Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsroom

No Sign of Plane; Black Box Locator; Heavy Weapons Rattle

Aired March 31, 2014 - 14:00   ET

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

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Wolf Blitzer, thank you so much. Good to see you here in studio.

I'm Brooke Baldwin. Happy Monday to you.

And the search conditions for Flight 370. A question today, what did Malaysia know and when did they know it? Because for weeks and weeks, we have all been led to believe that those final few words from that cockpit, "all right, good night," that was it, that that was the last communication to the ground. But now we are learning today, more than three weeks later, that that was wrong. Instead, "goodnight, Malaysian 3-7-0" were the final words heard from Flight 370 down to air traffic control. But the actual transcripts of the communication between the pilot of Flight 370 and the flight controller still not made public yet. So we'll talk a little bit more about this, if this is even significant, why that hasn't been made public, coming up, and that investigation.

As for the search itself, time is running out on that emergency locator pinger because by next week, the 30-day more or less battery life of the plane's black box pinger will likely expire. This is that clicking sound that they're listening for, if it's not silent already. Right now, an Australian navy ship outfitted with special U.S. equipment to detect those critical clicks you just heard, those pings, is now heading to the search zone. But it could take this ship three days just to get to that area. We here at CNN have spoken to Australia's prime minister. He tells us the search is intensifying.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TONY ABBOTT, AUSTRALIAN PRIME MINISTER: The effort is ramping up, not winding down. We'll have more aircraft in the sky tomorrow. We've got more ships in the area. So we are ramping this effort up.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: For now, though, it's another dark night for the families who have known only disappointment and grief since Flight 370 vanished now. That was back on March 8th. Correspondent Kyung Lah is at the launching point for those searches there in Perth, Australia.

2:00 your time, Kyung. And we know this vessel, the Ocean Shield, will be out looking for those black boxes. We keep reiterating the fact that the batteries, you know, will be gone in a matter of days. Why is it taking so long just to get this thing out there? KYUNG LAH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, the first step was it had to get here from the United States, so it had to make its journey here. And then when it got here and it was loaded on to the ship, the ship had to be retrofitted. They had to build this a-frame in order for the TPL to sit on it. And then it had to be inspected. It sounds tedious, but this is part of the normal process. This is something that had to happen for this device to get out to the search area safely and intact. So, yes, these are frustrating delays, but, Brooke, a step by step process in order for it to ensure that it may work when it gets out there.

BALDWIN: So what about the search and the timing of this in and of itself? I mean we know that the PM of Australia has said he won't put a time limit on this search, but certainly this can't go on forever. Have you heard of a finite ending point?

LAH: Not yet. At least not publicly. No one's even whispering about it. And we heard the prime minister said in this exact language, there is no time limit. What he wants to do is to make sure, to keep the pressure high. He came out here and he was shaking hands with the search crews. He wants to try to keep morale high because it is frustrating. I mean the truth is, it's a giant space out there. They haven't found anything. A lot of ocean garbage, but nothing of the plane. So it is a tough task and he wants to keep morale high.

BALDWIN: Kyung Lah in Perth. Thank you, Kyung.

And, you know, these potential leads, and, again, they are just potential thus far, they continue to come, but so do the setbacks, the frustrations. Today we learned new information, as we mentioned at the top, about these final words spoken from the cockpit, not "all right, good night," as initially reported. CNN's safety analyst David Soucie joins me now from New York to talk about that. And just kicking that off, David, now that we know it was "goodnight, Malaysian 3-7-0," I mean just hearing experts, and make sure you corroborate this, the wording change is actually relatively insignificant. The real issue here is, why didn't they make this public and stop the speculation weeks ago?

DAVID SOUCIE, CNN SAFETY ANALYST: Well, and that is my concern as well. Now it seems like it makes more sense because that's more in line with what should have been said and it's more structured over there, even than what I've witnessed here in the United States. But what bothers me most is that when we do accident investigations, we look at the credibility of the evidence that we have and we put ratings on that. Based on those ratings, we use that for the most possible case (ph). So, right now, if I'm looking at the information, any information I get from Malaysia, I've got to reduce the credibility or the confidence factor in that data.

BALDWIN: So perhaps reduced here as we learn about that.

Number two, we know that - now that we know the actual words spoken, they're doing this forensic investigation to determine actually who said it. Initially when we thought it was "all right, goodnight," we thought it was the copilot. Now I guess they're not entirely sure. Why does it really matter? That's my question for you.

SOUCIE: Well, if it - if it occurred under duress, if it occurred in some other manner, it may change one way or the other. But, typically, the pilot in command would have not been the one making the radio communication. It would have been the opposite person. So it might give you an indication as to who was in command of the aircraft or actually at the controls. But that's still speculation, obviously, on my part.

BALDWIN: OK. The transcript itself, the back and forth from the cockpit to ground control. We are hearing - again, from Malaysia officials saying nothing sinister upon reading this transcript, yet the public has yet to see this. Do you think - I mean this is obviously an ongoing investigation. So I'm not surprised, maybe, that they haven't released it. But at the same time, do you think that they should?

SOUCIE: Well, yes, I think that they should. You said nothing sinister. So they're coming out saying there's nothing sinister. But what about other parts of the investigation. Maybe it could have indicated that they weren't aware of something else that was going on, on the aircraft or it might make us aware of some inoperable equipment that they may have discussed. Something like that. There might be something in there that experts, 777 captain, people - I'm not a 777 captain but there's some that might understand some language that goes between there. So there's little clues that you can get when it's translated properly.

BALDWIN: What about all this talk, obviously, about the pings, because the ping gets you to the black box, gets you to answers to what happened on this plane? But I know, David, you have been talking to sources telling you that the black box could have been stored improperly. Can you explain what you mean by that or what they mean?

SOUCIE: Well, what it was actually it that there was a credible mechanic that I know that was working on aircraft at Malaysia and he did the audit and their business processes and how they store parts. He found that the pingers, not the whole box, but the pingers, which are changed out every 1,000 hours or during the sea (ph) check. And when that happens, they take them out of stock. They replace the old one with a new one.

Now, when they're in stock, they're supposed to be stored in a cool dry place, and that's from the manufacturer. The manufacturer says if it's stored in a hot place, then it reduces the battery life significantly. So it's possible, in their estimation, well actually in my estimation from what they told me, that these pingers could have been replaced with pingers that were improperly stored and that could reduce their battery life.

BALDWIN: Even further than what we're hearing, the more or less 30 days.

SOUCIE: That's right (ph).

BALDWIN: Not what families want to hear. SOUCIE: No, I'm sorry (ph).

BALDWIN: David Soucie, thank you so much for joining me for your perspective.

Now this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I even promised them I'm going to bring her home but I really don't know either way (INAUDIBLE).

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: This man's wife was one of the passengers on board Flight 370. He tells CNN he doesn't know what to tell their children. His emotional story coming up.

Plus, you know, some are calling it essentially a hail mary pass. Crews bringing in all this high tech equipment from the United States to try to listen for these pings from the black boxes here and the cockpit voice recorder. But they haven't even found the haystack yet to find that needle. We'll talk live to an ocean expert about that process to see if really is just a long shot.

Also ahead, our other developing story we're keeping a close eye on for your, North Korea firing hundreds of shots towards South Korea and the south has responded. Tensions are escalating. Stay right here. You're watching CNN's special coverage.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: Welcome back. I'm Brooke Baldwin. You're watching our special coverage of Flight 370.

So, the Ocean Shield may be close to 350 feet long, but this is a tiny underdog compared to the vast ocean it's really up against here. Let me back up. The Ocean Shield is the Australian ship carrying crucial high tech equipment towards the search zone. Remember, this is a massive search area still even though they're honing in on this particular part of the world. This is more than 100,000 square miles. So against all odds, the hope is that this Ocean Shield will be able to deploy this yellow thing you're looking at. This is the TPL, Towed Pinger Locator. It's the TPL 25 to be precise.

So, here are the basics on the TPL and we've been over this. But as a ship slowly drags it, tows it behind and under water here the TPL, the yellow thing on the left-hand side of your screen, that's what listens for pings from the black box, the cockpit voice recorder, just to try to find that, to find the clues to figure out how this plane went down. But exactly how close does the TPL Need to be? Here with me with some answers and how long this could potentially take is sea operations specialist Tim Taylor.

So, Tim, nice to have you back on here today.

TIM TAYLOR, SEA OPERATIONS & SUBMERSIBLE SPECIALIST: (INAUDIBLE).

BALDWIN: And let's begin here with, so you - they'll deploy the TPL. They'll be listening for the pings. And we keep going back to this, you know, analogy of finding the needle in the haystack, the needle being the black box. But if they don't even know what the haystack is because, let's be real, they don't.

TAYLOR: Right.

BALDWIN: How is this even supposed to work?

TAYLOR: You know it's - it's such a long shot. It's like looking for your cellular phone, throwing it out of the window of your car on 95 from here to Florida, New York to Florida, and listening for it by yourself.

BALDWIN: I don't like those odds.

TAYLOR: No, it's not good. So, I don't really believe that, unless they find - they're looking for debris now to satisfy the families. Tracking the debris back with current modelling and then searching the bottom of the ocean without narrowing the area down, this flight could be lost forever.

BALDWIN: I want to get to that real possibility in a minute. But we know, as I mentioned, the search area about 100,000 square miles. And you did the math. I know you talked to one of our producers and you said hey basically if this search area were, you know, 10,000 square miles, with everything, you know, perfect, weather conditions, technology, equipment all, you know, a-OK, how long would that search take?

TAYLOR: I have exact experience with a blue fin 12 inch vehicle that we launched for three years in mapping 1,800 square feet of bottom. So my numbers, based on performance of their systems, because it's not -- they don't work every day. They have maintenance days. And the boat has weather days. And then you have to refuel.

BALDWIN: Of course.

TAYLOR: So if you do the odds, you're going to do - every three days you're going to get a (INAUDIBLE) mission in. But, if you successfully launched off of that boat an AUV, and you only had one AUV, again, you can do the math and add AUVs and cut it down. But one AUV, one ship, if you launched it successfully every day and you were only covering 100 square miles by - 100 miles by 100 miles, which is 10,000 square miles, it would take you two years of every day working. Six hundred and sixty-six days or something like that.

If you actually really were doing it, it's a six-year project because of the time that you successfully will get the AUV to bottom and lock and scan. And then that's just a low resolution picture. You're still going to have to go by and find targets that are high probability targets and then relaunch to go down and look for them again. So the numbers - I'm being conservative, but that's just 10,000 square miles. And you said it's 100,000 square miles? BALDWIN: Yes.

TAYLOR: Do the math.

BALDWIN: Right.

TAYLOR: And then - and if you want to do money, you're in the hundreds of millions of dollars just for that two-year search.

BALDWIN: We're not hearing anything from the Australian prime minister as far as when this search would end yet, but I have to believe this would be incredibly expensive to continue on for as long as it possibly could take.

Let me also add this.

TAYLOR: Yes.

BALDWIN: Is that, you know, listen, we're all waiting to see if the debris that they pulled out of the water from the past couple of days amounted to anything and thus far it hasn't. It was just trash. And so I feel like so far, here we are, three weeks out, and the real spotlight of this story is these, you know, gyers (ph) -

TAYLOR: Right.

BALDWIN: These, you know, trash in the ocean. That's it. Ocean junk.

TAYLOR: Well, that is kind of the story. What the prime minister I think is saying is, we need to give the families closure. In order to give them closure, we need to find a piece that's identifiable.

BALDWIN: Proof.

TAYLOR: And that could happen by washing up on the beach two years from now.

BALDWIN: Yes.

TAYLOR: But that's the mission I think at hand. If they had a zone narrowed, I would - I'm sure the ships would be on their way. They're not, not telling us something. Even if they are keeping something secret, they would be deploying assets on location and it doesn't, from my standpoint, I don't see that rush to get the search assets down. It's still a debris search and it's still for closure.

BALDWIN: Yes.

TAYLOR: This could be an Amelia Earnhardt type catastrophe on a grand scale.

BALDWIN: That is -

TAYLOR: That you're looking for 100 years from now.

BALDWIN: That is certainly what some are fearing here. Tim Taylor, thank you so much. I appreciate you coming on here.

TAYLOR: You're welcome.

BALDWIN: And, you know, listen, this is about the families, the families of Flight 370. They are being denied a look at the maintenance records of this plane, but officials are revealing other information. We'll share what that is.

Also ahead, the world knows Kim Jung-un as unpredictable, but his move today has the U.S. very worried. North Korea firing shots to the south and my colleague, Wolf Blitzer, in studio with me. You know this part of the region pretty well. You've been over there. We're going to talk about what this means today, tomorrow, and the U.S. role. We stick around.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR, "THE SITUATION ROOM": I'm ready.

BALDWIN: All right. Wolf Blitzer in the studio.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: It is getting loud once again on the Korean peninsula. Very loud. That is live fire from the South Koreans. Hundreds of mortar rounds fired from land out over the Yellow Sea. And now watch this. The South here holding amphibious drills as well. All of this happened after North Korea fired hundreds of shells into those same disputed waters. Nothing has hit anyone so far, but Wolf Blitzer is here with me in studio.

You have been to the DMZ how many times?

BLITZER: A few times.

BALDWIN: A few times. North Korea once?

BLITZER: Yes.

BALDWIN: So we're used to the saber rattling, right, between North and South, but this seems louder than normal, doesn't it?

WOLF: It's the worst incident, I think, right now. The tensest moment between North and South Korea since 2010. That was a very tense time at that time as well. The North Koreans shelled a South Korean warship, killed a whole bunch of South Korean sailors. They shelled a town in - the North Koreans shelled a town in South Korea. The North Korean claimed it was actually North Korea.

I happen to have been there with Bill Richardson, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

BALDWIN: We're talking to him next hour.

BLITZER: I was there with him. Six days we spent in Pyongyang. It was a very tense time. This is very tense right now. And, remember, there are a million North Korean troops along the DMZ, almost a million South Korean troops, 30,000 American soldiers right in between along the DMZ. And if they miscalculate, given the thousands of artillery pieces, tanks both sides have, let alone North Korea's nuclear bomb, they have a nuclear capability, this thing could explode. So cooler heads have to prevail.

BALDWIN: I was reading one of the papers this morning. It was described - I believe the adjective it used to describe Kim Jong-un was "frisky," feeling extra friskier right now, extra frisky, and then it -- they were basically saying that President Obama, perhaps being otherwise, you know, busy with other world affairs, you know, maybe not quite eye on this ball at the moment. Do you think that's a fair -

BLITZER: I think that Kim Jong-un, as previous North Korean leaders, they want attention. They want the world to know what's going on. And sometimes when they feel neglected, they do -

BALDWIN: They like to make some noise.

BLITZER: They do a little provocative act like this to get the world's attention. And Chuck Hagel, the secretary of defense, is going to be in China in the coming days and I think they want to get some attention. The Chinese have a significant role because they're basically the only country that has any influence over North Korea right now. We'll see what happens.

But, you know what, I'm really worried about a miscalculation. When you're firing hundreds of artillery shells from North Korea into South Korean waters, and the South Koreans retaliate, hundreds of artillery shell, if one of them hits a populated area, a bunch of people are killed, this thing could escalate big time. So I'm very worried about what's going on in the Korean peninsula right now.

BALDWIN: People were killed in 2010.

BLITZER: Oh, yes.

BALDWIN: Yes.

BLITZER: A whole bunch of - 50 or 60 sailors, South Korean sailors, were killed in one exchange. And it was a very tense time. We didn't know if we were going to get out of North Korea at that time -

BALDWIN: Wow.

BLITZER: But we got out.

BALDWIN: I remember that.

BLITZER: Yes.

BALDWIN: I remember that documentary. We will see you, I'm sure, with more on North and South Korea on your show.

BLITZER: Yes.

BALDWIN: Wolf Blitzer, "The Situation Room," starting at 5:00 Eastern.

BLITZER: Thank you.

BALDWIN: Good to see you, sir.

BLITZER: Always good to see you.

BALDWIN: All right. Coming up next, we will go live to the flight simulator to demonstrate what kind of weather conditions these search crews are up to in the south Indian Ocean when they will be taking off actually just a short time from now, 2:30 in the morning there in Australia. Martin Savidge and his flight instructor, Mitchell Casado, standing by live.

Also ahead, the husband of a flight attendant who was on board doesn't know what to say, how to explain this to their children.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And now I'm not sure whether I could bring her home, you see.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Near the bottom of the hour. You're watching CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin.

Another adjustment in what we now know about Flight 370. The Malaysian government says the final words heard from that cockpit were not "all right, goodnight." Rather just a slight change here, "goodnight, Malaysian 3-7-0." It's not clear here if it was the pilot or the copilot speaking. As the search itself here, time is running out. By next week, the 30-day battery life of this pinger, which helps searchers find the crucial black box, is likely to expire if it hasn't already. Right now, an Australia navy ship is headed to the search zone west of Australia. And on that ship is some very sophisticated U.S. equipment to help listen for and detect those pings, find those boxes. And Malaysian government officials say they plan on asking the U.S. for more help. Here is what Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said about that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHUCK HAGEL, DEFENSE SECRETARY: I don't know what additional requests he will make of me. I certainly will listen carefully to whatever those are. I think the Australians, as you all know now, are in the lead on this and they've been doing a tremendous job. We're providing everything we can provide, as are other countries. But the Australians have this now and they're really doing quite a good job.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: As for the planes searching for debris, the families of Flight 370 search for information. And like the search teams, loved ones are coming up empty. Families in Beijing were given a technical briefing, but Malaysian officials deny their request for maintenance and repair records of MH-370, citing this ongoing investigation.