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Mutliple Earthquakes in SoCal; Official Death Toll 17 in Washington Mudslidde, But 90 Remain Missing; Awaiting Press Conference From Secretary John Kerry On Russia-Ukraine Conflict; Analysis of Missing Malaysia Air Flight

Aired March 30, 2014 - 17:00   ET

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

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: You are in the CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Jim Sciutto in New York.

And the search for flight 370 is now in what could be a more promising phase as we enter the 24th day since it disappeared without a trace. Ships are now heading out to retrieve multiple objects spotted by Australian search plane. These objects being called their most promising lead so far.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RUSSELL ADAMS, RAAF FLIGHT LIEUTENANT: We have an area within approximately 500 miles which included four orange colored objects. Greater than approximately two meters in size each. We can't confirm the origin of these objects.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO: Bright orange all about equal size some six feet in length. Experts say they could, and emphasis on could, be the plane's life rafts or possibly the emergency slides. Clear sky that search zone closer to land does mean greater visibility and with this comes more sightings. One of them turned out to be just trash. Dead ends like this one happening as the clock still sticks on the flight data recorder pingers. The recorder has about one week of juice (ph) left in it and a ship is now on its way with the U.S. navy pinger locator system on board, a listening device, put in the water to pick up the pings from those recorders.

But expert stress that the debris field is needed before this thing can really get to work.

Are these four mysterious strange objects debris from the plane? Who will try to confirm that right away when the next eerie search begins in just over an hour.

I want to bring in CNN international correspondent, Sara Sidner. She is in Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia.

So Sara, what are you hearing today about what these planes are going to do? Are they going right to these orange objects? Is that their priority this morning? SARA SIDNER, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, you know it will be light in about an hour in the area there where they will be searching off the waters of Perth. And yes, I mean, their plan is to try and pinpoint exactly where these objects are.

It is interesting that they keep using the word mysterious objects. I mean, there are so many pieces of trash in the oceans. And so, it is very difficult for them to figure out whether or not this is trash like some of the objects that were picked up by the Chinese vessel or whether or not this had anything to do with missing flight MH 370.

It has been an exhaustive search over a huge watch of a very deep water in the Indian Ocean. Very, very difficult to pinpoint these things. I think a lot of people say, look they found something via satellite image and it makes people think that they are going to be able to easily find that because they can see it from space.

It is just too vast and you have currents that move things around. So yes, the priority will be to try and pinpoint and locate and then, of course, get a hold of whatever it is, whatever these objects is that are actually in the water there.

Once they get a hold of it, they can determine fairly quickly usually whether or not it had anything to do with the flight -- Jim.

SCIUTTO: As you say, Sara, I mean, throughout the story, we needed expectations management because there have been a lot of false alarms so far. But at least, this one, Australian saying more promising than some on the path.

I want to read you now a facebook post from Malaysia's prime minister. And he says, addressing the families, be assured that the government is fully committed to the search operation and we will not stop until that plane is found.

Sara, into the 4th week now. We know the families are greatly frustrated. Are they beginning to worry if the search effort doesn't pick up anything soon that they might dial it down?

SIDNER: Absolutely right, Jim. And so, in the latest briefing that we were in a day ago, they told the government here which included the acting transportation minister who has been front and center explaining to the world what it is in the Malaysian government and other authorities know, made sure to give pointed questions to (INAUDIBLE), saying to him, please the one thing that we want to be assured of is that this search will continue until the end.

They do not want the investigation to stop. But they certainly do want to search to stop. And Malaysian authorities have given them their assurances that it will not stop. And even hearing from him, he basically said that it is still a search and rescue mission, that there might be some miracle, that they might find some survivors alive. Of course, that gives hope to the families who do not want to believe that their loved ones are gone forever. But remember, we are going in to day 24. It has been 23 days since flight MH 370 was lost. And I want to let you hear some of the frustrations of the passengers. We were able to hear from the Chinese passenger who had something very pointed to say to the government here.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): We want Malaysia to apologize for the information that caused confusion in the first week which delay the search mission. And we want the Malaysian government to apologize for irresponsibly announcing on March 24th that the plane had crashed.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SIDNER: And there you go. A lot of frustration, a lot of changing details. The family, their emotions are frayed and they just want some answers and physical proof of where their loved ones went -- Jim.

SCIUTTO: No question. I mean, a lot riding on this investigation for the families and also for investigators because if there was an issue with this plane, they want to know what that issue is so they can correct it.

Thanks very much to Sara Sidner who is in Kuala Lumpur.

So we want to talk about these latest developments with our panel. We have Tom Stalcup. He is an independent investigator. He has done extensive research in to the crash of TWA 800 in 1996. Mark Weiss, CNN aviation analyst, also a former pilot for American Airlines and our Miles O'Brien. He, once again, CNN aviation analyst as well, also himself a licensed pilot.

Mark, I'd like to begin with you because we know there is a lot of debris in the oceans everywhere. That has been one discovery of this story, really. But particularly, in this area where they are looking now, it is in the shipping lanes, the way those currents work in that part of the Indian Ocean. There is a lot of trash there.

You are a pilot. You know these planes. You plot a lot of hours in the cockpit. When you hear of orange objects six feet or so in dimensions, does that sound like something that could be part of a plane?

MARK WEISS, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Well, the size actually seems to be a little bit too large for a life raft of most of the life rafts, the ones that are attached to the doors and could be deployed from inside the cabin most are yellow in color.

As they age they can sometimes turn a little darker and they look orange. Now, the crew life jackets, crew life vest, are orange. And I wonder if something like that could have come together. But that size, six feet, six feet, it doesn't actually seem like it is part of an aircraft that I'm aware of.

SCIUTTO: Interesting. Key is going to be getting a ship out there to pick it up and take a closer look. Miles, I want to talk to you because we are talking a lot about these pings from the so-called black boxes, but we are out, as we have reminded the viewers a number of times over the last week, that there is a deadline. Because the battery in the pinger generator inside those black has a 30 day deadline.

How much of the deadline is that -- I mean, is there any hope that it might last a little bit longer, or is this really, you know, the last best chance to find these recorders?

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Well, that is what the battery is guaranteed to supply. But there is no guarantee that the pinger has activated at all. And has happened time and again and again, aviation crashes where these pinging devices are not extremely reliable. They have limited range. And if in fact, it is pinging, maybe it will go 30, 35, maybe 40 days, who knows. And there is a lot of factors involving the conditions. Of course, it is going to be , if it is adopted, it is going to be a very cold and that affects battery life as well. So, it is a bit of a crap shoot, really, as to how long that batteries is going to last.

SCIUTTO: Yes. And then the navy has reminded us that that locator, as high-tech as it is, it is only useful once they have identified the debris field because it has got to be close. If you can't just stick the hydro phone in the water and suddenly it start hearing the ping across the Indian Ocean.

Tom, I want to go to you now because you got a lot of experience and certainly with flight 800, that was a much smaller area, of course. So here you have a huge area, really, the only precedent would be air France 447. As suppose the difference there was wreckage was found within a few days. You had a general idea of where the search area. Is there any precedent for going into a search like this with so little information?

TOM STALCUP, INDEPENDENT INVESTIGATOR: Well, I think air France does a good example. It did find wreckage a lot sooner that they get in this crash. For flight 800, they basically had two air National Guard pilots who are there. They saw the tail sink. They got GPS coordinates immediately. So they knew were flight (INAUDIBLE). And what I find interesting is the importance of radar data. And both of those are critical as we saw from the military saying that they used radar data to determine that it turned directions. And then we have that confirmation from Immarsat who did a tremendous job, kudos to their engineers to use the Doppler effects, the same effect that we use to determine that our galaxies are going away from us, the red ship.

Well, they are similar, exact same phenomenon. What they used to actually determine those on a southern tract. So the least, we are looking in the right part of the world.

SCIUTTO: Yes. And then they just entrusted the search zone a few days ago to a little closer to Australia where there are more confidence now.

Thanks very much, Tom, mark and Miles. Please stay with us. Because I know we are going to come back to you with more questions.

More than three weeks later, we still know very little about what brought down flight 370.

Up next. we look at the investigation, we look at the role of the pilots and the continuing look at terrorism.

And later on, the number of missing from that Washington landslide has fallen drastically. We will explain why. Ad also tell you searchers are hoping for a miracle there.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SCIUTTO: We have our panel back. I'm Jim Sciutto in New York.

As search teams prepare to head out once again, let's focus on the investigation in to the disappearance of Malaysia flight 370. What cause it?

I'm going to bring the panel back. We have Tom Stalcup, an independent investigator. He did extensive research on the 1996 crash of TWA 800. We will CNN aviation analyst Mark Weis, also a former pilot for American airlines and of course Miles CNN aviation analyst as well and himself, a license pilot.

Tom , I want to ask you because of your experience with TWA 800, you know, vastly different circumstances, right, because people knew exactly where that plane went down, off Long Island, very relatively close to shore and an much smaller debris field and in fact search area. I believe the search area was something like four square miles.

In those circumstances, to was very control circumstances, how long did it take you to find the flight data recorder. And I have next to me here one of -- here on the set that our viewers can look at and they can get the sense of the size and dimension of it. How long did it take with flight 800.

STALCUP: I believe it was within a week. It was over five days but within a week.

SCIUTTO: Within a week. Even in that confined area it took a week and that where they knew exactly where the plane went down. And it just gives us all the sense of a challenge now. When they haven't even come close to identifying the debris field.

Miles, if I could ask you, you know, these investigations, they were fast when they begin quickly and when there is at least some had evidence to examine, you know, among them, wreckage right? The plane even something floating on. We have almost nothing to analyze here, you know, holding got up to a very slow start.

Are you confident that investigators will ever get to the bottom of what happened with this flight?

O'BRIEN: Well, I think eventually yes. But will that time frame be suitable for these grieving families. It is another question entirely. I think eventually they will to find it. But it might be another season or two, it took two years to find the black boxes for the Air France crash in 2009. And they were able to find it and they were looking in an area 40 square miles.

So, do the math on that. We are in over 10,000 square miles, a state of Mexico here. It has get narrowed down some more, but we just don't have a lot of data to go with. We are basing this on this clever engineering that the Immarsat people did. It has never been used in this fashion before. We have no reason -- it is really all that the researchers have to go on. But it is really a big -- it is an educated but it is still a guess.

SCIUTTO: Yes. They really are doing their best with such limited information.

Mark Weiss, f I could ask you, you are an aviation analyst. You flown planes for years. You know, looking at a case like this, you have heard a lot of questions out here, including from the families today in China saying the Malaysians there holding back information. They are not telling us all they know. I mean, partly that is a natural reaction because of the frustration with no answers. Bit is there any reason to believe that there is better data on where the flight ended up or why it ended up there than the Malaysian government, than the Australians, the Americans are sharing at this point?

WEISS: Well, you know, I think it would be interesting to note whether or not the radar tracts or the path that the flight apparently took or supposedly took, what is being distributed to the Chinese families is that the same that is being distributed to say, us here in the United States or in Australia or other parts of the world? We still don't really know.

The Malaysians have been I think somewhat secretive about coming out with the tapes from the air traffic controllers, from the description of the flights tracks that have been taken, the transcript that came out a week or so ago that was translated from English to Mandarin and back to English. We have never really had the actual transcript done in English. In one step we will see have been I don't want to say doctorate, but they been -- there really was no (INAUDIBLE) in there.

It is very hard to know what the Malaysians have because what we have been shown is very discerning. It leaves too many questions, a lot of speculation based upon no real references.

SCIUTTO: Well, you bring up some good point because of that back and forth and that contradiction, it makes -- it sparks more questions about what else may be hidden even if that is not the case.

I want you all to stay there. We are going to come back in about ten minutes because certainly more questions to answered.

And coming up, the husband of a flight attendant on that missing plane opens up about his struggles as his kids keep asking where is our mom?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) SCIUTTO: Welcome back. I'm Jim Sciutto in New York. And this is just into CNN. This is an update from the Australian maritime safety authority. They are in-charge of the search for Malaysia airline flight 370 of the coast of Australia. And this is what we are learning just now.

We are told that the search for the plane debris will begin again at 6:00 p.m. eastern. That is 40, 38 minutes from now. Today's search activity, they say, will involve a total of ten aircrafts. American, Chinese, Korean, Australian, Malaysian aircraft involve, as well as a total of ten ships. That includes the Australian ship, the HMS excess. That's important because that one has the ability to recover material they could be found in the water. And you remember our news earlier this hour was that they have spotted four objects. Search planes yesterday spotted four objects some about six feet in dimension in orange colors, possible pieces of the plane.

We are told that the AVV ocean shield, this is the ship that is carrying that new American equipment. It is going to depart Perth today for the search area. It has benefitted with black box detector, as well an autonomous underwater vehicle that can help if, and crucially, I want to mention this, is a debris field is identified. If they can get closer to begin to see if they can listen for these pingers.

So that is the latest update, the search to begin in a little more than 30 minutes now, ten ships and ten aircraft as well.

For more than three weeks now, the families and he passengers, the crew members have not held or kissed or spoken to their loved ones. And that includes the husband of one of the flight attendant. He tells out Paul Hancocks how he simply at a lost as to what to tell their children/

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

PAULA HANCOCKS, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Foong Wei Yueng's 10-year-old daughter and 4-year-old son keep asking where she is.

Eighteen years as a Malaysia airlines flight attendant, she was working aboard MH 370.

LEE KHIM FATT, HUSBAND OF MH370 FLIGHT ATTENDANT: Mommy is going to take a bit longer to come home this time. And I even promised them I'm going to bring her home. But I really don't know either way is she alive? And now, I'm not sure whether I can bring her home.

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

FATT: Of course, I'm still hoping there have been lots of miracles. But 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 being 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. Now she is lost. Lee says he has lost all direction.

Paula Hancocks, CNN, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SCIUTTO: After any disaster we talk about closure for the families. But the case of flight 370 is like no other. And how can you find closure when a love one just vanishes, with no answers to all those important questions?

We have Jeff Gardere now to join us. He is a clinical and forensic psychologist.

Jeff, heart breaking to watch that story. I mean, it is just difficult to watch. What can you tell him and what can he tell his children?

JEFF GARDERE, CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGIST: Well, the most important thing I would tell him is to continue talking about his feelings and don't keep them bottled up. You know, surely the brief he is experiencing is beyond words. But he has to have the words or he will die inside. The isolation is what brings the most damage.

Also talk to the children. Let them know what happened and give it to them in a language that they can understand that their mom is missing and may be gone and then sit back and let them talk. Listen to whatever it is they have to say. Answer questions as much as you can is a parent but also be willing to say I don't know. We don't know. We may know more later but we don't know right now. And most importantly keep as much routine as possible in that home. All of the things that the kids are used to doing. Don't put it on hold as so many families have done. But keep them going to school and keep them n the after school activities. Just keep them active.

SCIUTTO: So it feels familiar. It feels like home.

GARDERE: Stability.

SCIUTTO: But you mentioned that you would recommend that he raise the question with his kids, right? He has been telling them now and this came up because we have friends who are neighbors of a family who lost the parents and haven't told the kids yet.

I am imagining myself in that situation. I would find it impossible to tell them. Are you saying that it is a bad idea to withhold that news from them? GARDERE: You have to know where your children are emotionally. So if nothing else you begin with questions such as, do you have any questions as to where mom may be or what are you feeling right now or they will bring up where is mommy or what is going on?

I wouldn't with hold the information. However, every family is an expert within their owned family unit. So I would never second guess those parents if they feel they need to with hold the information out. But be careful.

SCIUTTO: They are making decision that's right for them.

GARDERE: They are making the decision that may be right for them as parents but may not be right for them as children. So -- but then again, they may be making, as you are saying, a decision that is right for the whole family.

SCIUTTO: I can't believe we talked two weeks ago. And at that time, we were talking about just the pain of stretching out, you know, the mystery here. Now, here we are, two weeks later. It has been more than three weeks describe the pain for the families, as this continue.

GARDERE: Well, a great aeronautical mystery certainly one of the biggest in quite a while and therefore there are, you know, a lot of thoughts that are just not what one would even think of. There are no man's land (ph) as far as their emotions right now. They don't know where the bodies are, they don't know where the people still alive. They don't know if they are kidnapped. I think a lot of people want to believe that but I think it is hope against hope at that point.

But if nothing else, they have not been treated well. We hear it from the family members and that adds insult to injury. Getting sketchy information, not getting enough information, conflicting information, getting it from the media. They should be the first ones getting that information. Texted that their family members are dead, but without the proof there. And then now, they are told, we will pray for them and let's, you know, let's keep them alive in our minds and our hearts. It is just too much for them. Ad these people need to be heard. This is so traumatic for them.

SCIUTTO: You talk a lot about the safety lessons that can be learned from an accident like this. But there also how an emotional lesson how to handle the needs of family and friends in trouble.

GARDERE: I hope that we learn from that and specialists need to be part of that mental health specialist advising them.

SCIUTTO: Well Jeff Gardere, it is always great to get your point of true. I know a lot of our viewers curious about how the families can recover from this. Thanks very much.

Ahead, our special coverage of Malaysia flight 370 continues with the look at what's going wrong in the search and in the investigation.

We are also -- I want to let you know waiting for John Kerry, secretary of state, John Kerry. She is going to be speaking shortly after his meeting in Paris with Sergey Lavrov. They have been discussing the crisis in Ukraine.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SCIUTTO: Welcome back. You are looking at a live picture now from inside the U.S. ambassador's residence inside Paris where secretary of state John Kerry has recently finished a meeting with the Russian foreign minister Segey Lavrov. They have been discussing the crisis in Ukraine. The possibility of a diplomatic settlement raised after Russian president Putin called U.S. president Barack Obama within the last 24 hours. We are expecting him to speak shortly, and when he does, we will return to Paris.

But right now, we're going to go with our top story, which is still the missing Flight 370. And it's not much, but search crews today spotted some things in the waters off Australia that they are calling promising. This is one of several pieces of something scooped out of the Indian Ocean today. Not sure what it is or whether it's a piece of airplane debris. The objects I mentioned earlier were spotted from the air and photographed. Ships are now headed in that direction to hopefully pick it up.

A senior U.S. Navy officer has told CNN that the challenge is putting the right piece of search equipment in just the right location. And that is difficult to do in the open ocean with no landmarks and so far no clues as to whether exactly the plane went down.

So I want to get my panel of experts back in here. We have Tom Stallcop air disaster investigator. He has a lot of experience on TWA Flight 800. Captain Mark Weiss, retired airline pilot, CNN aviation analyst. And CNN aviation analyst Miles O'Brien, who is also a pilot himself.

Tom, I want to start with you, because we look at how many days we are into this search now, more than three weeks; absolutely nothing to show for it. What's gone wrong to this point, and what, looking back, would you have done differently to increase the chances of having found something by now?

TOM STALLCOP (ph), AIR DISASTER INVESTIGATOR: Well, you know, looking back, we have to give the Malaysian government some slack here. I really think we do. They are working on such a low amount of data. I believe there are only about six or seven pings in the last five hours of that flight. In Flight 800, we had hundreds of data points, many different radar sites within minutes. And they are working off of five data points, which didn't have positions coordinates. They were very - like I said earlier, the Inmarset engineers, they deserve an award for what they did to determine exactly what part of the world this aircraft went. So, I really think we should cut the Malaysians and other authorities some slack.

SCIUTTO: Well, it is a fair point everybody is working with so little information, both where the plane went down and why the plane went down, in fact.

Captain Weiss, I wonder if I can bring you in because you have been at the controls of a Boeing 777, exactly the kind of plane that went down in this. I know to speak to many commercial pilots today, retired and otherwise. And I also, in my experience, it is the folks who know the planes best who - situations like this best who have the best, frankly most credible theories. What is the theory that most pilots find credible about the disappearance of this plane?

MARK WEISS, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: This is such a magnificent airplane. It just doesn't come out of the sky. There are so many redundant systems, back up systems that had there been some type of catastrophic, mechanical failure, there seems to have been enough time that a emergency distress call would have been given off.

So, that tends to lead a number of the people, myself included, that there was some type of human intervention that contributed to this accident that caused that aircraft to deviate from its intended flight path. Now, we don't know if there was somebody in the jump seat. We don't know even who was in the cockpit at the time. What I believe is that, that aircraft was purposefully turned off its heading toward Beijing. And again, we have seen the radar track or what we believe to be the tracks in so many different directions that we really don't know which one true.

SCIUTTO: Well, Miles, I want to ask you a question because of course, one of the key answers is going to come from when and if pieces of that plane are found. But what about this possibility in light of how many days and weeks its been since the plane disappeared that you do find floating debris, but you don't find the debris field on the bottom of the ocean, in which you don't find the black boxes as well. How much - how many conclusions, hard conclusions, can be drawn just from floating debris as opposed to the entire plane with that data stream from the black boxes, etc.?

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: How the debris breaks up is very important, and a trained investigator can certainly identify the hallmarks of an explosive device, for example, or a fire onboard if you get the right piece, of course. If the plane hit the water at very high speed, it is apt to be a lot of small pieces. So the chances of that -- that would be a lucky find, if you found some particular piece that led you to a conclusion.

But I think you're onto something there, Jim. The idea that they might find some wreckage in the narrow window allotted, but not get to those black boxes seems like a scenario that we should be prepared for.

SCIUTTO: Right, fair. It would be a frustrating scenario for sure. But possible. Thanks very much to Tom Stallcop, Mark Weiss, and Miles O'Brien. Appreciate your help on these questions.

Coming up, we are going to take a look at new autopilot technology that lets people on the ground take complete control of an airplane, leaving a pilot or a hijacker powerless.

We are also waiting for Secretary of State John Kerry to speak after his meeting with Sergey Lavrov. The have been discussing the crisis in Ukraine. We will bring you there live when he comments on it.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) SCIUTTO: So we'll take a little diversion now. March Madness is living up to the hype. We're almost down to the Final Four in the NCAA basketball tournament. Wisconsin knocked out Arizona in dramatic overtime victory in the West region. That was 64-63. Wisconsin will now join Florida in the Final Four. The Gators defeated Dayton, 62- 52. And earlier today, Connecticut punched its ticket by knocking out Michigan State, an upset, 60-54. The winner of the Kentucky vs. Michigan matchup now underway. It will round out the Final Four.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SCIUTTO: We are showing you live pictures now of inside the U.S. ambassador's residence in Paris where secretary of state John Kerry has just finished a meeting with the Russian foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov. They have been discussing crisis in Ukraine. The possibility raised of a diplomatic solution. Soon as we hear that Secretary Kerry has come out to make comments on that meeting, we will break live to Paris to discuss that. That is a live picture from there right now.

Meanwhile, on our main story, we are learning new details about technology that could prevent another plane from suffering the same mysterious fate as Flight 370. It involves flying a passenger jet from the ground. CNN's Brian Todd has the story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): A lost signal, a vanished plane, and on the ground a feeling of complete helplessness. But an idea has circulated to put autopilot on passenger planes on remote control in stressful situations. In 2004, Boeing applied for a patent for a system referred to as interruptible autopilot.

MARK WEISS, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: The ground controller could now take control away from the pilots so that they wouldn't have control over the throttles, over the yoke, over the rudder pedals. And now this would be handled by the ground. So everything now that the pilots would try to do would be inconsequential.

TODD: With this idea, pilots could flick a switch when under stress. Sensors in the cockpit could go off or sensors on the cockpit door could activate the ground autopilot if a certain amount of force was used against the cockpit door.

Then ground operators could take control of the plane using radio or satellite signals and steer it to a predetermined airport. They'd be flying it almost like a drone. If Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 was hijacked or if a member of the crew purposefully did something to alter the path, could this have saved that plane?

WEISS: If in fact they determined that it was a problem that -- then they tried to get in touch with the pilot and the co-pilot and they couldn't, then if that system were in place, it seems as though the ground controller could then have landed this aircraft.

TODD: Right now autopilot systems are manually switched on and off only at the discretion of the pilots in the air. And autopilot cannot land or take off. But this potential solution could also present a new problem.

(On camera): This wouldn't necessarily be hack proof, right?

MARK RASCH, CYBER AND PRIVACY EXPERT: This system wouldn't necessarily be hack proof, and so terrorists might be able to get into this data stream and force the plane to land or do whatever they wanted it to do.

TODD: Has Boeing advanced this idea from 10 years ago? Is the company still testing it out or has it scrapped the idea entirely? We tried multiple times to get information from Boeing on this project. The company would not speak to us about it.

Brian Todd, CNN Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SCIUTTO: We have much more coverage of the mystery of Flight 370 just ahead. But first, more than a week after a massive landslide, Washington's governor says he is still holding out hope for a miracle. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SCIUTTO: Now to a painstaking search here at home. Disease, contamination and death are some of the dangers facing crews digging through several feet of mud following that deadly landslide in Washington State last week. The work is simply treacherous.

Still, there is hope of finding survivors on day eight of the search, says the governor of Washington State. CNN's Dan Simon is there. Dan, what's happening now? How aggressively are those searchers still combing over that landscape? I mean, it really looks horrific.

DAN SIMON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It is horrific. First of all, Jim, if I could talk about the list of those who are missing, you know, crews have been working around the clock to try to figure out who is actually missing and who may have fallen victim to the landslide. Those efforts, Jim, have allowed them to narrow down the list significantly. At one point, they said 90 people were missing. Now it's 30. That's still a lot of people. And rescue crews, they're still out there working through what has been described as toxic sludge. You've got septic tanks. You have oil. You have gas. It's just a mess out there. Here's how one official described it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LT. RICHARD BURKE, BELLEVUE, WA. FIRE DEPT.: So that we don't take the contamination from this site and get other people sick, tetanus, there's nails in boards, there's dysentery. Everybody is grossly de- conned. So that means they knock off the big chunks, then they go through a complete washdown. Then that material is cleaned and cleaned and cleaned so that none of this goes back so we don't get crews sick. That's the last thing we want to do. We don't want to get anybody injured out here, and we don't want to get them sick. So we prevent that through great de-con. The Army is taking care of us. They're doing a great job.

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SIMON: The end goal, of course, is to try and find victims. And at times, and this really gives you a sense of the grim nature of it all, they're only finding body parts. That tells you, one, that this was an incredible force that came down with the mudslide. And, two, that identifying the bodies, identifying these victims is going to be a very difficult chore for the medical examiner's office. Jim?

SCIUTTO: That's a point that Governor Inslee made to us when we spoke to him last week. Just even when they looked at things like cars, how cars had been torn and crushed, that it really made many of the rescuers think it would be unlikely that someone could have survived the force of that landslide.

SIMON: No question about it. Another problem, Jim, of course, has been the rain. Right now, basically holding off. But really over the past 48 hours, it's really been unrelenting. And that's created sort of pools of water in this mud. And it's been described as quick sand to begin with. Now you add more water on top of it. It just makes it almost impossible for these crews. One thing that they've been doing is putting pumps out there to literally sort of drain the water if they can. It's helping a little bit, but it's still really tough just for crews to walk around that debris field. Jim?

SCIUTTO: It's a real natural tragedy right at home. Thanks very much to Dan Simon, who's right in the middle of it in northern Washington State.

Still ahead, much more coverage of the mystery of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. We're going to take you live to Perth, Australia, where teams are about to head out for another day of searching.

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SCIUTTO: We have some breaking news out of Paris. This is Secretary of State John Kerry just completing his meeting with Russian foreign minister. About to give comments on the crisis in Ukraine. Let's go to Secretary Kerry.

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