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Al Lives Are Lost; Inmarsat Helps Locate Plane; Ships Search for Objects; Search Focuses on Floating Objects; Plane Flew Low

Aired March 24, 2014 - 14:00   ET

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

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Wolf, thank you so much. I'm Brooke Baldwin. Great to be with you on this Monday as we continue CNN special live report on the hunt for missing Flight 370.

Today was huge. Big developments to share with you. First, we saw the Malaysian prime minister delivering the news many had expected but no one wanted to hear.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NAJIB RAZAK, MALAYSIAN PRIME MINISTER: That MH-370 flew along the southern corridor and that its last position was in the middle of the Indian Ocean, west of Perth. This is a remote location far from any possible landing sites. It is, therefore, with deep sadness and regret that I must inform you that according to this new data, Flight MH-370 ended in the southern Indian Ocean.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Careful with every word. You heard him say it, the plane, quote, "ended in the southern Indian Ocean." So this is based upon U.K. military data that tracked the plane down the southern corridor ending west of Perth. This is the same location where both Australian and Chinese satellite spotted possible debris and the same location a visual debris sightings during flyovers. But let me be clear, none of those has been verified yet.

But just utter heartbreaking scenes at this briefing. This one just for the families.

(VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: You see the stretcher for yourself. Some people had to be removed from the room. Not many dry eyes here. Relatives wailing, screaming. You see this man lashing out at members of the media, cursing Malaysian authorities there.

Families were also sent a text message. Let me read a part of it for you. Quote, "we have to assume beyond all reasonable doubt that MH-370 has been lost and that none of those on board survived."

And you are heard me right. You see the heartbreak in the room. And this incredibly sensitive news delivered via text message before that formal press briefing. Malaysia Airlines, though, very quick to say it did tell families in person and by phone and says the text message, and I'm quoting them now, "was used only as an additional means of communication."

But 153 of the 227 passengers of Flight 370 are from mainland China or Hong Kong. So let's go now to Beijing to CNN's David McKenzie.

And, David, 18 days now since this plane vanished. And as we saw, just - you saw them yourself, absolutely devastating for these families.

DAVID MCKENZIE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, through these days they've been holding out on to hope, Brooke, and this message through text and in person was really that hope being dashed. These people, these families stuck in this hotel behind me, they have followed (ph) every lead that we've followed, every bit of information that could mean that the plane perhaps was still out there, some miracle they could have clung to. Well, when that message came through, those miracles had run out. And here's what one woman had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): They made this announcement today. Is it really true? What's their proof? First of all, they have not been able to confirm any suspected floating objects. They simply made this announcement today telling us that no one survived, everyone sank into the ocean. What's your proof? It's been 17 days. They simply just give us this result. How can people bear this?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MCKENZIE: Well, Brooke, many of the family members I've been speaking to say they want that same information. They want to see physical evidence that this plane went down. But in general, yes, it's just this resignation, the start of a grieving process for these people, for these families, that this raw emotion of people lashing out to the media, being put on stretchers and stretchered off to hospitals throughout Beijing. Certainly this was the scene here in Beijing that ending of hope effectively.

Brooke.

BALDWIN: I can't even begin to imagine what this is like for these parents or these children, aunts, uncles. But I have to ask, David, the bit about the text message, I mean such sensitive information. Can you just tell me more about how exactly the news was delivered via text, phone, in person?

MCKENZIE: Well, it was through all three. But many of the people I've spoken to, or several of them, got the message in a text message. Often, in fact, Chinese, who got it in English and weren't sure exactly what it was. And it says, you know, "deeply regret, but beyond any reasonable doubt that this flight has gone down and no survivors." So certainly very brutal way, some might say, to get this information.

The Malaysian Airline authorities saying they did try to reach out in person and on the phone. I guess the logic would be to get the information before that official presser happened so that there wasn't too much of a violent response to that particular press conference. But certainly family members wanting to know even from us if we know more details. Though there is on some level closure in this matter because the data adds up, it's such a terrible thing for families. They want physical proof. And in China, they want to see the actual body or the remains before they can start that grieving process.

BALDWIN: Can you blame some of them? I can't. David McKenzie in Beijing. David, thank you.

Malaysia's prime minister mentioned new data when making today's announcement and he specifically talked about data from this British company Inmarsat. It's a satellite communications firm. So Inmarsat was able to do something it's actually never done before, to figure out the plane's direction of travel, it used this particular kind of calculation to analyze the jet's automated satellite data. So CNN's Wolf Blitzer actually spoke with a top Inmarsat official not too long ago who said, while nothing is final, the data is pretty solid.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WOLF BLITZER, ANCHOR, CNN "NEWSROOM": Do you know for sure, without any doubt whatsoever, that the plane went into the Indian Ocean and that there are no survivors?

CHRIS MCLAUGHLIN, SR. VICE PRESIDENT, INMARSAT: If you look at the plots that we have using recent adjusted techniques, we can say that the most likely route is the south and the most likely ending is in roughly the area where they're looking now.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: So Chad Myers is here.

Just to explain a little bit further, how exactly did this work?

CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: We still have the same number of pings. But what happened - what has changed now is that those engineers at Inmarsat, they've never had to do this before.

BALDWIN: OK.

MYERS: Didn't even know that they could. But they worked it out over the weekend that they could figure out whether the plane was flying toward their satellite or away from their satellite, even by the slightest margin, by what's called Doppler shift. So we talked to Inmarsat guy, we talked to Chris a couple of hours ago as well and he said, yes, Doppler shift is what we used.

Here's Inmarsat's satellite. Think of it on a giant flag pole in the middle of the Indian Ocean. It stays over the exact same spot all the time. It's called geosynchronous orbit, 64.5 degrees east right there.

So let's get rid of this and now let's look at what we think the pings probably looked like. Remember, they haven't released the pings to us exactly, but we're pretty close here. We have where they thought the plane probably started, that's the last contact, and where it ended.

Now, I haven't drawn all the pings because I want to kind of keep this a little bit simplified here. But this is the distance to the first ping, the second ping, the third and the fourth. We knew the distances and we always did know the distance. But now what's different is, are the planes moving away, along or outside - inside the circle or outside the circle? That's the Doppler effect.

Now, let's get right to this here. I'm going to take you to what I believe the Doppler effect is, especially for that ping right there. That's the first ping somewhere around 2:00. We say 2:11. I'm not sure this is exactly where it is but we're - we're within a couple hundred miles right there.

BALDWIN: OK.

MYERS: The plane was flying into the ring, inside the ring, which means it was getting closer to the satellite itself.

So this is Doppler radar. We use Doppler radar, the same word, to know this is Tuscaloosa's tornado. This is moving this way by Doppler shift. This is moving this way by Doppler shift. We know and we knew at the time there was a tornado on the ground right there at Tuscaloosa.

Where else can you hear Doppler shift? If you hear a fire truck or a train or a race car go -

BALDWIN: Sure, you can tell if it's far away or closer to you.

MYERS: That's the shift. That's the shift. If you're going closer, the frequency is different than when you're moving away from you. The train moves across and it gets lower, the sound gets lower as the train goes by.

So as we get rid of this and back to our satellite, because here's really where the guts of all of this comes in, this is the first ping. There's a second ping through here. A third ping down here.

This ping is getting closer to the satellite. This ping, it's flying along the line, not getting closer or farther away. The ping down here, it's definitely flying away from the satellite to get it down to Australia. And the last ping here, we don't know if it was the - you know, the end of the flight or was there still another hour of fuel or 59 minutes anyway, but there was no 9:11 ping, 9:11 a.m. ping.

So what Inmarsat has done is said, if all this is true, moving away, moving closer, (INAUDIBLE), there's no possible way that we can make all of that new data fit to any flight plan going this way. It had to go that way if all of these things came true.

We're still only using one ping. We still don't have triangulation. I know it's all out there. But these guys worked on this all weekend. I know they did because I was a part of a couple of e-mail chains going on when they're talking about Doppler shift. And they worked hard on this. BALDWIN: I understand that, but, still, I imagine for those families, pings, science, data -

MYERS: Uh-huh.

BALDWIN: I think that many of them want to see pieces of the plane.

MYERS: Absolutely.

BALDWIN: So, we'll get to that search.

Chad, thank you so much for the explanation there.

MYERS: You're welcome, Brooke.

BALDWIN: I want to get to the search now because for the past several hours here there is an Australian naval survey ship that's been following up on this lead. Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott announced just this morning that an air crew spotted not just one but two objects some 1,500 miles southwest of Perth. One is described as gray or green, circular object, and the other is an orange rectangle.

China also reported suspicious objects in the area spotted by plane. Now, none of the objects has been re-spotted and they cannot be confirmed right now to have come, of course, from this plane, Flight 370. But with me now from New York is Richard Quest, our CNN business correspondent and also our aviation correspondent, and Kit Darby is here in Atlanta. He is a former airline pilot and now a consultant.

So, gentlemen, welcome (INAUDIBLE).

And, Captain Darby, let me just begin with you because here we're getting, you know, new information from the prime minister today that this Flight 370, his phraseology was, you know, ended in the Indian Ocean. Does that suggest anything to you as far as how or even why this plane went so off course?

KIT DARBY, RETIRED UNITED AIRLINES CAPTAIN: Well, initially I felt the airplane had tried to return. And the more recent radar data we've gotten from the military, which has been questionable all along. We have two radars, one from Malaysia, one from Thailand. As a military pilot in the past, my experience with military radar is it's designed to tell you the asmath (ph), the direction and the altitude. It's used for interception. So it's its actual design. I have quite a bit of confidence in that altitude information, especially the second one from Thailand. So I believe the airplane turned and descended, under the control of the pilot, with an attempt to return successfully to the ground, probably in Malaysia, at one of several airports in north Malaysia there.

Along the way, at 12,000 feet or below, I'm not sure about the 5,000 foot hit, but they were proceeding with a plan to get the airplane on the ground, I believe they were under attack. So at some point they may have lost that battle.

BALDWIN: Under attack, how do you mean? DARBY: Well, they had a threat. I'm not sure what it was. Whether it was outside the cockpit trying to get in. I'm not sure. But they were trying to save the plane and themselves and their passengers.

BALDWIN: Hmm.

DARBY: So at that point - and the radar's (INAUDIBLE) confirms it climbed back up and headed south. Obviously whatever they were doing, they lost that battle. So now we're into the, you know, someone else in control, pilot perhaps following their instructions or not, autopilot doing its job heading south for a really long time. But the initial information still shows that there was a - and it probably limited the range of the plane because they used fuel to go back to altitude. And that would change the calculation by as much as an hour as to how far they could fly. So that's my -- using all the bits of recent information, what I believe --

BALDWIN: Piecing it together.

DARBY: You know, I do believe (INAUDIBLE) both schools were right. You know, yes, something went on near where it turned and, yes, something went on in the deep Indian Ocean.

BALDWIN: Richard Quest, what do you make of that assessment?

RICHARD QUEST, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: Well, I mean, we can't really say one way or the other at this point because there are so many pieces of this jigsaw that don't make a complete picture that one really -- I can - I can take any fact and I can not only advance it to the nefarious option, the other option, the pilot's option, the pilots dealing with something. The call remains - and, of course, we don't have a confirmation on a crucial issue, which is whether or not the plane did descend to 12,000 feet, which would make a dramatic difference to the whole scenario. (INAUDIBLE) turned and stayed at altitude, then that would be a completely different kettle of fish than the turn and the decent.

BALDWIN: But aren't we getting that today? Correct me if I'm wrong, because I know you've been in the weeds (ph) on this, but are we not hearing from a source that this plane, after that dramatic left turn, did descend to 12,000 feet?

QUEST: We've heard from a source.

BALDWIN: OK.

QUEST: We have heard from a source. We also heard from a source that it was pre-programmed with new waypoints 12 minutes before -

BALDWIN: Right.

QUEST: On the ACARS and that proved to be incorrect. We've heard from a source that it flew at 5,000 feet, and that proved to be incorrect. So I come back to this fundamental point that what we learned today was crucially important, not only for the families and the relatives of those on board, but because it will now allow this vast armature (ph) of ships and planes to hone their searching skills deep into the south Indian Ocean.

BALDWIN: Yes.

QUEST: And once they find one piece of debris, they will find more as they reverse drift (ph) it up the Indian Ocean. And that's the most important part.

Now, to the captain's point, it is going to be absolutely crucial to understand what happened. And I agree that all the - all the facts do lean towards the suggestion of somebody doing something. But as to who did what --

BALDWIN: We don't know.

QUEST: No, we just don't.

BALDWIN: We don't know. We don't know.

QUEST: We don't.

BALDWIN: Captain, and to you, Richard, thank you.

Do me a favor, if you can, stick around, because we're still getting all kinds of questions from you, the viewers. So in 15 minutes from now, we will keep answering your questions about the plane, about, you know, this possible debris. Just send me tweets @brookebcnn. Make sure you hash tag it #370qs. We'll get back to them in a minute.

Coming up next, a closer look at the search itself now focused off the coast of Australia along this southern corridor. We are just a couple hours away from sunrise. It's 2:15 in the morning there. And the start of another day of searching for possible debris. So coming up next, we will go live to Australia for a closer look at the plans there to send ships and planes out for another day.

And we mentioned the report here of this plane plummeting to 12,000 feet after making that sharp left turn. Can you fly that low? Would there be warning signs? We'll actually take you inside a flight simulator to show you.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

BALDWIN: All right, welcome back to our special coverage here.

Even after the news from the - Malaysia's prime minister confirming that Flight 370 ended somewhere in the southern Indian Ocean, we still don't know exactly where or why it crashed into the water. So the search for answers continues to be, you know, obviously a desperate one. Today's announcement comes the very same day Australian officials said they spotted two objects in the southern Indian Ocean. They say one object is gray or green in color and it's circular. The other is orange and rectangular. CNN's Kyung Lah is in Perth right now for us.

And, Kyung, tell me, how does the announcement from the prime minister today affect the search?

KYUNG LAH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, it doesn't stop it. It basically just sort of shifts it. We have noticed that there is a mood shift here on the ground. What we've noticed over the last five days of the search is when the pilots land, especially the Australian pilots, they walk up to the press, debrief what they saw in the ocean. They're not talking anymore. What we have been told is that the Australian pilots are now not going to be speaking to the media. They're certainly trying to get on message here. The focus is now trying to get the evidence to back up what the Malaysian prime minister said in that you news conference.

So the search very much still going on. They're trying to bring these pieces home. So far, no pieces found, even though they have been spotted. They haven't been lifted out of the ocean and brought home.

Brooke.

BALDWIN: Can you - just walk me through that process, Kyung, if and when hopefully they locate - we know with -- have a visual on the debris, see the debris. What really happens next?

LAH: What happens from the air is that they drop beacons. So when those items were spotted, especially by the Australian search plane, they drop beacons. So they figure out, they try to put a beacon into the water. Remember, this water is located in some of the most remote spots on the planet. It's constantly swirling and swishing. It was described to me, the Indian Ocean in this part of the world, like a giant washing machine. It's constantly shifting. So the beacons hoping that it will give the ships somewhere to go.

So what has to happen is that the ship has to see it on the sea. They have to find the debris that was spotted, lift it up out of the water, some of the deepest water on the entire planet, and then bring it back. It's not going to be easy and it is very far away, a four hours' flight from where I'm standing, Brooke.

BALDWIN: And then, of course, the process of using that debris to figure out what happened to that plane. Kyung Lah, 2:20 in the morning where you are in Perth. Kyung, thank you.

And we have been showing you reports of this rapid change in altitude by Malaysia Flight 370. Now there is a reports the flight dipped as low as 12,000 feet. So what could have happened in that cockpit? We are about to take you inside a flight simulator and show you.

Also, some of the families notified about this tragedy by text. They're understandably furious, devastated by the news. Many are questioning why the wreckage itself hasn't been found. How do they cope?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

BALDWIN: New information today about the minutes before Flight 370 disappeared is helping piece together really just this timeline of what might have taken that plane down. A source close to the investigation tells CNN that this plane flew as low as 12,000 feet at some point before it disappeared from radar. And that military radar tracking shows it did make that significant turnover the south China Sea and head toward the Strait of Malacca. CNN's Martin Savidge and pilot trainer Mitchell Casado join me from back inside that flight simulator.

And so, just, can you guys show me what it would be like inside the cockpit if you're drop to 12,000 feet?

MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Brooke, what we're trying to work on here is this idea of the descent and there is still, as Richard Quest has pointed out so well, so much we do not know, even with this additional information, such as, what was the rate of decent? Certainly something that would be a key indicator, was it really steep, was it gradual over time? We don't know.

But give that, we wanted to sort of paint for you a scenario where you would get a decent and the turn as been described. It's an emergency and it's a specific one. Say it's sudden decompression.

MITCHELL CASADO, PILOT TRAINER, 777 COCKPIT SIMULATOR: Sure.

SAVIDGE: If you had a bulkhead blowout, if you had something explode in the back that ripped out a section of the aircraft, then this would cause for the decompression to begin. It would be loud, it would be dramatic and it would definitely be an emergency. So that's what Mitchell is doing now. He would have oxygen on. I'd have oxygen on. The plane is descending, but I should point out, it is not like you point the nose directly at the ground. You want to get down as quickly as possible to a level where people can breathe.

Now, the passengers would have oxygen, but only for a limited time. So we want to get down to say 12,000, ideally 10,000 feet, and that was what Mitchell is doing. At the same time, you'd be turning because you're either trying to get back to Kuala Lumpur, where this plane took off, or maybe to an alternate airport that is off somewhere to our left. So the turn and the descent.

But point out who the descent is not like a screeching straight down dive.

CASADO: Of course, because if it's a rapid decompression, if it's an explosive decompression, the aircraft -- structural integrity of the aircraft could be compromised and you don't want to worsen that with over-speeding the aircraft.

SAVIDGE: Right. The plane could be so damaged by whatever caused the decompression that if you descended too rapidly you would rip the plane apart, which you don't want to do. So it's - it's very controlled, speedy dive, but it's not nose down into the ground kind of dive. And eventually you're going to get down to a level where people can breathe, you can stabilize the aircraft, you can begin to try to assess how serious your problem and you'd be vectoring (ph) and communicating to get on the ground because you're not going to plan to keep flying with that.

BALDWIN: OK. Again, these are all what ifs, but helping paint a picture if that did in fact happen.

Martin Savidge and Mitch Casado, thank you both very much.

You're asking about the descent. You know, you have all these wonderful questions about this missing flight. So coming up, we'll take some of those questions to air live here.