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Missing Jet's "Partial" Ping Raises New Questions; Legal Steps Under Way for First Lawsuit; Malaysia Airlines May Need Government Rescue

Aired March 26, 2014 - 10:30   ET

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

ANA CABRERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Newly-released 911 calls captured the shock and the panic that overtook this tight-knit community.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: My neighbor's house and their neighbor's house has been completely taken out. It has collapsed on several of them and they are trapped.

CABRERA: Four days into the search, people are still trapped.

RAE SMITH, SEARCHING FOR DAUGHTER: My family has been down there and digging for her since Saturday afternoon.

CABRERA: Aaron Briet, focused and determined, charged into the disaster zone against officials orders.

AARON BRIET, SEARCHING FOR COUSIN: I wanted to rescue people. I wanted to find people that were still alive.

CABRERA: Instead, the horror he witnessed now haunts him.

BRIET: It's no fun finding bodies. It's no fun doing any kind of work like that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CABRERA: Now, certainly, the families are just waiting to have some kind of closure in all of this. Not necessarily expecting the best but hoping for the best. We do know 16 bodies have been recovered. So those are confirmed deaths. And authorities did identify another eight bodies that they believe are under the wreckage that they hope to be able to get in there and recover today.

So Carol, the death toll is looking to be around 24 at this point but still dozens missing.

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Oh Ana Cabrera, reporting live from Arlington, Washington this morning.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM a so-called half ping echoing 19 days after the Malaysian Airliner vanished. Well talk to a retired airline captain about this latest intriguing twist in the investigation.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: This morning a new glimmer of hope in finding Malaysian Airline Flight 370. Satellite images show a possible debris field. Some 122 objects bobbing in the south Indian Ocean. Now until they can reach those items, it will be impossible to tell if they are tied to the crash. But on this 19th day of the flight's disappearance it's a possible lead in a search that has not turned up a single piece of physical evidence.

Another tantalizing clue that may lead to this very spot where Flight 370 went down, a mysterious half ping. It came in after the last transmission from the aircraft. That half ping is the so-called digital hand shake between the jet and the satellite.

Jim Tilmon is a retired captain from American Airlines and now serves as CNN aviation analyst. Good morning, Jim.

JIM TILMON, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Good morning. How are you?

COSTELLO: I'm good. I want to talk about this half ping. It came after 8:11 a.m. and it wasn't a complete ping. So -- so what might this show?

TILMON: I think it's going to have to be carefully analyzed in terms of the timing of the half ping and its nature. Because it may very well be the very last attempt for the airplane to hand shake with the authorities other means of discovering what's going on through the satellite.

It may become very, very significant. Right now, it's all part of that same jigsaw puzzle that we have with all those pieces that they have finally located in the debris field.

COSTELLO: So, this half ping, I'm just trying to figure out what it could mean. It's because the electrical system would have been down or the plane would have been communicating better with satellites, right? But now this mysterious half ping. So when that -- when that hand shake was made, could that mean the electrical system somehow came back to life? Could it mean that the plane came in contact with salt water and that somehow activated the electrical system? What could it mean?

TILMON: I think your analysis is working out pretty well, actually. The fact that it did occur when it did and where it did is significant. And for you to suggest that maybe salt water helped to trigger it makes a lot of sense to me. There is a whole lot about these pings that I don't know how much most of us know. This is a completely different world of ping-logy.

COSTELLO: Right and the experts and the investigators are trying to piece this together themselves. But I think that all of this evidence put together, with all of these pings taken into account that the jet went down sometime between 8:11 in the morning and 9:15. And I suppose if they -- if they closed -- they narrowed the window that much, it would greatly help them kind of pinpoint where to look in the Indian Ocean. TILMON: It will make all the difference in the world. I mean I woke up this morning to, I think, very good news; that they finally may have something of substance that we could point to and hold in our hands and examine to find out what really went down in this deal. I'm just delighted to know that we found a debris field and I'm hopeful that it's the right one.

COSTELLO: Well we keep talking about them finding debris fields, right? But the ships that you know charge toward those debris fields that are spotted from the air via satellite, they never quite reach the debris field. But I guess the encouraging thing is that I think four separate satellite images now show debris within the same area. And that's important, right?

TILMON: It is very important. And the idea that you have this much material all in one site, so to speak, says a lot about where all the rest of the items may very well be. I think this is the first real encouraging find that they have made since they have been doing these flights every day. So my hat is off to those out there in this wilderness, you might say, digging out the little pieces here and there.

Now, we have some pieces to the puzzle to put together. And that's painstaking work. It will take a lot of time, but I think it is going to be worth it.

COSTELLO: Well I hope so. And I hope the weather holds out tomorrow and they can search again. Thank you so much, Jim Tilmon. I appreciate it.

TILMON: Thank you.

COSTELLO: Still to come in the NEWSROOM, as teams search for clues from Flight 370 in the Indian Ocean, lawyers start to search for answers in the courtroom. We'll tell you about one family's push to learn the truth.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: Nineteen days and counting and we're still searching for Flight 370 and everyone on board. Now the family of one of the victims is heading to court. Firman Siregar is one of the missing passengers. That's him in the middle. He's 24 years old. His father has hired a Chicago-based attorney. Now he wants an Illinois judge to force Malaysia Airlines and Boeing to open up their records about the plane, the fuselage, the batteries, the fire and oxygen systems on board.

And Laurie Segall is live in New York and before we get to the lawsuit itself. I want to know more about this young man.

LAURIE SEGALL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: You know Carol I've been talking with his friends. And the one word they describe him as a smart -- very, very smart. He just graduated from a prestigious technical university in Indonesia, very ambitious. He actually studied electrical engineering. And he was very social. He was a part of many different organizations in school. You can see him right there.

And you know what his friends said is he would sometimes go play football on the weekends. He was a huge Liverpool fan. He also sometimes on the weekends would go into his room, play the drums, play guitar. He was very musical. And a lot of his friends they just called him ambitious. He had just gotten a job at a U.S. oil company in China. And he had actually gone to Kuala Lumpur for training and this was his flight out.

And you know one thing, Carol, that really struck me. Is a friend of his called him humble because apparently when he had graduated, he had all these job offers from oil and gas companies.

And what he would -- he would never brag about it. And what he would say is, he would say it was because he always prayed and God had answered his prayers -- Carol.

COSTELLO: And I know his friends -- is you know on their Facebook book pages they are just trying to deal with this. How are they doing?

SEGALL: You know you'd talk to them and I think like everyone it's really tough to wrap your head around the mystery of this and what one said is we hear the news every day so mostly our friends just hope that he's still OK.

So when you hear that, you know, you can really begin to understand his family and his father's grief and why he's really pushing for answers.

COSTELLO: Laurie Segall, many thanks.

Joining me now is Daniel Rhodes -- Daniel Rose rather -- an aviation attorney. Welcome back.

DANIEL ROSE, AVIATION ATTORNEY: Good morning Carol.

COSTELLO: Good morning. I read a bit of this lawsuit. It is asking for things like -- it's asking for things from Boeing like the history of the airplane, who made the parts and their history, who maintained the electrical system. So it seems like this family doesn't want money, per se, although they may in the future. I don't know. But it seems like what they want right now is an independent investigation of whatever happened to this plane.

ROSE: Right. Well, I mean he certainly sounds like a remarkable young man. And you know, there's nothing worse for a family than losing a child and I feel terrible for them.

But you really have to question the merit for this legal -- it's not a lawsuit. It is just, as you said, a petition, which is a kind of request to get information from Boeing and maybe Malaysia. You really have to question that legally.

First of all, you know, we don't even know where the plane is. We haven't found a piece of the wreckage. We don't have any of the bodies. While mechanical system failure may be in play, there is no specific evidence to indicate that. So the effect of this request for information about the plane essentially is, give us everything about the plane that you have, which is irresponsible.

You know, this is not the first time this law firm has done that. It did the exact same thing after the Asiana crash. And there the judge on his own said, "Out." It is not an -- it is an improper and not a legally well founded claim to be making at this early stage. And it makes sense logically I think for everybody.

I mean there are plenty of responsible lawyers out there that specialize in this area -- our firm is one of them -- that wouldn't think twice about making this kind of a legal petition at this stage when you really don't know a lot of the answers.

COSTELLO: Well, the other thing that this petition asks for, it requests that U.S. investigators be involved in the investigation which I found unusual. The other unusual factor in this petition is it was filed in Chicago.

ROSE: Yes. I haven't read the petition specifically but I am familiar with the general type of tack that's used here. You are right. You can't go into a court in Cook County, Illinois, and ask that judge to tell the Malaysian government to let the NTSB be more involved in the case.

In fact I don't think that court at the end of the day will have any jurisdiction over Malaysian Airlines, except maybe for the U.S. cases, and those are U.S. residents or citizens that were on the plane or people that bought their ticket in the U.S. or were returning to the U.S. they have a different claim. And really this kind of a petition does a disservice specifically to those Americans that have the potential for claims in the U.S. but really across the board for all families because it really sends a false sense of hope or investigative ability that I think the families have to question, why is this law firm doing that?

COSTELLO: You can understand why this young man's father might have employed these lawyers, right. They are not getting much information from Malaysian authorities. They are frustrated. They just want some kind of answer. They want the United States more involved, because, frankly, we kind of know what we are doing when it comes to plane crashes. So you can understand why perhaps this family would take the bait.

ROSE: Absolutely. Absolutely. There is no suggestion that the family at all is doing anything improper. The only thing I'm suggesting is to all the families, is to, you know, consider what a petition like this is really intended to do. Look at the lawyers that are purporting to be experts in this area and do your homework. Talk to other lawyers, including lawyers in the U.S., whether they practice in aviation law, like my friend does, or not and you'll be able to get a good idea of which firms are capable in this area and which firms run out to foreign crashes and, you know, try to get visibility.

COSTELLO: Daniel Rose, thanks for your insight as always. I appreciate it.

ROSE: My pleasure, Carol.

COSTELLO: Still to come in the NEWSROOM, the business of Malaysian airlines is in dire straits and the airline, partially owned by the government, may be in need of a bailout. We'll talk about that next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: The search for missing Flight 370 isn't Malaysia Airlines' only problem, the company is also in deep financial trouble and maybe in need of a government bailout.

Alison Kosik is in New York with more on this. Good morning.

ALISON KOSIK, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Good morning -- Carol. Here's the thing with this though you can't blame the carrier's financial troubles just on Flight 370 at this point. Malaysia Airlines is actually in a lot of trouble before the plane disappeared. It was losing a lot of money, struggling with competition from low- cost carriers. And what it tried to do is cut costs. But it really wasn't enough.

So now, clearly, things could get worse for the airline financially. And here's why. Because of Flight 370, Malaysia Air could get hit not just with a slew of lawsuits but it could get hit by a crisis of confidence meaning fewer people may not want to fly the airlines.

One analyst says, yes, this is an airline that may need a government bailout. In fact, the Malaysian transport minister was asked about that today. He dodged the question so at this point they are not saying yes, they're not saying no. But you look at how investors are nervous. Shares of Malaysia Airlines have dropped since the plane disappeared -- Carol?

COSTELLO: All perfectly understandable. How big a bailout are we talking about?

KOSIK: That's really a good question. You look at how the company has been doing. It has lost more than $1 billion over the past three years. That doesn't even factor in the impact of Flight 370. Clearly, there could be a sizable amount this airline needs.

One analyst says though Malaysia airlines won't shut down. Here is a bit of proof for you because, you know, we have seen airlines here in the U.S. get bailouts. They go bankrupt multiple times, they merge and they still operate through it all. So Malaysia Airlines could still have options.

COSTELLO: I'm just thinking back to that CEO and they are calling for the CEO. The families, of course, are calling for the CEO to resign. And you have to think, he probably will resign after this is all said and done, whenever that may be.

KOSIK: Wouldn't be a surprise. But I think that is just tip of the iceberg. COSTELLO: All right. Alison Kosik reporting live from New York -- thanks so much.

And thank you for joining me today. I'm Carol Costello.

"@ THIS HOUR" with Berman and Michaela after a break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

JOHN BERMAN, CNN HOST: Hello, there. I'm John Berman.

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN HOST: And I'm Michaela Pereira. It is 11:00 a.m. in the East, 8:00 a.m. out West.

BERMAN: And after 19 days and so many leads that led nowhere, could this finally be the breakthrough in the search for Flight 370? The Malaysian government says that new French -based satellite images show more than 100 objects floating in an area in the Southern Indian Ocean about 1,600 miles from Perth, Australia.

PEREIRA: Yes, some of those appear to be big, the size of a wing and some appear smaller, some say about the size of a seat. Now we really don't know. If these images -- we should point out -- were taken Sunday, if they indeed show plane parts but this appears to be the most promising lead so far.

Here's what Malaysia's transportation minister said earlier.