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New Video From Australian Search Plane; Satellite Spots Debris In Flight 370 Search; Malaysia Air Meeting With Passengers' Families

Aired March 20, 2014 - 10:00   ET

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

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CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Happening now in the NEWSROOM. Is this it?

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We now have a credible lead.

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COSTELLO: Brand new satellite images taken more than a thousand miles off the coast of Australia showing debris floating on the surface.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It is probably the best lead we have right now.

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COSTELLO: The American Navy and a group of 18 ships scouring the area, aircraft taking to the skies, storms at sea hampering efforts.

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CHRIS CUOMO, ANCHOR, CNN'S "NEW DAY": They're dealing with bigger waves, tough to see things, ships move more slowly.

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COSTELLO: Families just finishing up a press conference.

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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Should a miracle be required then that's what we're hoping for.

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COSTELLO: Malaysia manages expectations.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: For the families around the world, the piece of information that we want most, they wanted most, is the information we just don't have. The location of MH 370.

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COSTELLO: You're live in the CNN NEWSROOM.

Good morning. I'm Carol Costello. Thanks so much for joining me. Want to head right now to Perth, Australia to talk about that debris possibly from this missing plane. Two pieces of debris found on satellite images. One 79 feet long, the other 16 feet long. Those two pieces of debris, 14 miles apart. Now these were taken by satellite. These pictures were taken by satellite four days ago.

Ships down on the ocean have not found any sign of that debris yet although we understand the Norwegian ship is in the area. Of course, it's night fall in Australia. The search for debris has now ended. Earlier today, a CNN photographer went up with the Royal Australian Air Force on a plane so he could watch them search for this debris. This difficult, difficult search.

Andrew Stevens is on the phone right now to take us through what you're seeing on your screen right now, this is on board that plane. Tell us more, Andrew.

ANDREW STEVENS, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (via telephone): That's right, Carol. This is footage taken by, (inaudible), our cameraman here. He went up on the Hercules aircraft. Their task was to drop buoys into the target zone. Their role is to get data on the movement of currents and the temperature of the water to give an idea of where the sea, southern part of the Indian Ocean is moving, how it's moving. Whether they can trace the area where the debris was given the currents and movements of the sea, trace it back now 14 days to where that plane, where the plane may have gone down.

We can't overemphasize, this is still not a fact. It is the Australians that said it's the best lead they've got. The prime minister said this is new, incredible information coming to them about the possibility of these objects being linked to the plane. It took four days to actually release these images because there was so much analysis done on these objects.

Now the footage you've seen there taken from inside the cockpit also the crew there lowering the back ramp throwing the buoys in. They'll start transmitting information back and hopefully give investigators a better idea of where this plane may have gone down. It's almost working backwards. It will give an idea of where the movement of the sea would have taken those objects.

Night has fallen here. The search is off for the day. There are four long range surveillance planes in action including a U.S. P- 8. They all came back empty handed. Not getting any reports of success at all. In fact we've got a tweet from the Australian aircraft saying bad visibility, rain, low clouds really hampered the search today, which means they'll be going back up tomorrow and will continue to go up until they can get some sort of lock on what the objects were.

It's important to get a visual I.D. on what these are and more important for those to be picked up at sea by vessels. At the moment, there's one vessel in the area. There's 18 vessels now from 26 countries involved in the search. They are in the southern corridor, which we're talking about. They're not yet at the scene. This is at the far end, southern end of that area we're looking at. It's going to take them some time to get there.

There's an Australian warship heading out to sea now. It will take another day, they say, before it gets to that zone as well. At the moment, the vessel are converging. The search will resume at first light. Since we have that announcement from the Australian prime minister, there hasn't been further developments to back up what the objects may have been.

COSTELLO: All right, Andrew Stevens, stand by. Want to go to Tom Foreman now to give people an idea of exactly where the satellite spotted this debris. It's one of the most remote areas on the planet. So Tom, take us through that.

TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes. Carol, listen to what Andrew said about all of the ships that are down there. You have a race on the high seas happening right now. In addition to those ships, there are nearly 30 aircraft going down to join the four that already went out and searched and didn't find anything to join that Danish cargo ship also out in that area that's trying to get close and see if there's anything to find.

So all of these assets are being brought into the area. Yet, those are not yet finding anything. This is the big question. The big ark out there and whether they can get to this target area and do they find anything? In the process, can they answer these basic questions?

Carol, we broke it down in a simple way. You have to look at the question of credibility first. You have officials saying that there's a credibility, a credible reason to believe in this. There's also doubt that remains. That doubt is important. So the credibility matters. They wouldn't say it if they didn't have four days of analysis.

But the fact it took them four days to decide this mattered. It also pushes the idea of doubt. There's the issue of size. This does make a big difference here. If you're talking about on the pro side and on the con side. This is a big plane. It's about 200 feet across, about 200 feet in length. The tail alone on a plane like this is about 60 feet.

So there's the possibility of getting a piece about 78 feet long out of this, but it's a little bit hard to do. Whether or not that could float, that's a different question. Lastly let's talk about the issue of location in all of this because location also matters. This is generally in the right location, but locating it as we know already is going to be a challenge.

Beyond that, I want to talk about one other thing. When you talk about currents and everything else there. Remember if this scenario plays out and this were the plane, you're not talking about something that broke up in flight in theory. You're talking about something that ran out of fuel and then hit the water.

So if both these pieces were related, how are they related 14 miles apart from each other? That's some pretty unusual current work to separate them that far even over this period of time, Carol. So we'll have to see as they keep plunging into the waters there and seeing if this race in the high seas can bring them to this islands.

COSTELLO: I know. This seems like an impossible search. Let's show those pictures again of the Australian Royal Air Force up in that high-tech plane desperately looking for anything they can find on the ground. We'll keep pictures up while I talk to Indra Petersons because these planes can't stay up in the air for a long period of time in part because of the weather in this area of the world. Really rough out here -- Indra.

INDRA PETERSONS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Yes, I mean, the distance that you are talking about, of course, from land all the way to that region is pretty far. Of course, they had a cold front in the region again today. So that was the concern there as we definitely had that storm system move through. They had problems with visibility and of course, high ocean currents.

I do want to hone in a little bit and kind of show you one of the maps we were talking about early this morning. We are able to pull some of the maps. We have a large search zone that everyone was looking for just yesterday. A lot of people were asking how did we hone in on the smaller area. So what we actually looked at -- remember, we did know that at 2:15 in the morning was the last time we had radar contact with the plane.

And then of course, you had the satellite contact with the plane. What we actually looked at, the bottom portion of the arc was the connection of that last radar connection with the ping of the satellite. If you look at the fuel time that was left. If the plane went straight down and took an hour for each time period moving an hour forward, you actually came to the last point. That's where they would have ran out of fuel.

That's where they came to that region or assuming how they honed down on that search area. One of the things a lot of people have been talking about is something called a gyre. A lot of people say, is the potential here this could be debris, a lot of trash potentially in that region as the trade winds pick up a lot of stuff from ships and move in that region.

One of the things I want to point out. It can take 50 years from one plastic bottle to go from the beaches to this circulation. It breaks up to small particles like a thin film at the top of the ocean. When you talk about large particles, it could have to be cargo that fell off a ship or something like the tsunami wreckage that piled up. Unless something like that happened, it wouldn't be typical to see a piece of debris that large.

We're talking about 75 feet. That's the concern. Of course, something that large. If it was a plane, would it have sunk? These are the things we talk about. Two and a half miles deep ocean depth. That's a huge concern. Currents in the region, we keep talking about the roaring 40s. What is that? Latitude between 40 and 50 degrees we start to get strong westerly winds. That's the reason sailors like to take advantage of currents in that region.

That means hair wind and high surf as well. Stronger the wind, the stronger the high surf will be as well. This morning even white caps in the region further south. Waves as high as 20 and 30 feet. Ships trying to make their way into that region. They are dealing with the cold front. Keep in mind that cold front is moving out. That's good news.

Anyone going to that search area, they're still dealing with the cold front. They're flying through it. You can see on your computer screen or TV, winds have calmed down since the winds have left. Since you're so close to the area with strong wind, they're still dealing with it in the next 48 hours. Things are calming down.

COSTELLO: All right, Indra, thanks. I want to explain what we saw in the video. You saw the crew aboard that Royal Air Force plane throwing something overboard. Long tubular things are buoys. They're marking where they've already looked so they'll know. So that's what they are doing there. Just wanted to explain that because it looked kind of strange.

I want to bring in Jim Tilmon. He has retired from American Airlines. He now serves as a CNN aviation analyst. Welcome Jim.

JIM TILMON, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Thank you.

COSTELLO: So these pieces of debris they found described as 79 feet long, the other is about 16 feet long. They're 14 miles apart. What do you think of that? Is that consistent about what you'd find if an airliner crashed into the sea?

TILMON: There are no rules and there's no history we can point to, to determine just how large pieces of debris will be. Those are consistent with the size of the airplane. Unlike the information we got some time ago about another satellite view where the pieces were far too large and wrong shape and everything else.

So there is a possibility that we have really found part of the debris field. I want to underline the word possibility. I'm really trying desperately to make sure none of us gets our hopes up and gets our eyes squarely focused on something that doesn't pan out.

COSTELLO: Right. Because again, these satellite images are four days old. No one has found the actual debris. So we don't know what it is at this point.

TILMON: No, we don't. There are all kinds of things it could be. I'm just really hopeful that this is something from the airplane. As you know I'm sure, if they did find that it was, that's good and that's bad. It's good that we would finally get to a place we could begin to backtrack a little bit and find the main debris field and maybe get a hold of the boxes that tell us what happened on that airplane.

It's bad in that, one, it might be misleading information again for those with loved ones on that airplane as well as narrowing down the fact that, well, the airplane hit the water and everyone perished. What they're going through is unreal, just unreal.

COSTELLO: Yes. I'm with you. I don't know how to describe it. Jim Tilmon, thanks so much. I've got to take a break. Still to come in the NEWSROOM, if this is debris from that missing plane, how did it get there? Martin Savidge live from inside the flight simulator. Hi, Martin.

MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Carol. We've done now is we've moved magically in time thanks to the simulator, four and a half hours ahead. We're approaching the area where this debris was spotted. We'll tell you what we found with this aircraft coming up.

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COSTELLO: All right, before we get back to our plane coverage, a bit of breaking news to tell you about. President Obama expected to make some sort of a statement on Ukraine in the 11:00 a.m. Eastern hour. Now earlier, the president said that the United States has taken military action off the table. As you know, Russia has honed in on Crimea and has essentially taken control. Violence is on uptick in that country.

Some people say the United States ought to get more involved, but again, the president will make some sort of statement on Ukraine in about 50 minutes, 60 minutes. We'll take him live. But again as I said earlier, the president says the United States has taken military action off the table.

Now back to that missing plane. New satellite images show what could be debris from the missing jet. Two objects floating more than 1,400 miles off Australia's coast. Martin Savidge and pilot, Mitchell Casado join me again from inside that Boeing 777 simulator. Last hour, you guys set a course from Kuala Lumpur to this debris area, where do things stand now?

SAVIDGE: Well, let me just tell you. This is all based upon very raw data, Carol. So we should point out, that first of all, there are a lot of factors that play in here. We were told the fuel load was about seven hours of fuel, but you know, we don't know the specifics on that. That's guest mating. There were no waypoints listed specifically to get them down here.

We do not know whether condition at the time of the flight that night. Head winds. All that can affect the fuel path. We are roughly 1,000 miles to the southwest of Perth. Let me show you on the rough map. Kuala Lumpur is up here. We've flown four and a half hours. We're roughly here. Perth is over here.

Generally the area of where debris was found. What's interesting though, doing math in our heads and doing figuring, Mitchell and I believe, we have how much fuel left? How much time left?

MITCHELL CASADO, PILOT TRAINER, 777 COCKPIT SIMULATOR: Two and a half hours. Two hours and 45 minutes or somewhere around there.

SAVIDGE: In other words that we could continue and again, this is all very loose, for another how much further?

CASADO: Another 1,500 miles or so.

SAVIDGE: So we could go a lot further into a much remote region at least based upon the information we have. This raises the question, if the plane didn't go that far, why did it come down? Was it out of fuel or was it something else? We don't have the answers to that. These are gentle directions the simulation points you to. Raises more questions unfortunately.

COSTELLO: So, would the plane be on auto pilot? Is this a known flight path or would someone actually have to be flying physically in this direction?

CASADO: The plane could be on auto pilot, what we call heading mode. There doesn't have to be a flight plan for the plane to be on automatic flight. You could point in a direction at 360 degrees at altitude and speed and the airplane would just fly that. You don't actually need a path. It can still be on auto pilot.

SAVIDGE: What happens to automatic pilot when you run out of fuel?

CASADO: When you run out of fuel, the auto pilot will disengage. It will keep gliding until it actually hits.

SAVIDGE: So it doesn't go to a nose dive?

CASADO: No. It will start to --

SAVIDGE: Even without any human intervention without the pilot touching the control?

CASADO: Right. It will gently slide down to the water.

COSTELLO: A horrible thought. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Martin Savidge and Mitchell Casado.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, Malaysia Airlines meeting with the families of the missing. Atika Shubert is inside the briefing room. We'll check back with her when we come back.

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COSTELLO: For the families of the passengers on Flight 370, the wait for answers has of course been agonizing. Some are holding out hope their loved ones will be found alive. Others say they are prepared for the worst. Malaysia Airlines now meeting with the families at a hotel in Kuala Lumpur. Our Atika Shubert is there. Has the meeting begun?

ATIKA SHUBERT, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (via telephone): The meeting has begun. It's been going now for almost over an hour. We don't know what's happening inside, but I can tell you after speaking with family members, there's a lot of frustration and anger understandably. At the same time, especially with this news of debris being found, one father I spoke to said he's hoping for the best, but that if this is the plane, he would accept whatever they find.

So I think family members are taking it all in different ways. We don't know what's being said inside. We are hoping that somebody will come out and make a statement. They said a spokesperson for the families will come outside. Malaysian officials want to give a full briefing and keep them up to date with the latest findings on the debris.

COSTELLO: Yes, I talked to one man who lost his stepmother and his father on an Egypt Airliner that went down. He talked about the financial cost to these families. He said he wanted to say to the government of Malaysia, help these people economically. Soon they're going to begin really hurting in that sense. Have you heard anything about that?

SHUBERT: There's been no discussion of compensation yet. I think part of the reason for that is we simply don't know what happened to this plane. If for example it is a confirmed part of the plane. That may be a part of the discussion. For many families here, they're still hoping in some sense that that the passengers have survived somewhere.

I spoke to a father of one passenger, 36-year-old it engineer that supports his own young family, two young children and a wife, but also his parents and sister that just graduated. It's that kind of a breadwinner of the family. He was the first graduate out of college in generations that it's going to be so hard to help to compensate. They were really earning for the entire family.

COSTELLO: Atika Shubert, we'll check back. Thanks so much.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, the families of Air France Flight 447 that crashed in the Pacific Ocean five years ago are reaching out to families. We'll tell you why they're calling for an independent investigation and how that could work.

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