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Mystery of Flight 370 Continues; Searching for Objects Seen on Radar

Aired March 20, 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: We are tracking what is being called the best lead yet in the search for missing Flight 370. And you are looking at it here. You are looking at it here, these two mysterious objects floating in the unforgiving waters of the Southern Indian Ocean, 14 miles apart, spotted five days ago by a satellite.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN YOUNG, AUSTRALIA MARITIME SAFETY AUTHORITY: This is a lead. It's probably the best lead we have right now, but we need to get there, find them, see them, assess them to know whether it's really meaningful or not.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Caution in every word there.

But the bottom line is this. Flight 370 could be resting some 1,500 miles off the west coast of Australia. Of course, until they find these objects, we can't know for sure.

But let me tell you what we do know. One of the objects is huge, 24 meters, so, translation, 79 feet long. The other is much smaller, five meters or 16 feet in length. Planes, as you can imagine, were immediately dispatched to scour this area where they think this debris may now be.

But think about this. Weather, the weather has been wild. And eventually nightfall ended that search for now. But a merchant Norwegian ship is there searching the area through the night and using high-powered lights.

And let's not forget the families who have been told about this possible debris find, and some of them not wanting to believe this is how the search could end.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SARAH BAJC, PARTNER OF MISSING PASSENGER: It's enough to make us all anxious again, after a couple days of quiet, but I'm cautiously pessimistic that it's not a piece of the plane. I keep hoping that somebody took this flight for a reason, which means they would have preserved it and tried to hide it, tried to take it someplace.

If this debris is indeed part of that plane, then it kind of dashes that wishful thinking to pieces.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Let's go now to CNN's Saima Mohsin. She's live in Kuala Lumpur for us.

And I understand that Malaysian officials, they are directing nearly all of the search teams to the possible debris site in the Indian Ocean.

SAIMA MOHSIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, that's right, Brooke. They are.

And that's because they really have a firm belief that this could well be the place where they can finally locate Flight MH370. This is a remote part of the Indian Ocean. So, what we have right now, in effect, is all of the search-and-rescue operation being diverted to this part of the Indian Ocean; 2,400 kilometers away from Perth, we have 18 -- out of 18 ships.

There were 18 in the entire operation. All 18 of them have been diverted to this location; 25 out of the 29 aircraft in the entire operation have been diverted to help in that search-and-rescue operation, and we understand a number of helicopters as well.

Now, of course, that means that this is going to be a massive operation in that area. And it is so crucial that these efforts are all diverted there, because, of course, time is of the essence, and the distance is an issue as well, not least because it is so far away from Perth, the base where many of the aircraft will be flying in and out of.

But also that debris was located on the satellite four days ago. It could well have floated away. Let me tell a bit you about this location as well, Brooke. This is one of only five locations in the entire world where the sea collects oceanic trash. It's like a kind of garbage patch, if you like, where debris from water gathers.

The concern is that this could be any kind of debris. It might be linked to MH370. It might not be. Authorities are being cautious to remind us of this possibility and of course a lot of hopes and fears resting on it, Brooke.

BALDWIN: It could be the plane. It could be something off a ship and it could just be trash. Saima Mohsin, thank you in Kuala Lumpur.

Joining me now from New York, oceanographer Arnold Gordon of Columbia University.

So, Mr. Gordon, welcome back.

You just heard our correspondent there. Forgive the cliche. They are putting a lot of eggs in this basket as far as the search goes. When we say 20 ships and 35 aircraft searching the waters, can you just run through conditions and weather currents, et cetera, and just the difficulties for the search teams? ARNOLD GORDON, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY: Yes, I agree that the debris looks -- there is a good probability that it is the aircraft.

And the debris field they speak about in the middle of the Gyre is a little bit north of that area, quite a bit north of it. I don't think it's in what is called the garbage debris region of that area.

And I also think that from the size of it, it's not coming from a merchant ship. I would put pretty high odds that this is it. However, with that said, to find it now is not going to be easy. I think it could be at least 100 miles away from where that -- those satellite image of 16th of March show it to be.

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: How do they do that? Let me just jump in. How do they do that since the pictures are a couple days old? How do you pinpoint where that location could be, given the other variables at play?

GORDON: Oh, that's right.

So, there are many measurements of ocean circulation from satellite. There are some drifters out at sea. And these are all put together into a map. And I looked at the average currents there for the last five days, centered, I think on March 15. And the flow is clearly to the east at about a half-a-mile an hour.

However, they're strong winds. The storm that just passed is giving strong winds from the southwest, and you get some really big waves coming around from Africa, south of Africa there. And that forms whitecaps and breaking waves. It's a very rough surface. It's very hard to see from a ship more than a few miles. And aircraft are going to see a lot of whitecaps.

They got probably about a 100-mile area to look through, not easy.

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: That's not easy and that's just the surface. Can we talk about what lies beneath, right? Because talk about massive and the depths vary so much between several thousand and 15,000 feet and then you have topography on the bottom of the ocean. Would about submersibles? Wouldn't they be pushing underwater vehicles out there as well and looking underneath?

GORDON: Yes, that would be the -- that's what they are going to have to do.

It's the debris I believe would have dropped very close to the mid- ocean ridge. And its average depth might be 3,000 -- 2,500 to 3,000 meters. But the sea floor is very rough there with mountains and valleys. The debris from the plane would have broken up, it would be scattered in different places in that hills and valleys.

They can send down non-manned submarines with photography. They move very slowly. It will take a long time to find it. I think we're talking about months, unfortunately.

BALDWIN: Somebody was saying to me earlier today that it's almost like we know more about the surface of Mars than we know about the surface the ocean floor in this part of the world. That's a frightening thought, right?

GORDON: Yes. Yes. That's true.

BALDWIN: Arnold Gordon, thank you for joining me.

I know there lots of questions out there. We are working to get them answered for you. You continue sending me. My twitter feed is inundated by you. I appreciate it. We're going through them. Send me tweets at @BrookeBCNN. Hashtag it #370Qs. And we will bring our experts on to answer some of your questions live on CNN in 20 minutes from now. Stick around for that.

Also ahead, the families, the families of these passengers reacting to the news about possible plane debris off the western coast of Australia, each day so emotional. Each new piece of information can be gut-wrenching. And today some of these family members held a tearful news conference in Malaysia, hoping these objects that we keep talking about off the Australian coast are not part of the plane.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): I have hope. From the very beginning, I firmly believe everyone on board is alive. I am just not sure where they have hidden the plane.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Next, an expert explains how the families can possibly try to cope with this just sense of helplessness, this not knowing.

Also ahead, can the possible debris tell us what happened in the cockpit? Down the road, was the plane on autopilot? Did it run out of fuel? We will explore those angles coming up.

You're watching special coverage.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: You're watching CNN's special live coverage of the disappearance of Flight 370.

And at this moment, the families of the 239 souls on board that plane, they are waiting for facts. Not leads. Not theories. After 14 days, they are demanding answers from officials as to where their loved ones are, and today they still don't have that answer.

Look at these pictures. You don't even have to speak the language. We can show you still pictures and this translates, because this is what these unanswered questions are doing to them emotionally each and every day, the anguish on their faces.

Just a short time ago, one father told us he can't sleep at night.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WEN WANCHENG, FATHER (through translator): I can't sleep each night because all I think about is my son. Up until now, what else can we do? This is about his flight. There is nothing you can do to help. We can only wait for further updates.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: In Malaysia's capital, officials told family today they cannot confirm the debris spotted is in fact from a plane, but a father of a passenger says, if it is the plane, he will accept it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SELAMAT BIN OMAR, FATHER (through translator): As a father, I hope that all the passengers on Flight 370 are safe. My feeling is, personally, I am grateful to the Australian government for finding it. Both governments, Australia and Malaysia, I thank them. If it is true, it is OK. I will accept it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: That's the first time I have actually heard something like that.

This is Erik Fisher, a licensed psychologist, joining me to just walk through with the emotions. And that was the first time. Most of the time, I have heard from passengers' family members who have said they don't want this to be from the plane, they don't want to believe that their loved ones are not alive somewhere. It's this mixed bag, is it not?

ERIK FISHER, PSYCHOLOGIST: It is.

I think we have the feelings that many of us want to show on the surface, our ideal self. And we have our real self and our feel self. Even in these situations, you have some families say, I want them to be alive, but somewhere inside, they have to also want some closure.

And that's the hard part is the guilt that can go on in terms of looking out for yourself and wanting closure, and the pain that you feel and the fear you feel for someone you love potentially being in a perilous situation or being dead.

BALDWIN: And then what makes this almost worse for some of these parents is that there is a one-child rule in China.

FISHER: Exactly.

BALDWIN: You can have one kid. And for many of these parents -- we saw the mother dragged out of the news conference yesterday talking about her son. That's her only son.

FISHER: Exactly. The other issue too with that is there are people in China, women in China who have more than one child, but they can only keep one. If you lose your son and you had given your other children away and other things had happened to those children, that you don't have them, how devastating it is to relive another loss.

BALDWIN: You had already dealt with one loss and now this becomes very real again, multiplied, revisiting.

And then there's the issue of, you just don't know.

FISHER: Right.

BALDWIN: What are -- I'm losing track of the days, 14, 15? How do you start the grieving process? Do you allow yourself to begin that, even though you don't know definitely what happened to your son, daughter, aunt, uncle? How would you advise one to cope?

FISHER: They are grieving already. There is a grief process. They're going through this.

What is added to it is a feeling of helplessness, of hopelessness, of powerlessness, betrayal, mistrust, fear.

BALDWIN: Anger.

FISHER: Yes, and anger comes up to protect us. The anger, the rage and the emotions that are expressed and are so powerful are there to protect, because they want to protect their loved and that their loved one might not be getting the attention that they need, as well as protecting themselves and their feeling of helplessness.

Emotionally, it's an extremely overwhelming situation. Very little sleep many of these people are getting. They don't trust the people around them that are supposed to be giving the information. And they're out of their element. They're not home. Many of them have come from China to a strange country. Granted, it's in the region, but it's not home.

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: It's not home.

FISHER: And that makes it that much more stressful for everybody.

BALDWIN: Thinking about them, I come back to at least thinking, they are all together. It's not like this is one family dealing this with one mystery. It is a mass amount of people, hopefully talking and coping and hugging one another.

Erik Fisher, thank you so much for your expertise, as always.

FISHER: Thank you.

BALDWIN: Coming up next, if this plane did crash, that's a big if, how it crashed of course is key. Our experts will explain the different ways it could have crash-landed into the water and how that is important once they find the debris to then backpedal and figure out what happened to the plane in the first place.

We will walk through scenarios, as our CNN special coverage continues right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: In the search for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, we are working every angle of what is really now the best lead yet.

You have these two grainy satellite images may, may show possible debris from this missing plane, two objects detected in remote and turbulent and very isolated waters here, nearly 1,500 miles off the Australian coast there in the Indian Ocean.

This possible debris may help explain what happened to Flight 370.

Joining me now to talk about this, CNN aviation analyst Mary Schiavo, also former inspector general for the U.S. Transportation Department, and pilot David Funk.

Welcome to both of you.

Mary Schiavo, let me just kick this off with you. If and when these search vessels find this debris, if it in fact is debris from the plane, can you just walk me through what they will be looking at, the examination process?

MARY SCHIAVO, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Well, first and foremost, they will carefully mark wherever they find it. They will put buoys and markers and they will chart where they find it.

And then they will have to bring it on board a search platform on a ship and save it. And everything will be important on it. They won't wash it off. They will want to see if there is any residue, what it looks like, is it torn, is it ripped, has it been exploded, are there burn marks, and of course they have to be careful and sensitive too because they will be looking also for human remains.

And then they will chart the waters and they will calculate how far the debris could have moved, because they will then basically want to reverse the clock for 12 days and find where they think the point of impact was, so they can look for the black boxes. But there will be lots of clues on any piece of wreckage.

BALDWIN: David Funk, is it possible that anyone could have survived this? Can you ditch at sea?

DAVID FUNK, FORMER PILOT AND INTERNATIONAL CAPTAIN: You can clearly ditch at sea, but had they ditched at sea, we would have a raft in the water if there were survivors.

And in those rafts would be an emergency locator transmitter that is water-activated. As soon as they just toss it off the side of the raft on a little lanyard, a retention lanyard, we would have known because the satellites would have immediately picked that up the night of the airplane going missing.

So, had that happened, if there were survivors in the water, those slide raft combinations, when you open those door, we would have known about it immediately and we would have had people there 12 days ago. So, to me, if this turns out to be debris from the airplane, it's unlikely that we have any survivors. I hate to say that. This may become a recovery operation.

BALDWIN: And, then, Mary, we keep talking about the black box. Listen, I know it's orange, I know it's the flight data recorder, but, colloquially, everyone knows it as the black box.

And we know the black box is kept in the tail. We know that is what was found two years after that Air France went down, and that really held the secrets as far as what happened to take that plane down. How difficult is it to find the tail? Is it likely to float?

SCHIAVO: No, it does -- well, the tail itself will float, but the black box is probably not still in the tail section.

In a breakup on the ocean, the ocean, it looks like nice whitecapping water, but the plane would probably break apart. It's probably at the bottom of the ocean. And that thing, the flight data recorder, does not flat. The cockpit voice recorder, since the flight -- if it's there, the flight would have gone on so long. And if the pilots were not speaking and there is no clicks or sounds of equipment, the cockpit voice recorder is not going to be a lot of help.

But the data recorder will be a gold mine of information and it will literally tell everything that the plane did.

BALDWIN: And, David, when we look at this big picture, this puzzle, it almost seems like a moving puzzle. And we all know we are lacking many, many pieces, but what is the most crucial piece of the puzzle that you think they need to find?

FUNK: If we could find a digital flight data recorder, that would be number one.

The cockpit voice recorder would be number two. And then I would say the third thing is if we can recover the cockpit itself from the ocean floor, if that's where it's at, because we will know then if there was a fire in either electrical equipment compartment or in the cockpit itself. I would like to know what the position of the oxygen masks were.

Were they stowed in their secure containers? Were they removed? If we can recover the cockpit off the floor of the ocean, that will really help us answer many, many questions. We may never get the full mosaic, but we will get enough pieces that we can have a pretty good idea of what the probable cause was here.

BALDWIN: Mosaic, that's the perfect -- that's the word I was looking for, but that is all the big if, if in fact this is the plane debris.

Mary and David, will you do me a favor and stick around? Because a lot of people have questions and we will continue throwing them at you. So, keep sending them to @BrookeBCNN. Hashtag it #370Qs. We want some of our experts to answer some of those questions, and they will do so, everything from you are asking about a depressurization of the cabin to the government's next step, if this is not debris from the plane.

That's ahead. Also, we talked to an American deep sea rescue company that could be called in to help find this plane. The divers actually helped search for -- we were just talking about it -- that Air France Flight 447 as well. Hear what they think is the key to finding this missing plane.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: Just about at the bottom of the hour. You are watching CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin.

And, at this moment, we are following not just one, but two big leads in the search for missing Flight 370. A U.S. official says the FBI team examining pilot's at home-flight simulator is confident it can recover at least some of the information that was deleted. So, that is number one.

Number two, as far as the whereabouts of the plane itself, well, the answer might -- might be right here. Zooming in, zooming in, here you go, 1,500 miles off the west coast of Perth, Australia, it's being the most isolated place in the world. But, right now, in the middle of the night, it's 12 hours ahead here of us, the search for these two objects spotted by satellite bobbing in the Indian Ocean off of Australia is continuing.

A Norwegian merchant cargo vessel, though, has taken the night shift. They're using their high-powered lights to hunt for what could be parts of this missing plane, trying to find and track those missing pieces, possibly of plane debris.

Some of the best questions, they're coming straight from you tweeting me using the hashtag #370Qs.