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Flight Computer Reprogrammed For Turn 12 Minutes Before Co- Pilot Said "Good Night"; Data Deleted From Pilot's Simulator; Loved Ones To Malaysia: "Tell The Truth"; Families Of Air France 447 Victims Write Relatives Of Flight 370 Passengers; Source

Aired March 19, 2014 - 10:00   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning. I'm Carol Costello. Thank you so much for joining me. There is a new twist this morning in the disappearance of Malaysia Flight 370. When the co-pilot said, "all right, good night," to air traffic controllers at 1:19 a.m. on Saturday, the plane's on board computer had already been reprogrammed. In fact, investigators tell CNN someone rerouted the flight a full 12 minutes before the co-pilot said those last words.

Martin Savidge is inside that Boeing 777 simulator along with our friend pilot, Mitchell Casado. Good morning to both of you.

MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It has added new insight into the investigation and what may have been going on inside the cockpit. As you point out, there was sort of a 12-minute heads up that they were going to make this change. It wasn't spontaneous. It seemed to have some planning. The flight management system here, this is an on-board computer. There is one here and up here next to the co-pilot and pilot. It does many things. The biggest thing is navigation.

So just like on 370, we have pre-programmed it. We did before we took off. It is flying us to Beijing as they were doing. We can pre- program it if you have the right expertise. Mitchell can show you it is fairly quick procedure. We are not saying this exactly how it was done, but how it could be done entering a waypoint and simply punches it in. Then, you see that white button. That's the execution button. We would have to communicate, you and I.

MITCHELL CASADO, PILOT TRAINER, 777 COCKPIT SIMULATOR: Absolutely. I would say confirm we are going to that waypoint and you would say confirm. The airplane is turn willing.

SAVIDGE: The key point is that both of us would have been involved. Pilot and co-pilot commit in making the decision and to commit to making whatever course deviation. The question is, in the cockpit, were both the pilot and co-pilot involved? Was it an emergency? Could they have somehow had a gun to their heads being forced to do this? We just don't know at this particular time -- Carol.

COSTELLO: I would just like to ask Mitchell more about this. So the co-pilot supposedly reprograms the plane's on board computer 12 minutes before he says, "all right, good night" and then they enter into Vietnam's air space supposedly. Shortly thereafter, they make that left turn. Does any of that make sense to you as a professional pilot?

CASADO: It does. It makes sense if they had a reason for it. If they had a weather deviation or something to justify that. Recently, the dispatchers and the airline and the controls will let you do what you need to do but you have to be able to justify it. The timeline certainly makes sense. Certainly, the radio phraseology is in mind with standard. Nothing seems out of the ordinary to me.

SAVIDGE: If it was just a question of deviation.

CASADO: If there was a justification for that deviation, we don't know. If there wasn't, that's another story.

SAVIDGE: You know at least from what we know from the telemetry coming from the aircraft, it didn't indicate there was a problem with the aircraft. Maybe it wasn't something with the plane. Maybe it was something in the cockpit or human intervention as it has been spoken of it some way.

COSTELLO: Perhaps so. Martin Savidge and Mitchell Casado, thanks as always. Let's take a closer look at these latest developments. Steve Wallace is a former director of the FAA's Office of Accident investigation. He joins us as a CNN aviation analyst. Good morning, Steve.

STEVE WALLACE, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Good morning, Carol.

COSTELLO: OK, so let's talk more about this 12-minute gap. So 12 minutes before this co-pilot communicates for the last time with air traffic control, somebody reroutes the plane in that on board computer. What does that say to you?

WALLACE: I think Martin Savidge laid out the possibilities that speak to a rogue pilot or intruder or someone coercing the crew or one pilot got the other pilot out of the cockpit. We have seen all of those scenarios. It is somewhat speculation. I am I am not sure about this information that came on the ACARS. That is the data link communication thing. It is separate from the flight management system. It was turned off. I haven't been told who received this ACARS data. I am not convinced that the best experts have seen it yet.

COSTELLO: So it is still a confusing bit of information that we just can't puzzle together. I'm just going to go through a lift of things we think we know. I'll put it that way because that's the best way I can put it. So if you put this all together, the on board computer was reprogrammed, right? The transponder was turned ought. The radar shows that that plane made a sharp turn west. The Thai military said that.

A fisherman on an island in that general area said they saw a very low-flying plane. They never see that. They think it was that flight. If you put all of these things together, does it tell us -- does it make the picture any clearer? WALLACE: Well, you know, my side of the business is kind of the civilian investigation. There is very much a parallel civilian technical kind of investigation going on in parallel with the criminal investigation. All of the things that you just described pretty well tend to push things in the criminal direction.

First of all, if you were planning to deviate this airplane in 12 minutes, you would certainly tell the air traffic controller. I don't see that there could be any legitimate reason to do that. Mitchell just mentioned weather, but I don't think, clearly, weather was not a factor. There is very little weather up at 35,000 feet. All the things that you cited push the investigation more in the criminal direction although everything is still on the table.

COSTELLO: Something interesting that a former TSA agent told me in the last hour in the NEWSROOM. He said that the cockpit door should not be locked. He said someone from the outside should be able to get in. He said, if something is happening with the plane and the people inside lock the door, there is nothing anyone can do at that point. Do you think that should be rethought? That the cockpit door should be locked and no one else have the combination to get in, except the pilot and the co-pilot.

WALLACE: Well, I think the flight attendants have it. I have talked to some American Airlines 777 pilots that say it is a little key pad with a few digits in the key pad, but there is the capability to deadbolt the door so that you cannot access it with the key pad. We don't know specifically if this Malaysian airplane was set up that way or not. I haven't heard that specifically with this airplane.

COSTELLO: Well, our reporting showed that there was the key pad, the keypad was on the door. I don't know about the deadbolt on the other side of the door, though.

WALLACE: Well, so I think the deadbolt capability would be that this would prevent a situation where someone might grab a flight attendant and you know, put a gun to their head or something like that. That capability exists, I believe, in most 777 cockpits.

COSTELLO: It's a tough question, I know, but thanks for trying to answer me. Steve Wallace, thanks to you.

Another bit of information that could prove important, data was deleted from Captain Shah's homemade flight simulator. This is what I'm talking about. That's Flight 370's captain in a YouTube video sitting in front of his homemade simulator. The Malaysian government seized that simulator and now says data was deleted, but they did not say who exactly deleted that information.

For the families of the missing passengers, frustrations are boiling over despite headlines about search areas and flight paths and black boxes. Despite the perceived inaction from the Malaysian government, still at the heart of the story are people, someone's mother, father, fiancee. Today, anger and desperation erupted.

Just a few hours ago, a passenger's mother broke into a hotel conference room filled with reporters. She was crying and carrying a banner begging the Malaysian government to tell her the truth, to bring her son back. You don't need to be able to speak Mandarin to feel her heartbreak.

Moments after that mother spoke those words, this happened. She was actually dragged away by security and taken behind closed doors. Atika Shubert was at that briefing in Kuala Lumpur. That is hard to watch -- Atika.

ATIKA SHUBERT, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It is. It was really heartrending to see her being dragged out like that screaming. You can really hear the distress in her voice. They were brought to a small media room. They were told not to speak to the press and then were later escorted out. A scuffle ensued as press tried to pursue them.

Frankly, it was a pretty ugly scene with a lot of media just scrambling over each other to try to get to them. But clearly, for Malaysian officials, this has been a disaster to see something like this happen. Now, they have responded by saying that they are sending a high-level team to Beijing that includes a senior 777 pilot to explain the ins and outs of the plane.

But really, the problem for family members is the fact that they are getting so many conflicting bits of information. For example, they have been told that the plane might have flown for hours and could have been on the ground when it was admitting these signals to the satellite, which, of course, gives many families hope.

On the other hand, they are now saying today that they are concentrating a lot of their efforts looking in the Indian Ocean suggesting that the plane crashed into the sea. So it is this kind of conflicting information that has been extremely difficult for families to take. What these family members are saying is that they just want clarity to know exactly what happened to the plane.

COSTELLO: Normally in this situation, airlines will have their own public relations people talking with the families, grief counselors on the scene in case any of the families need help. Is any of that happening in Kuala Lumpur?

SHUBERT: It is happening. It is happening in Kuala Lumpur and in Beijing. There are grief counselors talking to the family. Again, the problem is, that the story keeps changing from Malaysian officials. So even though they are getting counseling, the families feel like they are being lied to. They feel like they are not getting to the truth of the situation. Information is being hidden from them.

Now Malaysian airlines and other Malaysian officials have tried to address this. They put out a statement. I will read you a little bit of that statement basically saying, "We regret the scenes of this afternoon's press conference. One can only imagine the anguish they are going through. Malaysia is doing everything in its power to find Flight 370 and bring some degree of closure for those who have family members who are missing.

But the fact is, now, we're not looking at days at finding the plane. Now, officials are saying it could take weeks, even longer. In the press briefing today, one Malaysian official said, reminded everybody that the Air France flight that went missing on the way to Brazil took two years to find. It is those kinds of words, I think, that are really causing this anguish among family members -- Carol.

COSTELLO: Atika Shubert, reporting live from Kuala Lumpur.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, every day, the search area for Flight 370 changes. What was once an area in the South China Sea turns now to a spot in the ocean off the coast of Australia. We'll learn from the investigation is shifting south now.

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COSTELLO: The search for the missing Malaysian plane is drawing comparisons to Air France Flight 477. It took two years from that flight to 2009 disappearance for investigators to find the wreckage on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean. Now relatives of the victims of that flight are reaching out to family members of Flight 370. CNN's Samuel Burke joins us now from New York to tell us that side of the story. Good morning.

SAMUEL BURKE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Carol, it is actually German family members of victims from that crash in 2009, and they've taken to a Facebook page, which the families of many victims in different plane crashes around the world use in these type of situations. They have actually posted an open letter to the families of the Malaysian victims.

They say in this letter that they are also dismayed about the vague and partially contradicting information, but they actually give the families of the Malaysian victims and Chinese victims advice. I want to read you part of this letter, Carol, they say, "We also encourage you to demand together with your national government, right now and in addition, a neutral investigation to be carried out by competent experts of your choice in order to safeguard full transparency and best practices be applied.

So these families have actually been in the shoes of these other families who are sitting here waiting for any type of detail. They also have financial advice for them. It is probably hard to imagine. They have been through this before and know you have to start organizing as a group to get financial compensation.

I want to read you one other part of this letter that they posted on Facebook, Carol. They say to them, these German families. They say, "As to immediate financial aid, we recommend that you demand from Malaysia Airlines a first installment out of 113,100 special drawing rights according to Montreal Convention." That's a convention which the United States has signed on to, which guarantees these family members about $140,000.

So what these families of the victims of that Air France crash from 2009 are saying, is start getting some of that money now. Hard to imagine. But of course, these are people that have been in this very same position before -- Carol. COSTELLO: Power in numbers. Good advice. Thank you so much, Samuel Burke.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, the focus now moves south and the search for that missing flight. New details about where exactly they are looking next.

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COSTELLO: What was the search area, the size of the continental United States has now been narrowed to an area just a little bigger than the size of New Mexico, the area or the southern arc that's now considered to be the most likely place Flight 370 could have gone down. The focus is on a section just under 1500 miles off the coast of Perth, Australia.

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JOHN YOUNG, AUSTRALIAN MARITIME SAFETY AUTHORITY: Today, the search area has been significantly refined. It has been refined somewhat based on better, more detailed analysis. The area at the end of those analyses has been refined, worked on by the National Transportation Safety Board on the fuel reserves of the aircraft and how far it would have flown. You will see it has also moved a little way east. It is not as far from Perth as it was for yesterday's search.

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COSTELLO: Barbara Starr live at the Pentagon for us. Tom Foreman is in Washington. Good morning to both of you.

TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol.

COSTELLO: So Tom, take us through this new area.

FOREMAN: What you are really hearing in the language of that gentleman speaking a moment ago is the practical application of what's called bayesian search method. Let's look at the big arcs spread out by the satellite images. What they have been doing hour by hour is using very specific data about currents and about the likelihood of where it went and the likelihood of it having been hijacked or something going on with the pilots or some accident. They put it all in a big mathematical formula that allows them to focus on one area and say, this is the one that matters the most.

Here is some details of that area if you look at it this time because this area has moved since yesterday. It was a little bit more to the west. Now, it is searched back a little bit more to the east and been made somewhat smaller in that process. If you go beyond this image and look at what they are actually seeing out there.

As they are moving along in search planes like this, what they are flying over is something that visually, you know, from flying over water, is very hard to spot anything on. If you have a glare that would have come over this water, it becomes very hard to see anything on the surface. One of the measures of how important this search area is, is the presence of this plane. This is the P-8 Poseidon.

The fact it has been sent here is a measure of importance of that area. It can cover thousands of square miles in a day of searching. Does that mean it will find something? No. It is no guarantee. It is a big job. There are questions about the effectiveness of this plane. The fact this plane has been moved down to Perth and it is out to survey the waters in that area and put more than just eyes on that very confusing surface, is a measure of how this area is the one to watch today -- Carol.

COSTELLO: I hope they spot something. There is always hope. I know what you are saying, Tom, and I hear you. We have to have hope. What else do we have? So Barbara, what other assets are the U.S. using to help find this plane?

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: They are really focusing on these airborne assets right now, these aircraft that Tom just so thoroughly discussed, Carol, of course, is that issue that's come up. There are a lot of commercial satellites who cover -- that may be covering that region now, that have moved down that way to begin to have a look and provide imagery.

Don't look for U.S. military satellites to go down there. They have other national security needs that they are going to stick with, we are told. I think it would be very useful. It seems like we bounce back and forth every day. The northern, the southern, the most hopeful, all of that. Let's just regroup for a second about what we are really talking about here.

Why the focus on the southern arc? It has never gone away as being the U.S. view that it is most likely the plane went down there. It may not have. The U.S. view has always been the southern arc. Why do they say that? Because there has been no sign of the plane anywhere else. It leads investigators to believe it most likely went down in the Indian Ocean. We had seen and been reported that for many days now. The northern arc that large land mass in Central Asia, the problem is, there is no sign of the plane.

No verified radar blip, if you will. Truly, verified to be this plane at a point in time. No satellite imagery showing an explosion or a crash landing on the ground. No satellite imagery showing any indication that this plane landed at a military airfield or anywhere in that region and a real view behind the scenes. At least with the U.S. military, that it could not have gotten through coastal radars, air traffic control radars and military radars spread across that Asian northern arc. So it leads them to believe the Indian Ocean is the most likely place.