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Floating Objects Spotted by Satellite; Possible Fire Scenario; Technology Used for Underwater Searches

Aired March 26, 2014 - 14:00   ET

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

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Wolf, thank you.

Hi there. I'm Brooke Baldwin.

News just in to us here at CNN. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel says he is not ruling out anything, including terrorism, in the disappearance of this plane, this Flight 370. But as for the hunt for the plane itself, could this finally be the breakthrough in the search for this Flight 370? Look at this with me. What you're looking at here, it's actually now being called the most credible lead thus far. New satellite imagery showing 122, very precise here, 122 objects floating in the southern Indian Ocean. Now, some do appear to be big, the size possibly of a wing. Some a little smaller, perhaps the size of a seat.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HISHAMMUDDIN BIN HUSSEIN, MALAYSIAN ACTING TRANSPORTATION MINISTER: We are able to identify 122 potential objects. Some objects were a meter in length, others were as much as 23 meters in length. Some of the objects appear to be bright, possibly indicating solid material.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: So here's what you need to know. These images that we're really focusing on today were taken by a French satellite on Sunday. The objects are about 1,600 miles from Perth in Australia. And this debris field itself is believed to be scattered across some 150 square miles.

This is a big area. We've been saying this, time and time again. But the other complication here, it's a moving target. Talk about chaotic currents here. This ocean is hostile. And you see just how rough it is by looking at this video. This is an example of what these searchers are up against in this part of the world, in the southern Indian Ocean.

Let me tell you about this. Another big development. We also know Inmarsat tracked the plane down this southern corridor via a series of pings. So now we're learning that last one heard was a mysterious partial ping, which some aviation experts say could be triggered by a catastrophic event, outage of power, perhaps as the plane was hitting the water.

So let's go straight to senior international correspondent Sara Sidner, who is on the ground for us in Kuala Lumpur. And, Sara, as we talk about this potentially huge, huge lead, this possible debris field, the real question is, when are they getting out there to find the actual debris?

SARA SIDNER, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Right. So what's happened is the weather has been particularly bad and they had to ground some of the flights at some point this week. But we do know that today - today was a good day to fly. There were flights that could last a bit longer. They could see a bit better. It wasn't as choppy. The winds not going gale force. So what you got today was a much clearer picture. But, unfortunately, they were not able to find those 122 floating objects that the satellite was able to show.

We do know that it is, though, those objects, in the same area where they have been searching. And as you mentioned, it's such a large area, it's very, very, very difficult to find. We heard one searcher talking about the fact that it's not like a needle in a hay stack, it's like a needle in a haystack and you're not sure exactly where the haystack is. So, very difficult to find this.

But, the search continues and will continue. It's a multi-national search. So you have countries that have all come in and come together to try and find this debris. The key, though, being that they have to physically put their eyes on this, and then be able to get a hold of it to try and confirm what it is that they are looking at. If it turns out to be just rubbish that happens to be in the water, that's one thing. But they will hopefully be able to find this so they can determine if it had anything to do with missing Flight MH-370.

Brooke.

BALDWIN: Then to possibly reverse the currents, and then find the wreckage and find those boxes to answer these questions.

So, from the search, Sara, we're now learning more about the stories from some of these passengers. That I know you talked to the wife of one missing passenger. What did she tell you?

SIDNER: She was like all of the families who are here in Kuala Lumpur and those who are in Beijing, heartbroken. She actually doesn't yet believe, because she herself has not seen the physical evidence. She has nothing to go on but the words from officials, who have been very clear in saying that they believe that all 239 passenger and crew aboard MH-370 are not alive, and did end up in the Indian Ocean where the plane crashed. But she says she simply can't believe that. So she herself doesn't want to believe it, and she's been unable to tell her two children. She has two young boys, age one and five, because she simply doesn't have the courage, Brooke.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SIDNER: What have you said to your children about what's happened to your husband, their father?

CHENG LI PING, WIFE OF MALAYSIA AIRLINES FLIGHT 370 PASSENGER (through translator): I don't bear to. I've no courage. Every day I'm scared to call my sons because once I call them, they will cry out, daddy, mommy, and my heart can't handle it. I don't want to hurt my children.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SIDNER: Cheng Li Ping describing how difficult it has been as a mother and as a wife, and she's still here, waiting for her husband. She's not going anywhere until she sees some kind of physical evidence that he's gone forever.

Brooke.

BALDWIN: We will hear more stories from these family members throughout the next two hours. Sara Sidner, thank you for sharing that, from Kuala Lumpur.

Let's go back, though, to these satellite images. Joining me now from Houston, Texas, Leo Romeijn. He is a satellite image analyst.

So, Mr. Romeijn, welcome to you. And, you know, when this news first broke and we were showing these pictures to experts bright and early this morning on our morning show, I mean I kept hearing wows, you know, from experts here. I mean you're the professional. You looked at these pictures. You tell me what you see here.

LEO ROMEIJN, SATELLITE IMAGERY ANALYST: Yes, those satellite images were acquired by the (INAUDIBLE) 1-B satellite, what is operated by Airbus Defense and Space. This is a satellite sensor with .5 meter resolution. And as you can see on the objects that (INAUDIBLE) on the image, it looks like the collection angle was very suitable to obtain the reflection from the sun. Had the sun - it just depends on how the image is physically collected, but there is a lot of reflection. So, yes, I --

BALDWIN: What does that tell you, metal perhaps?

ROMEIJN: Yes, it's really good. I mean this is I think one of the best images. And now there are several images, of course, in track (ph). We have 16th of March, the 18th, and now this image. And that all - that comes in a row. So you have the position of the previous debris, and now you can backtrack and find out the course. And combining this together with the Inmarsat signals, I think the search area is going to be narrowed down. And they're going to eventually find the aircraft. It's -

BALDWIN: Let's -

ROMEIJN: Hopefully. I mean it's all a good sign.

BALDWIN: Let's hope so for these families. I mean this could be hugely significant here. And - but just to remind everyone, these pictures, you know, and we keep talking about these different satellite pictures, they're from, you know, several days ago. This one specifically taken on Sunday and only acted upon today, which, you know, for someone who doesn't look at satellite imagery as their job, it kind of makes you think, well, doesn't it compromise their worth? I mean why the delay in getting out there and finding this? ROMEIJN: Well, we're covering a large area. I mean it's -- all the satellite operators, Digital Globe, we're using also radar satellites and it's a huge area to cover. And then they need to -- the data needs to be analyzed. And that all takes time. I know that it's -- everybody wants to know where the aircraft went down and it's going to take time to physically find that location. And - but how more data we have, how better it is to obtain that information.

BALDWIN: Mr. Romeijn, let me just pause to just show our viewers something because we took this image - so this is Google Earth - and it's about an hour old. And so what it shows, it shows all those different satellites here whose orbits take them near the search area. My question to you is, since you know all about satellites, are there enough in this particular area of the world that we're talking about? And if not, could you move them so they could all be taking pictures of the southern Indian Ocean?

ROMEIJN: No, these satellites are coming over at least once a day in this particular area. Actually, some of them, because we're getting far south, might even come over two times a day. And they can track that down very well. And I think there are sufficient resources available to cover this area.

BALDWIN: Is it possible, I mean just throw this out there, that as this plane was flying southward and ultimately landed, according to the Malaysian government, down in the southern Indian Ocean, is it possible that a satellite could have clicked a picture of the plane itself?

ROMEIJN: No, that's - that -- because the weather condition in this particular area is very, very bad. There is hardly any clear imagery available. And it's definitely very, very difficult to catch that. And most of the time commercial satellites do not collect imagery over oceans. And so most likely the satellites were not even tasked to do that.

BALDWIN: OK. Leo Romeijn, thank you so much for your expertise. I truly appreciate it here as we're watching this, the biggest lead thus far.

Coming up, the missing jet sent this partial ping. I told you about it at the top. It's final signal just before disappearing. And my next guest says this could mean a fire on board. He'll explain that hypothesis.

Also ahead, we have shown you inside this flight simulator. But in a matter of moments, you're about to get an up-close look at the underwater vehicle that could find this missing aircraft. We will show you how it works live. This is CNN's special coverage.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: All right, welcome back. I'm Brooke Baldwin.

Just getting some breaking news here as we're talking about this missing Malaysian aircraft, Flight 370. Just got some news in from specifically the FBI. We are now learning that the FBI director says his agency will be investigating hard drives from not just the pilot of this plane -- talked so much about his at home flight simulator and those deleted files, and you know they're going through those deleted files, once they recover those, which he says they will. We also now are learning, just glancing down at what the FBI is saying, that, yes, they will be looking at the hard drive from computers from both the pilot and the co-pilot. So that's new from the FBI.

Back to is possible debris field here, and those are pictures, pilot on the left, co-pilot on the right.

Let's get back to those 122 objects. It could be the big break these families have been waiting for just to help solve this mystery here. Once again, putting these on your screen, these are the satellite images from a French defense company. The objects are scattered in this massive area. So this is a 154 square mile area, about 1,600 miles off of Australia. And it's 2:15 local time in Perth. So in just a couple of hours, once the daybreak happens, search planes will be heading out again for a closer look and the potential debris field may tell us approximately where Flight 370 ended. But still, not why.

So aviation analyst Les Abend says a mechanical problem makes the most sense to him. So given what we know, and I know it's not a lot but we're learning a little bit more, he hypothesizes in this CNN opinion piece, a smoldering fire began to affect the components and the electronics in engineering compartment. And Les joins me now, a 777 pilot.

So, welcome, sir. Welcome back.

I was just telling you in the commercial break, I read your piece two times through here because it's very specific. Sort of these points zero through 11. So let me just have you simplify it for everyone here, because it's a thorough piece. How do you contend that this airplane flew so far south into the Indian Ocean in your hypothetical scenario?

LES ABEND, 777 PILOT: Well, you know, all of the theories that we have are still theories and they're still speculation.

BALDWIN: Yes.

ABEND: And we can say that over and over again, of course. And even mine has holes in it because you just pointed out, you just made a great point, is that the bottom line is, how did it fly, because my experience with jet engines, even efficient jet engines, how it got that far into the southern Indian Ocean, I can't tell you, especially at low altitude. If it was at a higher altitude, it makes a lot more sense to me. But, you know, there's holes in every theory and every speculative idea that we've come up with.

BALDWIN: But why are you saying fire?

ABEND: Well, it's a gut thing. You know, just by the fact that the last verbal communication indicated that everything was OK with the airplane. And then the -- what we seem to confirm as credible information, a left turn, is, to me, a turn that involves a diversionary airport. And now to - it's a crew that may be fighting a potential -- what makes the most sense is, I mean, we talked about decompression, we talked about the fire scenario. The fire scenario makes more sense because now we have an airplane that ends up in the middle of nowhere and I see the crew being overcome by a slow burning smoke situation that might be toxic and then eventually when you're breathing under stress with oxygen masks, knowing that you have smoke, you're staying at altitude or even descending, you're going to breathe just like you were in a scuba dive situation, the more stress you're under, the more you're going to breathe and you're going to take down that oxygen tank that's provided for you in emergency circumstances. And that seems to be the most viable theory that works for me at this point in time. But then again, like I said, it's got holes. It's got holes.

BALDWIN: Yes. Let me ask you this. This is a morbid thought that just popped into my mind. But the notion here, if the pilot and the co- pilot were compromised, even if they had the oxygen mask, et cetera, is it possible that for some period of time, because we know the trajectory of this plane was multiple hours before ending in the Indian Ocean, could the folks in the cockpit have been out, compromised, but people in the cabin OK?

ABEND: That's a great question and I very much doubt it because if something effected the cockpit, it would affect the cabin just by virtue of the way the airplane is designed. In simple terms, the cockpit actually gets mostly fresh air as opposed to the recirculated air that passengers get. Not that it's bad air -

BALDWIN: OK.

ABEND: It's just that it's more efficient to recirculate air. And the bottom line is, that creates a higher pressure in the cockpit to prevent just that circumstance -

BALDWIN: OK.

ABEND: From smoke from entering the cockpit.

BALDWIN: One final question as we've been talking a little bit about the partial ping, because we know there were a series of pings and we now learn that there's a partial ping. A possible explanation in just hearing pilots saying, this could really be the hint to learning what happened. What would lead to -- why could this be a big deal? What could a partial ping be, when the plane hits the water?

ABEND: Well, the ping aspect is above my pay grade as far as -

BALDWIN: OK.

ABEND: It's incredible what these folks --

BALDWIN: You guys know so much. Forgive me for throwing that one at you.

ABEND: Well, no, it's fine. Where I was going with this was that, to me, I discussed this on another program, was that it's possible that that might have been the last engine that burned - that basically ran out of fuel. And when that happens, the airplane is designed to automatically deploy a system called a ram (ph) air (ph) turmon (ph), a RAT as we call it in the business, and that will allow for electricity and some hydraulics. So what it could have indicated was a transfer of power, very quickly, because that bus may not -- the bus that powers that satellite system that created the ping may not be on that emergency RAT system, does that -- if that makes sense.

BALDWIN: More or less. More or less. Just being honest. Les, you're a wealth of knowledge. I know you are sticking around because I know I have more questions, our viewers have more questions.

ABEND: Sure.

BALDWIN: So we'll see you in a little bit. Thank you, for now.

Coming up, these satellite images that captured these objects offer a glimmer of hope. But we'll talk to an oceanographer who says, not so fast. Why that area of the ocean could offer a startling number of false positives.

Plus, this search for missing Flight 370 goes deep underwater. Here she is, Rosa Flores, with a closer look at the high tech tools investigators are deploying to take them miles and miles below the ocean's surface and could help find this missing aircraft.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 has so far been primarily focused on what can be seen on the surface of the ocean. But, soon the search will go deep underwater because we keep showing you, this is so huge today, these new satellite images that show these 122 objects floating in the southern Indian Ocean. And now investigators searching for this plane are using high tech tools to begin an undersea search of this area. And Rosa Flores is live for us right now with this - with this demo in Golden Meadows, Louisiana.

So tell me where you are, Rosa, and how this thing works.

ROSA FLORES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, so this is a multi-million dollar piece of equipment that dives into the ocean miles deep and it gets a map of the ocean floor. Take a look. It's an AUV, an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle. And it uses side skin sonar, which is down here, and it's got sensors all around the body of this probe so that it can avoid obstacles. It also has a GPS system, because it's important to know where this piece of equipment is at all times.

Now, I'm going to show you how this works. I'm going to ask Brian to go ahead and start launching for us. Now, this probe is owned by CNC Technologies. We're on the Miss Ginger today in Golden Meadow, Louisiana. And it's important to note that this particular probe has been used in the deep sea to find plane wreckage before.

Now, what we're going to show you here is a demonstration of how this piece of equipment is deployed into the water. Now, normally it's out in the deep sea, it's out into the ocean, so it's not tethered. We are tethered today only because this is a demonstration and we are on the dock.

But I'm going to show you, Brooke, how this happens and how it works once it gets deployed. So what happens is, it gets deployed into the water. It goes several miles deep. And you're going to see that it floats. So at that point, a team in the control room would program a mission for this particular probe and then it would take off. And it would immediately start sending data back to the control room that would give experts an idea of what's on the ocean floor.

And, you know, Brooke, that time is of the essence here. As soon as that search area is narrowed, one of these probes could be the first eyes on the wreckage scene.

Brooke.

BALDWIN: So as we look at this, and this is just pretty cool to see live, is this something that's listening for the pings of the boxes? Is it taking pictures? And then what happens when the juice on the boxes die?

FLORES: Well, you know, this piece of equipment in particular is highly customized by CNC Technologies. So they were telling me, they could put something in there that listens for those pings. But in the case of the MH-370, we know that there's a separate pinger locator, it's called a TPL, a Towed Pinger Locator, that specifically has a listening device that's looking for that ping. This would be the secondary device, an AUV, that would go then to that narrowed area -

BALDWIN: I see.

FLORES: Because the ping would isolate the debris field and then this would specifically look for oddities, Brooke, on the ocean floor that appear to be a wreckage. So the experts in the control room would then mark those and say, OK, this stands out, let's send the probe again and get some still photos. And there you have it. Those could be the first eyes on the wreckage.

BALDWIN: Amazing. Rosa Flores in Golden Meadow, Louisiana. Thank you so much to you and the crew for showing us exactly how that - how that high tech piece of equipment works.

Back to these satellite images, these pictures that we're showing you today. My next guest says, yes, this could be plane debris, but there are hundreds of possibilities. Why this particular location in the southern Indian Ocean can create a lot of false positives. What do we mean by that? We'll explain.

Also back here at home, we have to talk about what's happening in Washington state. After a landslide actually just a couple years ago, in 2006, officials invested millions of dollars in safety precautions. And now you know the story, this devastating landslide in Snohomish County. People are asking, were the warning signs ignored? The surprising answer, ahead.

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