Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsroom

Developments in the Search for Flight 370

Aired March 23, 2014 - 13:00   ET

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

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: 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.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (INAUDIBLE) 94 percent area coverage. But again, we weren't able to detect any evidence of the missing aircraft.

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

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: It's a game changer.

SCIUTTO: This as the world responds with more planes arriving into the region. But the weather could hamper those efforts.

And what of the families waiting, worrying, and praying?

We have all the angles covered. You're in the CNN NEWSROOM.

Hello, I'm Jim Sciutto in today for Fredricka Whitfield. And we are following new developments today in the mystery of Malaysian 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 on the search, Malaysian authorities say France gave them a third satellite image today showing possible debris again in the Southern Indian Ocean. Chinese and Australian satellites have also spotted objects there. Today eight planes and a ship searched that area of the ocean but unfortunately they didn't find anything.

We did find one thing, though, 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.

And also Malaysian authorities clarified today what was in that last transmission from the plane's communication system at 1:07 a.m., the night that the jet disappeared. Officials say it showed nothing unusual and that the plane was still heading for Beijing. That appears to undermine the idea that the plane's computer was reprogrammed to take a different route before the flight.

I want to get right to those new images that Malaysia got today from France. We have CNN's Will Ripley in Kuala Lumpur. Will, down there, what's the reaction to these images? Because now you have three different countries with their satellites, Australia, China, and now France, with some data indicating what could be, and again, emphasize, what could be debris in that area.

What's the reaction there as to how serious this is?

WILL RIPLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, I'll sure tell you the reaction at Subang Airport here, basically we have planes that are now leaving this area, heading down to Perth to assist in the search and rescue operation. So that just goes to show you right there that resources are being moved closer to this area, about 1500 miles off of Perth where this suspected debris is located.

And this is really interesting. This is one of the most solid leads that we have so far because as you mentioned we now have three countries -- Australia, China, and France -- that all claim to have satellite images that show in this general area what they think could possibly be debris from Flight 370.

But again, we have to emphasize the word possible because as we saw with China earlier, there was -- there was another satellite image that was released that turned out not to be anything. So we have to always say this could be, but one of the most promising leads that we've seen so far in this investigation which is now stretching more than two weeks.

SCIUTTO: No question, as we always say on the air they're working with the best clues they have, not necessarily definitive but the best information they have.

We understand as well that NASA is going to help with the search. How are they going to contribute?

RIPLEY: Well, we know that NASA satellites are in this area trained over this area, and the request has been made by the Australian government for the NASA satellites to now specifically focus in on this area in the Southern Indian Ocean off of Australia to take a close look and see if they can also get any sort of image of what is suspected to be this particular debris.

We know that these are very high-resolution satellites. They could be able to get a more clear snapshot. The only issue here, though, is that once you see it on a satellite actually finding it went you fly a plane out there, that has proven to be quite a challenge. We have a tropical cyclone in the area which is making conditions really treacherous.

I was up in a P-3 Orion yesterday. We had to fly around the cyclone, had to actually cut off our search a little bit early, and we're flying through lightning on the way back to Subang Airport here in Kuala Lumpur.

So, obviously, once you have the image, that's step one. Step two is getting out there and actually finding something.

SCIUTTO: Right. That's been frustrating so far.

Thanks to Will Ripley in Kuala Lumpur. And also, Will, welcome to CNN. It's great to have you on this story.

So we want to get now to some analysis of today's developments. We have Mary Schiavo, CNN aviation analyst, also former -- also an attorney for victims families and transportation accidents. Also formerly with the NTSB. We have Ric Gillespie, airplane recovery consultant and the author of the book "Finding Amelia" about the search for Amelia Earhart. And Kip Darby is a retired commercial airline pilot, head of his own aviation consulting firm, as well as CNN safety analyst David Soucie, author of his book "Why Planes Crash: An Accident Investigator's Fight for Safe Skies."

So good to have all of you here. A meeting of the minds on this. And today we do have some new developments.

Maria -- Mary, I wonder if I can start with you, just on this news that Malaysian authorities said today about data coming from that cockpit? Because you remember a little more than a week ago there was word, there were reports, indications that that turn to the west after the plane lost contact might have been preprogrammed, and this added to the theory that the pilots might have done this on purpose or that it was premeditated.

Now you have word at least from the Malaysians that that is not the case. There was nothing from the plane to indicate that the flight -- that that turn was preprogrammed.

How important a development do you think that is and for you does it undermine the theory that the pilots were somehow intentionally involved?

MARY SCHIAVO, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Well, I mean, I never thought the pilots were intentionally involved. We were pondering this 12-minute gap. What happened was because this was thought to have been programmed in by the pilots, we -- and the last communication was 12 minutes after they thought this was programmed in, no one could understand why the pilots were having a mayday or they were having a cockpit intrusion or if it was a hijacking or if the -- they were on fire or rapid decompression, why they didn't issue either a 10-10 or a mayday or ask for -- inform somebody or turn around.

Now if this wasn't preprogrammed in, there is no mystery. We don't have a 12-minute gap of I why didn't the pilot say anything. Quite likely they didn't have time to say a word after whatever happened happened.

SCIUTTO: So just to be clear, Mary, for you this gives you an indication at least or a clue that they were responding to some sort of event in that cockpit.

SCHIAVO: Oh, absolutely. And especially since there's not one -- there's literally not a shred of evidence that anyone has turned up of pilot suicide, terrorism, sabotage, or hijack. So this hopefully will help people focus on the important events, maybe even now that they know that this wasn't a pre-programmed event, maybe perhaps we can zero in on the headings even better and not have to rely on just a few satellite handshakes.

I think it's very, very helpful as long as people focus on it and just work like crazy from this -- from this clue to pinpoint the plane in the -- in the water and still not chase the northern route.

SCIUTTO: And I'm glad you brought the point about terrorism. I've been talking to intelligence sources since this plane disappeared 16 days ago and they've told me repeatedly no indications of a connection to terrorism.

I wonder, David, if I can ask you just this question because, you know, these are all theories, that's the best really that investigators have at this point are theories. I mean, there have been cases in the past where governments, you know, their flagship airline, for instance, in the EgyptAir case, where there were indications and, you know, pretty hard proof, in fact, that the pilots flew that plane into the water, that was a conclusion, though, that the government wouldn't take -- wouldn't accept. And that was a flag carrier.

I mean, do you get any sense that Malaysia -- the Malaysian Airlines that they would push back on a theory like that because it's a flagship -- because it's a flagship airline or have you seen, as this investigation has developed, a better cooperation in sharing of intelligence, et cetera, from the Malaysian authorities?

DAVID SOUCIE, CNN SAFETY ANALYST: What I see is that the Malaysian authorities are starting to learn how to run an accident investigation and they're going back and forth because of the fact that they just simply don't have the experience. You look at the news conference when a piece of paper was handed to the official to say, hey, this is information. I've been accused of not sharing so here it is.

You know, that gives me -- I feel for these guys because they're really trying to do the best they can. It's just they don't have the experience. Now that the information is coming out, I think they've accepted that we don't know what we don't know and we're starting to work together and share information in the way that it's appropriately shared after it's been validated and has some good information that we can say we have good confidence that this is true or it's not true.

I feel like it's moving forward now and as Mary said now hopefully we can focus on the real facts. I doubted that that was preprogrammed into -- that turn was preprogrammed in the first place because there's nothing on the aircraft that would have reported that, so I couldn't understand where they got the information. So I didn't put a high level of confidence in that in the first place.

SCIUTTO: All right. Thanks very much. We're going to have to take a quick break here. Ric and Kit, I'm going to get back to you. Please, viewers, as well, stay with us. We have many more questions to answer right after this break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) SCIUTTO: Welcome back. I'm Jim Sciutto in New York.

And I want to bring our panel back because we really want to dig deep to explain to our viewers and dig deeper on one of the developments today. And that is the Malaysian government saying Sunday, that the last ACARS transmission -- remember, this is the system from the plane, to our viewers, that wirelessly sends flight data back to the ground, direction, speed, et cetera, conditions of the engines.

That that last transmission from ACARS sent at 1:07 a.m. several minutes before the plane had its last -- that famous now "good night" communication showed nothing unusual, including it did not include information that a turn, this turn to the west that has become familiar to us now, was preprogrammed into the computer.

Why is that significant? Because little more than a week ago there was a theory and some reporting that in fact the plane sent back a signal to show that that turn to the west was preprogrammed. It was not sudden. It was not in reaction to something that happened in the cockpit but that someone plugged it into that computer before the turn took place and therefore, because of this change from the Malaysian authorities undermines the theory that somehow the pilots premeditated this turn.

I want to go to Kit Darby because he himself a retired commercial airline pilot, flown planes like this, head of his own today aviation consulting firm.

I wonder if you can help and probably better than me walk our viewers through why this new information from Malaysian authorities is important as investigators try to figure out what happened to this plane and who was responsible.

KIT DARBY, RETIRED COMMERCIAL AIRLINE PILOT: Good afternoon, Jim. You know, I initially had a theory myself that something happened that was immediate -- required immediate attention. The whole concept of ACARS reporting information contrary to that sort of dashed that theory. We're back to the point where the pilots easily could have been dealing with an internal problem or had a gun to their head. I mean, we can't really say.

But the fact that it would be premeditated would take away all those other scenarios. So ACARS is doing its normal job, we have normal communication, we have normal ACARS reporting, and then a line is drawn and things change drastically. We have to look at what things could cause the pilot, for instance, to turn back. And a pilot would turn back if he -- his plane, you know, is in trouble. And that's why he wouldn't descend and land. There are other issues.

Every theory as holes in it. We don't have enough information to make a complete picture. But the fact that ACARS and preprogramming of the flight management system didn't occur prior to this line being drawn leaves open the option that the pilot was simply dealing with a very difficult problem, and although not a zero probability that he would communicate first, controlling the plane and getting the plane where he wants it to go, could easily be the first priority. If there was something like fire or smoke involved, he could put on an oxygen mask. Sounds like a simple thing, but it complicates both flying the plane and communicating. So if it was electrical, then all the things at once could be electrically based. Typically when we have one problem, we say, well, the piece broke. But if we have several problems, several communications cut at the same time, we would most likely look at a power source or several power sources.

So now we're faced with this possibility that something happened, electrical, fire, smoke, the pilot had his hands full, he was making an attempt to return initially and what happened after that we have no additional information.

SCIUTTO: Well, that's very helpful, Kit. And just to reiterate to our audience, the key here is sequence, really, because when this initial report came out about a week ago which now the Malaysian authorities are contradicting that this turn had been preprogrammed 12 some-odd minutes before the plane took that turn, it gave an indication at the time that when the cockpit said "good night," an odd communication to give, to say everything's fine when in fact you programmed a turn off course to a completely different direction than the city of Beijing, the sequence in key, that raised questions about whether this was intentional.

Now, again, just to reiterate, we're being told by Malaysian authorities that in fact at 1:07, that last kind of wireless communication from plane via the ACARS system, that there was no indication that this turn had been preprogrammed.

I wonder if I could bring you back, as well, Mary, just for someone who's investigated incidents like this before. Just explain to our viewers why that sequencing is important and why this new information changes that. And as you said earlier, undermines the theory that this was intentional.

SCHIAVO: All right. Well, in prior accidents and things that are similar and at least for my part, when I look at a case, I go back to previous accidents that give clues how this might have happened. And what occurs is you're flying your own course. You do have other waypoints, you do have other alternates entered in but only safeties. For example, if you can't get into Beijing in this case, you would have to have something else entered in.

Here some early reports said that, no, no, the pilots entered in other waypoint, way off of the course of Beijing or their safety and they did that in advance, and so that showed they had something nefarious in mind. But there was no evidence of that. There were just media reports and news reports coming out from various sources. And so what would happen is if you're communicating with air traffic control ordinarily if you have an emergency, it's something -- a rapid decompression in the plane, meaning your plane has burst somewhere, like -- literally like letting a leak out and you can't breathe.

You don't have oxygen, you've got to get your oxygen masks on, and also fit with the theory that another pilot had heard a garbled communication from this plane. But all of that was difficult to reconcile with -- from the time that the reports were that the pilots had put in this turn and were intending, at least according to reports based on -- inputting data, were intending some kind of a turn and their last communication that was 12 minutes.

And that didn't jive with anything because if you're fighting for control of your aircraft, if you're fighting for your life, you're going to try to let somebody know. But now if it wasn't preprogrammed, what you do not have, you do not have any malice aforethought, you have no evil intent, you're just a pilot more likely involved in some heroism rather than terrorism.

SCIUTTO: Well, that's a great point.

I want to bring Ric Gillespie in, because your job is about finding lost airplanes, including your book, "Finding Amelia," of course the story of Amelia Earhart, because this theory about some sort of -- you know, that this turn was under control as opposed to reacting to something was based not just on the ACARS data but also on the information that when the plane took that turn it followed very closely waypoints, radar points used for navigation by airplanes, and it followed them so perfectly that it was an indication to investigators that this was not under the control of the -- of the pilot when it wouldn't be 100 percent perfect but more likely under the control of auto pilot or -- of the computer of the airplane.

I wonder what kind of indication that gives you, particularly for someone who's trying to track where disappearing planes ended up.

RIC GILLESPIE, AIRCRAFT RECOVERY CONSULTANT: It's incredible to me to see how everyone in this case is acting just like people acted in 1937 with the Earhart loss. The assumption that something happened so quickly that there was no time for a distress call. The last communication from Earhart indicated that she knew she was having trouble finding the island she was looking for, but there was no mayday, there was no "we're going down," anything like that, just as in this case.

Now I'm going to open for -- I'm going to argue for an open mind here. Everybody is concerned about, well, it wasn't preprogrammed, but it could be programmed at the time the pilot wanted to execute the maneuver, just for -- a matter of reaching down, boop, boop, boop, program. He probably knows that ACARS is reporting this.

If there is a criminal act here, it was very well-planned. And I don't think we can throw that out just because somebody would have made a mistake and left a trail for what they want to do. When an airplane changes course and heads in a different direction under control as this seems to be, it's on its way somewhere. Where was that airplane headed? Why is no one asking that question?

So maybe there's wreckage in the South Indian Ocean. Maybe it's an accident. I hope it is. But let's keep an open mind here. Let's not build a house of cards.

SCIUTTO: Well, listen, you make a good point that all theories are still open because investigators have made no final conclusions, just new information, taking the information as they comes.

I want to thank our panel. So many difficult issues to explain to our viewers here. Mary, Ric, Kit, and David, we're going to have you back to talk more in just a few minutes.

But first, searching a vast stretch of dark icy ocean poses a whole range of technical problems. We'll talk about some of them right after this break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SCIUTTO: The South Indian Ocean is one of the most remote places on the planet and not only that it's an incredibly hostile to searchers with huge waves and strong currents and depths that are dark and ice cold.

For more now on the technical challenge of a deep-sea search, we turn to Dr. Alistair Dove, the director of Research and Conservation at the Georgia Aquarium.

Alistair, you know, we know a lot has become familiar how remote this ocean is, and particularly the search area of the ocean, 1500 miles south and west of Australia. Beyond its remoteness, what else is difficult about this area in terms of searching for a plane like this?

ALISTAIR DOVE, DIRECTOR OF RESEARCH AND CONSERVATION, GEORGIA AQUARIUM: Well, the conditions on the surface of the water are part of the problem. It's also a very poorly surveyed part of the ocean. We don't have a lot of data buoys out there that provide real-time information about what the ocean is doing. And so we really lack a lot of basic information that's necessary before you plan a complex search and recovery operation of the sort that's being undertaken right now.

It's really a long way off the Australian coast but as you mentioned the problems just get started once you break the surface of the water and you go down into those perpetually cold, perpetually dark conditions where the pressure are really crashing, and finding anything becomes practically impossible.

SCIUTTO: So what kind of special equipment will searchers need? Yesterday on the program we were looking at a -- what looked like a mini sub but an unmanned sub that had been used to find other planes, missing ships, et cetera. What kind of technology are we talking about here?

DOVE: Well, the first thing they're going to do is narrow down the search area using these aerial assets that they have. But then when they're ready to start looking a little below the surface of the water they'll probably bring in some surface-driven sonar, survey equipment that will be able to tow back and forth across the area and survey the bottom of the ocean to see what that bottom looks like.

But it's so deep there that the resolution of the sonar survey of that sort is really not enough to pick out individual pieces of debris, mostly you're just likely to find something that looks interesting and at that point you have to then deploy other pieces of equipment that can go a little bit deeper, things like ROV, remotely operated vehicles. Those go down to the bottom. They're tethered to the surface via cable and they're eventually a robot submarine that you can drive around from the surface and it will look -- either survey the bottom with sound or look directly with lights and see if it can find more debris that way.

SCIUTTO: Yes. It's a tough thing. I've seen some of the images that they get on those first scans, and they look like little amorphous shapes. You've got to use, you know, magic as much as anything else to figure out if it's worth a closer look. It's tough.

You know, this is a question I almost -- uncomfortable asking you, but, you know, you look at Air France, it was two years before they found that plane but -- and they knew where it went down in general. Is there a chance this plane will never be found?

DOVE: I think that's a significant possibility, and I'm obviously loathe to say that. It's very disappointing for the families of those involved. But when the ocean reclaims things as it so often does, very often there's very little sign. And we have this notion that we know every part of the planet and that there should be some sign, but there are parts of the planet that are still beyond our reach.

And the deep oceans is one of those places. So if the deep ocean reclaims something like this, there is a good possibility that we will -- that we won't find it and it will suffer the same fate as millions of ship wrecks and other lost things that have been reclaimed by the ocean over the course of the last centuries.

SCIUTTO: It's an incredible thought to think in this age of sort of super surveillance, satellites in the sky and everything, that there might be part of the planet we don't know very well.

Thanks very much to Alistair Dove of the Georgia Aquarium.

We have continuing coverage of the search for Flight 370 including this theory.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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

We're entering the 17th day since Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 vanished and we are learning new details today.

Malaysian authorities say France also has a satellite image showing possible debris in that same area of the Southern Indian Ocean. That's the third satellite image to show objects in that search area but search crews flying from the air still haven't been able to find whatever those objects might be.

Still the Australian prime minister expressed some hope this weekend. Here's what he had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) TONY ABBOTT, AUSTRALIAN PRIME MINISTER: Obviously, we have now had a number of very credible leads and there is increasing hope, no more than hope, no more than hope, that we might be on the road to discovering what did happen to this ill-fated aircraft.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO: In another development Malaysian officials said today the last data transmission from the plane did not show a route change, that contradicts earlier information that indicated someone may have preprogrammed a route change in that cockpit before the last communication from the cockpit.

Now with no concrete evidence in hand, theories on what happened to Flight 370 continue to live on. And one of them is the so-called shadow plane theory, that Flight 370 was obscured by another aircraft on radar.

Chad Myers from Atlanta joins me now. He's been looking into this theory and is explaining why it still has some traction.

Chad, walk us through it and why this theory still appeals plausible to some.

CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: It still has traction because Inmarsat hasn't given us the pings. As soon as we know where all the pings are from all the hours we could maybe throw this theory away but for now we cannot. This is not disproven just yet.

Here's what the shadow theory says. And Heath Ledgerwood is on Twitter with this. He basically came up with this. It says that 370 took off, went out here to the waypoint and turned left, just like everybody knows it did, and went right over that airport where remember the guy -- the first guy said, there was a fire here and he was headed for the airport. That's the airport he was headed for.

But at the same time or maybe even an hour later there was a Singapore Air Flight 68 coming straight up the Strait of Malacca, straight up through here. Guess what? This plane here was at 30,000 feet. We still know that this plane at some point in the Strait of Malacca was at 29,500 feet with only within a few miles of this plane as it got.

Now, OK, that doesn't prove any theory whatsoever. What we need to figure out are the pings. And so I have drawn six -- this is SIA, Singapore Airlines Flight 68, it's its flight path all the way up to Barcelona. That's what t it looks like. Here's where the pings would have been at those times. So here's what the ping pattern would have to look like for SIA 68 here and also MH-370 if those pings are correct.

A line here but a line closer, then a line farther away. Then a line farther away than that. And as we get back up here, we are still very close to this outer circle, this is the outer last ping where the plane could be on the northern arc or the southern arc so we can't throw this away. What we see is that if the transponder is turned off and the secondary radar shoots a target, Singapore 68, and whether MH- 370 is above or below doesn't really matter.

If it's close enough, that secondary radar will only see one target, this will ping back down, it'll squawk back down and say here I am, SIA 68, the radar controller was saying, there's 68, he's there all the time, he's flying to the north.

This still hasn't been disproven. We have reached out to Inmarsat, so has Keith Ledgerwood to try to figure out whether those pings could be in that pattern. If they're not, if they continue to move away from the satellite, then all of this is for naught. But for now we just don't know.

SCIUTTO: Well, it's interesting. It's another one of those case where without all the data there it's impossible not only to zero in on a correct theory but also to eliminate other theories which may turn out not to be right but it's a process of elimination at this point I suppose.

MYERS: That's exactly right.

SCIUTTO: Thanks very much to Chad Myers.

MYERS: You betcha.

SCIUTTO: In Atlanta as always.

When we come back, new information on that search for Flight 370.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SCIUTTO: Welcome back. I'm Jim Sciutto in New York. And I want to bring our panel of experts now to continue our conversation particularly as we analyze some new developments today. We have Mary Schiavo, CNN aviation analyst, also an attorney for victims and families of transportation accidents.

Ric Gillespie, airplane recovery consultant, author of the book, "Finding Amelia," about the search for Amelia Earhart's plane, another mystery, Kit Darby, retired commercial airline pilot, head of his own aviation consulting firm, and CNN's safety analyst David Soucie.

I want to just present to the panel, and the panel is familiar with this but viewers just joining might not have heard this new development from Malaysian authorities this morning saying that as far as their analysis of the data is concerned, they saw no indication from the plane that that turn to the west away from its original course towards Beijing from Kuala Lumpur was preprogrammed into that flight computer.

This had been a development about a week ago that had raised a lot of questions about why the pilots would have preprogrammed the turn before very calmly and in a friendly manner saying their last good night, their last communication with the ground.

I just wondered with this new development -- and I'm going to give at least a couple of you a chance to comment, but Mary, does this eliminate any continuing concern -- and I know you didn't have much concern from the beginning -- that the pilots intentionally took this plane off course for something nefarious, for instance?

SCHIAVO: Well, I would think that it should because that was all that we had unless something has come up with the FBI searching the pilots' computers and flight simulator and the one phone call that was made from the piles on the ground, which is very, very common. I mean, all my, you know, pilot friends do that as well.

But unless something turns up there, there just was nothing to point the finger at these pilots. And so I think that should, but really at this point in the investigation doesn't make a lot of difference. At this point we know we've got to find it in the sea and we have to because it becomes even more important because now we know there was most likely something wrong with the plane and there are a thousand of them out there, these planes. We have to find it to make sure aviation can go forward safely.

SCIUTTO: Ric, I want to just give you a quick chance to respond. Do you share Mary's point of view that in light of this new information about the sequencing that it's unlikely that you have an indication that the piles did this intentionally?

GILLESPIE: I keep coming back to the fact that the aircraft changed course for some reason for some reason. It didn't apparently go wildly out of control. It changed course. Now why did it change course? It seems to be under human control. Now the fact that nobody telegraphed those actions ahead of time doesn't change anything.

I'm just hesitant to now think that we have solid facts and we should go in one direction and disregard all others based on this. I don't see how it follows.

SCIUTTO: Well, Kit, I'd like to bring you in as well just as we move forward a little bit from this point. Being a retired commercial airline pilot, and this is a question that came via Twitter but I think it's a smart one because it gets to another possibility as to why pilots might take turn.

It comes from someone like Ziggy if catastrophic failure and all instruments become nonfunctional, what would an experienced pilot. So if not preprogrammed and if reacting to something that happened in that cockpit. What would you do in that situation and how quickly -- and based on that would -- what this plane -- how this plane behaved be consistent with that.

Well, the plane would become difficult to control. But there are nine or 10 possible power sources here so we would have to have multiple failures. Each engine has two generators, the auxiliary power unit has. A generator that's a ram air turbine that drops out. We have batteries for s short time.

It's almost inconceivable that everything can pale but if that happened at my -- over the twitter with no instructions. It'll be difficult to control the airplane. And we would not expect a flight path like the one we see on our primary radar where the airplane is going where it needs to go. That's not an airplane to me that has had a catastrophic failure.

SCIUTTO: All right. That's a very good point.

Listen, Ric, Mary, Kit and David -- David, thank you for your patience. We're going to come back after the break because I want you -- get your view on that point as well.

Meanwhile, did Flight 370 become a so-called zombie plane with no one in control? It has happened before. We'll explore that theory and some others right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SCIUTTO: Investigators have looked into the pilot and the co-pilot of Flight 370, but they're also pondering another question -- what if the flight crew lost control of the plane? More specifically, what if no one had control of the plane.

CNN's Suzanne Malveaux is here to explore that theory.

Suzanne, does it -- does it still have legs?

SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: It does have legs, Jim. This is one of those theories, you know, a lot come and go, but this has really some legs to it, it has gained more credibility and more steam as the weekend has progressed. And one of the possible scenarios here that I've talked with aviation experts this week is that this would explain how and why this plane went down.

We are talking about the whole crew and passengers becoming incapacitated. It is an ominous title. It is called the zombie scenario.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MALVEAUX (voice-over): October 25th, 1999, a chartered Learjet carrying professional golfer, Payne Stewart, and five others, plunged nose first into a South Dakota field. It had streaked across the sky for almost four hours flying on its own. The plane had lost cabin pressure and all on board were dead.

Jet fighter shadowing the plane could do nothing to save it as it eventually ran out of fuel.

Could Malaysia Flight 370 have also turned into a so-called zombie plane?

CLIVE IRVING, CONTRIBUTOR, "THE DAILY BEAST": They were, at some point, overtaken by whatever it was. Smoke fire or -- other some kind of problem, and the plane was then left to fly itself. That's what we call a zombie option.

MALVEAUX: It happened with Helius Flight 522, which flew on autopilot for nearly two hours before crashing outside Athens in 2005. Pilots forgot to turn the pressurization switch from manual to auto. At 34,000, all 121 on board passed out and froze in their seats. So far we know the Malaysian flight was flying for at least seven hours based on pings or signals emitted from the plane. Clive Irving believes whatever took out the plane's transponder and communication systems, ACARS was mechanical and could have also damaged the plane's electronic nerve center which, among other things, monitors the cabin's climate.

IRVING: In the case of oxygen shortage where you have a decompression, it happens pretty quickly. Can happened in a minute or so. In the case of smoke, it can also be very quick. The pilots have a greater oxygen supply than the passengers do so they could have remained active for longer, but all of this could have taken no more than say 10 minutes at most.

MALVEAUX: Skeptics say the zombie scenario is highly unlikely for the Malaysian flight because of the behavior of the plane and crew.

MARK WEISS, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: You're changing altitudes because you cut him down to get to land safely. And you're changing direction and you're changing heading, and professional and by training you would let somebody know, air traffic control. So an emergency signal would have been broadcast.

IRVING: It may be that they did try to send a signal and for some technical reason the signal was never sent or maybe the signal was sent and no one was listening. This was like 1:20 in the morning over the Pacific.

MALVEAUX: In the case of Payne Stewart's crash, investigators found no distress call was made either, just a sounding of alarms, including one for a loss of cabin pressure.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MALVEAUX: So, Jim, what is behind the credibility of the zombie plane theory is whether or not you believe this is an investigation into the mechanical failure of this flight or the an investigation into a criminal ac. Because the difference between whether or not you believe the crew or someone else switched off the aircraft systems or they just failed, which would have given everybody on board little time to respond or even survive -- Jim.

SCIUTTO: So, Suzanne, this new information that there is no indication or there was no indication coming from the plane that at this turn was preprogrammed, does that increase the possibility of a zombie plight? Does it add weight to that?

MALVEAUX: Well, you know, it's interesting because I talked to aviation analyst. It gives weight to the possibility that there was a mechanical area. That there wasn't something necessarily nefarious or nefarious or sinister behind the flight's failure. And whether or not this was an electrical failure in the belly of the plane or a fire and a gas, the crew and passengers, they could have become incapacitated pretty quickly leaving this plane to fly on its own and to simply drop in the ocean -- Jim.

SCIUTTO: Well, it's incredible. A spooky possibility.

Thanks very much to Suzanne Malveaux in Washington.

And now I just want to bring our panel of experts back to continue this conversation and get to this issue of the zombie flight. We've got Mary Schiavo, CNN aviation analyst, Ric Gillespie, author of the book "Finding Amelia." Kit Darby is a retired commercial airline pilot himself and of course our aviation analyst David Soucie.

David, I want to give you -- because you've been patient. I want to give you a chance scenario. Talk about the of a zombie. What would cause that to happen. And looking at the data as you see it now, and I'm not going to hold this to you, but do you see information pointing in that direction?

SOUCIE: You know, I don't see the zombie scenario because there's two part to that really. One is in a zombie scenario, you have inability to communicate with the person, although your communication system is intact. In this scenario, it's totally different than that. We have no communication with the aircraft. So I want to go back to what Ric Gillespie had said. It's important to understand that we may be using our experience against us here.

I call it institutionalized thinking. Our experience is very valuable in trying to determine these things. But you have to be able to fathom the unimaginable to be able to think about things outside of that. So as I thought about that, I listened to what Kip has said, which is very true, that this aircraft has 10 different power sources, and the combination of those power sources, 10 to 10 power as to where those things can get their power from.

So if you think about those systems and how reliable they are, the only thing I can think of that might possibly have a vulnerability might be the fact that the communications bus is separate from the navigation bus. So if you have the communication bus fails, then you would have no communication, the pilots could still have navigational abilities, they could still have the autopilot working, be able to plug in new waypoints, other points like that.

So I really believe at this point, I'm really starting to narrow in on a really good theory that makes a lot of sense to me, and that is that the communication bust itself is what could have failed. The only thing in question for me then is how is the pinging, how is the satcom still pinging at that point? And I'm going to be looking into that.

SCIUTTO: Mary, you've investigated crashes before. Does that theory sound plausible to you?

SCHIAVO: It certainly does. And the turn to me sounds like more of a fight for the plane to take it back to some place to land because on that heading, there was a very large, long runway with no obstructions. And I do think that the pilot certainly had the ability to fight for the flight for a while. And we find in so many other accidents statistically speaking, this is what often comes up.

You have a malfunction on the plane and then you have pilot action. And those two things, so many times in an accident, that's the report in the finding of the National Transportation Safety Board, we had a mechanical failure exacerbated by pilot action. And it's tragic and it's sad but it makes it so, so, so important to get those -- fly that flight data recorder and find out what happened because the passengers' families will want to make sure it never happens to anyone else.

SCIUTTO: No question. That's the real next key is finding this plane.

I want to thank all of you. Great to speak with you so many times during this hour, Mary Schiavo, Ric Gillespie, Kit Darby and David Soucie as well.

Coming up in the next hour of CNN NEWSROOM begins right after this break with new information we learned today about this search for Flight 370.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)