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Mystery of Flight 370

Aired March 18, 2014 - 15:00   ET

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

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: And we continue on, top of the hour. I'm Brooke Baldwin.

Some news into CNN as it pertains to this missing flight, because now we know the U.S. officials say they have reviewed those cockpit conversations between that missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 and the air traffic controllers. Here's the news: nothing suspicious, nothing suspicious.

This comes as investigators say they too have found no dirt on the pilots of Flight 370. We have also learned that a search of their homes, their e-mails, and even that at-home flight simulator that that pilot had, seen here, have turned up nothing suspicious.

So, that said, the question, who reprogrammed this plane to go so far off course? A law enforcement official telling CNN that this plane's flight path was deliberately altered through the flight computer, making it almost certain that someone inside the cockpit with aviation knowledge programmed Flight 370 to make that sharp left to go west. We keep showing you on the animation. Follow the red line here.

But we still cannot confirm who entered those new coordinates or when they did it or why they did it. This theory, though, about the sharp left turn has also just been bolstered by Thailand because a second country here confirming this radical change in the route.

The Royal Thai Air Force now says it too tracked that Boeing 777 through normal channels until roughly 40 minutes after takeoff, 1:22 a.m., when it, poof, vanished. Six minutes later, 1:28 in the morning, that same Thai military radar detected an unknown plane heading in the opposite direction.

Let's go straight to CNN International's Andrew Stevens, who is live for us right now in Kuala Lumpur.

And, Andrew, tell me more about the search of the pilot's home. Nothing suspicious, they say.

ANDREW STEVENS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Nothing suspicious.

And a lot of people have been waiting for this news, Brooke. We're getting this through unofficial sources. The state Malaysian police officially continue to say nothing at all. That flight simulator was actually taken away on Saturday afternoon, so we're now going into Wednesday morning. And this is the first time we have heard that there is nothing suspicious there. Now, I want to talk also about that preprogramming of the flight, and for that sharp left turn. Now, that was raised at a press conference yesterday with Malaysia Airlines' chief executive. And he said on the ground, Flight 370 was actually programmed from to go from K.L. to Beijing.

He said anything could happen once the pilots get into the cockpit. At least on the ground, it wasn't -- it was preprogrammed in that -- the coordinates were programmed in, but we don't actually know when. That's a vital clue. Coming back to the pilots, as you say, nothing suspicious.

This follows China saying that they have done background searches on the 153 Chinese nationals. Nothing suspicious there either.

BALDWIN: Andrew, while I have you, I know that there is a new theory about what may have happened that you're hearing where you are. Tell me what that is.

STEVENS: Yes, it's a lot of people talking about this here in Kuala Lumpur. It comes from a pilot. It's sort of a simple theory almost, Brooke. And it ties in with just about everything we know so far. And that comes back to a catastrophic mechanical failure, probably in the form of a fire, perhaps even in the form of an underinflated front tire on takeoff, a slow burn there.

The cockpit fills with smoke. In the situation -- a crisis situation like that, the pilot mantra really is aviate, navigate, and then communicate. So the aviation was to keep the plane in the sky. Navigate, turning west would have lined it up with Lankayan Island on the western side of Malaysia, which has a 13,000-foot runway. That would be the route they would plan to get to.

They passed out before they could get there. Before they passed out, they programmed the plane to turn in that direction. They couldn't, though, then carry it through. They passed out. The plane didn't get any instruction to land, so it just kept on flying. We do know that that plane was last seen in that direction, heading northwest, pretty close to Lankayan Island, heading off and basically crashed when it ran out of fuel.

That is a theory that really is gaining a lot of credibility, if you like, here amongst aviation people I have been speaking to, because it does join a lot of dots and it does sort of take the wilder theories, the more sort of, not fanciful, but the more sort of sophisticated, complicated, complex theories off the table. It was a fire. The pilots acted. They were overcome by smoke. The plane continued to fly until it ran out of gas.

BALDWIN: Now, we have been discussing that exact theory here, and I have had a lot of pilots shoot it down. We will keep talking about it, though, Andrew Stevens. Interesting that that is what really is the buzz in Kuala Lumpur. I appreciate you joining me.

Let's bring in someone who knows a thing or two about flying, Daniel Rose, a pilot and aviation attorney, and also CNN aviation correspondent Richard Quest.

So, all right, guys, Daniel, welcome back to the program here. We will get to this fire theory in a minute. But just on the news we're hearing from these officials that there was nothing, nothing suspicious from this pilot's at-home simulator, nothing suspicious between the cockpit and air traffic control, nothing suspicious in e- mails, at the homes, your reaction, Daniel?

DANIEL ROSE, AVIATION AND MARITIME ATTORNEY: I think that's been the problem all along with this so called deliberate or hijacking type theory. there just isn't a motive here.

You don't have -- you have a guy, captain who's by all accounts a family man and well-respected, and an enthusiast about aviation. You wouldn't leave a simulator out in broad daylight if you were planning some kind of nefarious act like this.

And on top of that, you don't have any sign of the aircraft. You don't have any communications from 239 passengers. You don't have any ransom demands or anything like that.

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: No one claiming responsibility.

ROSE: Right.

BALDWIN: Right. Right.

Richard Quest, you have been listening to all of this for the past 12 days. Now also the nugget today that we have this, the Thai government saying, yes, they were tracking the flight. Yes, it vanished off the radar. And then they saw this blip of this unknown flight. Could be 370. Maybe not. Why are we just now hearing about this on day 12?

RICHARD QUEST, CNN CORRESPONDENT: You're hearing about it on day 12 because everybody is going back to look at their information again.

We are looking for definitive answers, when people are having to work with some very raw basic material. So, yes, I'm sure the Thai authorities looked at their radar, and they have gone back and looked at it again and then they have checked it. And, also, this doesn't really hugely advance our sum of understanding.

And they may well have told the Malaysians about this earlier in the week. It's just this -- it's another nugget on the table, another piece of the jigsaw on the table. I have -- this interesting idea, I mean, this Chris Goodfellow article about the fire and the...

BALDWIN: Yes, about a fire.

QUEST: Yes. Well, let's row back just a little bit and not put it down to a fire, because let's just say a mechanical issue, a mechanical issue, because once you start talking about a fire, that raises a whole other raft of other issues. But let's say a mechanical issue that overwhelms both the pilots and the plane and leads to its eventual demise. This has always been the most logical, basic aeronautical explanation for what has taken place. It has only one fundamental flaw.

BALDWIN: Which is?

QUEST: And it is this. There were no messages, no ACARS messages received warning about it.

And ACARS is so designed that even if -- I mean, not literally, but even if the toilet fails, certainly if there's a fire in the wheel well and fire censors are going off, then ACARS would send out an emergency warning to the ground.

And we know this -- sorry -- this is really significant, because we know this because this is what happened in Air France 447; 24 messages were sent out before anybody else realized what was happening. Now, arguably, ACARS was the first thing to be hit and therefore it failed and therefore other events followed. But still mechanical remains the number one reasonable option.

BALDWIN: OK. Let me back up a step.

In case you're just joining us, what Richard is referring to, Chris Goodfellow, 20-year veteran pilot, wrote this whole theory, stunningly simple theory on Google+, which is now being passed and pinged among everyone clearly globally. And his notion is that it was a fire. Clearly, Richard, I hear you loud and clear. You're saying maybe not a fire, because that throws in a whole -- a lot of other variables, but, yes, it could indeed be mechanical.

Daniel, to you then, let's go along this premise, One, we know that this plane flew. Let's say it was mechanical. It continued to fly for hours and hours. Could it have continued to do so on autopilot, right?

ROSE: Right.

BALDWIN: And let's just begin there. Autopilot, does that work?

ROSE: Sure, absolutely, it works.

BALDWIN: Even with a fire, let's say?

ROSE: Even with a fire. And the thing about the fire is now you have opened up a kind of a random scenario of failures.

It can explain any kind of sequence of failures because you don't really know where exactly it originated and where it propagated.

BALDWIN: But why no beacon?

ROSE: Well, it depends how quickly it starts. That's the other factor. It's very random and it could be expeditious. I handled actually the legal claim arising out of the last Boeing in- flight fight case in Dubai. It was really incredible to see what systems failed, including the oxygen, including the flight control system. So it really just opens up a random possibility of explanations for this what seems to us confusing sequence of events.

BALDWIN: All these theories, conspiracies. It could have been something as simple as mechanical. Gentlemen, I have to leave it, but thank you so much, as we continue digging and talking to our sources and trying to figure out where the heck this plane is.

There's so much more coming up on the disappearance of this Malaysia Air Flight 370. Next, this man has a unique perspective on the mystery because he is a former Malaysia Airlines pilot. He used to fly the very plane that is now gone. He is also a friend of the missing pilot. And he has a very, very specific idea about what happened.

Also ahead, we will talk about the flight's path. Was it reprogrammed? CNN's Martin Savidge back in that flight simulator and he will show us exactly how someone could reprogram the path, and we will ask him if it can be done from not within the cockpit, from elsewhere. That's coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: Let's talk about what we know. We know the aircraft's first turn to the west, that left turn, was carried out through a computer system, one that was most likely programmed by someone in the cockpit. And investigators say whoever flew that plane off course for hours appeared to know exactly what they were doing.

But, so far, there has been no evidence to tie the pilot and first officer to its disappearance.

CNN Kyung Lah spoke to a retired Malaysia Airlines pilot and friend of the missing pilot here who is certain human interference is to blame.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NIK HUZLAN, RETIRED MALAYSIAN AIRLINES CAPTAIN: I know for sure. I flew this plane.

KYUNG LAH, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: You flew the missing airline?

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

LAH: So, what do you think happened? Being someone who's actually been behind the controls?

HUZLAN: Yes, very, very strange. The lack of communication is the one that's really, really puzzling, the way pilots did not communicate if there was emergency. I think from the second or third day, I 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, but does your attention turn to the co-pilot?

HUZLAN: Well, like I said, unlawful human interference means human is involved. We start going down. Personally, we start going down.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Watch the full interview on "ERIN BURNETT OUTFRONT" tonight 7:00 Eastern here on CNN.

But, right now, I just want to take a minute to show you how someone would reprogram a flight.

Martin Savidge is back in that simulator with pilot trainer Mitchell Casado.

So, Martin, take it away.

MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Brooke, to so many of us who are just passengers, the whole cockpit is a land of magic and just mysticism.

So, really, spending so much time up here has really been enlightening because I have learned so much. Today, let's focus on this thing, the flight management system. This is basically a GPS system on steroids for an aircraft. Think of how you program when you're going to go in your car to someplace.

Well, the airline does that, too. Flight 370 did it. They were going from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. They would have before takeoff loaded in all the coordinates, all the information they need to make that flight into this flight computer. And then it would help the co-pilot and pilot, assist them on their path.

However, once in the air, it is possible to reprogram it and go a different way.

And, Mitchell, you can show us just how simply that's done.

MITCHELL CASADO, PILOT TRAINER: Yes, absolutely.

If you look at the screen here, this magenta line is our flight path. This is our route to our destination. The right triangle is us. The apex of that triangle actually is us. And all you really need to do to change course is, we type in the identifier for where we want to go, so, in this case, this little airport here.

So, I'm just going to type it in this little keypad here. And then you just press a button up here and the computer asks you with this white line, are you sure you want to do that? Are you sure you want to make that deviation? And if you are sure, you press this button and the airplane will start to make a turn in that direction.

SAVIDGE: And you can see actually that it may look dramatic as far as the viewpoint from the cockpit here, but if you're a passenger sitting in the back, really, this just seems like kind of a normal maneuver and you probably wouldn't have thought too much of it, even though right now this airplane is veering dramatically off of the original course to take it to Beijing -- Brooke.

BALDWIN: OK. And pushing buttons, it's simple as I believe there were eight buttons pushed, according to our reporting. So you guys just showed me that.

But let -- this is my -- Mitchell, I have this follow-up for you, because let's say under normal circumstances, could there have been any legitimate reason for anyone to, you know, punch those buttons, to have preprogrammed that flight before the left turn, or even before the plane took off?

CASADO: Yes.

I mean, in operational flying, that happens quite a bit. You have what we call an alternate flight plan. OK? So if the first one doesn't pan out for whatever reason, you always have a backup. In flying, everything is backed up, it's redundant. So that's for on the ground.

In the air, we can make deviations. It happens all the time, especially for takeoff and landing. They give us what we call vectors, so off our course to make our route more efficient. And in cruise, it happens as well, although a little bit less common, for passenger sickness, mechanical reasons, weather, thunderstorms, stuff like that. So there's a myriad of reasons to do this.

BALDWIN: OK.

SAVIDGE: The problem is, Brooke, we don't know whether this was someone trying to do it for devious reasons or whether this plane had an emergency and they were trying to get it back.

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: That's exactly right. Gentlemen, thank you so much again, inside that simulator, so helpful to see it in addition to talk about it.

Coming up next, new information from the government of Thailand about what they saw on their radar moments after this plane lost contact. We will tell you how those new details could impact the flight's suspected path.

Plus, you have heard the theories abound about, right, about the plane flying maybe toward land. Could the plane have actually landed in a remote area? Could the passengers still be alive? You will hear what a survival expert has to say about that coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: Thailand's air radar is now casting some new light as to what may have happened to the missing 777 and the 239 souls on board, becoming another country to confirm this radical change in route.

So CNN's Tom Foreman is live in Washington to show us here.

Tom, let's just begin with your map. Tell us what Thailand's air force has now revealed.

TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, what they have revealed is something that at least fits into a part of this very confusing puzzle. We always lay the ground here before we get started so you know exactly where we are.

That's where the plane took off some 11 days ago, flew up here, went off the coast and then disappeared on the way up toward Vietnam. And since then, we have had all this conjecture, all these conflicting reports that have created all these different search areas, including this big one that came in from satellite data, suggesting that maybe there was a southern arc where it went, maybe a northern arc where it went. But they don't really know.

But the Thailand information would fit in to the northern arc. Let's go in a little bit closer and look at Thailand's location here.

BALDWIN: OK.

FOREMAN: Because, if you talk about the search area up on the north there, you see that initial box there north of Kuala Lumpur?

BALDWIN: Yes.

FOREMAN: That was the first search area. Thailand is suggesting that they tracked a plane cutting back across the Isthmus there toward the box on the left, above Banda Aceh. That's the start of the Malacca Strait we have talked about so much.

So they're talking about tracking something going back across that way. Does that fit into the general profile of what we're talking about? Yes, it absolutely does. Does it move us a whole closer, Brooke, to knowing where it is? I can't say it does that. It just seems to confirm some earlier suspicions -- Brooke.

BALDWIN: But how is it possible that this plane flew through such a potentially wide space without being picked up by radar?

FOREMAN: Well, I think that's a really great question, because if you were to talk about the northern route, the idea that somehow after the folks in Thailand picked it up on their radar, that it headed up north, that's not really likely.

Look at this, Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar, China, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Kazakstan, all these different places, yes, there are holes in radar up there. Yes, there are people up there who maybe aren't watching the radar that well and keeping it in such good repair. Maybe a lot of these countries...

BALDWIN: Don't want to share.

FOREMAN: ... don't want to tell us a whole lot about what they have. Yes, maybe they don't want to talk about it. But it is somewhat inconceivable that a plane this big would have flown through all of that and not been picked up by somebody else.

BALDWIN: So why is Thailand just now releasing this information?

FOREMAN: Thailand says that it initially released it through diplomatic channels, suggesting that the Malaysians or somebody else had it ahead of time and we're just now learning about it publicly.

But, nonetheless, I think it still does raise a question. To what degree is everyone fully handing over information, because you remember, some of the countries we just went along there have some fairly big disagreements with their neighbors. And they're very jealously guarding their own national security, especially if some of them may believe privately in their upper echelons, we don't think this thing came our way. We don't think it ever made it up here over the Himalayas. We're not about to go spilling the beans on some wild chance that it might be here.

But all of this, all of this complicates the equation and makes us things like this new news out of Thailand and say, well, there is another tiny piece of a very, very big puzzle that's nowhere near being solved.

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: Yes, indeed. Tom Foreman, I'm so visual. I love seeing you in the map room. Tom, I really appreciate it.

Coming up next, more on our breaking news, officials announcing that nothing suspicious has been found in the homes of those pilots. So that's big today. We are also hearing details about the conversations between the cockpit, the air traffic control. What did they glean from that? We will share that with you next.

Also, live pictures from inside the White House, because this is exciting, in a matter of minutes, President Obama will begin a unique Medal of Honor ceremony, because he is honoring two dozen veterans who were discriminated against because of their race or religion. Folks, this is the largest ceremony of its kind in decades, and we will take it live. You won't want to miss this.

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