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New Developments in the Mystery of Malaysian Airlines Flight 370; Deadly Landslide in Washington State; Thousands of Pro-Russian Residents Marched in Ukraine Today

Aired March 23, 2014 - 17:00   ET

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

DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR, NEWSROOM: Hello, everyone. I'm Don Lemon. Thank you for joining us. You are in the CNN NEWSROOM.

Right now, I need to tell you that a Chinese search plane is set to take off looking for any signs of physical evidence from missing Malaysia flight 370. Today's search fully based from Australia. It is much larger including two planes from Japan and two from China. As the sunrises over the Indian Ocean now in the next 10 -- 19 minutes, crews will launch a new effort to find out what happened to 239 people onboard that missing jet.

Malaysian authorities say the French gave them a brand-new satellite image showing a possible object floating in the Indian ocean. And Chinese and Australian satellite spotted possible objects earlier in the same general part of the ocean.

Plus, we have a significant update from Malaysian authorities. They now say the last ACARS system transmission which transmits technical or transmits technical data using satellite showed normal routing all the way to Beijing.

We are covering every single angle of this international mystery of Malaysia airlines flight 370 for you. We are covering every single angle of this international mystery of Malaysia airline flight 370 for you. And we have brought an aviation experts to tackle new developments and theories.

So let's get right to it for you and get you up to date on the latest information.

First, Australia is the base for the search and that's where you find our Kyung Lah.

Kyung, those crews are coming off another frustrating search day. Bad weather, no clues. They got to be hoping to bring some new clues back today.

KYUNG LAH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, and absolutely they are understanding that they have a very tough task ahead of them. In just one hour, they are going to take to the sky again, yet another day of departing from Perth heading to this remote area.

What's going to happen today, more planes in the air, more countries involve, including the United States P-8 Poseidon, just like it was yesterday. And we got a chance to talk to the lieutenant commander and this mysterious plane.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is a Boeing P-8 Poseidon. Newest aircraft in the world, actually.

Motivation air crew is exemplary. They recognize the gravity of the situation. They are going out to give people rest and closure.

LAH: I mean, it looks like a passenger plane but not at all.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Without windows. But it is the sensors, the system that we have on, that differentiate this from the commercial airlines.

We call the truck portion of the airplane. It is basically a 737.

LAH: What is it look like out there?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It is stern at thousands of miles of ocean and it can be very monotonous. Everything looks the same.

LAH: Just a huge wave?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It can be. If you imagine that the winds flows around the earth without really interruption.

I don't know if I called it frustrating. Just to say that it is part of the job, to go out and keep looking and looking and looking until you find it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LAH: And the question is, of course, is will they be able to find it. Conditions were tough according to that squadrons commander. He said that the plane had applied 300 feet about the water because of low line clouds that at times Don, the water looks like a giant washing machine. So you can imagine how tough and at times frustrating it is for them. But they are set to take to the skies again in just about one hour -- Don.

LEMON: Kyung Lah in Perth, Australia. Thank you very much. Kyung, appreciate that.

I want to run these developments now by our experts, Mary Schiavo, a CNN aviation analysts. She is also an attorney for victims and families of transportation accidents. Pilot and CNN aviation analyst Miles O'Brien is also with us.

So let's talk about this last ACARS transmission which stands for Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting system. Malaysian government said today, the last ACARS transmission from that plane was sent at 1:07 a.m. and showed nothing unusual, just a normal routing all the way to the Beijing.

So Mary, first to you, what do you make of that because we have heard that the routing a change, now we are hearing that it was normal.

MARY SCHIAVO, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Well, actually, what I make of it is it actually makes more sense than what we heard before. No one could reconcile the fact that they had the 12 minute gap between when the supposed way point which is off to the left to cause the plane. It was supposedly programmed in. Now we know not. And then the 12 minutes of no reports of problems difficulties why they were deviating their route to Beijing, nothing. And then the final transmission of "all right, good night."

Now that we learned that this was not programmed and they are preprogrammed, things make much more sense. And when you are doing an investigation you, you know, criminal or civil investigation, you know, you have to have things make sense. You have to have a motive. You have to have opportunities, et cetera. And now the pieces of the puzzle really do start to fit a lot better.

LEMON: Do you agree, Miles, with the significance of this, what Mary is saying?

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: I totally agree with Mary. This is the most significant development that we had on the outside of the investigation since it began. And frankly, shame on the authorities for allowing discussion to continue as long as it did.

LEMON: You took the words out of my mouth. That is my --that was next question to you.

O'BRIEN: There is no evidence that these pilots did anything wrong. I will say it again and again. It is like when a plane crashes, the butler is the pilot, you know. The butler did it, the pilots did it. It is always the dead pilots. And in this case, we should scale back our discussion about pilots doing anything wrong. We have no evidence of it.

LEMON: So Mary, Miles brings up a good point. As I said, there I kind of rudely interruption. I didn't mean to because I was thinking the exact same thing as you were saying it.

I mean, Mary, you know, this is why the information we have heard so many different versions of. This isn't the first time that we have -- that Malaysian authorities have contradicted themselves.

SCHIAVO: Well then, it is right. and particularly here, by having so many theories that, you know, this ACARS issue, this one, this 12 minute gap of, you know, knowledge and no communications, that has, you know, that led the investigation straight. Precious time was wasted. It is so imperative to get the quite data recorder and by chasing though, you know, (INAUDIBLE) by looking and intact and send a pole when by all evidence now, it looks now they were heading to Beijing, If I have any alternatives all programmed in. And we know what they had to, They had to have a safety. You can't get in Beijing. You pick another airport less than, you know, a certain number of miles away.

But nothing like this. And now it all, at least for me, it makes sense. There was not one shred of evidence about these piles. I worked the 9/11 cases for 11 years. It was to keep a low profile. Surely, you don't post how to fix things videos on You Tube, And so these pilots just did not fit any hijack or terrorist profile, note from -- .

LEMON: Yes. I want to move onto these objects supposedly spotted. But Miles, I just want to ask you and then you can jump in, yes or no, Miles and Mary.

So does this completely blowout this whole northern arc scenario that we have been hearing about? Miles?

O'BRIEN: It makes sense to me because if you walk down a scenario where there is some sort of crisis in the cockpit, some sort of decompression, you name a scenario. What every pilot would do is 90 degrees to the left which is what we see.

LEMON: Right.

O'BRIEN: So, you know, my hunch would be heat he's heading to land to the nearest landing field he can get to and he is trying to get down. That would be the logical scenario. Where they later incapacitated is the question.

LEMON: Yes. Very quickly, Mary. Do you agree? Does this the whole northern arc? This is sort of the blow that out?

SCHIAVO: I agree completely. The day (INAUDIBLE) well over week ago, the day that Thailand said that they did not enter Thai air space for me, the northern route was over, not to mention, you can't fly to the Himalayas at night with no fuel.

LEMON: Mary, this new object that the French satellite supposedly spotted, do you -- this is this big news for you?

SCHIAVO: Well, it is not a big news. I think we will hear this in the coming days. I mean, every piece of debris -- so many satellites are now trained on the area, as they should be, and we'll have lots of reports in the coming days in the hardest part is obviously for those -- for flight crews flying 300 feet above the ocean searching. That's real hard.

LEMON: All right, thanks to both you. We will you a little bit later on the broadcast. Miles, I have more questions for as well. Stand by.

Imagine losing a family member, though, in an air accident and never finding out what happened. I'm going to talk to a son who is still looking six decades later.

But next, the disappearance of flight 370. why my next guest says there could be logical reason for what happened.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: Welcome back, everyone. Thank you for joining us. We have been covering this for a long time and you are sitting with us. So we appreciate that. We have lots of questions and we are trying to get them answers there on CNN.

Let's talk about this timeline though, for the final communications from missing Malaysia airlines flight 370. It keeps shifting.

Malaysian authorities today said the last ACARS transmission at 1:07 a.m. showed normal routing plan all the way to Beijing. This may poke holes in a theory that someone, perhaps a pilot, preprogrammed the aircraft to make it unexpected left turn during the flight to fly back over Malaysia.

So joining me now to discuss this is Les Abend. He is a CNN aviation analyst, 777 pilot and Jeff Wise, CNN aviation analyst and science journalist.

Thanks to both of you for joining us. I feel like we are all family here. We have been covering this long and we are going to continue to cover it until we get some answers especially for the 239 people, their families, onboard that plane.

Today's update, does that change anything for you, does that change your theories you say the plane flu sew south. It had to go through Indonesian radar.

JEFF WISE, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Well, it doesn't change that aspect. I'm not -- no, this is actually a different set of data. This is an actual -- listen. When we are talking about an aircraft accident investigation, we have facts or things that are close to facts. And then top positions are inferences that we draw from the facts. And some of those inferences can be changed as new information comes in, OK?

Now, this doesn't change that the probability that it was -- that it went to the north from the south. But the new information that you are referring to over the course of past week, it is become clear, there is new Immarsat information has really narrow down the possible routes that inference of weather when north or south.

LEMON: Right.

WISE: So, if it went south, we now know that it went over the western tip of Indonesia.

LEMON: So, they are saying now that it went right -- it was normal routing to be routed to Beijing. Everyone I spoken to just within the last couple of minutes here said this -- that hold northern arc thing, it's kind of throws it out of the window for the most part. You disagree?

WISE: That, I don't see how that inference can be drawn.

LEMON: OK. So Les, the first day this happens, remember the first time you were in the air? It's right here with me? And we were talking about the Malaysian authorities as they were releasing information about this. And oh my God, you know, what is taking them so long? You know, since it become contradictory. Even more contradictory now. Do you have any faith in the investigation by the Malaysian, the information coming from the Malaysian authorities?

LES ABEND, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Like you said. I have been skeptical all of long. And even this Immarsat data that yet the first two, I'm not sure exactly what that tells us or whether it is accurate information or whether it is going to interpreted appropriately.

I would love -- I'm on agreement at least on that which that I'm not sure that I would rule out the northern arc part. And I don't know if I can them arc, I just call it a simple left turn to get to a diversionary airport. I think that is to hold to reason.

And now with the new information that the ACARS was unbelievable to me that the ACAR was updated prior to their exit point into or entry point into Vietnam air space. I mean I have an explanation for that one too. But the terms make it even more sense now.

LEMON: Does this update tell you anything knew about the pilot's actions in all of these? Because all along they said, you know, it had to be the pilot or co-pilot that did this. and they were thinking there was some, you know, something nefarious, but I have heard that word, nefarious so much as we have been --. I haven't so much in my life, right? But does that change anything for you?

ABEND: Yes, it tells me that the captain was being a captain. It tells me that he said I got the airplane. The copilot stared the checklist. The captain, normally in our airline, does the communications in addition to flying the airplane while the copilot takes care of the problem.

LEMON: So now, it is back to the captain doing the right thing.

ABEND: Doing the right things. I always believe that all along. Listen. I'm open to the nefarious situation. But he bottom line is I see the captain putting any diversion airport and getting this airplane under control.

LEMON: All right. What is the biggest misconception you have, you think, about this particular mystery now?

WISE: I think the misconception that this is anything but an intentional pilot action is absolutely can be ruled out. This flew for eight hours. It didn't -- I understand although that why a pilot in a burning plane would want to turn to the nearest airport and that could we overtime and the plane keeps flying. That course does not put you on the arc, we know that things we unpack really that this plane was on one of those two arcs at 8:11 a.m. in Saturday morning. You can't get to either those arcs by going over one (INAUDIBLE) island. It went up in Africa or the ocean.

ABEND: That is provided that data is correct. And I'm still not convinced that it is. But even if it is, I've got an explanation for that.

LEMON: So. There is no time like the present. We were request we are on television there. Go ahead.

ABEND: You are running out of time.

You know, I hate to use the terminology, but you know, we have been using it here at CNN, the ghost plane, the zombie plane. It is where these pilots are the problem is developing perhaps on the (INAUDIBLE) compartment either through the hold baggage compartment. If something burning or something they directly in the compartment, they see components starting to shout down which drives them to a checklist. I don't know checklist perhaps, but the checklist that they have to responded. Captain takes the airplane. He puts in diversionary airport and he is now responsible for communications and flying the airplane under automation.

LEMON: Right.

ABEND: And that's what we were trained to do. So he does that. Now, he smells something. And with us, it could be the cookies the flight attendants are burning in the back. Not that time, it would be cookies but anyhow, it is midnight. Whatever it is. So we just kind of, that's all right.

And then, we get a little more suspicious from where the smoke continues. And then, if the smoke starts, then we realize it is time to put on those oxygen masks that they have the integral goggles.

LEMON: That's what you do first.

ABEND: That's exactly you do.

LEMON: And then what do you do next?

ABEND: Once you establish that you do have smoke in the cockpit situation, then, you go to a more emergency type situation where you got for smoke clearance checklist and part of it could be to start down. But regardless, they are on oxygen. They are stressed out. The cockpit is now a bad, visible situation.

LEMON: Keep going.

ABEND: And then, they are breathing oxygen under pressure now. And you ever scuba dive, of you are under stressed and you are breathing out on the pressure, you are going to bring that tank down very quickly and now the toxic fumes overtake them, OK? And they are on auto pilot. They are at certain altitude. They are heading for a diversionary airport, now the airplane flies forever.

LEMON: And they can't get down low enough where they can take that smoke out or open it up that little window.

ABEND: Well, they started down. That is great. But that might have explained if that is correct, that trip down to 5,000 feet, if that radar data is correct. And they may already done that.

LEMON: That seems like the more logical explanation for all of us.

OK, we will continue talk, standby.

By the way, did you know that -- do you have a twitter account yourself?

ABEND: I do, I don't utilize it, Don.

LEMON: You don't utilize -- your jacket has a twitter account that has lots of followers.

ABEND: And thank you for making it more. Appreciate that.

LEMON: Anyway, I thought it was real Les Abend until I realized it was just sort of thing.

Thank you. Will talk to you guys.

More on flight 370 in just a moment.

But first, a desperate search for survivors in Washington state as a deadly land slide levels everything in its path. Next, the rescue operation where even some of the rescuers have to be saved.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: Welcome back, everyone. We are going to return to the search for Malaysia airline flight 370 in just a moment, just a moment. But first, we have some other stories that are making headlines this hour.

I want to start with this one. This is one is from Russia. Fresh fears at Russian president Vladimir Putin could be setting aside on another post Soviet Republic. NATO's top commander warns Russian troops are massing on the eastern border of Ukraine strategically close to Transnistria. It is a pro-Russian region neighboring, Moldova. Remember Putin first sent troops to Ukraine to, in his words, protect Russians living there.

Meantime, thousands of pro-Russian residents marched in a major city in Ukraine east today urging for a referendum so too they could split off and become part of Russia.

Ukraine will remain a top priority for President Obama during an eventful trip overseas. The president is to depart in Washington a few hours from now, first stop, the Netherlands. Tomorrow, the president is to meet with G-7 leaders there to urge allies remain united against Putin and in support of Ukraine. His message will remain the same when he gathers Wednesday with European leaders in Belgium.

Mr. Obama also is to meet with Pope Francis and Saudi Arabia's king Abdullah.

Emergency crews are hitting a number of roadblocks as frantically search for survivors of a deadly landslide in Washington state. Just hours ago, Governor Jay Inslee flew over the area north of Seattle where 18 people are unaccounted for following yesterday's disaster. Rescue helicopters are using thermo imaging may not have found any survivors and the muddy conditions have left ground operations at a standstill.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHIEF TRAVIS HOTS, SNOHOMISH COUNTY FIRE DISTRICT 21: We suspect that there are people out there. But it is far too dangerous to get responders out there on that mud flow.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEMON: Well, six homes were demolished in the landslide, seven people were injured, three others killed. Significant rainfall has made the region right for a series of landslides such as this one.

Our meteorologist Jennifer Gray take a looks at the weather and how it could impact rescue operations.

JENNIFER GRAY, AMS METEOROLOGIST: We've been talking so much about how California has been so dry over the last couple of months. While that's happening, the exact opposite has been going on in the pacific northwest. The reason California has been so dry is that the jet stream has been riding very far to the north. It has been bringing the storms that normally role on shore in California up to the northwest.

So, it's been giving them a lot more rain than they normally see. In fact, a lot of areas outside of Seattle are experiencing one of their wettest months on record. And some areas are in the top ten. So, it has definitely been very, very wet.

And so, what happens when you get more rain than you should right around these mountain ranges it becomes very, very heavy and the soil begins to soak and gravity just pulls it down. And when you get those very steep slopes, too steep to support it, the slope falls, and that's where you get your mudslide. And that's exactly what has happened.

The northwest will stay dry over the next couple of days. By the time you get into the middle part of the week, another storm system rolling through. So not good for the pacific northwest. They have gotten a lot more rain than they should this season.

LEMON: All right, Jennifer, thank you very much.

March madness living up to its name this weekend especially in the south regional. Number 10, see that Stanford cardinals, well they have advanced to the sweet 16 earlier. They have moved on by upsetting Kansans City Hawks 60 to 57. The Cardinals have a date with the tournament's other Cinderella team. That would be the taking flyers. They advance by knocking off Syracuse on Saturday. Flyers were in a (INAUDIBLE) but proved a C (ph), nothing but a number when it comes to March madness.

And we are just minutes away from day break in the South Indian Ocean. And next, we are going to live to Kuala Lumpur for the latest on the investigation. How the latest images impact the search plan.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: Search plane returning to the sky this hour trying to solve the global mystery of Malaysia flight 370. Four new aircraft from Japan and China will take off from Perth, Australia today to scan for possible objects in the southern Indian Ocean. The whole world is watching and waiting for any sign of the plane that vanish 17 days ago.

Now for families of the 239 people onboard, the torment is beyond agony. Malaysian authorities held a six-hour meeting today with desperate families trying to answer painful question and this.

Malaysian authorities say that French gave them a brand-new satellite image showing a possible object floating in the Indian ocean. Chinese and Australian satellite spotted possible objects earlier in the same general part of the ocean.

Plus, we have a significant update from Malaysian authorities. They now say the last ACAR system transmission which transmits technical data using satellite showed normal routing all the way to Beijing.

When the sun comes up in Kuala Lumpur, another day of investigation is about to begin. So let's go to Saima Mohsin.

What can you expect today? What can we expect today especially with the news about French satellite images, Saima?

SAIMA MOHSIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well Don, you know, everybody is hanging onto every word that comes out to the Australian search operation and to the press conferences at the same time. So we are getting hearing Kuala Lumpur.

Now, we have this 4th object. Let me tell you a bit more about it. It has been spotted by the French satellite. It is around about 2,300 kilometers away from Perth. So slightly close to any sea-like (ph) towards Australia or towards land. Around 200 kilometers away from the original objects that were spotted by the Australian satellite.

And then, of course, we had that other object that was discovered by the Chinese satellite 120 kilometers southwest of those. So we have these four objects if you like from 2000 away from Australia. We still don't know, Don, and we have to emphasize it, what exactly they are.

You know, are they related to flight 370? Every effort that you say is thinking made to get out of their location. A lot of things hindering this search operation though. We have cycling heading to the area. We have heard the people heading out on those flights describing it as being in a washing machine because of the winds, because of fog out there. But today, Chinese and Japanese claimed joining that search operation trying to get to those locations, trying to locate those objects if they are still in that place where they were spotted on the satellite days ago and then trying to identify them -- Don.

LEMON: Saima, I have to ask you about this. You know, we do have to remember, obviously, that there are families and the 239 people onboard and we must keep that top of mind. What is ahead today for those families?

MOHSIN: Well, Don, only it is unimaginable what kind turmoil they are going through. Every word they hear in these segments, every things that cling on, a mixture of hope and relief, you know, relief to perhaps now those finally finds out what exactly has happened to that flight that so many love ones are onboard, 239 people, you know.

They are not just list of names, are they? They mean something to someone. They are mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters. Now, we know that they have been in a lot of detailed briefings with Malaysian authorities because they felt that they weren't getting that kind of clarity and information today. We only had the first meeting a few days ago and we are two weeks in now.

So what they are hoping for is more clarity. They are getting that I have to say, Don. We have had a lot of misinformation likely because Malaysian authorities as they have explained to me, certainly, that what they wanted to try and do is give that information as soon as they got it. but we have ended up having a bit of misinformation in that process.

But families really are looking for more clarity. And amidst that, we know that Malaysian authorities have said that the plane was still bound, as you said, at 1:07 for Beijing. So when something went wrong on the plane, it went wrong off to that. They want to know more about that as sunrises here in Kuala Lumpur -- Don.

LEMON: Appreciate you reporting. And of course, our thoughts go out to the families.

Saima Mohsin reporting to us from Kuala Lumpur.

You know, it is one of the biggest aviation mysteries ever, a plane and all of its passengers disappeared over lake Michigan more than six decades later. Crews are searching for that plane, six decades later. Keep that in mind. And their families still waiting for closure that is next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: Take a listen to this story. It is fascinating. Millions of people around the world are asking the very same question. How can a plane, big enough to carry so many passengers, simply vanish without a trace. In fact it has happened before.

Kyung Lah has the story of Northwest Orient flight 2501, a story that still hats no ending.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

LAH (voice-over): Sixty-four years later, and the pain is still there for Darlene Larson. When she was just 5-years-old, her father, Leo Wooler (ph), was flying home to his wife and seven children after a business trip. On June 23, 1950, he boarded Northwest Orient Flight 2501 heading to Minnesota. It never made it, vanishing somewhere over Lake Michigan.

DARLENE LARSON, FATHER DISAPPEARED ON FLIGHT: I was awakened by my father crying. She did her best to try to tell me what had happened, that my father was gone and would not be coming back.

LAH: Flight 2501 was at that time America's worst aviation disaster. The plane, except for some bits of human remains, was never found. The cause, never determined. The 58 passengers never recovered.

LARSON: It's hard to concept, because you don't have something to hold to, if you -- like a funeral or a casket or a grave.

I was certain that he was wondering around the streets of Chicago with amnesia and he would one day realize where he was and come home.

VALERIE VAN HEEST, AUTHOR: Therein lies much of the mystery. Why was this plane so far off its course?

LAH: Author Valerie Van Heest has interviewed more than 200 family members of the passengers from Flight 2501.

VAN HEEST: They don't understand that it really happened. It's hard to conceive of an accident killing a loved one if you don't have their body. The mystery of what happened to flight 2501 is a mystery that's plagued these people for now 64 years.

LAH: Haunted by the families' stories, Van Heest and a search team have been hunting Lake Michigan for the plane's debris.

VAN HEEST: Ultimately, finding that plane on the bottom of the lake would provide the final answers. And that's what we hope can happen with the Malaysia Airlines accident. We need answers.

LAH: Answers that the families of Flight 2501 never got.

Darlene Larson and her six siblings grew up without their father. Her mother never remarried and asked that her ashes be spread at the suspected crash site in Lake Michigan, so she could find her husband in death.

A single grave site where some of the unidentified human remains are buried marks the loss of all aboard the fateful flight. The living still coping.

LARSON: It's an eerie thing just wondering, wondering and just not knowing what actually happened.

LAH: So while most of us are riveted by the mystery of Malaysian Airlines, Darlene Larson can't bear to pay attention or watch the news. She says it is simply too close, too familiar.

Kyung Lah, CNN, Los Angeles.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LEMON: There you go. Kyung Lah, thank you very much.

Joining me now, there you see her, is Valerie Van Heest, author of "Fatal Crossing" and Bill Kaufmann is with us as well. Bill's mother was aboard flight 2501.

Bill, we just heard from Darlene Larson who lost her father in the Northwest Orient crash. She said she couldn't bear to watch the news about flight 370 because it just brought back so many painful memories to her. Have you felt that as well?

BILL KAUFMANN, CRASH VICTIM'S SON: Yes. Every word she said struck home. When I heard about this, my wife mentioned it and in a later broadcast, I went out and I saw the people crying. And my heart, by the way, went out to them, but that with the search efforts brought everything home to the point where I had to walk out of the room. I was almost in tears myself. And this was 64 years later.

LEMON: What do you say to the families?

KAUFMANN: Well, at I would say this. We learned about the loss of the plane and it was fairly soon that we knew what had happened in a general way that the plane had gone down in the lake, although we don't know where and we don't know exactly how it happened. But so the mystery of that is still out there for these families, I say to them, you have to have courage. You have to believe in yourself, you have to have the confidence that things will turn out somehow all right. You have to not give up hope, and in the final analysis, don't give up.

LEMON: Don't give up in what way?

KAUFMANN: Well, my father gave up. When my mother died he blamed himself for it and he just fell apart. The rest of his life, he was a very unhappy man and it was very hard for me not to be the same way, but I'm not the same way.

LEMON: It has affected your family all of these years.

KAUFMANN: Absolutely.

LEMON: So, Valerie, what really drew us to this story was the fact that it has been 64 years since this crash and there are still a group actively searching to find that plane.

And here is the interesting part, Valerie. When you look at the size of lake Michigan. We say basically lake Michigan is like an ocean right in the middle of the United States. But lake Michigan and compares it to the Indian ocean is like this cup of tea. It is a small body of water in a sense. And 64 years later, we are still searching for the r wreckage of that plane.

VAN HEEST: We are still searching. And we have good information, especially when I started interviewing some of the men who were involved in the search activity. But yes, we could only narrow it down to about 1,000 square miles. We have been able to cover 600 square miles, but we still have farther to go. This is a very small target. We know it would be a broken up debris field based on the kind of debris that was pulled from the surface of the water. So, it is still an immensely small target in a medium sized pond.

LEMON: I lived in Chicago for a while. And this is sort legend, right, in Chicago. People talk about this all the time. And there are active searchers and people are go looking. But my question is you don't have any affiliation. You have no affiliation with this flight's any of the passengers. So what inspired you to get involved with this?

VAN HEEST: Well, my organization, Michigan Shipwreck research Association, we are a small group of people who are dedicated to study in the great lake history. We search for shipwrecks. And we simply thought that maybe in the process of searching for shipwreck, we might encounter this plane.

Well, it was rather the other way around. In the process of searching for the plane, we found a number of shipwrecks. But in looking for the smoking gun, so to speak, the information that would lead us to the spot on the lake where this might be, we came upon all kinds of other information. Experts still alive today, personnel from Northwest and the families.

Bill Kaufmann actually found me when he heard about our search and then we got to talking. He encouraged me to find other people. And in the end, all of these information was so striking, so emotional that it prompted the writing of a book.

LEMON: You know, Bill, you know, we sit on television and I'm sure you hear all these scenarios and the family as well and, you know, we are searching and the whole world wants to know. So, what is the lesson in it for all of us, including the families, but everyone who is paying so much attention to this? What's the lesson?

KAUFMANN: You know, I really can't answer and I'm a trained philosopher. I teach the subject sometimes. The answer I supposed is just that, you know, life has hazards and sometimes they get right in the home and you have to -- the key thing is, you have to learn to accept. And the hardest thing is when there is the uncertainly, although I supposed, that is better than knowing the worst. I don't know the answer to that one. All right, I know is that you eventually have to accept the situation and move on with your life. And life is worth living regardless.

LEMON: Thank you, sir.

VAN HEEST: Don?

LEMON: Thank you Bill, thank you Valerie, I appreciate it.

VAN HEEST: Thank you.

LEMON: They are calling it the shadow theory, excuse me. It is just flight 370 flew undetected, hiding in a radar shadow of another commercial flight. Next, we are going to explain why it is not as farfetched as it sounds.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: While planes and boats are scouring the Indian Ocean for flight 370, a small number of people think the airliner could be somewhere else entirely like sitting on a runway, maybe in Asia. Police say a skilled pilot could make the plane seem to vanish by closely following another airliner. What sounds like a high-tech magic trick, right? But experts say it is possible.

Chad Myers joins me now from Atlanta to explain why this theory isn't as crazy as it sounds.

We've heard, we've been talking about this. Chad, you're going to demonstrate. OK. Explain it to us, will you?

CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: A guy named Keith Ledgerwood was the one who came up with this and put it on twitter. And I've been following him ever since. We have been trying to get a-hold of Immarsat, too, to get some different things. They haven't gone contact back from that yet.

Here is how it works, though, Don. The plane leaves Kuala Lumpur. It goes up here towards its way point. It turns off all its stuff so you can't see it anymore and it turns left and heads to a different way point over here.

In the meantime a different plane has left Singapore flying to that same waypoint right here. The two planes fly in tandem, one on top of the other or slightly behind. Very close to make only one ping on the radar. Only one blob on the radar as it leaves here and flies all the way up here. We don't see MH-370 because we're getting pings or squawks back from Singapore flight 68.

Is it crazy? Yes. Is it possible? Absolutely. The planes get underneath each other. They do this all the time. It is usually about 1,000 feet separation up and down. But if it gets close enough, you wouldn't see the plane on the ground and 68 wouldn't see 370 because its transponder is off. Because the transponder is off, there'd be no way to know it was there. So, if it snuck up from behind, that's the possibility.

So, what do we know? What do we know and where can we go from here? Let's draw it out for you. We don't know where 370 went. All we know is it ended up on this line somewhere. That's it. That's all we know.

But we do know where 68 went. It would have pinged here, here, here, here, here, and here. So, let's put those on the map and we will show you what it looks like. The first ping would look like this, right there, about an hour from when they would have merged. Another hour later, another hour later, and another hour later. On up, on up, on up, on up, and up here into almost the area here.

Take a look at this line, though. This is the blue line. This would have been 68's last location at 8:00 in the morning or 8:11. It is not on the same red line as our flight 370. So somewhere, I don't know where. Here, here, or here. This plane would have had to have break it off, 370 would have had to get out of the shadow, turn to the right and land somewhere on the red line.

That's the theory that Keith has put off. You can look at it. Go to my web page or my twitter handle. You can find it as well. I have links to it.

It sounds insane, Don. And until we get numbers, until we get these pings, if these are truly right, we won't know from Immarsat whether this actually mirrors what the pings look like from 370 and 68. If that is the case, this could happen. It the pings aren't exactly separated, but like they are here, then this is debunked, didn't happen. But right now we still don't know.

LEMON: @chadmyers?

MYERS: @chadmyersCNN.

LEMON: @chadmyersCNN. M-y-e-r-s. Go there. Also you can hash tag your questions to #370qs. Chad will get on it. And we will be looking at your twitter questions.

So thank you, Chad. Appreciate that.

MYERS: You are welcome.

Here's another question. Is an old satellite system with a new purpose, is it next? How using a 20-year-old network could make finding missing flights a lot easier in the future.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: The there's one question that's been bugging all of us, it's this. How do you lose a plane? My phone can tell me where I am at any moment, right? Why isn't there a device to do the same with an airliner?

The answer to fixing this problem could already be in the sky. It is a satellite networking and it is called iridium.

Brett Larson is here to explain how this could help, our CNN technology analyst and editor of techbyte.com. So explain iridium. How can this track planes?

BRETT LARSON, CNN TECHNOLOGY ANALYST: You know, it's interesting. It was a cell system that they set up back in the late '90s so that you could make cell phone calls from these really remote regions of world. And now those same satellite are being upgraded over the next couple of years so that this equipment could be put on airplanes so that when an airplane is over water, which as we now know very clearly when it's over water it's almost untrackable and this system will actually let that --

LEMON: Worldwide?

LARSON: Worldwide. No matter where they go from pole to pole and even over the oceans they will be completely trackable in realtime.

LEMON: So how long -- I mean, it's an old system.

LARSON: It's an old system.

LEMON: But they're updating it?

LARSON: They're actually updating it.

LEMON: So how long?

LARSON: It does require some launching of new satellite. They're saying from 2015 to 2018, all -- its 66 satellites that float in a geostationary orbit that will make this a possibility.

LEMON: The network, though, is 20 years old. Why hasn't this been done before?

LARSON: You know, it's a stall on the part of all of the governments, and there's always a new technology. But this stuff is obviously very expensive. The initial system was in the billion dollar range. And so, that's something that, you know, when you divvy that up even amongst airlines, they don't want to pony up the cash for that.

LEMON: When you think about it, Whatsapp is sold for $19 billion.

LARSON: Right.

LEMON: I mean, there is some way for someone to monetize it.

LARSON: Absolutely. I mean, it is like look, you took an old cell system and piggy backed a tracking system on to it. Why not find another way to piggy back another idea on to so you can spread the costs around ever further and make it even less expensive?

LEMON: Yes, that would seem like the thing to do. And also in (INAUDIBLE) in the billions of dollars. But -- and you keep having accidents, right? Do you have this one every so often? How do you put a price on might really can?

LARSON: Exactly.

LEMON: Thank you. Appreciate it. Brett Larson, we will see you throughout the evening here on CNN.

We will be live for you until 9:00 p.m. eastern. And then we will back after that from 10:00 to midnight as well.

The next hour of the CNN NEWSROOM starts now.