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Debris in Southern Indian Ocean Could Be From Missing Flight; Questions and Answers About Flight 370; Simulator Indicates Plane Could Have Traveled to Southern Indian Ocean; Australia Contacts U.S. Firm for Help in Search;

Aired March 20, 2014 - 15:30   ET

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

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: So let's just throw your questions at the experts, shall we? We are bringing them back, Mary Schiavo, CNN aviation analyst and former inspector general of the department of transportation, and David Funk, pilot and former international captain for Northwest Airlines.

So, a lot of you are asking me about autopilot. Let me read this questions from Kathleen. This is what Kathleen wants to know.

"Is it possible if the cabin depressurized and pilots succumbed that plane flew on autopilot the entire known flight path?" David, to you.

DAVID FUNK, PILOT AND FORMER CAPTAIN, NORTHWEST AIRLINES: Absolutely possible.

And what would happen is after it passed the last waypoint that was programmed into the flight-management system, it will go into the heading-hold mode where it will just fly the last assigned ground track.

And it will just keep going on that heading, compass heading, until essentially, what's probably happen here or may have happened here, until the airplane runs out of gas.

So it wouldn't require any inputs from any crewmember to just -- it's an automatic mode that Boeing and Rockwell and Honeywell built into that auto-flight system, and that's what it's going to do.

BALDWIN: OK, that's a good question on the autopilot, because that's really being talked about today.

Mary, this next one is for you, this tweet from Marie. She writes, "What is the range capabilities of the black box ping? How close would a searcher have to be to hear it?"

MARY SCHIAVO, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Pretty close, unfortunately. Depending upon the conditions, one to three miles, maybe, more or less.

But they really have to go back and forth across it, and that's why they sometimes use submersibles to get a little closer so they can hear better.

BALDWIN: Underwater vessels to try to be able to hear the ping.

And we know that the battery life runs out on that ping in about 13 more days, if my math is correct here.

Next to you, David, to you, and I don't know if this is your wheelhouse. This definitely would be for an oceanographer, but I'll throw it at you, anyway.

How far away can the wreckage drift away and to which direction since it has been more than 10 days?

FUNK: Well, an oceanographer could answer exactly, but being a former chemical and nuclear warfare officers, I understand downwind drift calculations, and essentially, they would just calculate.

The experts and oceanographers would just look at, as the previous guest you had on, talk about -- they would work it backwards, how much drift could this particular piece have had based on its known location?

Granted, these are just kind of averages, but what it does is it takes us down from -- if this is a chunk of the airplane, it takes us down from being looking over millions of square miles to a few hundred square miles.

And then you have an idea of where to put those submersibles in the water, so they can do the hard work under the surface.

BALDWIN: OK. Your expertise, glad you could answer that one.

And then, Mary, finally to you, and this is a very realistic question. Chris wants to know, "What if it" -- it being this debris or whatever this stuff is in the ocean -- "what if it isn't from the plane? Where will the governments go from there?"

SCHIAVO: I think they will continue to talk to the NTSB to try to refine additional possible flight paths and search data.

But I do think they will go back and look for criminal motive. They will look and see if there is any chatter on intelligence lines, maybe even put out rewards for information and use intelligence lines like after Pan Am 103 and the 9/11 planes.

And I think they will look back at criminal possibilities, but so far, we have absolutely nothing there, no motives and no chatter on the intelligence lines. That looks kind of quiet.

BALDWIN: OK. And one more question, we actually just added this. We keep getting all these great questions from you, so let me read this. David, we'll throw this one at you.

"Why did Malaysia not do anything when they saw the course had been changed?" I'm assuming the course is that dramatic left-hand turn instead of just heading straight to Beijing.

FUNK: They were probably waiting to hear from the pilots. And if this turns out to be something like a fire in the center pedestal that knocked out the transponder and the ACARS, it's also going to knockout the other communications radio, because they're all located in that same general area.

And getting back to what Mary said, because we are not hearing chatter, we're not hearing claims of responsibility, and people are not going to ground, sometimes the chatter disappears in the intelligence world.

And if that disappeared, that would raise suspicions, but because there's really no changes that I'm hearing from my friends out in D.C., my contacts, my guess is this is probably a crash, and as a result, we need to continue the search-and-rescue efforts.

If it turns out to be a -- if it's not a chunk of the airplane, we are still in the general vicinity where we need to be looking, it sounds like from the data points that we have.

We can only continue, as Mary said before, to refine those and try and get, as much as possible, good information to minimize the size of the search area.

BALDWIN: We are just about two-and-a-half hours away from sunrise in this part of the world.

You know, as we have been reporting, the vessels, the planes, dozens, heading to this part of the world, really focusing on this area for the search, trying to find this possible debris so we'll know, maybe in just a couple of hours.

Mary Schiavo and David Funk, thank you both very much for answering those questions.

And thank you for your questions. Keep them coming, continuing to answer them.

And, coming up next, we will take you back inside a cockpit flight simulator. CNN's Martin Savidge has been showing us all week long different scenarios that could have played out onboard this Flight 370.

And, so, today, we will have Martin fly over the site of this possible debris in the Indian Ocean, and he'll show us what happens when the plane can run out of fuel.

We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: Welcome back. I'm Brooke Baldwin.

Question, could possible debris spotted in the Indian Ocean bobbing along -- could it be wreckage from the Malaysia Airlines Flight 370?

We know that the search for the plane narrowed after the two large objects were spotted by satellite, you see the map here, just about 1,500 miles from Perth, Australia.

If -- big "if" -- those objects turn out to be parts of the plane, do they lend more weight to the theory that the plane was on autopilot and it flew and it flew for hours until it just quite simply ran out of fuel.

Let's take that and go to Martin Savidge in our -- back in our virtual cockpit with flight instructor Mitchell Casado.

And, Martin, I know that you two have programmed the cockpit to fly near -- over the Indian Ocean near this site of possible debris.

Could the plane have made it that far?

MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Right. That was the first test we did. We wanted to load the plane with the fuel we think that they had, about seven hours worth, and pointed south, and would it make it?

And we showed earlier today that, yeah, absolutely, this plane -- there's a lot of things we don't know, but in theory, this plane could easily have made it and actually had time to spare and gone further.

But we are right now over the southern Indian Ocean in, of course, the simulator. I can show you on a map, roughly, where we are. This pin drop here is us. You've got Perth, Australia, just over here, and Kuala Lumpur just up here. So, straight shot down.

You know, we are 1,600 miles away from Perth, Australia. This is right the area where the debris is said to have been spotted. We are on autopilot.

So, let me show you what happens, because what would eventually, we believe, in scenario is you run out of fuel, which means then that autopilot goes off. There would be an alarm. That's just the way it is.

You can shut it down, but then Mitch can take us down. The plane would do a gradual descent. It doesn't mean that when it's on autopilot -- right, Mitch -- that it just nosedives.

MITCHELL CASADO, BOEING 777 PILOT TRAINER: No, it would gradually go down.

SAVIDGE: It is built to do that, built to just slowly, evenly descend, right?

CASADO: Absolutely.

SAVIDGE: We're going to keep going down. These are the alarms you start to get, because the plane would be sensing -- it thinks it's landing, which, of course, it wouldn't be, and it's putting alarms out, saying you're too low, pull up.

It'll put out other alarms saying, You want the landing gear down, don't you, if you're landing? But, of course, we are assuming here the pilots were incapacitated. The plane's not going to get any response. It's going to go lower and lower and lower.

And we're now 160 feet, 150 feet. This would all be happening. The problem at this point is, Brooke, that the plane is not going to land itself automatically in the water.

Mitch is able to hold it here because he is flying it manually, but there is no autopilot that is going to take it down, gently, evenly onto the surface of this water.

We all know about the "Miracle on the Hudson."

BALDWIN: Right.

SAVIDGE That was called a miracle for a reason. This plane, it wouldn't do that, and we're going to attempt to try to simulate what would happen.

BALDWIN: No, let's not do that, but I see how close to the water you guys are.

Mitch and Martin, thank you.

And that is the question, if, in fact, this is debris from the plane, it's been fascinating just talking to experts about how they'll be able to figure out, trace back, based upon -- and the condition in which they find the debris, how that plane hit the water.

Australian authorities have contacted a firm right here in the United States. It's actually worked on several deep-sea searches, including the search for Air France Flight 447, which crashed into the Atlantic just about five years ago now.

So, CNN's Dan Simon is working on that for us today. And, so, Dan, what did you learn?

DAN SIMON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Brooke. Let's just assume for a moment that this is in fact the wreckage that we are seeing from the satellite.

We've been trying to research what an ocean recovery would look like, so we reached out to one of the pioneers when it comes to deep searches in the ocean, and we found Mike Williamson who is based in Seattle, and, as you said, he's already had discussions with authorities in Australia about possibly getting involved.

And what Williamson tells me is the first thing you'd want to do is try to get specialized equipment down there to hear some of the pings from the black boxes.

But he's not terribly optimistic you would be able to do so at this stage of the game, because the wreckage is likely very deep in the ocean. So, the next thing you would do, and this is what Williamson does for a living, is he puts equipment into the ocean. This is sonar equipment. And he does these highly specialized searches.

And it would take approximately 45 days to do a very detailed search of a particular area.

Now, assuming you came up with something, then you would put in secondary equipment. This would be ROV equipment equipped with cameras and the ability to actually extricate debris.

That would take another 45 days. So, now, we are looking at, Brooke, 90 days just to do this search, and we don't even know what we're dealing with yet at this stage of the game.

We don't know if this is, in fact, debris, so this could take a very, very long time assuming we confirm that this is plane wreckage.

And, remember, it took approximately two years to recover the black boxes in the Air France crash, so we're talking about a very painstaking process, Brooke.

BALDWIN: Right. They've just got to get those vessels and aircraft out there in a matter of hours once the sun comes up to at least try to figure out where.

Because, keep in mind, these pictures we keep showing, these satellite images of these two pieces of debris is a couple days old, right? So, they've got to find it first and then trace it back.

Dan Simon, thank you for that explanation.

Coming up next, we are taking you about 1,500 miles off the coast of Australia. That's where, really, the spotlight is today. That's where the possible debris is located.

So, we will give you a virtual view of the area and take a closer look at some of the challenges these search crews will be facing.

And remember this? We talked about this last week, that crowdsourcing Web site. We've been telling you about the site, allowed you, if you have a home computer, log on, look at the images yourself, satellite imagery of the water for clues.

Now, CNN has learned that the company has given information that they have learned to Australian leaders.

More on how this Web site is working to make a difference, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: Back to these two pieces of possible debris, may finally reveal what happened to Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. It's really the best lead yet, and it has the whole world watching.

Right now, sailors on a cargo ship are trying to spot, to find, the mysterious objects floating somewhere some 1,500 miles off the coast of Australia.

Official search crews will return when the sun rises there in just about two hours from now.

So, Tom Foreman, let's go back to you in this virtual room, because you're -- let's continue honing on -- honing into these grainy images filled with potential clues to this 777's final path.

TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, there several reasons why these grainy images have attracted so much attention, Brooke.

First of all, let's talk about this whole notion that the search has been closing in tighter and tighter on the southern arc.

U.S. officials have been saying for days the southern arc from that satellite data is where to look. That's why they were studying the images there so closely on these search teams.

We know now that you've got pretty much half or more of the entire team with the most advanced aircraft out there, the best ships out there, everything they can get, heading to this area to help sort through all this, all because of those images, because they want to look much more closely at these images and figure out if there's really something there.

Now, these images don't look good to us, but I'll tell you this. These come from a company called Digital Globe which has the capability of taking very close images. They can't legally release some of those images to the public. So, in fact, what you get is a more degraded image when you start talking to folks like us.

But they have the capability of going down to about 14 inches with their satellites. So, if you put a license plate on the back of a car or something, you couldn't read it probably but you would know which color it is.

So, probably what the authorities are looking at in these images is much more detailed than what we're seeing.

But there are three things that have to be considered here. One of them is basically whether or not there is credibility here. The fact that the government is talking about this so seriously and the search teams are going there suggests that there is.

Secondly, the issue of size, Brooke, what we're talking about here is this piece is some -- around some 78, 79 feet. The plane itself is 200 feet, back to front. The tail is about 60 feet, top to bottom, 200 feet, side to side.

So, yeah, you can get pieces off it that big, although, as you know, Brooke, many, many experts out there are saying, I don't know if they float.

BALDWIN: Right.

FOREMAN: But the last one is location, and location is what you're talking about when you talk about the challenges out here.

This is the right location based on all the parameters, all of the probabilities they worked up. They had a reason to believe something might be here.

The right location, but locating this piece or these pieces out there, that's a huge, huge job.

Think about this. When you get close to the water, you have reflections, you have white caps. You've heard about the weather all day. This is a tremendously difficult job.

The people on that ship are looking with lights and binoculars, out into the water right now. That's a difficult, difficult job.

The planes flying over have to deal with the same thing, especially since this debris is supposed to be somewhat beneath the surface based on the satellite images.

And once you start talking about going deeper beneath the surface, Brooke, now, you're talking about a whole different ball of wax here, because when we talk about the pingers and whether or not there's a signal coming up from the flight-data recorder of the voice recorder, there may be a signal coming up somewhere, but the distance from the bottom here to the surface may eat up almost all the power of those pingers to be heard.

Plus, if there are layers of warm water out there, thermo-clines out there, that severely limits how much those pingers can be heard.

The simple truth is, the pinger helps you when you're already on top of it, when you've closed in so closely that you're within one to two miles. Then the pinger might help you if underwater obstructions like cliffs and valleys don't get in the way.

So, this is the best lead they've had in days, as you said a little while ago. That doesn't make it a great lead, and it doesn't guarantee anything like success.

This is just step one of many, many steps here, even, even if they find this stuff and it pays off and seems to be part of the plane.

Brooke?

BALDWIN: So many qualifiers as part of this story, if this, then maybe that, even that.

Tom Foreman, we watch and wait. A couple of hours, they're going to be out there looking for this thing. Tom, thank you.

You heard him mention this company, Digital Globe. So it's that company that's playing this big role in the latest search efforts, along with people like you, sitting at home on your computer.

So, Ana Cabrera, she's working this for us. She's live right now in Denver. And, Ana, you talked to representatives of Digital Globe exactly about how many people have logged onto this crowdsourcing site. How many?

ANA CABRERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, two different things that we're talking about here.

First of all, Digital Globe is a company right here in the U.S., based here in Colorado, not far outside of Denver. And, yes, they're the company we've been talking about now for well over a week that's been providing those images for people at home to log onto their computers and help in their search through that crowdsourcing effort on their platform called TomNod.

Now, we don't know for sure if these specific images that the Australian officials are looking at, if they were flagged through the crowdsourcing effort, or if they were provided by Digital Globe to the authorities, independently.

But we did confirm through Digital Globe that, yes, these are their images and that they have confirmed with the Australian officials that these are their images. Did not provide any additional information, but says they continue to work with the Australian government around with -- along with other officials in continuing to search for the missing plane, regardless if these are the images or not.

Now, we do know that nearly 6 million different objects have been tagged and marked by people who have logged onto that crowdsourcing Web site.

And, so, again, is it possible that these images came through that crowdsourcing effort? It's possible, but we're told they're going to continue to do it until there is any kind of confirmation that the search is over in some way.

BALDWIN: We know so many people are trying to help this Web site has crashed, talked to one of the guys running it last week, as you point out.

Ana Cabrera, thank you so much, in Denver for us.

And we will be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: Just about 60 seconds away from the Closing Bell. Let's get a quick market check. Up 106 points, investors taking a second look at Fed Chair Janet Yellen's suggestion that interest rates could start to rise, next year. We heard that from her yesterday.

Before I let you go, news out of Crimea, look at this video with me, and I'll tell you that these are Russian soldiers and armed supporters moving to tighten their grip on Crimea. They are taking over yet another military base.

The same sort of scene playing out at other bases across Crimea, Ukraine says it's drawn up plans to pull its forces back to Ukraine. And in Washington today we saw the president here announcing economic sanctions against 20 more cronies of Russia's Vladimir Putin. The targets include longtime friends and backers, including some believed to have enriched themselves under Putin's political patronage.

That's it for me. We'll see you back here tomorrow, Friday.

In the meantime, Jake Tapper starts now with "THE LEAD."