pilot and this is a respected career in Malaysia," he said, "so it is an honor to have a neighbor like this."

The taxi driver describes the co-pilot as ambitious, someone who loved sports cars.

"After he became a pilot, he bought a GTI Golf (ph) and then he bought a BMW. He is a big fan of cars and I don't think he would do something crazy," he said.

The neighbor says the Hamid family kept to themselves, saying he also viewed the father as, quote, "someone important." But he can't forget the more recent conversation he had with his neighbor when he said simply, "my son is lost."

BOLDUAN (on camera): When the father talked to you, how did he seem, how did he act?

BOLDUAN (voice-over): "He was clearly worried, but he was, as a Muslim, he seemed calm and able to accept it," the driver said. "His father asked me to pray for him, pray for his son to be found, for the plane to be found, and I assured him that his son will be fine and that they will find the plane."

The media intrusion now impacting the surrounding community. The co- pilot's next door neighbor says the constant attention has forced his own wife and two children to leave.

BOLDUAN (on camera): When I asked the co-pilot's next door neighbor what he thought of the government's response to this whole crisis, he criticized the government saying the government's been slow to respond, that the government is inexperienced, but he also noted that this is an unprecedented crisis they have on their hands.

Kate Bolduan, CNN, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BALDWIN: All right, Kate, thank you.

Coming up next, more on this so-called left turn theory. Why a pilot would make such a sharp left turn. Was he trying to find an airport? We have some maps to show whether this even makes sense.

Plus, is it possible the computer onboard this plane can be interfered with remotely? In other words, a cyber-attack? We're answering that question for you coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)