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Malaysian Authorities: Last ACARS Transmission Showed Normal Routing All The Way To Beijing; Southern Indian Ocean Can Be A Hostile Place

Aired March 23, 2014 - 14:00   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, I'm Jim Sciutto in today for Fredricka Whitfield.

We are following new developments today in the mystery of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. We have updates on the search and also intriguing new information about the last data sent from the plane before it disappeared. First we'll begin on the search. Malaysian authorities say France gave them a third satellite image today showing them possible debris in the same area of southern Indian Ocean. Chinese and Australian sites have also spotted objects there. Today, though, eight planes and a ship searched that area of the ocean. They did not find anything. Crews did find one thing yesterday: a wooden pallet with strapping belts floating in the water. Pallets are used in the airline industry but they're also used in shipping. So it's not clear where this pallet came from.

Also Malaysian authorities clarified what was in that last transmission from the ACARS communication system at 1:07 a.m., minutes before the plane had its last communication with the ground. Officials say it showed nothing unusual, and the plane was at that point still headed for Beijing. That undermines the theory that the plane's computer was preprogrammed to take a different route before that 1:07 a.m. transmission.

I want to go straight to our CNN justice reporter, Evan Perez, in Washington. He's been following that story, particularly on this information since the beginning. Evan, that can you tell us about this development and how significant is it?

EVAN PEREZ, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Jim, it's pretty significant because one of the reasons why there was a lot of focus on the pilots, and one of the reasons why there's suspicion something went wrong in the cockpit was because there was this belief that the Malaysians had data that indicated there was a preprogramming or reprogramming of the flight computers that took it away from the course to Beijing, somewhere over the Gulf of Thailand, and sent it on the westward course that we have now charted.

Now, it's not clear why that information was relayed to U.S. authorities last week, but we do know from Malaysian authorities today that everything was normal in the computer system and that the ACARS system, the system that relays that system back to home base, didn't indicate anything was amiss on the way to Beijing.

SCIUTTO: Is there any reason, Evan, we should doubt this new information? As you know, there's been conflicting information and data coming from the Malaysian authorities. It's gotten better over time - we've heard that from a number of areas. But is there any reason to doubt this particular update?

PEREZ: Not really. One of the things that the Malaysians have done is to say, you know, I believe last weekend was when they raised the question of whether or not there was some foul play, perhaps, involved. And they also raised some concerns about whether or not the turn away from the flight path was deliberate.

So now they appear to have more information. They are for the first time telling us what exactly was in the computer system. I think that's a very important thing. Now, this doesn't rule out anything. This doesn't rule out that there might have been foul play. There might have still, obviously some theories that remain on the table -- terrorism, hijacking -- there might have been some mechanical difficulty on the plane that caused -- that caused the plane to turn around and perhaps caused the pilots to make some additional errors.

So all of those things remain on the table. And we should also point out that authorities are doing some of the same guesswork we're doing simply because they have such little information to go on, Jim.

SCIUTTO: All right. Bringing together pieces of the puzzle. That's true both of the investigation and frankly the search for the airplane. Evan Perez in Washington, justice correspondent. Thank you for joining us.

Now we want to get to some analysis of today's developments. Mary Schiavo, CNN aviation analyst. Also attorney for victims and families of transportation accidents. Kip Darby, retired commercial pilot himself, head of his own aviation consulting firm. Clive Irving, contributor for The Daily Beast. And CNN analyst Tom Fuentes, author of the book -- and David Soucie as well, who's author of the book "Why Planes Crash." So, we got a big panel here, a lot of brains who know these issues well.

I want to start with that first question. Viewers may be joining now for the first time and learning for the first time this development about sequencing. Malaysian authorities saying today for the first time that there is no evidence that the plane took off course was preprogrammed by the pilots, which had been a development a week ago. Interesting and it raised questions about whether this was a premeditated action by the pilots. And I wonder if I could begin with you again, Mary. Your experience with the NTSB investigating accidents before. Just explain to our viewers in short-term why sequencing is important.

MARY SCHIAVO, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Yes, it's important -- today's development is important because it does not -- it's more consistent. In other words, if pilots had put in this way point they were going to turn to, and they knew in advance of the last communication they were going to turn, then everyone was questioning. This had to be a premeditated act, that they were going to turn off the course to Beijing.

Now if the information is correct and it was not premeditated, it does fit very closely with the scenario that whatever happened happened suddenly, and they turned perhaps to go back to an emergency airport.

SCIUTTO: Well thank you, Mary. This is helpful putting it into context. Two developments today because the other news just right off the off the top of the hour is that the French have now provided new satellite data that points the direction of searchers in that same area of the south Indian Ocean. Nothing confirmed yet, satellite indications of possible debris.

Rick, in light of your experience on airplane recovery and your own research for the book "Finding Amelia" another great aviation mystery, significance of this new satellite data. Where would you place the progress of the search now?

We don't have you there, sorry. We don't have you, Rick. So, why don't I make that to Kip Darby, since you have experience as a pilot yourself. The new information, how much does this help us zero in, at least on where to focus assets here?

KIP DARBY, RETIRED COMMERCIAL PILOT: Well, Jim, although I agree with Mary there's nothing to indicate the pilots here -- from a technical point of view, the flight management does allow you put in a new route called an alternate route that wouldn't show up on the ACARS reporting. So just because the ACARS, which gives your current location when you pass over one of these known way points. It also gives the next way point and the one after that. So it would give us a map of where the airplane is expected to go.

But in the back-up case, you could put another route in and not activate it until needed. And there would be no indication from the ACARS reporting that route had been changed.

SCIUTTO: All right. Well, thank you, Kip. That's a good answer on another point, the idea there's another possibility of plugging in an alternate route without preprogramming it.

Why don't I go then to you, Tom Fuentes, since we have you as well? Experience as a former assistant FBI director. You and I have talked many times since the plane disappeared about the progress of the search. You have a little more satellite data today.

The trouble is each time one of the satellite pictures come up, they send the planes out to the area and they don't see anything. Is that simply to be expected in light of the expanse of ocean that they're looking in? And we should expect, in fact, a long process of looking for this and prepare for days, weeks, maybe longer?

TOM FUENTES, FORMER ASSISTANT FBI DIRECTOR: I think so, Jim. It's to be expected. That's exactly what we've gotten now for how many days in a row since the first satellite report by the Denver company followed by other satellite reports.

But I'd like to follow up on what Kit Darby just said. The issue back as I recall it was the rumor of the day last week or the week before about the flight having been preprogrammed. And the basis for that rumor at the time as I remember was because the flight turned too smoothly to have been hand flown by the pilot. And therefore it must have been a new way point or a new route entered in. And I questioned at the time, if the radar, if they were at the edge of the zone of coverage of that radar, and if they couldn't tell for sure what it was doing, how would they know it turned that smoothly? If it was a turbulent, hand flown, difficult turn, how could that radar be that precise, that far away, on one issue and completely ambiguous on other issues about that turn?

SCIUTTO: That's a good point. And again, just to remind our viewers, two developments today. New satellite data in the search but still nothing found when planes take a closer look. But this other development regarding the investigation. The idea that no indication, at least from the ACARS data, wireless transmission of data from the plane that the turn was preprogrammed. I have Clive next to me here as well. And you're experienced in these issues. As Tom reminded, it wasn't just the ACARS transmission which now turned out to be false that gave an indication. It's that the plane flew so steady by those way points, right, which would be less likely for you or me if we were experienced pilots to handle than an autopilot. But aren't there other ways for the pilot without preprogramming to get the flight to turn? For instance, just turning the dial, right? The heading.

CLIVE IRVING, CONTRIBUTOR, "THE DAILY BEAST": Well, I think this underlines something, this plane does not disappear. What disappeared was our ability to see it. And this shows shortcomings in the way of ACARS system because these ACARS messages were dispatched every 30 minutes. So between those messages there's this yawning gap.

Now this is a quite considerable change they have come up with again today, which is confusing. In one sense, it takes out the sinister implication that there was something sinister about preprogramming it before it disappeared. Now we're left with trying to conjecture whether it was a flown turn or computerized turn. I still adhere to the idea that whenever the turn occurred, before or after the last message, it was deliberate and carefully flown turn in some kind of emergency, which would be the natural thing for the pilots to do.

SCIUTTO: That's a key point. Even in an emergency, a pilot might make a control turn.

IRVING: He's flying 500 miles an hour at 36,000 feet. It's not like World War II where you suddenly grab the yoke and pull it over. You have passengers to think about.

SCIUTTO: So that would not of course eliminate the possibility that they were still reacting to some event, some sudden event in the cockpit to still have the plane under control.

IRVING: That's right. Once you get a new bomb dropped into the pool, which we've had now with this information, we have to, as it were, reconfigure the possibilities.

SCIUTTO: Understood. Listen, we have many more questions to answer. I'm going to ask the panel to stay with us. Thank you for joining us now, more questions to dig deep in.

The focus right now is on a recovery, not a rescue mission sadly. But our next guest says he thinks there is a chance there could still be survivors. Right after this break.

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SCIUTTO: Welcome back. I'm Jim Sciutto in New York.

Now, there's been a lot of talk about ACARS communication system on airplanes. And we wanted to explain to you exactly how this works. It stands for Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System. And it's a computer basically on board a flight that collects information about what the plane and pilot are doing at any time and it sends that information to the ground.

Now, we know that ACARS sent its last transmission at 1:07 a.m. It was expected to send another transmission a half hour later at 1:37 a.m., but that never happened. Malaysian officials said they don't know exactly when the ACARS systems went off in that 30-minute window. But we did learn when it sent last communication there was nothing to indicate in that last communication pilots preprogrammed that turn to the west. That's one of today's key new developments.

I'm going to bring back our expert panel. We have Mary Schiavo, CNN aviation analyst, formerly with the NTSB. We have Kit Darby, he's a retired commercial airline pilot, head of his own aviation consulting firm. Clive Irving here with me in New York. And CNN analyst Tom Fuentes, who is also former assistant director of the FBI.

Clive, I wonder if I could bring you in first. If we could talk about the system and the failings of the system and how the failings of this system contributed to the continued mystery as to what happened to this plane and where it is.

IRVING: I think the failings of the system are that it's not giving us what we imagine we should get from this system. It's not giving a complete and continuous - continuous is an important thing. Continuous picture of what's happening to this plane until the moment when whatever happened happened. ACARS is intermittent. In other words, it's every 30.

Also, it's not designed to describe the preamble to an emergency. It's designed to send, if you like, checks of the systems of the plane, the engines, the -- basic systems. It doesn't describe how the plane is being flown at that time. It's a health check. In that sense, I think we're all perhaps putting emphasis on what ACARS does and doesn't show us, and we have to look around the corner to see other things that are indicators, too. I've argued since the disappearance of Air France 447 that we badly need a system which is a streaming system, live streaming what's going on in the plane. And that's feasible. That can be done.

SCIUTTO: We've talked to some analysts and experts about even the cost, seemingly manageable cost.

IRVING: $1,500 a month per plane. If you break that per passenger, it's cents.

SCIUTTO: Okay. Certainly something to think.

As we focus now, if I could speak to the panel as well, on just the investigation here, it seems that we've seen at least all the information the investigators have. As you look at this, are there any other promising paths where before they find actual aircraft, presumably in the ocean, they can glean more information? Are they working with you think -- I'll start with you, Mary -- all they have at this point? Is there hope to find more data streams that can help them figure out what happened to this plane?

SCIAVO: Well, there are a couple of satellite company. Immarsat (ph) had indicated that they had provided coordinates to the researchers two days after the accident and where they are searching now. But it also suggested that perhaps there's more data from satellites and radar points to come. They're certainly gleaning it. More and more nations are providing information and assets to help in the search.

And of course, you'd also want to wrap up back at home base, if you will, on the issue of what was in the pilot's information to close that door, that alleyway, once and for all. What was in the maintenance records, was there anything outstanding. A lot of it is shutting down avenues so you don't have these loose ends. But hopefully the additional coordinates coming in from other countries and from the satellite company will help them hone in. At this point if they don't get any wreckage, then they have to theorize where the point of impact might have been based on those few satellite handshakes or pins where it would have run out of fuel. They are going to have to calculate the fuel burn. And for that, they're going to need the maintenance records and the aircraft logs.

SCIUTTO: Tom, I just want to ask you because Mary brought up the search there as well. It seems it's pretty paltry information so far -- or at least incomplete information that's leading them to devote so many resources in the air, on the surface, in the sky to the south Indian Ocean. Are you surprised on that focus based on the information they have? Do you think is irresponsible at this point to eliminate the other possibilities, even that northern arc where this flight could have ended up?

FUENTES: I think that's a really tough decision for them to make, Jim. Because if they don't devote enough aircraft and surface vessels to check the areas where they've had satellite imagery, and then they are off in other areas where they find nothing, they are going to be criticized for not following enough on the satellite imagery.

Meantime while they are down there following up on satellite imagery, what fewer resources are being devoted to the northern arc of that route and to the rest of that southern arc. If they are concentrated so much on that area, 1,500 miles southwest of Perth, Australia, they can't be everywhere all the time. They are making conscious choices on where to conduct the search with limited search hours that those airplanes and vessels have. And obviously, other things aren't being searched while that's ongoing. SCIUTTO: All right. Well, thanks very much to our panel. That's Tom, Clive, Kit, and Mary. We're going to bring you back later in this hour to delve deeper into these questions.

Search crews are looking for debris in the southern Indian Ocean. But one terrorism expert said the possibity of survivors still exists even to this day. We're going to talk to him right after this break.

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SCIUTTO: Satellite images from France may offer a new clue in the disappearance of Flight 370. Malaysia's transport minister says the images show possible debris in the southern Indian Ocean. The focus right now is on a recovery mission there.

And our next guest says the fact no one is talking about a possible rescue mission would infuriate him if he was a family member. Jeff Beatty is a terrorism expert who survived the deadly Blackhawk Down crash in 1993 in Somalia.

Jeff, great to have you on. This is a possibility that really doesn't get talked about much. It will seem a surprise to many in light of the fact that we're 16 days after this plane disappeared. How could it be possible for there to still be survivors?

JEFF BEATTY, TERRORISM EXPERT: Well, thank you, Jim. I'm not saying it's a probability. But with so many different scenarios out there, and I work off this theory analysis table and look at all the information against various theories. And there are still several theories where survivors remain a possibility. Remote but a possibility.

It seems to me that our priority should be on people. If there are survivors we need to do everything we can to try to find those survivors. And then the plane in the secondary sense. But we've had examples of surviving crashes. I was lucky enough to survive a crash where we had been left for dead. We had a Pan Am airplane go down in the 50s, ditched in the Pacific. Everyone was able to survive that crash. They got into the life rafts. That was encouraging. Of course, we all remember more recently the miracle on the Hudson.

So is it possible to survive one of these incidents? Yes, it is. When we think about the size of the objects that have been detected by multiple countries' satellite assets right now, I would invite you to go online and take a look at the slides for the 777 and large aircraft. And they are almost a match for the size of the objects that are seen floating. Those slide rafts that deploy automatically.

So perhaps we have slides out there. For all of us that fly, the thing to remember is if you find yourself in this situation, the lashing together of rafts, etc., gives a bigger signature so that people can look at satellite imagery and have an improved chance to see it.

So, my point is simply this: we have lots of theories. Many of them -- not many, but some say it's possible to have survivors. I was very pleased to see the Australians the other day mention they were in fact still looking at the potential for a rescue.

SCIUTTO: All right. It's a fair point. I wonder how would the search and allocation of resources change if that were the case. It seems they are working as fast as they can. But would you do it any differently, being a survivor yourself?

BEATTY: Well, Jim, I don't think we know everything that everybody knows about what's going on here with this search. There may be people who have information there are no survivors, and for protection of national technical means are just not able to tell us that at this point. But if it hasn't been eliminated, I would certainly be wanting to send out airplanes like C-130s that have the ability to drop survival rafts, to drop equipment right over people, to drop jumpers if need be to help people who may still be in the water. But the fact we don't have any aircraft capable of doing these air drops out there, the Orions and the Poseidon are not set up to have a big ramp where not just drop supplies or drop emergency supplies, survival supplies, but even put people with eyeballs on the ramp looking around.

So, we just haven't been putting assets out there to maximize possibility to favorably react if we in fact are fortunate enough to find one, two, or three survivors. But until we know all 239 personnel have in fact lost their lives, I think we should doing our operations in a way that gives us the ability, even if we save one survivor, it would be just a tremendous, tremendous thing to come out of this operation.

SCIUTTO: Well, it may change because I understand the HMS Success, it's an Australian ship, which also has going to the search area, it also has the ability for recovery in addition to search. And I believe there was one C-130, if my information is correct, it dropped a signal buoy around one of the search sites. So it would presumably - I don't know if was equipped with rescue equipment, but it would presumably have the ability at least - but you're right. Most of the aircraft are just purely surveillance aircraft.

And - but an interesting point, certainly one that requires explanation. So thanks very much to Jeff Beatty, terrorism expert and himself a Black Hawk down survivor under very long odds.

When we come back after this break, we're going to bring back our panel of experts back for a discussion of all the possibilities. Please stay with us. That's right after this.

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(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SCIUTTO: Right now authorities are analyzing a new satellite image released by French officials, potentially a fresh clue that could aid those in the search for missing Flight 370.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The area coverage, but again, we were not to detect any evidence of --

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO: Also, new details unfolding on what really happened inside the cockpit minutes before the last transmission.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's a game changer.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO: This as the world responds with more planes arriving into the region, but the weather could hamper those efforts. What are the families, waiting, worrying, and praying. We have all the angles covered. You're in the CNN NEWSROOM.

Welcome back. I'm Jim Sciutto in New York. I want to bring our panel of experts back. We have Tom Fuentes, former assistant director of the FBI, Mary Schiavo, formerly with the NTSB, Clive Irving, contributor to "The Daily Beast" as well as Kit Darby, a former commercial airline pilot, retired commercial airline pilot himself.

I wonder if we could just begin again at this new information today from the Malaysian authorities. That there is no indication now at least of pre-programming of that turn to the west. It doesn't mean that it wasn't done on purpose, but at least a pre-programming.

I wonder if I could start with you, Kit, as a retired commercial airline pilot yourself. The turn could still be deliberate, of course, even if it was not pre-programmed, correct? It could still be deliberate and under control even if it hadn't been plugged into that the flight management system. KIT DARBY, RETIRED COMMERCIAL PILOT: Well, Jim, at this altitude, the pilot is almost always on autopilot. I mean, I wouldn't say it can't be phoned by hand because it can, but the air is very thin, you're going fast. It's actually quite a handful at altitude that's why the autopilot were designed. So this thing was on autopilot.

If the pilot makes the turn, he simply turns a knob to a new direction, a very smooth turn is accomplished right below the threshold where many people sleeping in the back wouldn't even know. So if you had to fly it by hand, he would try to accomplish the same thing. Depending on his skills he may or may not wake somebody up. But it would still be a gentle turn. At that altitude, everything is going to be gentle.

SCIUTTO: Let me ask you a question just to follow up. You're in the cockpit, there's an event of some sort, a fire, a failure of systems, you want to turn that plane, head it back to a safe harbor, safe airport, is that a way you might turn the plane at that altitude just to change the heading?

DARBY: Absolutely, because I do want to keep the autopilot on because it takes brain power to fly the plane. I need my brain power to work with the emergency checklist, to coordinate with the other pilot, to understand what's going on. So if at all possible, I want to leave it the autopilot on. If it's off, I'm going to turn it on. So it would be very unusual to fly the airplane normally or certainly in emergency situation without the autopilot unless it was not available.

SCIUTTO: OK, Tom, I want to bring you in. So a turn that experienced pilots say could very well be deliberate without being nefarious, for instance, could be reaction to something. You're investigating something like this. Let's say that you had your FBI hat on again. How would that change your calculus as to the most likely explanations for why the plane disappeared?

TOM FUENTES, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: I don't know that it would change anything because there had been so many contradictory statements. Now we're going on two weeks and can't tell if the plane turned, was in the hands of the pilot or the autopilot. Now they are saying it wasn't pre-programmed when they never really knew for sure that it was.

I think as long as these conflicting statements come out as to when systems were turned on or off or whether the pilot was in control or not in control, you know, it really makes it difficult -- criminal investigators aren't really trying to determine at this point. They just want to keep gathering all of the possible facts in spite of the fact that the aspects of facts concerning the airplane keep changing.

SCIUTTO: All right, well, thanks very much, Tom. You make a good point. The questions are still there, too early to eliminate any possibility. Let me thank Tom Fuentes, Mary Schiavo, Clive Irving, here with me in New York, Kit Darby as well.

Coming up after this break, we go live inside a cockpit flight simulator where our own Martin Savidge will break down the significance of Flight 370's final transmission and what we learned about those transmissions today.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SCIUTTO: New details today from the Malaysian authorities on the last communication from Flight 370's ACARS system. Officials say the last transmission at 1:07 a.m., the night the plane disappeared shows nothing unusual and it showed a normal routing to its original destination of Beijing. That undermines the theory that someone may have pre-programmed in a new route before that last ACARS transmission.

Now our Martin Savidge is live in a flight simulator in Ontario. Mitchell Casado is the pilot trainer right there next to him. A familiar thought we've seen you in. I wonder, Martin, if you could help explain to our viewers the significance of the new information about that last ACARS transmission, the sequencing as it would play out in the cockpit.

MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Right. It would certainly seem to downplay some of the sinister sense that you would have gotten if somebody had pre-programmed a turn. But let me show you what we're talking about as far as being able to point it out on the dash as it were at the flight simulator here.

This is the ACARS system. It's a system that does many things on the aircraft. It allows the pilots to send text messages to the ground, allows the ground to do the same with them. It's an alternate communication system. Most important for this scenario, that system would report to the ground every half hour or so parameters of what this plane is doing, speed, altitude, direction, a number of things.

So we know it did that at 1:07. At that time as you point out everything was good. If there had been a change, a pre-programmed change, it would have been entered in this thing. This is the flight management system. It's essentially a very robust GPS. You could make that course change with about eight keystrokes. That apparently didn't happen.

But it doesn't mean that there was no turn. It is quite possible. I think I can do this, Mitchell, right, take it off autopilot. You get an alarm because you've done that. You could make this turn manually. Now, ACARS did not report in a half hour later. I'll let you get it back.

Because at 1:37, half hour later, ACARS should have come back and said all right, now the plane is doing this. ACARS going silent. That essentially means that it was shut down somehow maybe deliberately or accidentally and the transponder went off.

So if you take this new information essentially what it means is that you had an aircraft that reported in normal and then sometime immediately after that the transponder and the ACARS system stopped functioning and it appears there was a turn on radar. Is it deliberate all this stuff was shut down? It could still be painted as somebody wanting to hide the aircraft's movements or it could be an accident. We're back to that again, Jim. SCIUTTO: Now Martin, other pilots have told us, in fact, just a few minutes ago that there's another way to turn the plane deliberately, but still under control, not under the control of pilot on the yoke, but by just turning the heading in which case the computer would in fact still be flying the plane, the autopilot under control and hit those way points that we've talked about perfectly. Can you show us how that would work?

SAVIDGE: Go ahead, Mitchell, tell us.

MITCHELL CASADO, PILOT TRAINER: The autopilot is controlled through this panel. We call this the remote control panel. All it is, the number you see here is your heading in degree magnetic. This is your compass. You got your Cartesian points, north, east, south, west and all you need to do is turn the nob and the airplane is going to follow that direction.

SAVIDGE: Feel the plane moving now. It's being done automatically. Nobody touching the yokes. It's done smoothly. If you're a passenger, this would feel pretty normal. There is nothing dramatic. You can make this plane turn significantly without spilling a drink or making people feel like there is something wrong.

SCIUTTO: Mitchell, let me ask a follow-up. You teach pilots all the time in simulators like that. There's a catastrophic event, there is a fire. There is a decompressurization and all these things we've talked about. You want to get that plane back to safe harbor, to a safe airport that's behind you, is that something a pilot would do in those circumstances, turn the heading, get headed back in a direction, safer direction?

CASADO: That's absolutely correct. The plane at that point in our case would have been on autopilot. Fire, decompression. You're donning the mask, getting down and getting to the nearest airport immediately. You would do that by using heading bug. You would be asking for vector, mayday, mayday, mayday, have an emergency, need to get to the airport immediately. They clear an emergency. You have priority. Heading bug back to the airport using the vector that they gave you and then you're down and you're getting to the airport.

SAVIDGE: Obviously can't explain, what stands out, Jim, is the fact that there's no radio communications, none at all.

SCIUTTO: They made the turn without saying as you said that mayday call. That's one of the big mysteries. Listen, thanks so much, Mitchell Casado, Martin Savidge. I feel like you're both aviation experts now in there. Thanks for spending so much time in those close quarters. We appreciate it.

The Southern Indian Ocean is a pretty harsh climate on the best of days. Rain, high winds, are just part of navigating the waters. How this week's weather is factoring into the search, the difficult search for Flight 370.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) SCIUTTO: The southern part of the Indian Ocean is already known as a very inhospitable place, winds of more than 40 miles an hour are commonplace. So how is weather factoring into the search right now. Our Chad Myers is back, he knows the weather very well along with Alistair Dove, the director of research and conservation at the Georgia Aquarium.

Great that you're at the wall there. Can you walk us through just all the forces convening in that tiny little corner of the world that they are searching now.

CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Well, certainly, Alistair, right, this is one deep ocean. There's not a lot of topography. You talk about the spreading here of the ridge, almost like the Mid-Atlantic ridge. This is what the bottom of the ocean looks like here.

ALISTAIR DOVE, DIRECTOR, RESEARCH AND CONSERVATION, GEORGIA AQUARIUM: Spreading happens very, very slow. Mostly what you see on the bottom here is flat, featureless oozy mud.

MYERS: Ooze.

DOVE: Technical term, ooze. Made up of all the bodies all of the plankton that lives in the water. Over time it makes this thick layer of ooze on the bottom.

MYERS: So now is it turbid then or is it just so deep there's no currents down there.

DOVE: Now there are currents on the bottom and they are hard to understand and predict, but the water is quite clear right down to the bottom. But once you get in touch with the bottom if you disturb that you could muddy it up very quickly.

MYERS: So 10,000 to 12,000 feet, waves up above, because now we have a cyclone up there making rough waves, this is rough stuff here.

DOVE: Yes, it's very challenging at the surface and it gets even harder when you go under the surface. When you consider that 12,000- foot depth and black box pings about 14,000 feet you have to be right over the top to hear it.

MYERS: Sure, so this thing goes 14,000 feet to the top or if it's really close to the surface 14,000 feet this way and this way. If it's this far down you literally have to drive on top of it to hear it. That's really -- we listened to those pings yesterday. They are not very loud.

DOVE: They occur in a frequency range, which is not common in the ocean so that helps resolve it against background noise. There is a problem having to be over the top of it. It assumes all things ideal, density layer, those can act as a mirror and reflect sound away.

MYERS: So all of a sudden now let's say we find something and we have to go down below. There as ship up above. You just can't send an ROV down there by itself. It has to be attached to the ship that's pitching and rolling. That's going to make things difficult.

DOVE: That's right. So you always have to deploy off a ship. In fact, even to deploy it off the ship, you need ideal conditions. You use a special kind of crane to lower the robot off the back of the ship and to do that conditions at the surface have to be right, you have to get the ROV to the bottom and find whatever it is you're looking for. It's really is a tremendously technical challenge.

MYERS: And a category three cyclone is not one of those things --

DOVE: Not going to help, no.

MYERS: This is well to the north of Australia in the warm water. When it gets down close to where we are now, we know that the water near the search is about 50 degrees. That won't support a cyclone, hurricane. They are the same thing, just different oceans. But still there are being waves generated here. Those waves are splashing out in the wind we're seeing here, 115 miles per hour. You have rollers at 30 feet. Can you do anything with that kind?

DOVE: Not really. No. You needs things to be pretty calm, pretty level. You would call it a flat day if you're out there to successfully deploy these sorts of undersea search equipment. Those waves are not going to help. There's really nothing between the cyclone and the search area in order to interrupt that, fetch in the waves just going to get bigger over that period.

MYERS: So there's a storm coming in itself, winds of 30. What does sea state look like when you have big swells and winds of 30 on top of that?

DOVE: It depends a little bit of about which way the wind is going compared to which way the swells are going. If you have wind in the teeth of the swell, those waves can stand up and make life on top of the ship pretty difficult.

MYERS: We talked about this the other day. We have waves, blow off and we are looking for a white plane and we have thousands of white caps. You literally see nothing.

DOVE: Yes. I can tell you from having done a lot of aerial survey work, when you're looking on days with a lot of white caps, your eyes play all sorts of tricks on you. That's why it's important that they rely on automated techniques and radar. Remote sensing is so important here to help us understand what's going on.

MYERS: Thank you so much for your time. Thanks for coming on a Sunday. Jim, good information here.

SCIUTTO: No question. Chad Myers, Alistair Dove, walking us through how difficult it is to search in one of the most remote corners of the world. That is all for me today. I'm Jim Sciutto. Thanks so much for watching. Our Randi Kaye is in for the next hour of CNN NEWSROOM and that's right after this short break.

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