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First Look At Objects Found In Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 Search Area

Aired March 29, 2014 - 18:00   ET

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

DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR: It is the top of the hour here in the CNN NEWSROOM, and I'm Don Lemon. Thank you so much for joining us, everyone.

The mystery of flight 370 marks a new chapter this hour. The first search planes will take off any minute now as daybreak approaches in Perth, Australia. 10 planes will be involved in the search, although the weather is expected to worsen with light showers, low clouds.

Meantime, we are tracking a potentially major development. Ships retrieved objects from the search area today, finally after hearing the have phrase possible objects repeated for weeks. We are getting a first look at actually objects that were found.

And I want you to look at this. And we have to be clear that no link exists between the objects that we are showing you and that missing airliner so far. It could just be sea trash. Analysts are examining the objects now.

And we have this for you, grieving families of passengers are enduring a emotional roller coaster. On Monday, Malaysian officials told them all lives are lost. No one survived. Now, the message just got mixed today.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HISHAMMUDDIN BIN HUSSEIN, MALAYSIAN ACTING TRANSPORT MINISTER: We have been hoping against hope no matter how remote. Of course, we are praying, and we will continue the search for the possible survivors. But what they want is a commitment on our part to continue the search, and that, I have given not only on behalf of the Malaysian government, but of so many nations that is involved.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEMON: And the question is how can grieving families grieve with shifting areas and mixed messages from the Malaysian officials. Our experts are going to weigh in on that throughout the evening here on CNN.

I want to get straight to CNN's Will Ripley in Perth, Australia.

Will, at the moment now, search planes return to the sky, how long will they actually be able to search before the weather is a issue? WILL RIPLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: You know, we were just taking a little bit of radar here, Don. You know, the weather is still moving in from west to east. We see a lot of clouds heading in this direction. And I can tell you, just here in Perth, obviously, we are quite a distance away from the search area. It has gotten noticeably colder. It is more windy and there are clouds overhead as well. And the big clouds are still out over to Indian Ocean, moving towards the search area. So we don't know how many hours before this arrives. But when we say light showers, what that can really means is almost zero visibility. Whenever these clouds move in over the Indian Ocean, and they are so low to the ground that they can stop a search right in its tracks.

So we are going to have, as you said, ten planes in the air, ten ships and some of them, there are now others moving in as we speak, getting in place, just trying the take advantage of how much time they have to search before the weather turns ugly.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

So we came across a couple of objects. There are few of orange banners. There is other objects that the on closer examination were just debris, green fishing nets (INAUDIBLE). Very interesting and when we examined them closer, they turned out to be just that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RIPLEY: That is the story that we are likely to hear repeated in the coming days. Crew members saying they see objects that have potential, but then they turn out to be completely unrelated. And in that case, it was from a fishing vessel. And in other cases, it may be sea trash. But there are objects out there that the flight crews feel are suspicious, different from what you would normally see, enough so that they are dropping the buoys on those areas, marking the areas, letting the ships know where they are so that their ships can move in, look for the stuff, retrieving, getting it on board and then they will be sending it to a lab, essentially here in Australia where the experts will analyze it to determine if it did come from flight 370.

It is a complicated process, but it all begins with the ships on the water and the planes in the skies and will hope that they will have as much time as possible to search today.

LEMON: The latest on the search from Will Ripley in Perth, Australia. Thank you, Will. Appreciate that.

Joining me now to discuss all of this is CNN aviation analyst Maria Schiavo and Miles O'Brien as well.

Miles, ten search planes to take to the sky at any moment, but that weather is on the way. How can the crews best make use of the hours that they are searching that they do have?

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Well, is that for me, Don? I'm sorry. LEMON: Yes, Miles O'Brien.

O'BRIEN: You know, maximizing the time on station is the key on this. You know, remember, in the previous search sight, here you had the P-8 aircraft which is ideally suited aircraft for the U.S. Navy spending four hours of the time just to get to the site. So shaving even one hour off which is what this does provides, if you think about it, two more hours on the station. So that increases the odds dramatically, but weather is weather. And this is really a fight with mother nature right now.

LEMON: And Mary, you know, once these objects have been retrieved or returned to shore, what's next? How do they analyze them and how can you be sure that they are in fact from flight 370?

MARY SCHIAVO, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Well, hopefully the teams they have assembled in Perth which is where all of the wreckage is supposed to be taken or the debris or the sea trash, whatever they are pick up, will be seasoned investigators, and they have, and it really comes with experience. And of course, you go to school first, but you know what comes from the plane and what doesn't.

And what is unique about the aircraft other than the passengers' things, such as luggage and by the way, shoes float and galley carts (ph), et cetera, but things from airplane are very specific to an airplane. A lot of the parts on the plane are have to be FAA approve. The seats only are on an aircraft. And so, you really don't see a lot of things on an airplane that are here otherwise. You would not mistake them for boats.

So the investigators, you know, have hopefully worked many accidents and will know what to look for. But aircraft parts are very unique.

LEMON: Hey, Miles, and then Mary, I want to talk to you guys about this. You know, I have heard some of the analysts on CNN saying, you know, there is concern about the way that the objects are being handled, and maybe they should have gloves on. They should not be touching them with their hands or as little as possible. Mary said, listen, you have to grab it. You have to touch it in some way. It is unavoidable.

Do you think that -- what do you think about the possible about these objects being compromised because they are touching them with their hands, Miles?

O'BRIEN: Well, I mean, I just think in the real world, that they have to handle them a little bit. You know, the concern about somehow, you know, somehow wiping away evidence, I mean, after all they have been in the water for more than 20 days now, so just that fact alone is going to undermine any sort of forensic evidence, although, the investigators who are certainly that are on site, and they tapped into should be able work around that.

LEMON: Yes. Mary, you want to weigh in on that?

SCHIAVO: Well, the only time I can think of when that is a huge issue is in Alaska airlines and the crash off of Los Angeles back in 2000. And there, the jack screw which is the part of the plane that controls the horizontal stabilizer, the elevator, that exited the plane and when they got it up on the ship, they washed it off and people were very upset that they were washing away evidence. But even though that happened, the evidence was still on the jack screw, so it is pretty hard to mess it up by handling it.

LEMON: All right. Mary and Miles, thank you. Stick around and we are going to continue the discussion after the break.

But first, we have information that just into CNN. A preliminary magnitude 4.1 earthquake has been felt in southern California. Again, this is just into CNN, and according to the United States geological survey, the quake was centered one mile southeast of Roland heights, that is near Los Angeles. And remember, just last night, the Los Angeles area was affected by a 5.1 magnitude quake.

No significant damage or injuries from that earthquake. You can see the damage so that the other one had earlier, but there is no significant damage aside from the things falling awe of the shelves. No significant injuries as well. More on the quake just as soon as it comes in on CNN.

And coming up on CNN, we are going to talk about the difficult search for missing flight 370. How do you search in the open ocean with no landmarks and endless sea? And I say it is extremely difficult for the folks out there looking for debris. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: So started the day for search crews in Australia. Planes are taking off at this hour, leaving home base in Australia headed for those best guess search areas in the ocean.

Michael Kay is here with me now. He is a retired royal air force pilot and also Timothy Taylor, a deep water search and submarine specialist.

Michael Kay, what can the method do pilots used to search the open ocean for those landmarks? Is it grid search or circle patterns? What do they do?

LT. COL. MICHAEL KAY, BRITISH MILITARY (RET.): A combination of everything, really Don. I think it is all dependent on all of the nature of the information they have at the time. Usually, these guys, as an air France 447, because of the transponders and the ACARS, were be able to locate the debris pretty quickly. So then, they will just ping for that and they will search it out. That was a look at the tidal flows and they sort of, you know, put it in some algorithms and the computers come up with a data search.

LEMON: I would imagine before they go out, there is a briefing. How are they briefed? what are they told once they get to briefing?

KAY: Yes. I mean, the guys going out there are the pilots that are responsible for getting the aircraft out there. But in terms of the equipment that the aircraft is using, I think that it is then going to the responsibility hands over to the TC, the tactical controller, and that person is going to be responsible for the radar scope guys and the girls and everyone sort of down the path as we using the technology. So, you know, there will be aspect on what the search is doing, there will be safe aspects, there will be weather briefings, there will be actions of what happens if you see something, you know, because if they do see something, they take a picture of it. They want to get that imagery straight back to the analysts who are now to stop processing it, because as we said before, time is of the essence, so there is a myriad of factors that go into it.

LEMON: So there is protocol?

KAY: Absolutely, protocol.

LEMON: (INAUDIBLE), you must do this once if you -- when you find something.

Talk to us about the search though, because you, more than anyone, understands this. You can talk about what is it, AUVs that are helping in the search.

TIMOTHY TAYLOR, SEA OPERATIONS SPECIALIST: They are autonomous vehicles and drones for lack of a better word. But unlike the Navy drones that are flown from Langley some place or some remote location, water is very diffuse and hard to get signals through, so you cannot reliably pilot it. And any of it has to think on its own.

LEMON: This is one our Rosa Flores shot down in Louisiana.

TAYLOR: Yes. That is down in Louisiana. And actually, they were instrumental, I think, in finding the air France.

LEMON: And yours is different though the once you use?

TAYLOR: The ones we use are a little bit shallow. All of the same mechanics involve with the systems, but we have operated up to 5,000 feet. So they are exactly the same platform, but obviously, bigger to handle the bigger pressure.

LEMON: How much ground so to speak can this cover in the search period.

TAYLOR: Depending on how strong the sonar and its reaching out, but you can cover the 12 nautical -- 12 square nautical miles a day, and maybe with the big ones, a little bit more.

LEMON: For the sake of this discussion, what if they find something really convincing and they believe it is part of the plane, what happens then?

TAYLOR: If they find debris, and they have been saying reverse engineering, I like to say reverse navigating, because engineering is building something, but you are plotting back and trying to determine where the actual wreckage went into the water. The debris field is not where the lane is going to be. So, we have the find that. And what you need is clues to find it. So, every piece of data that is picked up on the ocean, every piece of data from satellite is plugged into a casino program, basically, that runs millions and millions of hits into a square grid, mile square grid. And then take, they now is like the highest probability areas and that is where we will start looking. And if we are looking with the AUVs, it is a monotonous job of, you know, 12 square miles a day or flying multiple vehicles in, you know, bringing that up.

LEMON: And in the video that was seen earlier, I thought that there was netting they found, but it is netting that they are using to pick up whatever it is. It appears to be some sort of paper or plastic that they found in this particular search right here which is entangled in the ne net, and then they have to get it out of the net. So they have to really -- they have got to (INAUDIBLE) these objects.

TAYLOR: I want to, you know, hold out this hope, but you know, this is stuff that we run across everyday in the ocean. There are trash and debris out there every day. So, you know, let 's hope that it is something from the flight.

LEMON: Go ahead, Mike.

KAY: Just moving on from what Tim was saying. I think we now need to move into the process of unequivocal dissemination of the information. I think there are too many what ifs whether it is from the Australian prime minister or there have been recent of information from Malaysia. I think the next pieces f information that comes out needs to be an unequivocal we have found something and it has been linked. And we know this evidence are there because there is just too much continuation and speculations --.

LEMON: Hold that thought. Let's talk more about that discussion after the break. So we will continue to discuss this.

Also coming up, as daylight breaks over Perth, Australia, search planes are just starting day 23 of the hunt for the flight 370. What could this new objects tell authorities about what to look for?

And make sure you join CNN tonight, just about 15 minutes here -- 14 minutes to be precise, flight 370, the final hours, the half-hour special to take a detailed look into what we know about the flight's last hours. Tonight at 6:30 eastern right after the broadcast at the bottom of the hour. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: Welcome back.

A total of 10 aircrafts are expected to fly over today's search zone. Crews are hoping to get in as much work as they can before the weather conditions start to the deteriorate.

I am joined again by our expert of panel. Mike Kay is here. Timothy Taylor, Mary Schiavo, Miles O'Brien.

Let's look at the big picture here guys. And can we put up the objects that they have found when they are searching for the net. And just -- I hope you guys can see in your monitor. And again, you know, we don't want to get to ahead of ourselves here as to what this looks like.

So let's take a look and see if we can kind of figure it out as they fish this out of the ocean. You know, they pull it on and then they undo it from the netting. And then OK. So it is frozen. Let's put it up there for a little bit.

Now, I'm just going to say, to me, if it is any, and it could be a magazine, it could be, you know, a page of paper or page from the magazine, but it looks like the emergency manual in the back of a seat cushion. I am just saying that. What does it look like to you, Miles?

O'BRIEN: I am trying to look at what appear to be some diagrams that you could be right about that. At first I thought it was money, but now that I am looking at it, maybe not. You know, but -- for all we know it could be a manual for a fishing trawler that fell off or something. But it does have that look. So this kind of thing, you know, obviously a that is not conclusive stuff necessarily. I mean, if it says, you know, Boeing 777 manual on there, then you got something.

LEMON: Yes. Mary Schiavo?

SCHIAVO: Well, the emergency evacuation instructions in the seat back are laminated, so I wonder if it would flake like that or maybe it is the lamination that made it possible to survive in the water this long. So I guess, I can't tell if it is a laminated product or not.

LEMON: Yes. It is, and again, we are looking at it with the naked eye. Yes, very good point.

Mary, you know, they narrowed the search zone that is located the objects collected a few of them. I want to get each of you to answer here.

What should investigators focus on beyond the obvious search? Is there something that is still missing from this operation? I'm going to start with Mary.

SCHIAVO: Well again, I still go back to all of the maintenance and logs and things on that plane, who touched the plane, everything about the plane and the shippers and I go back to the shipping manifest of what was on the plane. Because so often, you find the clues in the paper. It is the paper before the flight that often give you the biggest clues.

LEMON: OK, all right. Miles, a short time here. What do you?

O'BRIEN: Well, Mary is dead on right. And you know, one of the key things here is, there is always some emergency airworthiness directives which is like almost a recall for your car. We don't know if they complied with those airworthiness directives. That's very important. LEMON: Michael?

KAY: As soon as the transponder winds off, still thinking that we have enough information about the emergency procedures that would taken by aerial radar control whether be Malaysia or Vietnam. There is a distress call which they go to -- a distress sounds they go to which I think is the radio, an ability to talk to the aircraft and ability to talk to other aircraft in the airwaves corridor and what were the communications with the military.

LEMON: Tim?

TAYLOR: And we still need to recover debris and they just got to keep looking until they find something.

LEMON: All right, Michael Kay, Timothy Taylor, Mary Schiavo, Miles O'Brien, thank you.

Back with more on the missing plane right after this.

CB

LEMON: More on the search of the missing plane in just a moment.

But first, today is making their mark focusing on a program in Atlanta that teaches the homeless and low-skilled workers how to turn trash into treasure.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: At renew, we can up cycle. We are taking donated clothes that are not able to be used, because they have stains or holes, and we are repurposing it, and it becomes something actually much more beautiful.

And we are actually using plastic grocery bags, and keeping this from falling into the oceans or falling into the landfills. We loom began in 2009 under the program under the initiative for affordable housing.

Initial curve (ph) had a problem that we needed to solve. We had homeless women in our program who did not have jobs, and had extremely limited job skills.

We also received generous donation of fabric and clothing and textiles from our volunteer donors in the community. So we looked at the possibility of combining the two issues and turning it into a business where our employees could practice job skills over a longer period of time so that they transfer those skills into the marketplace.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It built my confidence. It allowed me to be independent. I was able to provide for my family and gain some stability. It gave me a fresh start.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The weavers who came to us, and our employees, when they started, they didn't have an income. Now they have a regular income that they can count on and they can move on and make some long term goals for their family, and stabilize their lives and just really do whatever their future holds for them.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LEMON: I'm Don Lemon. Thank you so much for joining us. Of course, we are going to continue with live coverage here on CNN starting and just about 30 minutes and the something happens.

In the meantime, we are be right back in to take programming to give you the very latest. I want you to stick around though for "CNN Special Report: Flight 370, The Final Hours" begins right now.