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Search Continues for Malaysian Plane; New Satellite Images May Be of Debris from Malaysian Plane; Russian President Contacts President Obama; City in Washington Recovering from Mudslide

Aired March 29, 2014 - 14:00   ET

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

DEBORAH FEYERICK, CNN ANCHOR: Searching for flight 370. They are looking for any sign of debris, and today we got our first look at some of the floating objects found and retrieved from the southern Indian Ocean. They are the first items picked up from the search area. While they look a little bit like trash, it is possible that this could possibly be debris from that plane. Experts will analyze them as soon as the ship returns to land.

Chinese search planes spotted three new suspicious objects today. China's official news agency says one is red, the others are orange and white. About a dozen other objects were seen in the search area yesterday, including what appeared to be an orange rope and a blue bag. Again, it is unclear if these items are connected to the plane, but it does give searchers hope. Seven ships are trying to track down these objects.

Most of the passengers onboard flight 370 were Chinese, and many of their family members staged a protest today in the streets of Beijing, demanding more answers from the Malaysian government. Other families in Malaysia voiced concerns right to the country's transportation minister. He says during a private meeting that he told families that he cannot give them false hope nor will he, and he'll do whatever it takes to continue the search as long as there are love ones to be found.

Let me bring in our panel of analysts in here today. Here with me in New York is Tim Taylor, operations specialist. Tim Abend on the end, a CNN aviation analyst and former Boeing 77 captain, and Justin Green is an aviation attorney and former military pilot. And join me from Phoenix is CNN aviation analyst and retired American pilot Jim Tilmon.

So let's talk about these items and the search area. One thing that really impressed me was the fact that two of the search items, or two of the objects found today, were three minutes apart by air, and that gives you a sense of scope of how large this area is. Is that what we're going to be seeing? These search areas picked up in a radius so large and significant that you're going to be, have to figure out what is and what it's not? Let's start with you.

TIM TAYLOR, SEA OPERATIONS SPECIALIST: Unfortunately, this late in the game, this many weeks later, yes. Unless they are clumped together by some kind of wind pattern or current pattern, or they're in amalgamate because of wires and hanging together and you get a big section of it, they're going to be scattered, individual things potentially scattered everywhere. If this place went down in the Florida Key, we'd be looking off the coast of Maine. So it's spread out across an immense area.

FEYERICK: We see a sort of net, looks like a fisherman's net, picking up something small. We don't know whether it's related to the crash or whether in fact its' just sea trash that's out there. But I guess people -- it's hopeful, but I think people really want to see those large pieces. They want that sort of Malaysia Airlines insignia stamped on the base of something, metallic based. Is that fair?

TAYLOR: That is extremely fair. The big section, the 78-foot section they had a week or so ago was extremely hopeful because it might have been a big section of the plane, or a section held together as I explained. The smaller stuff, although it gives you hope, you're really looking for it to lead you to something bigger.

FEYERICK: Exactly. I remember in some plane crashes they find a suitcase. And while terribly sad, it certainly gives people a lot more hope than other things.

Let me ask you a question, because I want to bring people up to speed on the investigation. The FBI has looked at the data that was on the pilot's computer. You don't think there's a lot of credibility to any information that may have been found or the fact he a simulator and the fact he had erased some of the information. You basically said that's a no-start?

LES ABEND, 777 CAPTAIN: Listen, I'm going by gut feel. I'm not privy to all the investigation information, as none of us really are. But you know, as gut feel as an airline pilot, as a professional, I see this man, the simulator, this is a hobby the man enjoyed. He did a YouTube video about how to install an air conditioner. He's a geek part-time. You know? He enjoys things with his hands and he enjoys aviation. So that's how I see it. I see a professional. This guy was an airman at least at one time if he wasn't already at Malaysia. He seems like a well-respected, consummate professional.

FEYERICK: And Justin, now, you are an aviation lawyer. There was a lawsuit filed randomly sort of by a law firm out in Chicago. The families have already been given about $5,000 as is required by the airlines, I guess to help.

GREEN: Right.

FEYERICK: First of all, is there any merit to this lawsuit that was filed out in Chicago?

GREEN: Well, let me just say first of all, it wasn't randomly. It was part of an actual marketing effort by the law firm. The law firm's called Ribbeck Law Charter. I think that's what they call themselves. They file the same sort of filing after the Asiana crash. It's called a petition for discovery. And in that case the court dismissed the petition. They just took one look at it and threw it out of court. I think it's quite apparent that they filed it not for legitimate purposes, but rather to help with their marketing. They're over in China, overseas looking for cases. FEYERICK: The fact you said their name on television helps in the branding effort, and it's fascinating.

GREEN: Maybe I shouldn't have done that.

FEYERICK: That's what people do.

Let me ask you about the dye. Once the pilots find the objects they drop that dye. How long does the dye stay in the water and how effective is that in relocating those items?

TAYLOR: The dye is a telltale, and all's it is to give you the current location and the drift at that very moment. It's going to spread and dissipate in the water depending how big the dye tablets were, how long it will last. Generally it's used in a rescue situation in a raft or something if you're floating to put in the water to make your appearance on the water look bigger. It will help them swing back around with the planes, or have other planes come in and I.D. that location and start searching. So it's probably just that day and for other airplanes.

FEYERICK: So even time is against that, even those items.

We have Jim Tilmon also for us in Phoenix. And, Jim, when you look at the state of the investigation, are you confident that everything is being done, and that investigators are where they need to be right now?

JIM TILMON, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: No. No, I'm not, and I'm sad to say there needs to be a much more robust organization. We still need to put more assets in there. If this is really a serious place we're looking, there are lots of things we could be doing we're not doing. We could have a tanker in the air, just loitering in the air to refuel that P8 and give him much more time on station. We could do a lot of things we're not doing. And perhaps that is a reflection of the lack of cooperation, put it that way, from the Malaysian government. It's almost like we're all adversaries.

FEYERICK: You're seeing this, it's interesting. People would argue, oh, no, it's collaborative. You've got China, Japan, New Zealand, Australia, the U.S. But you see it as perhaps they're not playing well together?

TILMON: No. I don't want to criticize that, because a lot of those people are very, very serious and they're working very hard to work together. I'm simply saying that none of us, none of those countries that you mentioned as far as I know are getting the full picture. We will get just enough to whet our appetite and give a reason to travel down that road to see if we can find some logical explanation for it. But we're never given a total picture. We never have enough information where we could feel that's a jump off point and go someplace.

I am praying we find something of substance out of this last search, because right now we're looking at situation where the people are being asked to do all kinds of jobs, and some of them are kind of risky. We're lucky we haven't had a real problem out there with all of these airplanes in a small space, and I wonder what kind of air traffic control is available for all that? We've got a lot of work to do. And it's almost as if we're starting over.

FEYERICK: Although as small as the space may be, I think I read somewhere, 252,000 square kilometers which is about 123,000 square miles. So certainly a lot of area to cover. Mechanical failure, do we think right now, mechanical malfunction? Do we think something more suspicious, les where are you heading, leaning?

ABEND: Well, I think people know where I'm going at this point in time. It seems to me that we've had a professional flight crew. There's a lot of indications to me that this could very well have been some sort of failure. I've been going with the smoke. The smoldering situation in the cockpit, that they were trying to deal with, and it overwhelmed them. You know, we can go the lithium battery direction. I mean, that's pure conjecture on anybody's part.

However, it's possible -- it's very toxic, that stuff, and if you don't see it as smoke, it's difficult to detect with the nose. It's possible they didn't put oxygen masks on and became overwhelmed by that toxic situation in the process of knowing they had a problem and attempting to divert.

FEYERICK: The lithium batteries would have been in the cargo hold. That cargo hold is not sort of isolated, it is not sort of sectioned off. I mean, how would that leak into the actual cockpit, then?

ABEND: It is. However -- and there's a very good fire suppression system in the cargo hold itself. However, everything in that airplane circulates somehow through from the bottom, into the cabin. So it's interrelated in various ways. Now, the unique compartment, electronics and engineering compartment that has all the guts and electronics of the airplane is near that forward baggage compartment.

FEYERICK: Right.

ABEND: It doesn't have specific fire suppression. All it has is the ability to reverse air flow to send smoke out. And if it doesn't send smoke, it won't send it out.

FEYERICK: I was just on a plane coming back from Phoenix, and it's amazing when you see there's -- you are in a very, very, very tight space, and everything is -- reach out and touch anything you want. Gentlemen, thank you so much. Tim Taylor, Les Abend, Justin Green and Jim Tilmon, thank you all so much for your insights into this continuing mystery that so many people want to know so much about. Gentlemen, thank you.

Well, was the 777 jet safe enough for long flights over the ocean? An aviation expert says, no. He's going to explain to us, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

FEYERICK: Digging into several theories how flight 370 vanished. Meanwhile, an aviation expert says the plane was not only the problem but the plane a victim as well. In his article, "The Exemplary Plane, at the Heart of the MH370 Mystery," "Daily Beast" contributor Clive Irving writes, quote, "With just two engines, the Boeing 777 wasn't supposed to be safe for long flights over the ocean." I want to bring in Clive Irving in New York via Skype. Clive, why wasn't this plane safe, given that this is a half billion dollar plane, one of the most sophisticated planes flying?

CLIVE IRVING, "DAILY BEAST" CONTRIBUTOR: Yes, I'm actually not saying that. I'm saying it had to prove it was safe. It was designed from the beginning to prove something at the time. In the early 1990s it was a very unorthodox idea I amongst aviation experts, which is that you could take a very large plane, holding 300 or more people, and fly it over long distances, over the ocean, and on only two engines.

And the critical thing here is, how far away would that plane be from the nearest landing strip if one of the engines went out? So the regulations began by saying no further than 60 minutes away. It's now up to over five hours. It's gone up to that level because the 777 has really been the proving point that it was dependable. In fact there was one instant where a 777 took off from New Zealand, lost one engine on the way to Los Angeles, and had to make a diversion to Hawaii on one engine. It's a large plane flying on one engine. It was designed to do that, and it flew for 90 minutes on that one engine and landed safely.

Of course, the background to this is that before that, large planes of that kind had either four engines, like a jumbo, or three engines, so that if one engine went out there were two were left, or three left. In the case of the 747, it was able to lose two engines and still make it back to land.

So Boeing led the whole aviation industry in the contention that the engines themselves, which are the things that decides whether the plane is safe or not in the end, in terms of reliability. But the engines have now reached a stage of sophistication where it was safe to build the whole plane around those two engines, and it hasn't successfully done that. I think the case is made.

Ironically what we're seeing now in the case of this Malaysian incident is that the plane was able to fly out long distances over water on two engines with no one apparently conscience inside of it. So if you look at it that way, you could say it proved the thesis.

FEYERICK: Exactly, that's exactly what I was going to raise, that is, obviously if something catastrophic had happened to one or even two of the engines, then that plane would have simply stopped flying much sooner, perhaps when off radar at that point.

IRVING: The point about it, if I can make, which is that this plane was very largely, technically, intact for the whole time that it flew over that water. What was not intact was something that happened in the early stages of the flight, which somehow left it able to do that. So in all of its critical systems, the engines and the way the other engines power the plane, it was performing perfectly. But we know something seriously happened wrong as soon as it took that turn. And it's at that hour or so, before and after it took that turn, where we really desperately need critical information about what went on in that cockpit.

FEYERICK: And it's interesting, because the 777 does have sort of a triple safety system redundancy, that means it protects it. So arguably, as you suggest, yes, this is a safe plane. It was safe enough to continue flying without the suggestion that anybody was actually operating the controls, possibly on autopilot, for example.

Now, you also write about the purpose of flight testing. Explain how that relates to the Boeing's disappearance.

IRVING: Well, the flight testing, the aim of flight testing is test the plane until, in a sense, it breaks, to test everything. In the course of the flight testing of the 777, there were two emergencies within two days of what's called a rapid decompression when the air pressurized air in the plane gushes out with explosive force. Those inside the plane need to get to an oxygen mask immediately or they suffer badly from asphyxia.

On two test flights, on one of the test flights, maximum altitude, 43,000 feet, and the pilot just got it down, and even then four of the test crew had to be taken to hospital to be treated for in diving terms called the bends, because they didn't get to their oxygen masks in time.

Now, it's very fortunate that that happened at that stage in the flight test program, and it exposed a flaw in a valve in the air conditioning system in the belly of the plane. That was rectified then, and there's been no recurrence of that since. But this simply shows to you that there was no redundancy for that failure. It was called a single point facial, which is highly unusual, and there was no backup. That's can't be repeated.

As I said, the whole purpose of test flying is to push these planes to the limit. The greatest test of all for the 777 is that it's been flying since 1996 with an impeccable, really impeccable, outstanding record of the sort of 1,800 in the air now. And I counted only 11 which for one reason or another were not flying. Three of those were involved in accidents, including this one, and others have been stalled. But such a -- 99 percent of the planes built over the last, since 1996, are still flying. That's an incredible testament to the --

FEYERICK: Absolutely remarkable, yes. Clive Irving, thank you so much. Really appreciate those insights. Just adds more mystery and speculation as to what was going on onboard that plane during this flight.

Now, coming up, he spent the last 20 years with this woman, a flight attendant onboard flight 370. Now he struggles every day as their two kids ask about her. Their story, straight ahead.

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FEYERICK: For exactly three weeks now the families of these passengers and crew members have not held, kissed or spoken to their loved ones. That includes the husband of one of the flight attendants who tells CNN's Paula Hancocks how he is simply at a loss as to how to explain all of this to their children.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

PAULA HANCOCKS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Foong Wai Yung's 10-year old daughter and four-year-old son keep asking where she is. And 18 years as a Malaysia airlines flight attendant, she was working aboard MH370.

LEE KHIM FATT, HUSBAND MH370 FLIGHT ATTENDANT: Mommy is going to be a bit longer to take home this time. And I even promised them, I'm going to bring her home. But I really have no idea where is she now. And now I'm not sure whether I can bring her home.

HANCOCKS: Lee Khim Fatt asks me what he should tell his daughter. He says Foong is caring and loving. He speaks in the present tense.

FATT: Of course, I'm still hoping for god's miracles, but it's just like -- what we want is the reality, the true story.

HANCOCKS: Showing me mobile photos of his wife, he tells me he's angry at the way he's been treated. His wife was part of the cabin crew, but Lee feels the airline tells the media more than it tells him. He says he gets most of his information from televised press conferences, part of the reason he's hired a lawyer.

MANUEL VON RIBBECK, RIBBECK LAW: It is not their fault that this happened to the plane. So, therefore, they have to be compensated for their damages.

HANCOCKS: Lee and Foong were together for 20 years. He says they were happy. No now she lost. Lee says he has lost all direction.

Paula Hancocks, CNN, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

FEYERICK: The families in so much pain and grieving now. Separately we are hearing that central Florida is under a tornado warning. That means that a tornado has been spotted or radar indicates that a tornado has formed. Alexandra Steele following for us now in the weather center. Alexandra what do you have? We're going to wait for one quick minute. We're going to get that sound problem fixed. We're going to go to break and have all that information about that possible tornado coming up. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

FEYERICK: Central Florida is under a tornado warning right now. You can see some of the images of the area. That means a tornado has been spotted or that radar indicates that a tornado is forming. Alexandra Steele is following it for us now. Alexandra what are we looking at?

ALEXANDRA STEELE, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Debbie, you're exactly right. A tornado warning has been issued. That means either Doppler radar indicating rotation. In this case in central Florida, National Weather Service meteorologists out of Melbourne, isolated severe storms saying there's a potential for rotation. Here's a look where it is. It is central Florida, tornado warning for central Brevard, southeast Orange, and northeast Osceola counties. This is going from now until 3:10 at this point. These storms are moving eastward at about 40 miles per hour. Tornado watch issued. You can see, this is the watch delineated here from Tampa and including all of central Florida saying the potential is there for tornadoes. You can see this very strong line.

But here in this purple, this is tornado warning, and this is quite different, more severe, and for a shorter period of time looking out, in this case, an hour, actually. So you can see. St. Cloud, Merit Island, some of these cities kind of in this, Cape Canaveral, big cities, also the Orlando International Airport. Cape Canaveral, Jetty Park, Cocoa Beach, and you can see a line of storms pushing eastward, 40 miles per hour moving east. Very strong winds, some hail with this. And, again, tornadoes being spotted. National weather service saying within some of these, you can see right here. There's a potential for some rotation again.

So in central Florida, until about an hour, that's the tornado warning. Tornado watch for a longer period of time. The severe setup is there. We have a cold front moving through, this warm air. There it goes, Deb, it is firing off. We'll keep you posted on this. Central Florida, Brevard, Osceola counties for the next hour under a tornado warning.

FEYERICK: And just very quickly, the force of these tornadoes, how dangerous could they potentially be?

STEELE: Absolutely incredibly dangerous. If you are watching us and see the tornado warning beeping on your screen or radio, get into interior rooms, preferably a bathroom without any windows, scrunch down, cover up and lowest floor room without windows. That will be your safest bet.

FEYERICK: Alexandra Steele, thanks so much. We'll touch base as you keep an eye on this. Thank you.

In a few hours search planes take off from Perth, Australia, to begin another long day of searching for flight 370. They are looking for any sign of debris. Today, we got our first look at some of the floating objects found and retrieved from the southern Indian Ocean. These are first items picked up from the search area. While they look a little bit like trash, they could hold significant clues in terms of what happened to the plane.

Let me bring our panel of analysts back here. Tim Taylor, Justin Green, Les Abend, and Clive Irving here with me. We've seen some of the objects retrieved. First of all, investigators will have a monumental task finding and putting everything together. From the law perspective, Justin, how much evidence do you need to file a lawsuit suggesting the plane, or somebody onboard that plane, was responsible for what happened?

GREEN: Well, it's interesting. In order to prove a design defect, that the 777 design was defective, you don't really need the wreckage out of the water. You could take a look at the design documents. You could take a look at the, the other airplanes, and your experts could say, look, for this reason, for the wiring in the cockpit, for the -- whatever it is, the design of the fuselage, you could say that the entire fleet of 777s is defective.

But you're not going to win the case showing that, because you also have to prove causation. And without the wreckage out of the ocean, without the black boxes, I think that's the hurdle you're never going to make.

And there's two things you should note, too. Before you bring a lawsuit you're supposed to have a good-faith basis to bring the lawsuit. Right now there's no good faith basis to sue Boeing. There's no good-faith basis -- the only people responsible legally right now is Malaysian Airlines, and they're liable because of the Montreal Convention, which is an international treaty, says they're liable. But to sue Boeing, to accuse Boeing of causing this right now is I think really irresponsible. It's not fair to the families, its misleading to them, but it's also not fair to Boeing.

FEYERICK: I remember with TWA flight 800, everybody thought there was an explosion or something, a rocket that shot up. Ultimately, it was determined that once they pieced together all those parts of the plane, they realized that it was something electrical that caused fumes in the center tank to basically explode. It was almost like a fuel bomb effectively. So you're right, piecing it together is going to be very, very difficult.

GREEN: If you go NTSB school right down outside Washington, they still have the TWA 800. They basically put it together like a puzzle to check that out. It is incredible.

FEYERICK: It is, because when you think about it, no matter what we talk about in terms of speculation and theory, until you actually have something hard to hold on to you don't know.

Les, let me ask a quick question in terms of the weigh point. There's been a question as to the moment that plane checked in and essentially said, seemed to be locating itself between two different airports. What does that suggest to you?

ABEND: Well --

FEYERICK: Were they trying to perhaps think in their mind that they need to land?

ABEND: Yes, absolutely. That's always been my contention, because everything was normal up until that's famous "All right, goodnight" point, and then they realized a problem was generated. They smelled something is we go with the smoke theory or toxic fume theory. They said we have a serious enough situation we have to head back to diversion airport. And the captain would have said, I've got the airplane which it was his leg anyhow, and the copilot would have been doing a check list.

The waypoint would have been entered. He was probably flying this route so much that he knew by memory what particular airport he wanted to go to, and he turned, put it into the flight management computer and the airplane turned that direction on autopilot.

FEYERICK: And, Tim I don't want to let go before we answer this quick question. In terms of what we expected to see from the black boxes, is there going to be that aha moment, that sound of an explosion, that sound that, you know, we're losing control? Because sometimes we talk so smudge about the black box and then we finally get the black box and it's not what we want. It's not that conclusive. Oh, that's what happened.

TAYLOR: The flight recorder probably is not going to have anything on it because it only loops every two hour, but the black boxes --

ABEND: Distinguish with the cockpit voice recorder may not have anything.

TAYLOR: The flight data recorder is going to have data. And it's empirical data that we can actually plug in. And guys like Les, I'm underwater, but they can plug in and find everything from fuel consumption, what was going on with the plane, where it was flying, altitudes, every little thing recorded, it's real data. Right now we have a point it might have gone down someplace and some debris thousands of miles away from where it might be. And so we're lacking everything in between. That would be such, such a find if they can find that.

FEYERICK: There's no question. We have to keep in mind, they may get so many different pieces and may not find the black boxes for quite some time, case of Air France. Two years.

GREEN: And it will tell you something, if the pilots were unconscious.

FEYERICK: Gentlemen, Tim, Les, Clive, Justin, we thank you for insights on the 777. We'll be right back on the other side.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

FEYERICK: As investigators search for the cause of flight 370's disappearance, some are already looking to how the flights may be affected in the near future. We saw commercial travel changed after the 9/11 tragedy. So what's in store for air travel now that a jumbo jet vanishes? Our Stephanie Elam take a closer look.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BARRY SCHIFF, RETIRED COMMERCIAL AIRLINE CAPTAIN: Every accident affects the future of aviation, because we learn so much from it.

STEPHANIE ELAM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Jetliner catastrophes don't happen often, but when they do, the impact on air travel can be global. In light of the mystery of Malaysia Airlines flight 370, the decades old radar technology is being called into question.

It seems crazy to me in 2014 a plane could just disappear. SCHIFF: I agree with you. You know, anybody can buy a little spot locator that transmits to satellites all the time, and we would always know where this person was. Why such things are not onboard every jetliner, I don't know.

ELAM: In fact, the Federal Aviation Administration has mandated that by 20 all commercial aircraft have GPS onboard. But the FAA doesn't call the shots for international skies.

ANDREW THOMAS: The way that aviation happens in so many ways is still very local. It's dependent upon government regulations, history, traditions, idiosyncrasies, and governments at the local level.

ELAM: After 9/11, changes were made. Cockpits doors, for example, were reinforced. But long before 2001, calls for that very improvement from some groups in the industry fell on deaf ears.

THOMAS: The industry is always hard-pressed to spend money on anything above and beyond what it's mandated to do by government. There will be talk about this, but I think in the end you won't see a lot of action on it.

ELAM: Any changes will take years. The major reason for that is cost. So while there are many suggestions out there from cameras in the cockpit and cabin to streaming flight data in real-time, these upgrades would could millions and have to be implemented without disrupting a system that moves millions of passengers a day.

And who will pay for those upgrades? In the U.S., the airlines, the taxpayers, and ultimately passengers.

Do you think maybe now the world will change how we fly?

SCHIFF: We've learned that we need to keep track of airplanes flying across the world's oceans. We need to know where they are at all times, more today perhaps than at any other time in the past.

ELAM: Stephanie Elam, CNN, Los Angeles.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

FEYERICK: And we're going to bring back our panel of analysts here at CNN to start talking about this black box. What's fascinating is you ask, how could a plane simply vanish, disappear? Do you think that how we track airplanes should be changed, that there should about steady streaming of information into a central data bank so we're getting more, not less? We're getting pretty much, but still, now you realize just how great the demand is. Let me start with Les.

ABEND: Well, you know, I go across the north Atlantic quite a bit, a system called ADSB, which basically a ground-based system through a satellite. And we're always tracked. So this is amazing that this hole in this part of the world could provide this system. This technology is already there. My airline receives constant data about almost every aspect of altitude, air speed, almost everything. Location is never an issue, where the airplane is. FEYERICK: Tim, this black box, do you believe that these are good enough? Everybody's been talking about the race against time, 30 days and then there's no ping. I think on some level, it shows that -- that we as human beings think, oh, we can find a plane. And 30 days is plenty of time.

TAYLOR: Yes. I think the beacons can be expanded on time. I put assets underwater that cost hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions of dollars or multimillion, and they have beacons on there that will last six months, eight months. It's --

FEYERICK: Realistic?

TAYLOR: Yes, well, I want to find it. If I lose it I want to find my gear, and so does the insurance company. So I think, yes. They can be expanded at least how long they last.

FEYERICK: Your company uses these incredible vehicles that almost look like underwater drones to go and find The depths they can go to. What are we talking about?

TAYLOR: I've worked with several different AVs up to 5,000 feet, pretty much my expertise, but they're all similar. And the smaller ones I've used I think I brought on set earlier this week on CNN.

FEYERICK: Yes.

TAYLOR: We go to 200 meters, 600 feet. It's all different sizes. But the big blue fin they're launching, the 21 inch is, I believe, 6,000 meters. So it's 2,100 feet.

FEYERICK: Right.

TAYLOR: And that, they go down and in order to take the pictures of the bottom you need with sound, which is like swaths. They take big, long, thousand meter swaths, you have to get it down to the bottom. These autonomous vehicles of the modern future, these are the way to do it.

FEYERICK: Absolutely. Getting people down there, eyes down there, without getting people down there.

TAYLOR: Again, it's the search for the box, when these things are implemented. Right now we have to narrow down where the search area is.

FEYERICK: Justin, as the lawyer here on this panel, have you ever gotten information from the black box that has proved crucial to the cases that you've worked on?

GREEN: Yes. It's actually the brain of our cases, basically, the cockpit voice recorder, flight data recorder. Working on the Colgan continental connection 347 crash up in Buffalo, the pilot's activity shown on the cockpit voice recorder, what they did minutes after the emergency, or on the flight data recorder, and that was the key evidence in the case. And not having that would have really complicated our efforts.

FEYERICK: Les, as an active pilot, do you believe changes is be made to the black boxes and changes should be made to the black boxes?

ABEND: Well, I think changes are already in the works. I think it's after 2015. I'll be corrected if I get this wrong, but it's 90 days on the beacon batteries.

FEYERICK: On the ping.

ABEND: I think there might be a possibility of making them, the signal, a little stronger so it doesn't require such a small area to get in the vicinity of these black boxes. But they're complicated machines, very complicated machines.

FEYERICK: Which is fascinating. Again, so much riding on hopefully finding this to get more information as to what happened. Tim Taylor, Justin Green, Les Abend, thank you so much. We are going to be right back after a quick break.

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JOE CARTER, CNN SPORTS CORRESPONDENT: Hi. I'm Joe Carter. If your March madness bracket is busted, here's a story anyone can root for. Brothers Archie and Sean Miller, if they continue winning, could face- off for the national championship game. Sean is the head coach of the top ranked Arizona Wildcats while Archie leads the Dayton Flyers, of course, this year's surprise team. These two brothers have never faced off against each other as head coaches, but wouldn't it certainly be something to see them go head-to-head in the national championship game?

So tonight, two teams will earn a spot in the final four, both games to be seen on our sister network TBS. The early game, the Cinderella story Dayton faces the number one overall seed Florida, and a huge matchup between the Wisconsin Badgers and the Arizona Wildcats.

To recap what happened Friday night, Kentucky, Michigan, Michigan State, and UConn all won and all advance to play Sunday in the elite eight. Stick around. More news after this.

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FEYERICK: More continuing coverage on the search for flight 370 in just a few minutes. First a few other stories happening. Secretary of State John Kerry headed to Paris today for a meeting on the crisis in Ukraine. The State Department confirms that Kerry and Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov will meet tomorrow. They'll discuss ways to diffuse the situation in Ukraine.

President Vladimir Putin phoned President Obama yesterday to discuss the crisis. The White House says they agreed Kerry and Lavrov would meet to consider a, quote, "diplomatic resolution," unquote.

An earthquake that hit southern California last night was about ten times stronger than the one that struck on St. Patrick's Day. The 5.1 magnitude quake caused no major injuries. It threw items from shelves, left a couple thousand people without power, and did break some water mains. It also triggered a rockslide that led to this car, as you see there, flipping over. Nearly two dozen aftershocks followed.

Well, about an hour ago, a moment of silence took place in Washington state to mark the instant a monster hillside collapsed and killed at least 17 people one week ago today. Before and after video shows how green valleys are now drowning in mud. And as people paid tribute, volunteers and rescue teams search for survivors in rainy weather.

CNN's Paul Vercammen is live in Arlington, Washington where a command center has been set up. And, Paul, tell us about how many people marked the moment with when that landslide struck.

PAUL VERCAMMEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, it was people throughout this greater area, Deb, and at the governor's urging, he suggested everybody, because we're almost at exactly one week ago today that the world came caving in on these people. People in the supermarket and throughout the area just stopped and caused and reflected on this tremendous tragedy and the loved ones that this community lost.

And it's just been heartbreaking, because as the grim search continues today in the slide area, what you have is volunteers and firefighters and others literally looking for bodies to bury, looking for someone so somebody can have some comfort in being able to put that person to rest. And imagine the heartbreak for a young mother. She lost both her own mother and her baby daughter. Let's listen to what she had to say.

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NATASHA HUESTIS, LOST DAUGHTER AND MOTHER IN LANDSLIDE: And I got to hold her, and I may be dropped a couple tears because I was so excited that we found her and all I could do is grin because we found my baby. And --

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VERCAMMEN: And it's dangerous out there. You may know that there's pools of gasoline and propane, septic tank materials. These workers are enduring this every day. They talk about going through this and waste-high mud, being careful where they step. One firefighter relayed earlier in the week it took him a long time, some five minutes, just to walk 50 or 60 feet, Deborah. And the rain is compounding this recovery effort.

FEYERICK: And Paul, with the search and rescue, recovery effort that's going on out there right now, the weather hasn't let up. Do they believe that if the rain stops, at least the ground will become a little bit harder and a little bit more searchable in terms of getting the kind of equipment and the people right there on the ground?

VERCAMMEN: Yes, that was helpful earlier in the week, Deborah, because we did see somewhat of a recession of the water nap is exactly what they want. They want to dry out. They've had record rain here. In a way, they're overwhelmed, they're overtired, and they are over it, over the rain that just has fallen seemingly nonstop in the month of March here in the state of Washington.

FEYERICK: Heroic efforts indeed, One week ago today. Paul Vercammen, thank you.

Next, debris collected from the ocean in the new search area for flight 370, all the new information, coming up after a short pause.

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