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Did Deadly Fumes Or Smoke Create "Zombie Plane"?; U.K.'s Telegraph Claims It Has Flight Transcript

Aired March 21, 2014 - 14:30   ET

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

MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: This is the time we all know as a passenger you are going to hear this. That is the distinctive ding of the seatbelts being turned off and then in the cabin, you would have heard the announcement essentially saying we've reached that cruise altitude. You are now feel free to unfasten your seatbelt and walk about cabin. So this is actually the moment of the flight when you really feel safe as a pilot, right? This is the safest time.

MITCHELL CASADO, PILOT TRAINER, 777 FLIGHT SIMULATOR: We have a saying called flying relaxed, but not detached. You are a little bit more relaxed, but you are not detached in any way.

SAVIDGE: Well, everyone feeling at least in the passenger cabin relaxed, there is another sound that you are going to hear up here and that would be the fire alarm. Suddenly the pilots realize somewhere on the aircraft there is a fire. They can look at the read out on the screen and it shows them this fire is emanating from the front cargo area. Could be that the front wheel maybe overheated and when you retracted the gear, it started smoldering.

Maybe there is a fire now in the electrical system. So the pilots immediately one of them might go down one level below us into that unit and look at the problem. Meanwhile you could be entering an alternate course to start sending us back to Kuala Lumpur at least to another airport. So that's what commences the turn.

Now while all that is happening, the transponder suddenly shuts off. Maybe the fire has affected that or maybe the co-pilot is down there unplugging the wires to shut it off like a burning toaster. And then you've got the ACARS system that shutdown after that. Maybe the same thing. But eventually the theory is there is so much smoke that the pilots become overcome and they pass out. But because the plane is on automatic pilot, because it has made this turn and has come about, it is going to fly for how long?

CASADO: About hours' worth of gas. So that would have taken it down to where they are searching.

SAVIDGE: And the engines just ran out and it descends into the sea. That's the theory of the zombie plane. It's essentially a plane without a brain because the pilots are incapacitated.

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: OK, Martin Savidge and Mitchell Casado, thank you so much for that. I want to get right to this just into CNN because we now know what the pilots on board this plane said to radio control from the moments before takeoff and until this plane vanished with that final verbal communication from supposedly this co-pilot, "All right, good night."

So the British newspaper, "The Daily Telegraph" said it has gotten a hold of the transcript that reveals the final 54 minutes of communication from the cockpit of this plane again to ground control. It is so important though, I have to mention this, that CNN has not been able to independently confirm that the transcript is genuine. OK, this is what we are getting from "The Telegraph."

So Rene Marsh joining me now, aviation and government regulation correspondent, and Miles O'Brien, pilot and CNN aviation analyst. So Miles O'Brien, I will kick it off with you. Tell me what you have seen of this transcript. Does anything jump out as unusual?

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: I haven't seen enough, Brooke, to really make a conclusive statement about exactly what they got a hold of. It looks like a like they got a hold of the ACARS transmission, which is that kind of automatic e-mail component of the aircraft potentially because it talks about it being a very technical conversation. What you get when you listen to the air traffic control tapes -- the conversations between the crew and the ground, are routine handoffs. We are at Flight level 350. They will say that, you know, welcome you to the frequently and that will be pretty much it. Unless something goes wrong, in which case there would be a whole conversation about that.

BALDWIN: Let me come back to you because Rene Marsh, have you seen this? What have you seen?

RENE MARSH, CNN AVIATION AND GOVERNMENT REGULATION CORRESPONDENT: No, Brooke. We do know that they will be posting it and we will be getting a hold of it, but at this point we have not been able to get our hands on it and to be honest, the newspaper and the telegraph is being transparent and saying that they have not even truly verified with the government that this is legit what they are looking at.

They have reached out to the Malaysian authorities there to find out if this transcript is indeed authentic and they said that they have not received any information that would be able for them to definitively say that it is authentic. But you know, this is why this is so important here. The only thing that we know of right now that was said is "All right, good night."

That happened as they were changing airspace from the Malaysian air space to the Vietnamese air space and that's when all contact was lost of moments later. The question was, you know, was there anything peculiar or suspicious that was maybe said in the minutes prior to that "All right, good night" and that's why we are waiting to see exactly what's in that transcript to see if there was anything said that may have raised a red flag.

BALDWIN: What about this? And this is could be to either of you if you know anything about it. We know that there was reportedly some call that was apparently made 6 minutes before the "All right, good night" message delivered by the cockpit. What was that call? O'BRIEN: Well, it's hard given what we know right now about this telegraphy recording, we need to see a little bit more. But basically certainly it is quite possible that 6 minutes prior that there was a routine conversation between air traffic control and the crew. Either acknowledging an altitude or a location or something along those lines.

These kinds of things are just routine aspects of flying. Basically you have a lot of conversations like this as you go along the way because as you move from the range of one radio transmitter to another, you switch over to a new controller, who is on a different frequency. It's all ground based instead of satellite based.

So that's the kind of thing we would expect to hear. What would be really interesting is to hear it not just read a transcript to see if there is any background noise that's unusual or to find out if one crew member or another swapped off on talking. That could be telling in some way. In any case, I would love to hear them.

BALDWIN: And we know the telegraph said they will be releasing it in about 20 minutes from now. So I know you guys are going to be near the computer when and if we get read this to parse through that. We'll bring you back on air.

Miles, let me stay with you because, you know, through this whole story, there have been so many questions and mine really is about relationships typically between a pilot and the co-pilot. We know this pilot was a veteran pilot, had something like 18,000 flying miles under his belt. Co-pilot was pretty young, 27. Are they close or share a lot and are they aware of what one another was doing in the cockpit at all times? Tell me more about that.

O'BRIEN: Well, you know, of course, the airlines over the years have experienced a lot of bad mishaps and fatal crashes because you have a tyrannical captain and a junior first officer. The tyrannical captain just said it's my way or the highway kind of thing and can fly them into deep trouble. I'm thinking of, for example, the collision of two 747s in the 1970s. That was the chief pilot for KLM. He wouldn't listen to his crew.

He was telling him that it was not a good idea to go down that runway. So that's one way it can go, but we don't know. This could have been a very healthy, you know, mentor-type relationship, which is what the airline is trying to encourage because you have a high time captain with a very low time first officer. So that can go either way.

BALDWIN: OK, Miles O'Brien, Rene Marsh, I will let you go, but we will see you in a couple of minutes when that report comes out and when we can parse through exactly what was said and what wasn't said in this transcript prior to take off.

We are continuing to answer your questions about this plane here live on CNN. I mean, everything from what submarines are doing to help in the search to why the plane was not picked up on Malaysian radar when it made that hard left turn away from Beijing. Send me a tweet #370qs. Special coverage right after this. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: All right, on the plane story, you have a lot of questions. They continue to pour into us at CNN. So let's go straight to our experts to help answer some of them. Rejoining me, Seth Kaplan, managing partner of "Airline Weekly" and Bruce "Buck" Rodger, a commercial airline pilot and aviation expert. So Gentlemen, welcome back.

Let's begin with one question. This is from Al Alsten, raises this point and Buck, I'll get this one first to you. So this is the question, Flight 370 has shown that lives of loved ones, future of aviation can be uncertain without radioing every 15 minutes. Now new tech, money needed. Do you agree with that? Should there be upgrades?

BRUCE "BUCK" RODGER, COMMERCIAL AIRLINE PILOT AND AVIATION EXPERT: Well, you know, Brooke, that's a great question and I'm happy to report that the new airliners that are being built such as the 787 Dreamliner are being equipped with equipment that will be automatically tracking the airplane every single second through satellite communication. This is technology that is on the way. It's now here and not every airliner has it. The older airplanes, this is not such an old airplane but --

BALDWIN: No, it's not.

RODGER: Unfortunately not equipped with this new technology.

BALDWIN: OK, Seth, here's a question from Allison. This is her question. Why have we not heard anything about submarines in the search for the Malaysia plane? Wouldn't that help the search efforts? So your answer is what?

SETH KAPLAN, MANAGING PARTNER, "AIRLINE WEEKLY": Good question, Allison. Well, first of all, we may not hear if they were being used because a lot of submarines, of course, military submarines and Navies are not going to tell us when they move those assets as they call them out of one place and into another. Beyond that, submarines are more useful when you narrow the field of possibilities. It's like if you picture painting your house and use a roller that paint most of the walls and touch it up with a brush at the end.

A submarine is more like that touch up brush that isn't all that useful until you more or less know what you are working with because they just don't -- particular with submarines, for example, it might detect those pings that we've been hearing about from the voice and data recorders. They don't sweep ocean floors. They go down to fairly specific areas. Great question though.

BALDWIN: Good analogy with the painting. Here's the next from Sheila. Buck, this is for you. If the flight took a turn to the left after flying a while and then flew back over Malaysian airspace, why was it not picked up on their radar?

RODGER: Sheila, that's a fantastic question. When this is going on, I did talk to my friends in air traffic control and talked to them specifically about radar. Just a little back up here. Radar is a system that sends a radio beam out and hits an object and could be a cloud or a bird or obviously an airplane. That signal is returned back. From that the radar controller can see the blip on the screen.

Now with this particular airplane we don't know what altitude it was at when it made the turn around. We are not sure if it flies back to radar coverage. In order for the Malaysian air traffic controllers to see this airplane, it would have to fly back. Now we know the transponder was not transmitting. This was an extra packet. They are seeing altitude, air speed, heading and identified the airplane. It's a specific code. That goes along with the radar blip.

So you are missing the packets. All you will see if it flies back is just a little blip and how long were they in radar coverage. You need many, many sweeps to be able to identify the airplane. It is an airplane and where it's going. This is why the information is unknown at this time. We don't know how long it was there and what altitude. I hope that answers your questions.

BALDWIN: Thank you for that, Buck. For Seth and this is something I have seen a bunch. We talked about the possibility of this, you know, the cabin suddenly lost pressure. The question here from Cynthia, are the pressure systems in the cabin and cockpit, are they separate systems? Can someone in the cockpit disable oxygen in the cabin? Seth?

KAPLAN: Well, the pilot, as Buck know, controls the airflow. Certainly in the cabin. In aircraft you have zones definitely. You can have different temperatures, for example, in different parts of the plane. You have zones, but the idea that they could disable it for the rest of the passengers and not for themselves, that would be difficult.

However, you know, you do have oxygen masks so certainly theoretically possible that somebody was on a mask and others weren't. Again, these are -- the idea that there were various people in the cockpit, the most likely scenario remains that there is one person in the cockpit who locked everybody else out of the cockpit. Far from the others, the only scenario.

When we see these various pilot murder suicides over the year, thankfully not many, it almost always involves one pilot locking the other pilot. The big difference and the reason why this is an enigma, the crashes with 1999 and the air crash of 1997, the pilot that locked out of the pilot crashed the plane right away. Why they would continue flying all those hours is a mystery.

BALDWIN: You know, bringing up the cockpit doors and the locks in the cockpit doors, Buck is a pilot, do you think that they should be there?

RODGER: Absolutely. These doors were generated from a result of a tragedy 9/11 that happened here. Before the cockpit doors, these new ones were installed, we had basically a paper thin door with a lock and key. Anybody that had a key would be having access to the flight deck. We felt the door that had safety features and if for some reason the pilots were incapacitate and a crew member needed to get in, there were codes they could use.

BALDWIN: There are certain codes.

RODGER: There are. However, if the pilots needed to completely isolate themselves from the back of the airplane, there is a dead bolt that they could use to completely totally take that door and shut it down and nobody gets through the door.

BALDWIN: I always wondered since 9/11 how exactly that worked if it was locked. Interesting answer. Thank you so much.

RODGER: Crew members, yes.

BALDWIN: Some of them have codes. Buck Rodgers and Seth Kaplan, thank you so much for answering these great questions and thank you for your questions. Keep them coming @brookebcnn #370qs. Coming up, why the search for this plane could have been made a lot easier if Malaysia Airlines had invested a little more into the technology of this jet.

So much conversation as we were talking comes back to technology. We are talking next about the $100,000 investment. Also ahead, we will focus on these 239 souls aboard the flight. The families in anguish not knowing what happened to their loved ones.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: Now to the heart of the story. The reason why you and I care so much. Not for all that's unknown or the unprecedented nature of this global search, no. This is about the 239 people who have not seen, hugged, talked to their kids and soul mates and partners and family and friends in two weeks. Here now is a snapshot of some of the lives so tragically interrupted.

This wife and mother from India is the executive secretary of the International Collective in Support of Fish Workers and so she was headed to a conference in Mongolia. Her husband allowed CNN to read the note he wrote to his friends and family. This inner circle just to thank them for their crucial support.

So let me quote part of this for you. Quote, "I remain focussed on what we have at hand by way of information and stay with the knowledge that Chandrika is strong and courageous that her goodness must count for something, somewhere. I carry firmly the faith that the forces of life are eternal and immutable and ever present to keep the drama ever moving in the ultimate analysis I am neither favored nor deserted. No one is," he said.

Like his wife there, others were traveling on business. Hollywood stuntman was reportedly headed home to Beijing to see his two young children and pick up material for a current project. Paul Weeks, a mechanical energy from Perth, Australia was on the way to a mining job in Mongolia. The father of two young sons, the oldest was just 3. He left his wedding ring and watch behind with his wife in case of the worst.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SARA WEEKS, SISTER OF MISSING PASSENGER: Earlier on, they discussed what they wanted to do and for some reason before he left to go to Mongolia, he decided to leave them both behind and saw that the oldest child would get his wedding ring and the youngest should get his watch if something happened to him.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Others on Flight 370 were traveling for pleasure. This man and his wife had been on vacation in Vietnam heading home to Beijing to their two young sons. She and her husband were taking a honeymoon they promised themselves for a long time. There were the Lawtons on the left here and the Burroughs on the right. Two couples, four friends seeing the sights abroad together.

Three Americans were on 370. Phillip Wood, an executive from Texas and father of two. And the other two with U.S. passports are children. Nicole Mang is 4 and Yan Jang is 2. It's unclear who these little girls were traveling with. Authorities say without waivers from those girl's families, there is nothing they can tell us about the children except that they are among the 239 missing.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: We begin with breaking news. Hour two. I'm Brooke Baldwin. You are with me as we continue the coverage of the disappearance of Flight 370. So this is the news just in. For two weeks, Malaysia has been refusing to hand over the radio communication transcript between the cockpit and the pilots of ground control. We have supports from the British newspaper, "The Daily Telegraph" that they have this transcript.

So every word spoken from the moment before takeoff until this plane vanished with those final words, "All right, good night." It's important to mention here that CNN has not been able to independently confirm that this transcript is in fact genuine. That said, we are waiting for the news from "The Telegraph."

So Rene Marsh is waiting as well. She is our aviation and government regulation correspondent. So specifically how much do we expect to see in the transcript? We are talking 54 minutes? Is that correct?

MARSH: Right. That's 54 minutes so, you know, the moment that they are pushing back from the gate. We know that typically pilots are speaking to either the controllers on the ground. They are telling them when to push back and when to taxi and go on the runway and cleared for takeoff. That's the typical communications that you would hear between the pilot and air traffic control. Now again, this British newspaper, "The Telegraph" saying that they have obtained those 54 minutes up until that last communication that we all know of.