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Flight 370 "Ended" In Southern Indian Ocean

Aired March 24, 2014 - 14:30   ET

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

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: 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. You still have time. Send me tweets, @brookebcnn, #370qs. We'll do that.

Also ahead, how do you try to find this possible debris spotted in the Indian Ocean? We have an ocean explorer who will join me to explain exactly how this happens in such a remote bed of sea.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: Just passed the bottom of the hour. You are watching special coverage here on CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin. Talking about this plane, without any physical evidence of this plane itself, today, Malaysian's prime minister announced the conclusion that Flight 370, his word, ended in the Southern Indian Ocean and that no one survived.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NAJIB RAZAK, MALAYSIAN PRIME MINISTER: 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: The data he's referring to is based upon U.K. military radar that tracked the plane down the southern corridor to this area west of Perth, Australia. It's a location that has become the scene of several debris sightings. We've talked about this although not a single one of them has been confirmed yet. The pictures tell it all. The news just too much to bear for some of them. Breaking down in tears. You see one person wheeled out on a stretcher after the Malaysian government told them no one survived that flight.

So here is the full text message, that's right, I said text message the families of Flight 370 received before the prime minister's announcement. Let me quote this, "Malaysia Airlines deeply regrets that we have to assume beyond any reasonable doubt that MH-370 has been lost and that none of those on board survived. As you will hear in the next hour from Malaysia's prime minister, we must now accept all evidence suggests the plane went down in the Southern Indian Ocean."

So joining me to talk about this, psychologist, Erik Fisher. So welcome back. I'll tell you and let the me just say this, Malaysia Airlines says, yes, they tried to talk to people in person, pick up the phone and deliver such sensitive news that way. But talking to a reporter in Beijing, many of them learned on a text. How do you process that? That is brutal.

ERIK FISHER, PSYCHOLOGIST: I think we have an issue here speed of information, speed of the media, speed to want to get some information that they didn't fully think through the impact of families who have been waiting for 14 days maybe thinking if we get them this information quickly, then we can move on with the news. So the issue you have to look at is weighing those things, but not necessarily considering the emotional impact because processing a text that you've been confirmed that your loved one is lost is painful.

BALDWIN: And then here you have these families. I'm trying to imagine you're told by the prime minister that the flight ended, right, and you're still I imagine left wondering, are you sure? How do we know you're sure? There are no pieces of the plane. We know that they have actually offered if and when these are pieces of the plane that they will, Malaysia Airlines fly the families to Australia to see them. Do you think that would be advisable for these families to do?

FISHER: As humans, we often need that closure. We need something to physical to touch or to see. They won't have a body to bury, which is very difficult in some cultures because they need that body to perform some of the rituals. So we have to consider that fact and this is something potentially that they feel they need to offer for people to move on. Whether or not people want to do that will depend on the individual.

BALDWIN: What if they don't get that? What if they get nothing?

FISHER: Unfortunately, sometimes life doesn't offer us the neat packages to give us closure to a life and we have to understand the difficulties that we all may face in the loss of loved ones that we may have. But how we choose to move through these situations in life it really depends on us, our support systems. The things that we choose to do to work through emotions. But my concern for a lot of these families is there may be a lot of complicated bereavement cycles because they're not able to have some of the ritualistic ceremonies that give them closure in their culture.

BALDWIN: Complicated indeed. Let me just read this tweet. This is from the partner of Phillip Wood, he was one of the Americans on board this plane. So she tweeted, hurts hurting. Lift all loved ones of MH-370 with your thoughts and prayers. Thank you for your support and for being our inspiration." I know people talk about closure. I kind of don't believe in it. You just somehow find a way to not move on but move forward. How do these families do that?

FISHER: Well, you know, I saw an interview with somebody who had a fiance on Flight TW 800 and you could tell they still hadn't fully moved on, just talking about what people may have gone through and brought up the emotions. So we have to know that we will have cycles of emotion in our grieving process as well as even for some people it might feel post-traumatic in a way. So we have to see that this will be a process that we'll work through for years to come. Anniversaries, wedding dates, holidays and things like that as well as anniversaries of the loss and other losses that happen to people can be triggers for many of us.

BALDWIN: Erik Fisher, thank you so much. Just thinking about them, those moms and dads, son, daughters, thank you.

Coming up next hour, we will talk to someone who actually knows personally what the families of Flight 370 are experiencing. He's the brother of a passenger whose plane went down in 2003 and has never been found.

Also we have been getting some just really insightful questions from you on Twitter. So coming up next, we'll read through some questions and get answers for you live here on CNN. So don't go anywhere.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: You have questions on the search for missing Flight 370 and we have experts to help. So let me bring them back in, Retired United Airlines Captain Kit Darby. So here we go. Question number one for you, Sir. This comes from Ken. Ken asks, how can you come to a conclusion based on new calculations without finding any debris? Referring presumably to the Malaysian prime minister's statement.

CAPTAIN KIT DARBY, RETIRED UNITED AIRLINES CAPTIAIN: I'm going to say that's best answered by the satellite folks, which have probably done some terrific work. But I'm a show me kind of guy, so I'm going to be a lot happier that we have the right information when they have the piece of the airplane in their hand. Right now, it's a little bit magic from an informed perspective.

BALDWIN: OK, so you're believing it, but you want to see the tangible. Question two from Nancy and Nancy tweets in, please ask about the emergency pingers that only go off when planes hit water.

DARBY: The pinger really is simply a locating device attached to the black box. It's designed to -- when water hits it to begin to work and lasts about 30 days. Actually longer, but at full strength for 30 days. In this case it would be barely perceptible. The water is deep enough that if you were right over it, you would be able to hear it with the right equipment. So it's a very difficult search in this kind of deep of water.

So that's why we want to narrow down the location before we start looking because the piece, the sub or the microphone, it will only move along at 4 or 5 miles an hour so you can't cover a lot of ground. So if we can't narrow it down, it would take forever to find it.

BALDWIN: So I think today is day 18. More or less it has full juice for 30, so not too many more. How long do you really think this thing could ping?

DARBY: It could probably ping for two or three times that. Maybe more. It will be weaker and weaker, but still usable if we can get close enough. BALDWIN: Last question, this from Dan. Dan asks this, why do pilots have to sound SOS or the mayday call? Why can't flight staff? Divide up who does what better. Pilots need to supply.

DARBY: The communication equipment that you need is all in the cockpit at ACARS system, you could send a text message basically. It has several automated keys. It has several frequencies. You have a lot of different ways to do this, but they're all accessible in the cockpit to the pilots and not accessible to the flight staff in the back. We could probably use their help if the situation was tough, but they simply don't have the tools to talk outside the airplane.

BALDWIN: OK. Captain, thank you so much for coming on. Appreciate your expertise. As families try to grieve, searchers focus on finding the wreck wreckage. But that is a vast area. You're about to hear from an ocean explorer about the monstrous task ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: We're hearing about a lot of different items spotted in the Indian Ocean. You have Australian Navy vessels, not just one, but two different objects. One orange, one gray or green in color and then you have China also spotted what it called suspicious objects from the air.

So joining me now is Christine Dennison. She is an ocean explorer and expeditions logistics expert. So Christine, thank you so much for joining me. Let's just -- first question would be let's say they find this debris. How do they even go about figuring out if it in fact is a piece of the plane?

CHRISTINE DENNISON, OCEAN EXPLORER AND EXPEDITIONS LOGISTICS EXPERT: First, thank you for having me. This is like solving a piece of a puzzle and we're just starting. There are so many variables, so many things we don't know. The one thing we do have now is that we have a location, which is deep ocean water. So starting from there, and the debris that has been floating and moving around because of the currents, because of the weather, because of 17 days, they are going to -- they have honed in on an area that they are really going to deploy resources into this area and scour the surface. So they're still following the same protocol of doing the aerial eye search which is what they have to do.

They have to visually make contact with the debris, identify it, and then retrieve it and so the process is remaining the same in terms of the way they will go about this, which will have to start with identifying debris before they can then start the grid patterns deploying a high row phone this is very deep water and the search will then have to continue. We really need to find these black boxes to solve the next piece of the puzzle.

BALDWIN: So let's -- the voice data recorder is key. So you mentioned the currents and now I think it is day 18. It's just about 3:00 in the morning what we are talking about. So what is even the likelihood that if they find a piece of debris on the surface and that tells them, OK, maybe something is farther down in the bottom of ocean, which is it the likelihood that it is even nearby anymore.

DENNISON: Well, this debris has been floating in the ocean for 18 days. What they will do is again as Captain Darby mentioned, they are working with some of the best current radar information people that are on sight or giving them information that I don't believe we are privy to at this point.

BALDWIN: agree with you.

DENNISON: And they will be working trying to figure out where the point of impact would be, where we can again -- Item B's acoustics. We have to listen for sound. They're eager to get it into the water once we find a debris field and then it's ticking off. We've tried this. We've done this area. We're not finding anything. They pick up and go to the next. So they will be moving along in a very methodic pattern to try to eliminate where they're not hearing sound. Cross that out and go to the next area and this is still a very time consuming process that will be hampered by weather.

BALDWIN: This TPL, I was watching earlier, this is the pinger locator, it's listening for the ping to figure out what happened. But it can only move like 10, 15 square miles a day and we're talking about an area that is like tens of thousands of nautical square miles, correct?

DENNISON: Correct. And it is a slow process. But again, you have some of the best teams that will be deployed and really I think the best resources that from all these different countries that are putting in the effort dedicated to finding this. And within the time frame that we have left and as Captain Darby also said, every day the batteries are being reduced and so it's more of a fate sound. But they're really working against time here.

BALDWIN: The juice is still there and hopefully they can hear that ping and find it and figure it out. Christine Dennison, thank you so much.

Back to these families of those lost on Flight 370. They have so few answers. So what is it like to lose a family member and have no idea what happened to him or her ever? Coming up, hear from a man who lost his brother more than ten years ago in a plane accident and still has no idea where he is or what happened.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: We'll get back to this plane in just a minute, but first, a major development in Saturday's landslide in Washington State that killed eight people. Officials are how telling us that 108 people are still unaccounted for. Let me take you how to Arlington, Washington where George Howell is working this. Authorities said more than a dozen were unaccounted for. So why such a big jump in the number?

GEORGE HOWELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, they basically looked at all of the reports that are out there. I'm talking about reports that perhaps family members put up on their open websites or reports over social media, or vague reports about a neighbor saying, I haven't seen Jim at his home on that corner lot. All of those reports they brought them together and they now believe that they have 108 reports that they're looking into. They want to decrease that number obviously have people call in, check in.

They're hoping that will happen over the next several days. But again, 108 reports that they're looking into. The search, though, continues today. We know they will be looking by air, have an aircraft. They're on the ground. People with electronic people to basically probe the ground to look for survivors. But when you hear from the officials today, they are still hopeful, but not quite as optimistic given that we're now more than 48 hours since that mudslide. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHIEF TRAVIS HOTS, SNOHOMISH COUNTY FIRE: We're still in a rescue mode. However, I want to let everyone know that the situation is very grim. We haven't -- we're still holding out hope that we'll be able to find people that may still be alive. But keep in mind we have not found anybody alive on this pile since Saturday.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HOWELL: So the outlook is grim, as you hear there, but here's the thing. Today is key. You see here the Pacific Northwest today, it's a sunny day, we know next several days there is rain in the forecast and certainly that will not help with search efforts here.

BALDWIN: George Howell, thank you so much in Arlington, Washington.

Top much the hour, I'm Brooke Baldwin.