Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsroom

How Is Data Recovered From Black Boxes?; Are Black Boxes Outdated?; Many Soldiers Struggle With Mental-Health Issues; Malaysian Official Meet Families, But Frustration Grows; High-Tech Equip Arrives in Perth to Help Searchers

Aired April 03, 2014 - 15:30   ET

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

LEMON: I'm Don Lemon. This is CNN's special coverage.

The man leading the search for Malaysian Flight 370 will hold a big, operations news conference. We don't know exactly when he'll -- he is going to announce that, and we're talking about Australia's Angus Houston.

The word is -- we are waiting and we're watching and we're eager for any clue that he may reveal what happened to the 239 people on board the missing plane.

Day 28 of this hunt and the search is running on borrowed time right now. Crews are desperately trying to get a ping from the plane's black box before the batteries run out of juice.

And we have learned that the British navy ship will conduct a very specific search. It is the HMS Echo. It has been hunting for any sonar transmissions from the flight-data recorder.

And data- and voice-recorders may hold the key to the mystery, but what information do they hold exactly, and how is this data recovered?

CNN's Zain Asher is here, and, Zain, you got a behind-the-scenes look at how these things work.

ZAIN ASHER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Don. That's right. I did.

I actually spent the day with an engineer in Buffalo, New York, who walked me through the process of how investigators would go about converting the information in the black box from binary code, so ones and zeroes, very complex data, to information that can actually be read and understood by investigators to work out what may have happened to a flight like MH-370.

Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's protected and shock mounted.

ASHER: This is what investigators will see once the black boxes for Flight MH-370 are found and data from the memory downloaded for analysis.

KEVIN BALYS, TECHNICIAN: When we pull the data up on the screen, we'll see the data in a tabular format and graphical format.

ASHER: Black boxes contain hundreds of data points or parameters about the flight's movement, pilot maneuvers, speed and altitude, all displayed with a series of graphs.

BALYS: Every flight-data recorder records the data in binary values. It's a series of ones and zeros.

In order for humans to understand that, we need to convert it to engineering units. And engineering units simply feet for altitude. Air speed is recorded at knots.

ASHER: It's through graphs like these that we'll learn if someone on board deliberately nosedived the aircraft, if there was a pilot error, or a mechanical problem.

DAVID SOUCIE, CNN SAFETY ANALYST: In an engine or mechanical failure, there would be all kinds of indications. They'd be able to determine which engineer turned off first. If it was because of fuel starvation, they know that versus if it would have been intentionally cut off.

ASHER: This line represents the plane's altitude. If Flight MH- 370 suddenly dropped to a lower altitude, mid-flight, here is where we'd see a change.

And if someone on board deliberately altered the flight path, we'll see this line start to dip or rise, depending on the direction.

BALYS: I think one of the important things that people will be looking at is, who was in control of the aircraft?

So when we look at the data from the flight-data recorder, you can see if the inputs were coming from the autopilot or the left seat or the right seat, in other words, the pilot or the copilot.

ASHER: Technicians can also use latitude or longitude positions here to pinpoint where the plane was located at any point during flight.

And although the memory chips on the flight-data recorders are rarely ever damaged, airlines still need to perform regular flight- data recorder maintenance and preflight testing to ensure the black boxes are up to par.

The biggest challenge now is to locate them before the batteries die.

SOUCIE: Those pingers that are out there could be already dead.

To find that pinger in those trenches or to find it after the pinger has stopped in the trenches is going to be extremely difficult.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ASHER: Right, and as David was mentioning, if the pingers are already dead, the search then becomes exponentially difficult, because you no longer are relying on the signals. You need the visual signals. You need to find that wreckage.

And, by the way, Don, even when you do find the wreckage, because the ocean is so vast and constantly moving, that doesn't necessarily tell you that you're close to finding the black box.

LEMON: And the black boxes could always be damaged. Let's hope not.

Thank you very much for that, Zain Asher.

Joining me now to discuss this is CNN aviation analyst Jeff Wise. A lot of talk about -- in the aviation industry about the failure to modernize, are these -- these boxes are outdated, are they?

JEFF WISE, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Well, you know, they've been updated throughout the decades since they were first introduced more than 50 years ago.

They used to just record a couple of parameters. Now they record up to thousands of parameters, depending on the model of the black box.

But, you know, I think the criticism has been more about, well, why can't we stream this? Why can't we --

LEMON: The question is this. It records all this stuff --

WISE: Right.

LEMON: But then, if you can't get to it, what use is it? If you can't find them, how does it -- how is it useful?

WISE: Yeah, or they could be damaged and in a particularly bad crash and you can't recover it there either.

This really has come to light in a couple of recent cases, MH- 370, Air France 447, where these mysteries really persisted for a lot longer than they would if we'd been able to just really have that kind of micro-level --

LEMON: So you said streaming. Is this where we are going to? Is this what's next with the technology?

WISE: It's certainly possible. The big question is, how much money do people want to spend versus the benefit?

This kind of accident is so rare, it's such a one-in-a-million kind of event that you have to ask yourself, is this really going to -- we don't even know what happened to this plane.

And then, ultimately, with Air France 447, we were able to find it anyway, so it didn't really matter in the big picture.

But once we figure out what really happened, we can make a rational decision as to whether we need this or not.

But that's where the technology is going, for sure.

LEMON: Yeah, but you say one-in-a-million, but when it does happen, it is -- you know, we are sitting here, wringing our hands here.

WISE: We want zero, not one-in-a-million.

LEMON: Thank you, Jeff. We appreciate it.

Coming up, we're trying to answer the questions of the passenger families. They say the government is not responding, so we took their concerns to aviation experts to see what we can learn about Flight 370.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back. I'm Brooke Baldwin. You are watching special CNN coverage, off-post here in Fort Hood, Texas.

Even without the tragedy, the subject of suicide is not too far away. Let me give you numbers. Twenty-two suicides in the year 2010 is the most ever on record here at Fort Hood. Ten suicides the next year in 2011, and flash forward to 2012 and back up to 19 suicides.

It is worth noting, as part of this conversation, the base was pretty empty back in 2011 where many of the soldiers were deployed to either Iraq or Afghanistan.

Here we are again, talking about the mental well-being of our men and women in uniform, not just them currently serving, but veterans, as well, 22 of whom die of suicide each and every day.

To give us a much more personal perspective of the mental struggles and challenges may go through, Captain Jason Haag, retired from the U.S. Marines. and our chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta.

Captain, thank you so much for joining me, and thank you so much for your service. First of all, my first question is, I understand that you suffer from PTSD, and if I may ask you, can you give me a little bit of your back story and how that came to be?

CAPTAIN JASON HAAG, U.S. MARINES (RETIRED): Yes, ma'am. I served in Iraq and Afghanistan, did two tours in Iraq and one in Afghanistan. I was hurt the first time when I went and again the second time.

When I came back from Afghanistan on my third tour, basically just shut down completely, isolated myself, hyper-vigilance, depression, anxiety. You name it.

The V.A. basically just threw as many medications as they could as possible. I was on 32 different medications at one time. I drank heavily.

I basically stuck myself in the basement and isolated myself from my friends and my family and didn't go out because I was so frightened from everything to go out.

I knew at that point that it was PTSD combined with traumatic brain injury and I couldn't get help. I didn't know there was help, besides what the V.A. offered. I had pretty much given up hope at that point.

BALDWIN: So what changed? That's the big question. Did someone come to you and see these tell-tale signs and say, Jason, you need to go in or did you recognize that within yourself?

HAAG: I did not recognize it within myself. My wife came to me, and she stuck behind me since the first deployment, and looking back, I knew that there were the signs of PTSD after that first deployment.

She stuck by me and came to me after the violent outbursts and the drinking and drug abuse. She said. I'm going to leave and take the kids. This is a dangerous environment. You have one more chance.

Through a wonderful nonprofit organization called Canines for Warriors, they provided me with a service dog who is sitting behind me who I take everywhere with me.

It saved my life. If I didn't have Axel, people would tell you I would have died of an overdose or wrecked my car or ultimately committed suicide. I would have been a statistic.

BALDWIN: Thank goodness for Axel and the organization and for your wife for helping you get help and stay with me because, Sanjay, I want to bring you in the conversation.

When you hear his story, does that ring familiar to you?

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Too familiar, when you think about Iraq and Afghanistan and how many times people are coming back with post-traumatic stress, which is really a disease of the brain.

You know, he talks about traumatic brain injury in addition PTSD. These are both brain diseases in a way, and 300,000 people, troops, have returned with some form of post- traumatic stress.

So it is all-too familiar, right down to the difficulty getting diagnosis, the feeling -- you know, he was on 32 medications at some point. That is somebody just basically shoveling a lot of medications at this as opposed to really trying to figure out what is happening and what is the correct course of action.

Finally, to the fact that it was his wife that was really able to sound the alarm, if you will, and get him any help at all.

HAAG: Absolutely, I mean --

BALDWIN: Captain, I just want to bring it back.

Go ahead. No, go ahead. Please react to that.

HAAG: No, absolutely, and that was the case, that it took so long for them to even diagnose the fact that it was PTSD and that it was a traumatic brain injury and that there was an alternate form like Canines for Warriors, and just a service dog that could take me off of that medication.

Thirty-two medications, I was walking around in a daze for almost a year. I didn't even know what was up and down. It was extremely unfortunate for my entire family. It almost destroyed my family.

BALDWIN: We're grateful. I'm sure your family is grateful that it didn't do that. And thank you for your bravery, again, and your service, speaking up, Canines for Warriors.

Let me say it again, Canines for Warriors, just one of a number of groups who are really helping folks like you.

Captain Jason Haag and Dr. Sanjay Gupta, thank you.

LEMON: Up next, more coverage of the missing plane as we wait for what's being called a big news conference, Malaysian officials held a special briefing to answer questions of families of passengers aboard Flight 370.

And we're going to tell you what they discussed and how families are responding, a live report from Kuala Lumpur right after this very quick break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: Welcome back, everyone, to our special coverage. I'm Don Lemon.

The families of Flight 370 passengers have been holding Malaysian officials feet to the fire. They demand for more communication about the investigation.

Our senior White House correspondent is Joe Johns. A government briefing with families just wrapped up in Kuala Lumpur. Tell us about it.

JOE JOHNS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Don, that was a government briefing with Malaysian officials and Malaysian family members, people who were on the plane.

CNN actually talked to a man who was in that meeting. He is the cousin of a honeymooning groom who got on the plane.

He said the authorities couldn't even tell them whether the plane had crashed, expressed a lot of frustration and questioned whether the whole three hours was just a waste of time, Don.

LEMON: You know, Joe, Chinese family members also got their own briefing yesterday. Did that one go any better?

JOHNS: Frankly, I think I can say no to that, Don. The Chinese families posed a number of questions to the authorities when they met with them.

These were highly technical questions, and when they didn't get the answers that they wanted, they went public with a very harsh statement and the statement said, in part, "We've been fooled again," and accuse the Malaysian officials of trickery.

LEMON: Joe Johns in Kuala Lumpur, thank you very much.

CNN has learned that a big operations news conference will be held, this as a British ship zeroes in on the search area.

This is special CNN live coverage.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: We are gearing up for the Final Four this Saturday. The games air on our sister's network TBS.

Seventh seed U-Conn takes on overall number-one seed Florida. Florida has won 30 games in a row. The last team to beat them, U-Conn, was back in December.

And the second game, eighth-seeded Kentucky faces Wisconsin, a second seed. The winner of each game plays Monday night for the national championship.

We're back in 90 seconds.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: I want to talk more now about a ship we've heard a lot about, the Ocean Shield. It's set to arrive to the search area soon. It is equipment with technology from the U.S. Navy aimed at finding black boxes.

Our Will Ripley is in Perth, Australia, where the search is being coordinated.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

WILL RIPLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Right now CNN is learning about three pieces of new information. This is coming to us from a spokesperson for the Australian Defence Force.

There's a British ship in the search zone right now. It's called the HMS Echo. It has sonar equipment, which means it can listen in the water, and we're told that, on Friday, this ship with that equipment is going to be conducting a specific search.

That means it's not random, but it's going somewhere to look for something specific. What that is, we just don't know right now. We also know there is going to be a -- what's described as a "big" operations news conference coming from Angus Houston, who's coordinating the search effort here, that also happening sometime on Friday.

And CNN has also learned that the Ocean Shield, that Australian ship, which is equipped with high-tech tools from the U.S. Navy, will be arriving into the search zone overnight.

So, within the next few hours, presumably, this ship will be in place, ready to deploy those two high-tech tools, the underwater listening device and the underwater drone that can scan the ocean floor.

So we're going to have a lot of technology arriving in the search area on Friday, not only the Ocean Shield and the Echo, but we also have a British submarine there, as well, all of these tools in place to listen and observe and hopefully find some evidence that will help solve the disappearance of Flight 370.

But, again, so far, as we've been following this case for weeks, there have been promising leads that have been turned out to be nothing, so we don't want to overstate the importance of this.

But there are definitely some new developments that are happening right now, developments that we will be continuing to monitor.

Will Ripley, CNN, Perth.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LEMON: All right, Will, thank you very much.

An operations news conference, don't know what they mean by that, when it will be announced, what they're going to announce, but we'll carry it for you here on CNN.

Make sure you tune in tonight, 11:00 p.m. Eastern to 1:00 a.m. I'll have a live, special report for you.

Bill Weir is in for Jake Tapper today with "THE LEAD."

BILL WEIR, CNN ANCHOR, "THE LEAD": Any moment now, the commander of Fort Hood, Texas ...

ENDED IN PROGRESS