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Developments, Updates and Analysis Of Flight 370's Disappearance
Aired March 23, 2014 - 20:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, everyone. I'm Don Lemon in New York, here in the "CNN Newsroom." This is breaking news that we're following in the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. A source close to the investigation is telling CNN that the aircraft took a sharp left turn. Then dropped to a very low altitude before it vanished from radar.
That is a very different picture of the time line that officials were working on up until now. Much more in a few seconds here on CNN.
Meantime, airplanes from the United States, China, Japan, Britain, Australia, all on their way again to a remote part of the Indian Ocean with eyes on the water. It is another day of looking for debris that might not be there and chasing satellite images taken several days ago. The space they're searching is vast. The pieces they're trying to find are relatively small.
So let's go live now straight to Kuala Lumpur and Saima Mohsin.
Saima, I just said that a source told CNN about this updated radar data. How does the picture -- how does this picture change with this new information?
SAIMA MOHSIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Don, it changes so many things. It really does bring us more detail. It's a small amount of detail but significant, Don. In this investigation into what happened on board Flight MH-370 shortly before it disappeared off the radar and disappeared for the past two weeks. Day 17 here as the sun rises in Kuala Lumpur since the plane took off.
Let me tell you a bit about the detail that we have from this source close to the investigation. Now what we understand is sometime between 1:19 and 2:40 a.m., a military radar believes that the plane not only made a turn but it dropped to 12,000 feet. That's around 4,000 meters.
Now the turn it took around two minutes on a 777 to make. That could be anything from 90 to 180 degrees. A complete U-turn effectively, Don. But crucially, the new piece of information that we've learned about, the dropping of altitude to 12,000 feet opens up a lot of possibilities, and clarifies the picture for us, Don.
One thing I must say, though, is that we don't believe that dropping to 12,000 feet was anything sinister to try and avoid radar or anything. Let's just clear that right up the top here. Dropping to 12,000 feet does not remove a plane from any kind of radar. So it was still visible, particularly to this military radar, of course. But what it does tell us is that something went wrong on board that made the pilot or somebody inside the cockpit take that plane right down.
Now there are a number of possibilities, which I'd like to share with you, Don. One is depressurization. Were they trying to bring the cabin pressure down to an altitude where people could breathe easily because of something going on onboard? Were they turning the plane around and bringing it down to a lower level to try to avoid other air traffic?
This is a very busy part of the kind of lane of air traffic. So were they coming out of the way of other flight aircraft because they were having trouble on board? Were they turning around, Don, to try and make an emergency landing?
Now last week I went to Kotabaru. Now this is in the northeast of Malaysia, on the eastern coastline. Just off the South China Sea. We met some fishermen who were out at sea that night when the plane went missing. Just below where the flight was, they say they saw a low flying aircraft. We can't independently verify that but they said they'd never seen an aircraft flying so low before.
But more importantly, Don, Kotabaru Airport is the nearest for the last known location when the aircraft identified itself as Flight MH- 370, before it disappeared. Now this airport has a runway long enough for a 777 to land on. Ample room, in fact. 7,900 feet, that's around 2400 meters. That's enough for a 777 to land on.
If it was trying to head there for an emergency landing, that would be the nearest airport to do it at. Is that what the pilot or co-pilot on board were trying to do before the plane disappeared? Many questions raised by this new development. But certainly a very important piece of the jigsaw puzzle.
And let me remind you, Don, where I am here in Kuala Lumpur, there are a lot of families waiting for every piece of information that they can get. And holding on to it because this pieces together where their loved ones might be -- Don.
LEMON: 239 people on board that plane. Thank you, Saima Mohsin. Live for us in Kuala Lumpur.
Let's get our panel of experts in to explain the possible significance of this brand new information. Joining me now is Mary Schiavo, the former inspector general for the Department of Transportation, Mark Weiss, he is a former American Airlines pilot and a security consultant. Miles O'Brien is one of our CNN aviation analysts and a pilot himself. Les Abend, a 777 pilot and a CNN analyst.
Bobbie Scholley is a retired Navy captain and a retired Navy diver. Lieutenant Colonel Ken Christensen is an aviation consultant. Also, David Soucie is the author of "Why Planes Crash: An Accident Investigator's Fight for Safe Skies" and also a CNN analyst. So thanks to all of you.
Mark Weiss, what do you glean from this new information?
MARK WEISS, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Well, again I think you have to start managing expectations. We've heard so many conflicting reports over the last numbers of days that I think this information needs to be vetted. Certainly if it is real and legitimate, it brings up a whole new set of circumstances. But as was brought up in the last hour, the descent to 12,000 feet, if it depends on how rapid that was. And also, did it -- did it climb back to another altitude?
It certainly at this point could have said a number of things. A, there could have been somebody in the cockpit. We still don't know. That forced the pilots to descend because they wanted to turn the aircraft around. Without question, this could have been a procedure that would have come about because of some type of catastrophe on board the aircraft. And procedurally this is what you would be doing.
But it still leaves open the question of no communication. Particularly going through a heavily trafficked air corridor.
LEMON: Yes.
Mary Schiavo, does this tell you anything about the pilot and the co- pilot's actions?
MARY SCHIAVO, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Yes. It does. It says they were fighting mightily but it also says one other thing. You know, in some planes, and we haven't talked about this before. In some planes there is an emergency descent mode aside from the pilot initiating it. And if the plane senses that the pressurization in the cabin has fallen below what it should be, the plane itself, and this will happen in the citation jet which isn't a 777, but we haven't had a citation jet.
And the plane will initiate a 90-degree turn and the plane itself, smart planes trying to keep us alive, will initiate the descent with the 90-degree turn in descent. So it also says that the pilots might have been fighting the troubles and the plane itself made the turn and started the descent.
LEMON: Yes. David Soucie joining us now.
David, this new information is coming in. Still the question is, though, where is this plane?
DAVID SOUCIE, CNN SAFETY ANALYST: Well, it's still significant this piece of information for a lot of reasons. But the one reason that -- the one thing that concerns me a lot is even if the pilots didn't have time to communicate this, there are other systems on the aircraft that automatically report it. Again, I'm referring to the ACAR system. So why that did not report it, try to connect, and make an attempt to connect, and report that something was going wrong, that's what concerns me a lot.
The other thing is that if they were not able to communicate, let's say that the -- the thing that's common between the ACARS and the communications systems, the VHF and UHL radios, is the communications bus which powers all communications systems. Although it's two different buses at that time, there is one common bus that could potentially trip that up which is a switch buzz or a crossover buzz.
So that concerns me a little bit. If that -- that could answer why they didn't communicate because of the fact the -- the automated that's reporting didn't work either. That makes me think that something happened down in that (INAUDIBLE) compartment to make this all go out.
LEMON: Ken Christensen, you know, we've been talking about the Malaysian government, some of the information coming out accurate, some of it not, and then all of a sudden they're contradicting themselves.
Does this tell you -- about the Malaysian authorities? Their information and also, what do you glean from this? Does it tell you anything about the pilots and co-pilot's actions?
KEN CHRISTENSEN, AVIATION CONSULTANT: Well, it does tell you something about the pilot and the co-pilot's actions. If the plane in fact did go down to 12,000 feet, and descended, if it continued to fly on. If it straightened out, adjusted course and continued to fly out, it would never reach where they're currently searching now at 12,000 feet because it would be an increased fuel burn and it would never make it to that -- that far at the lower altitude.
LEMON: Yes.
Les Abend, you've been trying to get in here. What do you want to --
LES ABEND, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Well, that last statement was absolutely correct. I think that we're all making an assumption that this airplane is in the water. And you know, I've contended before with reference to the ELT activation, the -- the emergency locator transmitters that are in the rafts just for the purpose of ditching, we never heard a signal or a latitude long from the satellite which they're capable of doing. So yes. I mean, I think that maybe we ought to explore looking over land once again.
LEMON: Bobbie Scholley, I see you are shaking your head there.
CAPT. BOBBIE SCHOLLEY, U.S. NAVY (RET.): Well, that would be -- if I were the salvage commander or the coordinator of the search efforts, that would be my question to all the aviation experts. How does this affect what we're doing with all those resources down off the coast of Australia. We have lots of resources tied up looking at the satellite -- looking for the debris that we picked up on the satellite imagery.
We probably have a lot of resources tied up looking at the satellite data, specifically covering that part of ocean. And maybe not looking at closely at the satellite imagery of maybe the other parts of the Indian Ocean quite as closely possibly. Because that's on the arc that we were looking at.
How does this new radar information affect what parts of the Indian Ocean that we are concentrating on right now and tying up all these resources in. That's something for the aviation experts to be feeding back to the people in charge of the search efforts right now. LEMON: And Miles O'Brien, you know, everything that we get, it's like a piece to a puzzle. There hasn't been any major -- obviously the major information would be they have found something or they have found the plane or do they have -- you know what I mean? But every little bit that we get certainly helps investigators in piecing together what happened. And this is certainly significant if indeed -- if indeed true. It's certainly significant.
O'BRIEN: Yes. I have a question to our 777 experts. On this communication bus, does it happen to be in proximity to the oxygen system for the crew? Is it possible that whatever happened, it could have taken out both communication and the oxygen for the crew? That would explain a lot.
LEMON: Les?
ABEND: That's a great question. But the answer, at least with my knowledge as a pilot, is absolutely no. There is a circuit breaker in the overhead panel that will shut off the display unit. But most of the guts of the ACARS is down in the ENE compartment or the -- you know, the avionics bay. And that's why I contend that this might have been a -- some sort of component failure as a result of a fire perhaps or something that occurred, and to respond to David, a supplement to David's comments with reference to the ACARS not reporting the malfunction.
This was a different system than Air France or the fact that Malaysia didn't buy the entire package. Something that I personally am not aware of. But that could be possible also.
LEMON: How does this all play out in real time? How does it play out? We're going to join our Martin Savidge and Mitchell Casado on the other side of the break in a flight simulator to see what happens. More with our breaking news right after this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
LEMON: We have breaking news here on CNN and it involves the plane's path, the plane making a sharp turn and then dropping to 12,000 feet in altitude, coming from the CNN source. That plane making that turn. There you see it just before it reaches Vietnamese air space. Last sight, where it says, site of last contact. Makes the turn and then drops to 12,000 feet. That's according to a source, military radar tracked that.
Mitchell Casado, Martin Savidge of CNN, joins us right now.
I understand that you have programmed this into the simulator and we're about to see how it might play out, Marty.
MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Right. Yes. Here's essentially what I've told Mitchell is that here's what happened in our scenario. And that is, we've had a sudden massive decompression. So I want him to get the plane down to where people can breathe. And get us 180 back the other way so we can land. So tell me how this feels. MITCHELL CASADO, PILOT TRAINER, 777 COCKPIT SIMULATOR: OK. For the last foot come on. Speed brake note. Throttle is idle. We'd started descent and a turn. I'd be on the radio letting them know what's going on. And we would be --
SAVIDGE: I'm telling you a checklist, right?
(CROSSTALK)
CASADO: Of course. Yes.
SAVIDGE: You've got a checklist so I'm calling things up.
CASADO: Yes.
SAVIDGE: As we do --
CASADO: Absolutely.
SAVIDGE: You've got an alarm that are going to be going off. One of them talking about the -- both the brake, how fast we're going down. You know, so the back handle.
CASADO: Yes.
SAVIDGE: But of course the idea is we've got to get it down for passengers to breathe.
CASADO: Yes.
SAVIDGE: We've got a limited amount of oxygen ourselves. I believe it's about 15, 12 minutes.
CASADO: The idea is to get below 10,000 feet so that we can talk with air traffic control and assess the situation. That's the bottom line.
SAVIDGE: We're now passing 28,000. If you want to go even faster to get it down (INAUDIBLE).
CASADO: Yes. I wouldn't be overspeeding the airplane. That's the danger of pulling it apart. Right? It is rapid decompression so there might be a hole in the aircraft. Any overspeeding will worsen the problem. Right? So you want to be careful to keep it within limits.
SAVIDGE: Overspeeding is saying you're pushing the aircraft so fast that it could literally have pieces of parts come off it. And naturally if you've had some sort of, say, explosion that caused this sudden decompression, you may have weakened the air frame in some way. So I think that's what you're --
CASADO: Yes.
SAVIDGE: You're worried about is that overstressing whatever damage that's already happened.
CASADO: Yes.
SAVIDGE: We're still at 24,000 feet.
CASADO: Yes.
SAVIDGE: And so in other words, this would take some time to get down there.
CASADO: It would. Yes.
SAVIDGE: Even though we're considering it to be an emergency circumstance.
CASADO: Yes. Yes. And of course you'd be talking with air traffic control. Getting back just to the nearest airport. You'd be running through a checklist. Challenge in response. And challenging me responding to him. And using the resources in the back, don't forget, we have flight attendants, we have passengers. Talking to them. We have a phone here. Right? And so it's just -- you know, following that check list. Everything as per the check list and using everything we have including the radio. That's important.
SAVIDGE: At 22,000 feet. 21,000. So you see it's all a big process, Don. I mean, carried it all the way down to 12,000, it's going to be a while. It changed a while. And does not in any way fully simulate the potential chaos that could be going on in that cockpit at the time.
LEMON: Marty, we're going to stick with you. Go ahead, Mitchell. We're going to stick with you. We have time. So continue on. And then we'll jump in if we have any questions. But you were saying that this would -- it provides a lot of stress for the aircraft.
CASADO: Yes. Absolutely. Rapid decompression. That can be caused by a bulk head failure. Some sort of compromise. The structural integrity of the aircraft. So the last thing you want to be doing is overspeeding the aircraft and worsening that problem.
(CROSSTALK)
SAVIDGE: What is he doing? It will notify you if you're doing that by the alarm system, the indicators onscreen.
CASADO: Yes. Absolutely.
LEMON: So -- and we were talking about when you would do that. I think it is called -- what do you call it? Overspeed? What do you call it when you stopped it, you said the emergency --
ABEND: The speed brake lever.
LEMON: The speed brake. You'd pull the speed brake lever --
ABEND: In the cockpit that you would pull.
LEMON: If you did the speed brake lever, Martin and Mitchell, that would indeed put even more stress on to -- on to the aircraft, correct?
CASADO: Yes, it would increase your speed brake. It would add some stress, yes, but you also want to get down and expedite your descend as much as possible. So it depends on the situation. But I have the speed breakout here because I know we don't have a lot of time and I want to get down.
LEMON: Yes. And so I'm looking now -- are we at 15,000 feet?
CASADO: Yes.
SAVIDGE: I mean, I guess at this altitude you can breathe. But you want to get lower.
CASADO: Below 10,000 feet --
(CROSSTALK)
SAVIDGE: What is the rate of descent that you're doing at this point?
CASADO: Over here we have 5,000 feet per minute. Between 4,500 and 5,000 feet per minute. Just pretty high. That's extremely high.
SAVIDGE: Yes. Just passing 13,000. And again remembering --
LEMON: Would this had been -- as we get close to this, Marty, would this have been uncomfortable, Martin and Mitchell, for the passengers in the back? As we get close to -- we're almost at 12,000 feet now.
SAVIDGE: Well, I mean, if you lost total decompression at the back, yes, it's going to be extremely uncomfortable. I mean, it depends how big the hole maybe or whatever has been created. You're going to have wind, you'd have cold, you've got air blasting in. And then on top of that, the banking of the aircraft. Not to mention the human shock. So yes, I would say in this scenario we're painting. And there are many other ways you can pain this.
LEMON: Are we there yet?
SAVIDGE: Shocking the passengers. Yes.
CASADO: We're below 10,000 now.
SAVIDGE: Yes. We're about 9600. So we took it farther.
LEMON: OK. So we're there. You took it a bit further. I should have -- I didn't see what time we came out of break and I got back to you. But approximately how long do you think that was, Marty and Mitchell, to get to 10,000?
CASADO: Two and a half minutes roughly?
SAVIDGE: Two and a half, we're saying. Two and a half.
CASADO: Two and a half. LEMON: Two and a half minutes. We've got lots of questions for you. I'm sure our viewers at home as well. Stand by, Mitchell and Martin. We'll be right back with our panel of experts to talk with these guys right after this break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
LEMON: Back now with our breaking news here on CNN. And this is from a source close to the investigation, telling CNN that at some point military radar was tracking this Flight 370. And all of a sudden there is evidence or information that it made a sharp turn and then it dropped from 35,000 feet to 12,000 feet. And we have been putting that into the flight simulator to see exactly how that might play out.
Martin Savidge and Mitchell Casado have been doing that. And now our panel of experts are here to weigh in and they have some questions for you. First, CNN aviation analyst, former American Airlines pilot Mark Weiss.
Mark, what do you want to know?
WEISS: First, I want to remind everybody that a number of years ago a United Airlines 747 out over the Pacific lost a cargo door at altitude. And was able to make a safe emergency landing. So structurally the aircraft stayed intact. But the question I have, and this is primarily for Mitchell, when we're talking about electric buses on the airplane, I mean, the buses are basically the power source, let's say, for the electrics and it is broken up into different areas.
Kind of like what you have in your house with circuit breakers. Same type of an idea. But the question I have is, and again it's been a while, I don't have the manuals in front of me. Does the number one radio, the captain's radio, come off the emergency bus, that would be powered at least by the battery in case of failure of the other buses? Is it separated that way?
CASADO: My understanding is it's connected to the primary bus. The hot battery bus. I'm not sure if you're referring to the hot battery bus or the emergency power bus.
WEISS: Yes, the hot one.
CASADO: The hot. The hot battery bus, I don't think it is. I think the hot battery bus is just the bottles in case you're on the ground. Basic things that you need on the ground in case of emergency. A fire would have erupted or something like that. The transponder is on the hot battery bus, but I don't believe the captain's radio is. No.
WEISS: OK.
LEMON: Thank you, guys. They're geeking out about pilot stuff. I actually -- I think it's very fascinating for our viewers at home.
I want to get Ken Christensen in now. CHRISTENSEN: Yes. I think what I didn't see there during the simulation going from rapid depressurization, rapid descent. What initially would happen is the aircraft, the other person would be getting their oxygen mask on, and they're quick to turn that on. Then the smoke goggles. Then there'd be a transfer of air traffic control from one pilot to the other pilot. That positive air traffic control.
And then the other pilot would be getting their oxygen mask on and their smoke goggles. Then there would be a crew communication between the co-pilot and the pilot. Get that com up before they talk with anybody else in the back of the airplane. So they're the ones up front driving on the business end of the airplane. They would have to get that going. And then, you know, initiate the descent and then make the radio calls.
LEMON: Mitchell?
(CROSSTALK)
LEMON: Marty, Marty, stand by. Stand by. Your mic wasn't up. Repeat what you said please.
SAVIDGE: I was just saying that Mitchell actually told me all of this before we did this scenario that there would be a lot of what was just described for the simplistic sake of making the turn and showing the dive, I sort of narrated that. So yes, there is a lot more that would be going on and we do not have that particular apparatus here to demonstrate to you. So you're quite right to bring out that detail. There would be a lot of activity on top of just simply flying, navigating and eventually communicating.
CASADO: You have to understand that we're in a simulator that's built for entertainment purposes. OK? Entertainment. This is not a simulator certified by the government. So we have limited resources. We don't have masks. I don't have flight attendants here. We don't have -- the ACARS system up and running, the communications, it is entertainment. So we're working within the limitations of that.
LEMON: Understandable. Understand. Stand by. I want to -- I want to get to retired Captain Bobbie Scholley now. Navy Captain Bobbie Scholley.
We -- this brings up a very good point here. We continue to talk about the scenario as if this was something that happened as it was turning back, going over land and over water. But we forget that there are -- we shouldn't forget there are searchers out there, planes that are going out now into the southern Indian Ocean now facing some very big challenges, trying to find any sort of sign of this aircraft.
CAPT. BOBBIE SCHOLLEY (RET.), U.S. NAVY: Right.
And as we look at all these different scenarios, right now, we have all these resources tied up looking at the current scenario that we have all been talking about for at least a week, maybe longer.
And we have a lot of ships and aircraft tied up. And we have people actually out in some pretty nasty weather who are doing some fairly hazardous work out there based on the current scenario that we have in place.
And now we have this new information that we're all discussing. And I think that that could possibly change the scenario, the search scenario, a little bit, and maybe change what we're doing with our resources. But we haven't confirmed that this new information might change our search parameters at all. We have got to be careful. We don't want to just start moving our resources around based on a little bit of information here, a little bit of information there, because it takes a lot of time to move these resources around that great, big, giant ocean out there.
Ship don't move very fast. Aircraft can, but we don't want to start moving aircraft around either. We can't make a lot of decisions just based on some information that we just received. So we have to be real careful about what we do with this new breaking information. On the other hand, we don't want to tie up our resources unnecessarily looking for this aircraft debris, when we know that we have time constraints working against us with this weather.
LEMON: More on our breaking news right after a very quick break. Don't go anywhere.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
LEMON: I'm Don Lemon in New York.
We have breaking news here on CNN that may make -- may shake up the theories on what took place inside Malaysia Flight 370's cockpit. A source tells CNN military radar shows the plane's altitude dropped as low as 12,000 feet after the plane made a sharp left turn.
The source says the sharp turn seemed to be intentional. The source also says the plane flew through a heavily traffic corridor, where its low altitude may have helped avoid other traffic. Now, earlier today, Malaysian authorities suggested the plane's sharp left turn was not preprogrammed.
Right now, a growing fleet of planes are in the sky scouring the Indian Ocean for any physical signs of Malaysia Flight 370; 10 search planes, including some from China and Japan, will make the journey today from Perth, Australia, to the remote, turbulent waters.
Why don't we get straight to Perth now and CNN's Kyung Lah.
Kyung, officials there just announced that the search has resumed. And I see you have a guest there. The question is, though, does that mean that airplanes are now on site at this search area?
KYUNG LAH, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Not quite yet, but they are heading that way. There are a total of six planes in the air right now.
And joining me here is Geoffrey Thomas. He's with AirlineRatings.com. He's a local aviation expert. Let's talk a little bit first about today's search. Why is today so critical?
GEOFFREY THOMAS, AIRLINERATINGS.COM: It is really critical, because there is a window of clearer conditions. There is a storm approaching. And so, within about 12, 18 hours, they might have to suspend the search and that may stay the case for a day or so, depending on the severity.
LAH: So, we're talking already a tough search, four hours down there, only two hours to hover. And then you add bad weather on top of that.
THOMAS: Look, indeed, and we're hoping that they will launch another four or five flights today, so we even might have 10 or 11 in the air today in total to try and capture this good bit of weather.
LAH: Yes, idea is to have more coverage of that area.
Let's talk a little bit about this breaking news we're hearing on CNN, the 12,000-feet report that we're getting. What is your read on that?
THOMAS: Look, if the plane went down to 12,000, and we have also heard as well it might have got as low as 5,000 at one stage, then, if that was an automation failure, then it can't be out here, because the plane would have had to have climbed back up to 37,000 feet to arrive down here, because, at a lower altitude, it burns a great deal more fuel.
At 5,000 feet, you're probably talking twice the amount of fuel be burned up.
LAH: So it would not have made it to the Indian Ocean.
THOMAS: It would never make it down here. They're searching down here because they believe it cruised at 37,000 feet to get down here. And they know it continued for I think another six hours after that 12,000-feet report. So, the sense is it must have climbed back up, it has to be human.
LAH: It has to be human. And if it drops back down to 12,000 and goes back up, it can't automate back up?
(CROSSTALK)
THOMAS: No, no.
LAH: OK. Very interesting perspective. Geoffrey Thomas with AirlineRatings.com, thank you so much for joining us.
THOMAS: Thank you.
LAH: That's the perspective, the read from here of that breaking news, Don.
LEMON: Hey, Kyung, stay with us, because Geoffrey may want to weigh in on this. I want to bring in our 777 pilot here, Les Abend.
Les, when the breaking news came out, I was trying to -- that's the information I was trying to get out of you. What happens? What is plugged into the autopilot and what have you if the plane was indeed turned? Is it going on continue to go the way it is turned or is it going out to this southern arc that we have been talking about?
I thought just from listening as a layman, that this would negate that whole scenario, that the plane and the searching area. He appears to be saying that if this is indeed correct, if it is, then he said the plane isn't out there.
LES ABEND, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Well, just let me say, Don, that it doesn't actually have to be an automatic -- an autopilot or a manual function.
By virtue of the fact that it -- if indeed it has gone down to this lower altitude, it's not going to make it to the area that's all the resources are being deployed to. Where I wanted to go was, we had reports last feet about 45,000 feet, exceeding the surface ceiling of the airplane, then diving down to the 23,000 feet, then down to 5,000, climbing back up.
So who is to say this data is actually correct with the 12,000? And here's an interesting point, is that if it is a situation where it is a decompression or even the scenario of the fire to remove smoke, 10,000 is the number that sticks in our head. So was that primary radar data really accurate? And 10,000 is the number that we use continuously to go down to, because we know it is an altitude that people can survive and breathe at.
LEMON: Mr. Thomas, and Kyung Lah, and again, this indeed -- we're just sort of gleaning from this new information. We don't know.
We don't know where the plane could be. And obviously the satellites have picked up they believe some information, as the Australian government says, that is credible and that's why they're out there searching.
But indeed, if you are right, if Les Abend, is right, if you are right, then this plane may not have gotten to that southern arc, as you have said, Mr. Thomas.
LAH: So, Geoffrey can't quite hear you, Don.
But I'm just going to ask what you Don is asking. He is saying that the plane certainly wouldn't have made it down here at that altitude. And you also brought up the idea of a left turn. A second left turn?
THOMAS: Well, it was tracking northeast toward Beijing. We know it turned left back towards the Malaysian Peninsula. We now know it descended down to 12,000, possibly even 5,000 feet, into the Straits of Malacca.
Then to get here, it would have to make another left turn to go due south. So you have got four or five actions that have to be human, because it wasn't programmed to do this. The flight program is to go northeast to Beijing.
LAH: And you have had this theory all along that it has been human.
THOMAS: It can't be anything else but human with these inputs, because, for instance, if it was a depressurization event, if that happened, and these things have happened before, the plane would have continued to go toward Beijing. It would not have turned left, descended, climbed, descended, turned left again, and come down here.
LAH: All right, Geoffrey Thomas, thank you very much -- back to you, Don.
LEMON: Yes. Yes. Thank you, Geoffrey. And thank you very much, Kyung Lah. Kyung, we will get back to you throughout the evening here on CNN.
More with our panel and our breaking news coming up right after a quick break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
LEMON: All right, welcome back to CNN's breaking news.
We're getting news information that radar has picked up a change in altitude and also a turn here for that plane, that missing Flight 370.
I want to get my panel back in. I want to get in Mary Schiavo. She was a former U.S. inspector general for the U.S. Department of Transportation. Mark Weiss is a former American Airlines pilot, CNN analyst. Miles O'Brien is a CNN aviation analyst as well. And pilot Les Abend, a 777 captain, Bobbie Scholley, retired Navy captain and retired Navy diver, and Lieutenant Ken Christensen, who is an aviation consultant, U.S. Air Force retired. Also, David Soucie, CNN safety analyst and the author of "Why Planes Crash: An Accident Investigator Fights for Safe Skies," and also Mitchell Casado and our very own Martin Savidge join us from the flight simulator.
Let's get to my first question is, for, let's get David Soucie in.
David, you have been listening to the information. And also you did not get to respond to the simulation of this happening, what kind of descent that would be.
DAVID SOUCIE, CNN SAFETY ANALYST: It really was more about what Miles had brought up.
He had mention too that had the oxygen, what the relationship of the oxygen to the ACARS system is. And I looked into that. And the oxygen system is not near the ACARS system. I just wanted to clear that up for Miles' question that he had.
But I did come across an airworthiness directive that I know someone is going to bring up. And I looked at this. It is called airworthiness directive 2014-05-03. Now we're talking airplane geek again.
LEMON: Yes, you are.
SOUCIE: But I just wanted to make sure everybody knew that what that airworthiness directive is about is mandating inspections on the satcom antenna mounting area.
That's nowhere near the front area of the aircraft. It is in the back of the aircraft. And what it entails is putting a reinforcement there. Until the reinforcement is installed, it requires an inspection, a routine inspection of there. So I wanted to make sure we got that on the table here now, that it was addressed, and I just don't in my mind connect that with the rapid depressurization, although the airworthiness directive does say could cause rapid decompression.
The area we're talking about is not anywhere near the size of the cargo door that came off that Mark Weiss had mentioned earlier. I did want to address those two things and make sure everybody knew that didn't going to that into the wrong perspective.
LEMON: OK. Miles O'Brien, that's a good lead-in to you, what David Soucie says when he talks this zero-dash pilot geek stuff that you guys do.
But here's the interesting thing. There's a certain procedure that is in a manual, a checklist. And you have that checklist. Can we go through that? And I want Martin and Mitchell to listen to this and then we can all discuss it. Go ahead, Miles.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: By the way, before we do the checklist, though, when we start talking about these airworthiness directives, we really need to see the maintenance records of this aircraft to see if they complied what those A.D.s. That's a big deal.
Let's do the checklist, though.
(CROSSTALK)
LEMON: Go ahead.
O'BRIEN: I have got guys like Les looking over my shoulder. I will be a little hot under the collar here, so you correct me, Les, believe me, if there is a problem.
But, basically, here is what you do. In the world of aviation, they call this a red box item. That means, the checklist is in your gray matter. It is so critical that you have to memorize it.
The first thing you do -- this is we call a cabin altitude issue. In parlance, that means a decompression scenario. And bear in mind the environment that this might mean for the pilots. You have a sudden pop, explosion, whatever you might say. Things are flying. You might have loss of lighting or power. You might lose your primary flight display, which is the screen you use to fly. You might be using little gauges. It is a very chaotic environment. And they say that flying is long hours of boredom punctuated by moments of stark terror. This is a stark terror moment.
So, obviously, the oxygen masks go on first. That's number one. And you drill it. You should be able to do it in about two seconds. Now, remember I was telling you about the context. This is incredibly loud now. And the most important thing, forget air traffic control, forget the back of the airplane, forget the flight attendants. The pilot needs to be able to talk to the co-pilot.
You're getting ahead of me of that. Can you go back to the previous page?
The pilot needs to be able to talk to the co-pilot. They establish communication. They're wearing these masks. They have got to make sure that they have communication. So then they check the cabin altitude one more time. And then it begins what they call the high dive.
Now we can go to the next page. And somewhere in this -- and this is not in the checklist -- you disengage the autopilot.
Les, you were talking about autopilot. But I think they would want to go to manual flying here, I'm pretty sure. Was that the procedure for you, to do manual for this?
ABEND: You could do either one, but I think the gut reaction of most of us would be to disconnect the autopilot and make it happen.
(CROSSTALK)
ABEND: But you could do it by automation, Miles.
O'BRIEN: All right. So down you go. And you want to go down as quickly as you can without breaking pieces off of the airplane.
And so we saw Martin and Mitchell do it. They put out what they called the boards, which are the spoilers. You have seen them as land. They flip up backwards to undermine the airfoil. And down you go.
I think they did about a 9,000-foot-per-minute descent, which is just about what you would expect to not overstress the airplane. And you're going to get down as quickly as you can. So, in that hectic time, the captain would likely take control of the aircraft.
The first officer would be responsible for the other duties, including the communication. And that is where something went wrong. And why did ACARS fail? Why did the radio not go through? Why did the transponder fail?
That is the big part of the mystery at this point. But part of this whole thing is descend to 10,000 feet, where you can get enough air to breathe. And then you sort of continue -- then continue your trouble- shooting. So in a dramatic form, watching Martin and Mitchell, you know it is a simulator, but it is kind of gut-wrenching watching that stuff. And you can imagine the scenario in the real world, when it was happening and how they were trying to respond quickly.
I just want people to kind of understand what that might be like for the crew and why maybe a communication didn't occur. Again, though, you had multiple failures, transponder, ACARS and radios. And that's a tough one to explain.
LEMON: When we come right back, we will respond. We will get our panel of experts to respond to Miles O'Brien's checklist and the breaking news here on CNN. Don't go anywhere.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
LEMON: We have been following some breaking news here on CNN all this evening. And it's major.
It involves a radar system, according to a source, tracking that missing plane making a sharp turn and then also dropping to an altitude of 12,000 feet.
My panel is back.
I'm going to start with Mary Schiavo.
Mary, you heard Miles O'Brien's checklist, the difficulty in doing this under duress. And also what do you glean from this new information?
MARY SCHIAVO, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Well, from the new information, it tells me that clearly something was going on in the plane, be it decompression, fire, smoke, explosion, and that they had an awful lot to do in a short amount of time.
It could have been the plane itself sensed a depressurization, did a 90-minute turn and started the descent. But following up with what David Soucie said, I'm a member with him in the aviation techno-geek club. It is important to look at those maintenance records, because I can't count the number of cases I have worked where a plane has come out of maintenance, they left some items undone. They were going to do them at the next maintenance turn.
And we need to see those. Those are very important. Let's hope Malaysia authorities grab them and are poring over them.
You mentioned David Soucie. Well, why not we go to him?
David?
SOUCIE: Although the fact that it took that dive, which I'm not 100 percent is good information, because typically radar doesn't give that kind of altitude information that quickly and that reliably -- so I want to hold off on that until I figure it out, but there was distress going on in that airplane. LEMON: Bobbie Scholley?
SCHOLLEY: Well, from a search and recovery perspective, we have just got to get our hands around this and see how this might affect where we need to look and what we need to do about it and be careful about how we handle this.
LEMON: Ken Christensen?
KEN CHRISTENSEN, PRESIDENT, INTEGRATED AVIATION SOLUTIONS: You will find the aircraft. Focus on the radar date, where it was lost, and follow the debris field.
LEMON: I think you said don't focus on, you said, where it was lost. You said focus on the radar data, right, right?
CHRISTENSEN: The data that you have, that's where you need to go. And then you will find the aircraft, absolutely.
LEMON: Mark Weiss?
MARK WEISS, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Well, 12,000 foot is the altitude du jour. We don't know how quickly that came down. We still don't know if it was human intervention or mechanical problem.
I would still be reserved in what we have to think about.
LEMON: Miles O'Brien, I'm going to save you for last.
I'm going to go to Mitchell Casado first.
MITCHELL CASADO, PILOT TRAINER: All these theories, we have to remember that the plane did fly for seven hours. If there was any kind of smoke, fire, electrical failure, anything like that, is that really possible, knowing that it flew for seven hours?
LEMON: Marty Savidge?
MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, same point. I think that's the one flaw in this emergency scenario, is that this aircraft, at least according to the data, continued to fly on in the air for a long time. It doesn't match emergency.
LEMON: Right.
And that's a great point brought up by Mitchell and also Martin Savidge. The plane did fly on for hours.
Miles O'Brien.
O'BRIEN: Boeing builds hearty aircrafts. We have seen them fly without cargo doors. We have seen fly without a roof came off in the case of Aloha Airlines. It could fly on for quite some time.
Final thought here. If there was a high dive like this, it takes implication, it takes -- we cannot point the finger as much at the craw. Either it was malfunction of some kind, a bomb, or somebody commandeered, in my opinion, in order to precipitate that high dive. It would not -- it probably would not go that way if the crew was complicit in all of this.
LEMON: Yes.
We have had great information this hour. We have just sort of thrown the rule book out, threw away the rundown, and just had great conversations.
The reason I saved you for last, Martin Savidge -- I mean -- I'm sorry, Miles O'Brien, is because we're so glad to have you back here at CNN, especially considering what you have gone through. And you're just a trooper.
When I heard about what happened to you, my heart sank. And seeing you on television, it just makes my heart explode in a good way. We're all glad to have you back. And I'm sure the viewer is as well.
Continued success to you and health and happiness. And I will see you back tonight at 10:00 p.m. That's the last I will say to that.
I'm Don Lemon. Thank you for watching.
Our continuing coverage of these new developments surrounding Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 continues one hour from now with a special report.
And you can always get the very latest on CNN.com.
But, first, the CNN original series "DEATH ROW STORIES," that begins just moments from now right here on CNN.
I will see you back at 10:00 p.m. Eastern.
