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Flight 370 "Ended in Southern Indian Ocean"; Answering Your Flight 370 Questions; U.K. Satellite Company Tracked 370's Course; 108 Unaccounted for After Killer Landslide; Crew Rush To Clean Oil Barge Leak; G-8 Suspends Russia

Aired March 24, 2014 - 15:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Just past the bottom of the hour, you're watching CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin.

And without any physical evidence of the plane itself, today Malaysia's prime minister made the announcement that flight 370 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 is referring to is based on U.K. military radar that tracked the plane down the southern corridor, a location that's become the scene of several debris sightings, although none has been confirmed yet.

Now, distressed families are lashing out -- look at this -- in anger, with an explosive statement from the passenger family committee. Let me just read part of this for you and this tell you how they feel.

Quote, "The airline, Malaysian government and Malaysian military have been putting off, holding back and covering up the truth of the incident, as well as trying to deceive passengers' families and the world.

"If our 154 relatives aboard lost their lives due to such reasons, then they are the real murderers that killed them."

Despite today's just devastating news that all lives were lost on this plane, the investigation moves on as Malaysian investigators remain committed to finding out exactly what happened.

So, joining me now, CNN aviation correspondent Richard Quest. And, Richard Quest, I want to talk about this report of the plane flying at -- descending to a 12,000-foot altitude sometime after the turn.

Again, this is according to a source, and as we have discussed, sources can be wrong. But what does that tell you?

RICHARD QUEST, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: If that is true that the plane did descend to 12,000 feet and backtracked from the last known point, back across Malaysia, we also know, Brooke, that it had to go back up again to about 35,000 feet, because at 12,000 feet, the fuel burn, the amount of fuel it would be using would be so huge that it -- because it's a very inefficient level to be flying at for an aircraft like that, it wouldn't have got that far south.

So, we know that the plane had to get back up to 35,000, 40,000 feet for it to have covered the distance to the sort of region that the Malaysians now say where the flight ended.

BALDWIN: OK.

And then also learning about the left turn that we have talked so much about, this dramatic left instead of heading up to Beijing, that there has been so much talk, of course, about autopilot, but now we've learned that turn took, according to reports, two minutes to maneuver.

The word that I believe that I read, someone said it was clearly an intentional turn.

QUEST: Right.

BALDWIN: What does that tell you?

QUEST: It tells that you it was a controlled turn, that it was done under the command of somebody, whether pilots or otherwise, because the plane basically would have done a gentle turn like that.

Now, when I heard the two-minute line, that's what this source suggested. I think that's a little bit long. I think you would do a turn perhaps quicker. You can certainly do a 360-degree turn quicker than two minutes.

But it's all evidence that whatever happened after the "all right, good night" -- after the "all right, good night" -- at around 1:21 to 1:23, that's what led to the plane turning and heading in the opposite direction.

And that much we know. We know the plane flew back the way it had just come.

We don't know about this 12,000 feet, and we don't know why it did what it did.

The Inmarsat satellite readings that you're now talking about -

BALDWIN: Right.

QUEST: -- is calibration of the highest order. They are going way beyond anything they've ever had to do before.

If you listened to Chris McLaughlin of Inmarsat and you know the AAIB, that's the British equivalent of the NTSB, they have been absolutely diving back into these pings from the satellite to the plane to try and make -- and it's all to do with the very short time difference between the handshake down and the handshake back up again.

And by taking those very small seconds, they can work out where the plane is.

And that's why China is saying now tonight they want to see the data. They're still calling it a search-and-rescue and they're still calling on Malaysia to provide more information. That has to be the next step.

BALDWIN: Through this whole thing, I've been thinking. Malaysia has to know much more than what they're telling us.

And here we have possible debris, possible debris off the coast of Australia, but without that voice-data record, which they may never find, it's possible these families, is it not, they will never know what happened to their loved ones?

QUEST: They will -- once they start recovering objects which turn out to be debris, that will tell an enormous amount.

It will show the compression of the object. It will show whether there was -- it could show whether there was fire and scorching and sooting.

It will show -- they will know where on the plane it was. They will be able to work out how the plane entered the water. Of that I have no doubt. We saw that from 447.

But the ultimate question, what happened in those minutes, post-11:19, for that, you're going to probably need to get the data recorders and get the information from that. That's pretty clear.

BALDWIN: Hope they find it, for those families.

Richard Quest, thank you so much.

And coming up, you continue to tweet us with your questions. Our experts -- captain sitting next to me in studio, he will have some answers for you.

Stay right with me. You're watching CNN.

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BALDWIN: Some new information and a lot of questions coming from you at home, tweeting us with the hash-tag, 370Qs, so let's get some of your questions answered, shall we?

Steve Wallace rejoins me, CNN aviation analyst and former director of the FAA's office of accident investigation, and John Ransom, retired and commercial and corporate pilot and aviation safety specialist.

So, gentlemen, let's get right to it. This first question, Steve, I'll toss it to you. But both of you, please, feel free to weigh in.

Lee Ray's (ph) question is, if and when debris is found, who takes charge of the recovery? Who has the best equipment to search for black boxes? Steve, first, and then Captain.

STEVE WALLACE, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Well, it's very much a shared effort.

At this point, since the assumption is that the aircraft crashed in international waters, then the country of register, which is Malaysia, would be in charge of the investigation.

Normally if an aircraft crashes on land or within the territorial waters of a country, the country where it occurs is in charge, so they will use a lot of -- typically they would use navy assets.

This is a huge exercise in international cooperation, I note, and they will recover the wreckage, and I expect they would take to a fairly -- the closest place they could perhaps reasonably reassemble it or evaluate it.

So I guess that might be Australia. Assuming that it appears -- they find it about where they are looking.

BALDWIN: OK.

John Ransom, I'm just going to through this next question to you, because we talk about this altitude drop, reportedly, on this plane after this sharp left turn. So, this is Greg's (ph) question.

Greg (ph) wants to know, MH-370 reportedly dropped to 12,000 feet, which would have meant two times the fuel consumption, now confirmed in Indian Ocean?

So the question here, how does the elevation drop really -- how would that affect, I guess, fuel consumption, is what he's getting at?

JOHN RANSOM, RETIRED COMMERCIAL AND CORPORATE PILOT: He's correct. The lower the airplane goes, the more fuel it's going to consume per mile.

It's especially noticeable if you try to maintain high speed, but if you slow the airplane down, the fuel consumption will go down a little bit, but still not enough to allow the airplane to get all the way to the Indian Ocean, I don't believe, which means that there is something that is not correct.

Either the airplane did not go to 12 and stay at 12 or went on 12 and somehow climbed back up to a higher altitude, presumably at a slower speed that might allow it to get as far as it did, or it never went to 12.

BALDWIN: But it would have had to -- had it gone to 12, it would have had to go back up to normal speed to get those six hours -

RANSOM: To get that far --

BALDWIN: -- to get to the Indian Ocean.

RANSOM: -- if everything else we know is correct.

BALDWIN: OK.

Steve, question from Nancy Casselman (ph), and Nancy wants to know, if MH-370 went into the southern Indian Ocean, how come none of the emergency pingers that go off when planes hit water have been heard?

WALLACE: Those pingers have a short range. They're just a little -- they make a little click sound, then we they put the best listening devices in the water, but they can typically be heard by some underwater listening device for only a distance of about three to five miles.

So now we've heard descriptions of how huge this search area is, and I think the short answer to her question is they haven't gotten the listening devices close enough to the pingers, assuming that the pingers are working.

In the Air France case, they actually did not work.

BALDWIN: And that's what we keep talking about, right? Correct me if I'm wrong, but the juice, the battery life for the pingers, more or less is 30 days. Correct?

WALLACE: Yes, I'm glad you said more or less, because it's a little bit like your computer battery. Sometimes it seems to goes longer or shorter than predicted.

This idea of a countdown clock is not correct.

BALDWIN: Is erroneous.

WALLACE: I would add here that the FAA has recently revised the standard and, in the future, the pingers will be a required duration of 90 days. This will be slowly phased in over the coming years.

BALDWIN: OK, Steve Wallace, thank you. And John Ransom, thank you so much for coming in. We really appreciate that.

And thanks to some new satellite data analysis, we know now all of these search planes and ships, they are looking in the right area. At least, that's what one British satellite company is telling CNN.

How did this company help track down Flight 370? We will take you to their headquarters in London, next.

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BALDWIN: New analysis used by a British satellite company helped break this investigation wide open.

Global communication company Inmarsat used this never-performed calculation to determine Flight 370's course, and CNN's Erin McLaughlin is live at the company's headquarters.

So, Erin, we heard earlier today from their senior vice president saying he's confident the company's analysis is on point, but everybody's question is, how can he be so sure? ERIN MCLAUGHLIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Brooke.

Well, they are saying here at Inmarsat that they're highly confident, but they're not certain, and that's because they are dealing with a limited set of data and that the plane did not have an onboard tracking system.

Now, there are two corridors that they are talking about. You may have mentioned the northern search corridor and the southern corridor. And that was based on a set of data, or handshake, pings between the plane and the Inmarsat satellite.

Now, the folks here at Inmarsat took that data and that analysis and shared it with authorities in Malaysia on March 11th.

And what they've done since then is taken that same set of data and kind of looked at it in a different way and compared it to other flights, similar flights, that have flown in that area.

Earlier I spoke to John McLaughlin, the vice president of external communications here at Inmarsat, and he walked me through some of that analysis. Take a listen to what he had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHRIS MCLAUGHLIN, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, INMARSET: And we also looked at the possibility that it could have gone north versus south, and what we found is a fit between the southern route model and the southern root and the route's pings that we received.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LAUGHLIN: Now, I asked Chris McLaughlin, on a scale of one to 10, how confident are they?

And they said that they didn't want to put a number to it, but that they are fairly certain, highly certain, that authorities right now are looking in the correct place.

Brooke?

BALDWIN: OK, Erin McLaughlin in London, Erin, thank you.

And stunning news coming out of Washington state today after that giant mudslide buried a neighborhood, this is just north of Seattle.

The number of people unaccounted for has dramatically risen, even as searchers frantically look for survivors trapped in the mud.

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BALDWIN: Now to this major development in Saturday's landslide in Washington state that killed eight people.

Here's the new number we have. As far as those unaccounted for, officials are now telling us 108. CNN's George Howell is in Arlington, Washington. And, first, George, it was several dozen unaccounted for. Now, 108. Why the dramatic change?

GEORGE HOWELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, and certainly that number has shot up significantly, 108, but it's important to break it down.

We're not talking specifically about names here. These could be reports that families might have put out on private Web sites looking for loved ones, could be reports out on social media or even generic, vague references.

For instance, making up a name here, Neil who lived on the corner, maybe a neighbor said, I haven't seen Neil there. That could be a report, so that's part of this 108 collective that they are trying to narrow down.

They are hoping that people will call in. They are giving a phone number for people to do so as they continue the search-and-rescue operation.

I want to show you over here, as well. Right now, we're expecting here within the next few minutes a news conference to get more information about what is happening right now with the search.

We do know that they are out there. They have aircraft. They have people on the ground probing with electronic equipment to look for people in the mud and the mess.

But I do want to tell you, the last news conference, Brooke, that we heard from officials, they are hopeful, but they are not as optimistic. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHIEF TRAVIS HOTS, SNOHOMISH COUNTY FIRE: We're still in a rescue mode at this time.

However, I want to let everyone know that the situation is very grim. We haven't -- we are still holding out hope that we're going to be able to find people that may still be alive.

But keep in mind, we have not found anybody alive in this pile since Saturday.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HOWELL: So, a live look here at the press gathered, waiting for this news conference that we here at CNN will continue to monitor and bring you the latest developments as we get them.

But the search-and-rescue operation continues. We know, Brooke, that they did it through the night, last night. They had the technology to do that. The land is better to do it today because we have a sunny day.

The bad news, though, there is rain in the forecast, so today really will be key to do more searching, Brooke.

BALDWIN: OK. George Howell, thank you.

And time is running out as crews try to clean up this oil spill off of Texas in Galveston Bay.

A collision Sunday between a ship and an oil barge sent 168,000 gallons of very heavy tar-like oil here into the water.

So, the shipping channel is closed, and special response teams are there to help affected wildlife.

A couple aboard a cruise ship was stuck in the Houston ship channel took this video, shared it with us, showing orange oil booms being placed there in the water.

It has been 25 years since Exxon Valdez wreck spilled millions of gallons of oil, so we want you to watch our "CNN SPECIAL REPORT, OIL AND WATER -- THE WRECK OF THE EXXON VALDEZ" tomorrow at 10:00 Eastern here on CNN.

And the United States and Europe have agreed at an emergency meeting to suspend participation in the so-called Group of Eight to punish Russia.

So, that meeting was called by President Obama to address Russia's meddling in Ukraine, its annexation of Crimea.

Russia was scheduled to hold the G-8 summit in Sochi this summer. That summit will now be held in Brussels without Vladimir Putin.

And, just a quick reminder, of course, any interview that you miss here, you can just go to CNN.com/Brooke, some of the segments we've done with some of these pilots, some of these experts here, as we're getting new information on this missing aircraft that we've now learned from some hours from the Malaysian prime minister that it ended in the Indian Ocean.

And I know Jake will be all over this. So stay right here. Let's go to Washington now. I'm going to turn things over to Jim Sciutto sitting in for Jake. "THE LEAD" starts now.