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Mystery of Flight 370; Ping Detector Arrives in Search Area

Aired April 06, 2014 - 18:00   ET

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

ASHLEIGH BANFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: In a moment, we'll get back to the hunt for Flight 370. We have some other stories we're keeping an eye on.

And this is a strange one: a tiny little spider making a very big headache for Mazda, the automaker Mazda. Because it's now recalling more than 40,000 of its vehicles saying the cause of it is these pesky spiders. They seem to love to spin their webs inside the fuel lines. And that can clog the fuel lines and potentially cause fires. It's the yellow sac spider. Apparently, it has a penchant for the smell of gasoline.

I can't make this stuff up. Mazda had a similar problem apparently three years ago and they had to recall more than 50,000 of these cars back then to install a little spring gizmo that keeps the spiders out.

You're in the CNN NEWSROOM. Hello, everyone. I'm Ashleigh Banfield.

For so many days on end no clues came out of the search for that long missing airliner. And now, this weekend they may be faint, but they are absolutely clues. And searchers are chasing them down with the best gear they've got.

Right now, a British navy ship is in the area where a Chinese crew detected some electronic pulses on a frequency used by aviator -- or aviation locater beacons. Despite the sound of that, our analysts say don't get too excited. These pings could still turn into nothing related to this airliner. Well, add to the pings that some objects were also spotted floating in the water not too terribly far from where these pulses were heard, and it definitely gets people moving.

Certainly, it gets equipment moving towards the site. Again, nothing confirmed, of course. But, again, these are clues in a sea of where there are so few.

The Australian official heading the multinational search mission is calling these new leads, and I will quote him, "the most promising." Today, if you're counting is day 31 since Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 vanished, a 777 simply vanishing.

Live right now in Perth, Australia, the headquarters of the search mission is CNN's Matthew Chance. Joining him is David McKenzie, who's live in Beijing.

Matthew, first to you. The HMS Echo, the British ship, is now on site. How long has it been there and do we know of any progress at all?

MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, it's been there for a couple of hours now according to the British ministry of defense. We're not getting regular updates, sort of minute by minute updates on what its progress is. But the expectation is in its 14-hour journey from its previous location it was getting prepared, ready to start work as soon as it reached the location where the Chinese recorded these two what have been called acoustic events. They detected these pings on the same frequency that is 7.5 kilohertz that used by these beacons on top of black box flight recorders and cockpit voice recorders as well.

And so, what they're trying to do is trying to verify that. The Chinese recorded the short bursts of pings, what they say they thought they were, anyway, and this ship, the HMS echo, has much more sophisticated equipment on it, we believe. And it's there to verify that they are, indeed, pings potentially from a black box. So far, that kind of verification has not taken place. That's why we're waiting now on an hour by hour basis, to see what HMS Echo, this sophisticated ship, designed to map the bottom of the ocean floor can turn up. Whether it can verify what the Chinese have found.

There's another location as well which I think is worth remembering about, which is the Australian vessel, a sophisticated vessel called the Ocean Shield, is investigating another acoustic event some 300 nautical miles away. It's also found something that it's interested in and wants to investigate further.

So, we're looking for updates on what its progress is as well. So, two separate locations in the Indian Ocean where there's potentially some hope of finding something will give us a clue to the whereabouts of this missing Malaysian airliner, Ashleigh.

BANFIELD: Matthew, thank you.

I want to go many miles to the north of you, to Beijing, where David McKenzie is now standing by.

David, look, this has been a very promising weekend in terms of developments because there have been so many days when there have been none or few. How are the families taking all of this new news of not only the change in the path of that plane but also three different receptions of pingers?

DAVID MCKENZIE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, the families really are jaded, numb at this point, Ashleigh. You know, in the last few days, even a week ago, the search seemed to have reached some kind of plateau. But now, there's a new energy to the search and new evidence that they might be -- at least signs they might be closer to some resolution in this. But still, the family members we've spoken to really want more physical evidence before they make any conclusions. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Maybe this is a time, maybe the next couple of days, next couple months, next couple years we will find the ending. But there will be a time that it will end.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MCKENZIE: They just want that ending. Many of the family members I've spoken to are exhausted at this point, Ashleigh, just because the many days of harrowing waiting and the many false leads. So, they're skeptical, I have to be honest, Ashleigh.

BANFIELD: It's hard. So many days after the fact for them, after they've had so many leads that have turned up to be nothing. It must be just a terrible yoyo for them.

David McKenzie in Beijing, Matthew Chance in Perth, thank you both. And do tune into us and let us know of any developments as it is now daylight just around the corner for you in Perth and daylight has just dawned in China as well.

The MHS Echo is designed to chart the sea floor. Map it and provide real-time environmental information. More importantly for this search, the Echo is equipped with highly sophisticated sound locating equipment. It could be the key to determining whether that signal heard over 36 hours ago actually came from the Flight 370's black boxes.

I want to bring in our panel, Richard Quest, CNN's aviation correspondent. Tim Taylor, who's now joined him to the right who's a sea operations and submersibles specialist. And Colonel Michael Kay, a former U.K. military pilot and CNN aviation analyst.

Tim, you've joined the panel since the last hour. And you've brought with you a very significant prop better known as an AUV. Explain how this is significant in what's happening on the other side of the world.

TIM TAYLOR, SEA OPERATIONS AND SUBMERSIBLES SPECIALIST: Actually, this is more than a prop. It is an actual AUV. It just is a shallow water version. When we talk shallow water, we're talking 200 meters, 650 feet. So, it will actually go down on its own and it will use its side scan to map the ocean bottom.

BANFIELD: And effectively, what we're looking at now is that this would be step two. They are listening with the phones, driving the phones along for lack of a better description. And now that they've got just a meager piece of evidence of pinging, this goes in next to start looking?

TAYLOR: Yes, the Bluefin-21, what the Navy has supplied, will be doing the work. It's a much larger system with a little bit more sophisticated navigation instruments because it has to go so deep. This doesn't need that kind of -- that instrumentation.

BANFIELD: And relative to this, the Bluefin-21 is how much larger?

TAYLOR: Oh, the Bluefin-21 is 21 inches in diameter. It's probably 2,500 pounds. This is 60. BANFIELD: And its side scan sonar -- again, just pointed out those two spots where you are showing the side scan sonar.

TAYLOR: It shoots sound out --

BANFIELD: On either side.

TAYLOR: On either side, bounce back and it will come back and it'll paint a picture of what's on its side. What's underneath it, it will have a gap, or what they call in nadir or holiday or blank spot.

BANFIELD: How big of gap?

TAYLOR: Depends how high it's flying off the bottom. But you could have a gap that the plane could possibly be in.

So, the big sonar systems that the Bluefin-21 has will actually have to cover one and a half times. It'll have to go over the spaces it went to cover its holiday or nadir unless it has a venting system that can look down. And that's not all systems are equipped that way.

BANFIELD: So just quickly I want to go to you, Michael Kay. There are a lot of assets that are either en route or already there. You'll have to correct me if I'm wrong.

But there's the Haixun that found -- this is the Chinese ship that's a very sophisticated ship with a lot of sophisticated technology. Not necessarily what they've shown us by video. It was one that depicted these pings.

There's also the ocean shield that is about 24 hours away. The HMS Echo, another ship that is now there as Matthew just reported a couple hours on site. And there's also the HMS Tireless, the nuclear submarine. We don't exactly know where it is, do we?

MICHAEL KAY, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Yes. We're not really supposed to know where submarines go. They're very covert. They're very secretive. And they do a lot of very secretive roles around the world. No one really knows where they are. They can be used for what's called sendings (ph) signals intelligence. Basically, it's a sponge where it listens to every little piece of communication that's out there.

The drones we hear so much about in Baghdad and Afghanistan and all these places in the Middle East, they have a similar sort of capability in terms of the ability to listen. So, they're very covert by nature. So, HMS Tireless will be in the area. I think the key to all this, Ashleigh, is the passive sonar.

The passive sonar is the piece of technology that will detect and listen for that ping. It's not active. It's not like this. It doesn't send out energy and look at the energy coming back. It just listens.

And Air Field Marshal Houston has a number of assets he can use and he has a priority in which they can use them. Now, if I was Air Chief Marshal Houston, I'd be putting the P-8s out there, which is Poseidon aircraft, the P-3s. I'd be dropping the passive sonar buoys into the water. The P-8 can carry 120. The P-3 can carry about 60 --

BANFIELD: And the sonar boys, they hold 100 phones as well.

KAY: They sit in the water.

BANFIELD: And listen?

KAY: The question I would have for Tim, is there a scenario where you can have the sonar buoys floating on the surface which wouldn't detect? Yet the AUV would if it was --

TAYLOR: Of course. Sound is very -- very different in the water. It has layers that it can't penetrate. So, looking at what the Chinese heard for one and a half minutes, it's quite possible that they did get a piece of sound coming through what's called the deep sound channel, or 2,000 to 4,000 feet deep. Essentially, sound can come up and be caught in that channel.

So, they could have picked up a minute and a half of the signal and lost it, the towed pinger. That's why they're going deep. The submarine is in there because I think they can get into -- unclassified depths are 2,400 feet for these submarines. So, I believe they're getting into the deep sound channel.

BANFIELD: One quick question for Richard Quest. I hate to do this, but it's critical. Early on in this mystery everyone asked the question about E-curves and the ELTs? They're supposed to be activated by salt water. And we haven't talked about that in about 31 days.

I'm still not sure I understand why none of them onboard, and there are several, were activated, if this thing's in water.

RICHARD QUEST, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: And no one can give you the answer. Oh, there'll be plenty of possibilities. Did they malfunction? Did the plane go down intact and therefore they've not gone into order? There's all sorts of answers. But it is one of the conundrums of the mystery. That nobody knows why they have not gone off.

And, you know, people can say it's too deep, whatever. They've been damaged, 1,001 possibilities.

BANFIELD: But there's about a half dozen of them by count.

QUEST: Nobody can give you a satisfactory answer.

BANFIELD: And it leads me to my next topic. The flight, the search for this flight, is primarily under water. And yet we've had no indication of that. So what about the air search? What happens now? Colonel Kay is going to weigh in on that next as well.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) BANFIELD: Three underwater sounds are heard. The question now, are they Flight 370's missing black box pingers? A British ship with advanced sound locating equipment has just arrived in the area where a Chinese ship detected those pulse signals on consecutive days and an Australian ship also investigating. It heard it as well, but something different, about 350 miles to the north.

As my guests join me, the search to locate the source of the sounds is on. But what about the search for the debris? Is that all but forgotten? I doubt it.

I want to bring back our panel, Michael Kay.

At this stage, as colonel, as a lieutenant colonel who spent many, many hours in the air unrelated kinds of searches and investigations, et cetera, they cannot have abandoned the force they've been using for the air search and just the debris fields.

KAY: Everything they have, Ashleigh. I think it's inconceivable that we could think the black boxes would be found without finding any sort of debris field whatsoever. As I've said many times on air, there is no smoke without fire. And I still stand by that.

We've got some very capable air assets. The good thing about air assets, maritime surveillance craft, they can get places quickly. The P-8 Poseidon travels 500 knots. The P-3 travels at around 240 knots, that's around four to five miles a minute. They can get places.

As I was talking about previously, they've got these passive sonars as well. So, they can get places and they can rule places out before you then decide to launch the vessels which obviously take a lot longer to get there.

BANFIELD: Tim Taylor, at this point, as all of the investigators and the -- the organizational team based out of the Perth has effectively led everybody to understand, this search is now based in the water. Gear like this is now the focus of the energy of finding this missing plane. We're at day 31. The pingers may not even be pinging anymore.

If they are, and that is a big if, are we -- are we good enough at this point? Do we have the kind of gear yet to be able to do this before it's all up to this? And just luck?

TAYLOR: Well, I mean, they've got a ping. Frankly, they're going to have to -- just like when they found debris on the satellites they're going to have to go the next step and investigate that ping. That means putting assets on the bottom.

BANFIELD: At this point, does it even matter what Colonel Kay said about still finding the debris? It's 31 days old. Where would the debris now be in relation to a flash zone, in relation to a float and sink zone if there are many other pieces?

TAYLOR: It may be difficult to track it back but the debris is still an important factor in this. So, the debris hunt should continue. BANFIELD: And it's not forgotten that Air France, we knew the splash zone. We knew the vicinity. It took two years using this. I mean, a bigger version, right, of this?

TAYLOR: Oh, yes.

BANFIELD: Two years of diligence to find those black boxes. And we knew the splash zone.

TAYLOR: There's a lot of bottom. Frankly, if the ping can be legitimized with the new assets on site today and tomorrow, as the days go on, let's hope the batteries last. But if they can get another signal and they can narrow it down, this is the stroke of luck that everybody's been wanting for 30 days. The real search goes on. And it could take a year or more to actually find the debris on the bottom.

So, this is the beginning of what's going to be a long, long term. Finding the ping narrows it down. It narrows it down so these guys can go do their long, tedious search.

BANFIELD: And, Colonel Kay, I don't know if you'll know the answer to this question. Clearly as a pilot, you are very attuned to things being in one piece and flying them. You're not as attuned to seeing them on the bottom of the ocean, say, ten years later.

If we find one piece of debris, if we find -- whether it's a piece of the fuselage. If it's a seat. If it's any part of a broken plane, will it at least give us a piece of evidence that will rule out many of the theories?

KAY: Tim, please jump in. I think we have to go back to Air France 447. I think that's a great example of the batteries on the pingers, on the GPS or the black boxes running out, and the way that the black boxes were found were through finding the debris field two years later through submersibles. And that then led them to where the black boxes were.

So, I think if we look at that as an example, it is quite conceivable that we could be here in 30 days' time with no pings. Yet having enough analysis from Inmarsat, from whatever the JACC are doing to pull together to get somewhere where we can go and look with these submersibles.

BANFIELD: If we're in the right vicinity, which brings me back to, have we crunched the numbers correctly with the math in the field? Do you remember when Les Abend was sitting beside you not 35 minutes ago? He asked a question of Martin Savidge, who's sitting, standing by actually with Mitch Casado in the flight simulator.

I see you're both still here. Can you hear me, Martin and Mitch?

MITCHELL CASADO, PILOT: This is not going to happen. I hope the water --

BANFIELD: I don't think -- MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I'm sorry, Ashleigh.

BANFIELD: So, if you can hear me -- we're going to go to break, you two. But Colonel Kay is going to effectively repeat for any of our viewers who heard Les Abend, our 777 pilot, ask you that question and asked you to spend 10, 15 minutes reprogramming the simulator, Colonel Kay is going to explain in simple terms what it was we wanted you to do.

Colonel?

KAY: Hi, guys. At 12,000 feet and a max operating speed, how far could this aircraft have flown?

BANFIELD: And that is going to be the question we ask you when we get back after the break.

Are we even in the right vicinity of a splash zone? That's coming up next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BANFIELD: So right before the break, we told you we were going to go to Mitch Casado and Marty Savidge in the flight simulator to come up with a program whereby we would figure out the fuel burn and the length of distance that the 777 would have traveled before it would actually effectively create a splash zone and if we're even in the right vicinity.

But I'm switching gears. We reprogrammed something a little bit different. In fact, the reprogramming, gentlemen, I think you were able to do in the time for this moment was the soft water landing. The reason I wanted to ask you about this as well was because there have been a lot of people who've been curious about why the EPIRBs did not go off when they hit water, why we found no debris if perhaps that plane landed intact?

So, I'm going to turn it over to the pilot who speaks far more eloquently than I do about this to ask the appropriate question to what to program for the soft water landing. Colonel Kay?

KAY: Hi, Mitch and Marty. It's Michael again. How are you doing?

SAVIDGE: God. We're in the dark. We had to do that to give you any sense of visualization at night which is almost nil.

KAY: What I just really would love to get a sense of is, as Mitch is going through this, if he could just talk us through just how difficult it is to enter the glide. Obviously when the engines flame out, run out of fuel, what he's doing when he's entering the glide, what speed he's coming back to for maximum glide efficiency and just the talk down of altitude. How quick it is. As he's flaring to get on to the ocean, all those sort of type of sound bites would be really useful just to give the viewers a sense of how difficult this really is.

SAVIDGE: You want me to kill the fuel? Or are you going to just try it straight?

CASADO: No. I'll fly it -- so -- so -- I'm sorry. I don't know the name. I'll answer the question.

Coming down, I'm about 50 feet over the water here at night. I mean, I'm -- my mind is on the flying, of course. But the idea is for a ditching at night you want to turn the landing lights off, they kind of mess with your perception. They're canted downwards.

You want to get a more directional light with the landing light. You want to have a hatch open. Even in the small airplanes we open a door so you have an escape. In a big airplane like this you have a hatch. We want to have that open.

Of course, the back would be prepared and would be briefed. You want to touch down tail low. Very low speed. VSO plus ten. Something like that.

Flap configuration maybe 15 degrees. Optimum so that drag doesn't override the lift. So, not full flap. Maybe halfway. Get optimum lift.

You want to touch down tail low. You're probably going to have two impacts. Very violent. The airplane is probably going to hit the water, bounce and then hit again and settle in.

SAVIDGE: Things we can't take into account are sea state. We don't know winds and other weather that might have been at that particular time. So -- and because of the fact, of course, we're dealing with a sky that might have had clouds and might have only had starlight. It could without the elimination of the aircraft be almost complete.

KAY: Can you give us a sense as well, if the aircraft does make a successful landing, what sort of flotation devices does the aircraft have, indeed, to try and make it float? Obviously, if this was a mechanical failure of some sort they would be deployed, I'm assuming?

CASADO: Yes. It has. You have your lifts which actually are tethered to the aircraft. They can be deployed.

And you can -- you can stay with the aircraft or you can cut them loose if need be. Everybody has a life jacket. You don't deploy the life jacket before you get out of the aircraft, obviously. Obviously, they tell you that before you depart.

Aircraft that have a -- a tail, an empennage that's canted at a higher degree angle have a tendency to sink, actually. There's a greater likelihood the aircraft isn't going to stay up aloft or stay afloat.

So, this airplane, the 777, the empennage is relatively in line with the rest of the fuselage which bodes well for a water landing. So there's a lot of things to consider with the water landing. Too much to talk about 50 feet over the water at night.

KAY: Now, Mitch, I mean, you made it quite clear you're actually doing a powered all landing here. I think in the real scenario, it would likely to be the two engines have flamed out because it's run out of fuel potentially. So, how would that differ making the glide approach versus the approach you just described with power?

CASADO: Well, I tell you what, if it was me flying the airplane, I'm going to be looking at the fuel gauges. I don't know what these pilots were doing. But I'd be looking at the fuel gauges. If I saw the fuel dropping to a level below which I couldn't make a successful landing at an airport, I would be doing a powered approach. Because I know I'm not going into an airport now. I have to ditch.

And when you have power, engine power, I'm talking about, you have a lot more options. You can control your rate of descent. For a water landing you don't want to be descending more than 200 feet a minute especially at night when you don't have a reference. Calm seas, glassy water, anything like that, you're going to have a very difficult time judging depth, 200 feet per minute on the rate of descent on the vertical speed.

In the middle of the ocean, if you don't have an altimeter setting, you don't have a reference. It's going to be useless. So you only have your BSI. And so I kind of forget what your question was but --

KAY: I think -- Mitch, I think you've made -- just made a brilliant point which is if the pilots were in control, they'd never let the situation happen where they'd actually run out of fuel. They'd realize they had no other option and they'd make a powered approach on to the ocean. I think that's a brilliant point you just made.

BANFIELD: Can I add one extra question to that, Mitch, and that's this? With our brand new map, that we've received today, that shows a very curious route, I'm going to add one extra question to that, Mitch. That's this. With our brand-new map we received today that shows a very curious route, skirting the northern part of Indonesia and then arching back around southward, and flying on for several hours southward to the South Indian Ocean, is there any circumstance that you can imagine where there would be two pilots who are still in any kind of control of that plane or intending for anything other than crashing that plane?

I mean, would anyone be trying to land gently in the spot where that plane on our map is being shown to have gone down?

CASADO: I can't imagine a scenario where they would be -- I mean, of course, there are scenarios where you have to ditch. I mean, the engine -- a bird in the engine like what happened in the Hudson. But with a healthy airplane, I can't imagine you just deciding to ditch. It doesn't make any sense. There were a lot of airports in the north that they could have gone to if they had an emergency that were closer.

They actually spent more time going down south in the Indian Ocean. Why? To ditch, why? You have more options up north.

BANFIELD: If you had an option anywhere between that turn, that first turn which was the last thing we saw, you know, actually registering with that plane, why on earth would it go to such trouble for such a remote spot to gently land the aircraft?

Mitch and Marty, thank you. Just an invaluable with that simulator and helping us to understand so many of the very, very arcane aspects of that 777.

Coming up next, that very question. That strange route. Up and over Indonesian air space. It sure didn't look like a ghost was flying that plane. It sure didn't look like the zombie flight that so many have said it could have been.

What does the investigation say about that plane skirting Indonesian air space. It's coming up next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BANFIELD: Want to get you up to speed now with the latest on the search for Flight 370. The HMS Echo is the latest ship to join the hunt for that elusive pulse signal that was just detected yesterday by a Chinese ship. But it could already be too late.

This is where the ship detected that pulse.

Here's the problem. The batteries in the airliner's black boxes may be gone. At best, they may have only days or even hours before they run out completely. And again, they may have been gone for days now.

The Ocean Shield, an Australian ship, recorded something they're calling an acoustic event. And that was quite separate than what the Chinese heard. And it was quite some distance away. Three hundred miles or so, to be exact.

And there is yet this new mystery as well tonight. A senior Malaysian government source is telling CNN that the aircraft steered a course up and around the tip of Indonesia. Very curious. It was long suspected but it is now confirmed that it effectively skirted Indonesian air space.

Again, very curious. Why would it do that? Was it an effort to stay hidden? Does that mean someone was flying it and intending all along to have that very strange path?

Answering some questions with the black boxes would be hard. Without them, nearly impossible. But investigators have little choice but to push forward at this point.

And CNN's Jim Clancy is covering that part of the investigation. He is live in Kuala Lumpur as he has been for the last month.

I have so many questions about everything that you've been covering up until this point. But this latest news about skirting the Indonesian air space, what are the investigators saying about that?

JIM CLANCY, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: The investigators aren't giving their interpretation of it. This source told CNN, this was the course that was tracked on radar. That radar would be very reliable. We're not sure which country provided it. We know that the Indonesia -- the Malaysians were tracking it. But this gives us a little bit more coverage as it comes around Thailand or Indonesia might have furnished some of this data.

But what it indicates to us is that the pilot was trying to avoid, you know, impinging on anybody's air space. Indonesia's air space. Something that might prompt a response. That the plane has already flown directly over Malaysia. But it was a Malaysian airliner might not have prompted a response for that reason or as it would seem, nobody was really paying much attention on that very early morning of March 8th.

What it tells us, perhaps, two things. A little bit to the motive of whoever was in control of the aircraft. Whether it was a pilot. Whether it was somebody forcing the pilot. Whether it was somebody entirely different inside the cockpit.

It also tells us another thing. This data was basically produced some two weeks ago using the Inmarsat handshakes with the satellite. And it matches that data pretty well. It gives us more confidence that the tracking that was given to us by Inmarsat, far beyond any of this radar, is, indeed, accurate.

It tells us, Ashleigh, we may be searching in exactly the right space down there today. Back to you.

BANFIELD: But we have -- what's so hard, Jim, is that we keep hearing that. You know, in 31 days we've had that sort of void spree. Feeling as though we might be on the right track only to be dashed moments later.

And I want to ask you, being in Kuala Lumpur, this is the location of so many of the families. Clearly the majority of the families were from -- were from -- were Chinese. But I asked David McKenzie how those Chinese families are dealing with that. He answered that question from Beijing. You're in KL. How are the Malaysian families dealing with this new information?

CLANCY: The Malaysian families don't want to get their hopes up. They would like to see a resolution of this. But they're taking a wait-and-see attitude. Most of the Chinese families who are here, all but three, I'm told, have returned to Beijing. The ones that remain say they were just trying to be patient. They were just trying to wait.

They hope they don't find the plane at the bottom of the Indian Ocean. They -- some of them still hold out hopes it might have landed somewhere. That they say they will accept the outcome -- Ashleigh.

BANFIELD: You've done an exceptional job. I know this is your last day of a month long assignment. There are few assignments that we're sent on at CNN that last that long. And thank you for your work.

Jim Clancy reporting live from Kuala Lumpur for us this Sunday night, 6:39 a.m. local time for him.

You've been hearing over and over for the last several days that this search is now a water search. It was only a couple of days ago that "The Washington Post" had a story about how easy it could be to effectively hide a nuclear submarine based on all those thermal layers in the ocean.

So how are we supposed to search that? Going to have some answers for you, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BANFIELD: The Indian Ocean in the search area is nearly three miles deep. The distance between where the possible audio contacts were heard, 350 miles. That's not even bringing in the waves and the wind and all the other objects in the water. A lot of them being garbage.

I want to bring back our panel, Michael Kay, Richard Quest and Tim Taylor.

The very first thing I want to just read out to you, and, Tim, effectively this is for you. I read in the "Washington Post" last week a quote from David Gallo, who's a director of Special Projects at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. And it was such a -- it was such a profound statement. I have to say I did lose a little bit of heart in this whole process of finding this ship.

Direct quote. "The ocean can do a lot of things with sound. For instance, if you know how to use thermal layers in the ocean, you can hide a nuclear submarine from some of the most powerful sonar."

Could you put that in perspective when we're talking about teeny tiny microphones looking for teeny tiny black boxes?

TAYLOR: Thermal layers are temperature difference and sound can actually -- it create like walls, so the sound can, like, bounce off it and not make it through it. So if you put a sub right one of those or below one of those, and they're shooting sound down to find a sub they can bounce off the thermals and even not see the sub.

BANFIELD: So if the hydrophone or the Towed Pinger Locator 25 which is the Cadillac of hydrophones is being towed behind the vessels in question, they have to be exactly in the right thermal layer in order to detect something?

TAYLOR: Yes. Yes. More or less. There's one thermal -- there's one layer that travels the whole ocean from 2,000 to 4,000 feet. And it goes up and down. But it is a -- it is a deep sound channel that sound can get caught in and propagate for miles. Whales can communicate across the ocean in these types of layers.

So the sound could get caught in there and not make it through. Or parts of it can make it through. And that's why that pinger is being deployed. They're towing that pinger down into about 3,000 feet of water where they can actually get into that zone and maybe even pick up the signal for a lot farther than it's sending out.

BANFIELD: Richard Quest, what did the Chinese know that took them to the spot that they found these pings? Because it wasn't in the spot that anybody was supposed to be searching that day.

QUEST: I do love your questions, Ashleigh. Particularly when they invariably and inevitably bring me to answer, I have no idea.

(LAUGHTER)

And I'm not being facetious when I say that because --

BANFIELD: And I'm not being facetious when I ask that.

QUEST: No. Because it is a perfect question to why the Chinese were there when it's not in the zone. Why they were searching in that equipment. And what equipment they may have really been using at the time of the search. And -- and I think it doesn't really matter if they find the plane. You know, the ends will justify whatever happened.

But let's remember what Angus Houston said, Ashleigh. He said they're getting very, very good cooperation and he's quite happy with the level of information that is coming from the Chinese. I suppose arguably he would say that.

BANFIELD: Colonel Kay, one of the things that -- that our CIA analyst told us earlier today is that he's been scanning the press in China. And invariably, the Chinese press is tooting a horn saying, we've done it. We've found the plane. We solved the mystery.

Now I can't say to a certainty that every press source is saying that. But there's a lot of crowing going on in China about this. Strategically speaking military to military. Is there something that you see in China being able to say that and effectively say to the rest of the search brigade, off you go. See what you can do. Find it. And if you can't, it's your fault. It's not our fault. And we have a 150 plus of those people. That's ours.

MICHAEL KAY, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: The simple answer to your question, Ashleigh, is no. I think the negative connotations of this, we need to be very careful of in terms of that --

BANFIELD: You don't see this as political?

KAY: Well, I mean it could be geopolitical. The thing which I think is disappointing is that the Chinese aren't working with the international community or it appears they're not working with the international community to provide that information in through the JACC. Allow the JACC to analyze that information. And then corroborate it and then disseminate it as they see fit.

I think what it's doing is it's potentially diluting the credibility once again of the investigation and causing a little bit of doubt in the people's minds. Especially of Chief Marshal Houston who is in charge of deploying the assets. And I think that's where the problem lies. Geopolitically, I mean, we've always had an issue with China. I mean China is regarded as the biggest threat to America.

So I can see why people would be taking this tone. I think the coordination aspect is disappointing.

BANFIELD: Tim Taylor, we heard immediately upon the news breaking of these pings being located in three separate instances, two of them from the Chinese, one from a separate location 300 miles away from the Australians that all of the assets or at least a great bulk of the assets were streaming towards that location to start their very hard work. What happens to all the other search areas now?

TAYLOR: They go on hold. They don't go away. All right? So they go on hold. And they work with the most pertinent and the most precious of those -- those zones right now. And that's going to be the ping from the Chinese. Now that deep zone I talked about a second ago, that TPL could have been picking up the same signal 300 miles away.

Quite possible in that deep zone so -- because they're towing down deep. Where the Chinese picked it up with whatever gear, as Richard said, we don't know what gear they're using. They're showing us pictures of a couple of guys hanging a hydrophone over the water.

BANFIELD: Yes, the experts --

(CROSSTALK)

TAYLOR: But I pretty -- I pretty much guarantee you that's not what they're using.

BANFIELD: Those were divers. Handheld devices.

TAYLOR: Yes, they're not -- they're not --

(CROSSTALK)

BANFIELD: The guy who actually makes it said I don't think that was it.

TAYLOR: They're holding their cards close on their gear. Which is --

BANFIELD: What? The Chinese? They think they're very close.

TAYLOR: I'm sure they are.

BANFIELD: Go figure.

TAYLOR: Yes.

BANFIELD: Tim, thank you. Michael Richard, thank you as well.

Coming up, you're going to hear from the wife of one of the passengers who was onboard this ill-fated aircraft. Apparently living fairly close to the entire infrastructure central of the search and command. Living close to the people who are trying to find your loved one.

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BANFIELD: Despite glimmers of hope in the search effort, there's really not much comfort for the families that all of those people who were onboard Flight 370 and have ostensibly just vanished. For one family in particular the agony has come very, very close to home. Their home.

CNN's Paula Newton has more from Perth, Australia.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

PAULA NEWTON, CNN INTERNATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: These are precious moments of peace for Danica Weeks. She's had few of them. Since Flight 370 went missing almost a month ago. She's haunted, she says, by this aviation mystery and the mission to try and solve it.

DANICA WEEKS, WIFE OF MISSING PASSENGER: This area that we lay on now, if it's there, are they going to find it? It's a big question everybody's got. Is it the right area? Are they going to find it but -- it's a big question that everybody has got. Is this the right area? It's a calculated guess. So this is, I think, the hardest process for me is understanding that a commercial airline can just go black.

NEWTON: Danica's husband, Paul, a 39-year-old mechanical engineer, was aboard Flight 370 en route to a job in Mongolia when the plane disappeared. Incredibly, the hub of search operations has moved just a few minutes' drive from her home near Perth, Australia, where she lives with their sons, Lincoln and Jack.

WEEKS: Sometimes I catch myself, you know, seeing the excitement of him coming home. And I have to -- I have to get rid of that out of my brain quickly. Because I can't let myself go to that level of excitement because it would only -- it's only going to make me crash further when I find out the real truth. Which we're all expecting will be that the plane has crashed. So -- but until that point, until I have something concrete, I can't grieve.

NEWTON (on camera): How important is it that they keep looking for him? That they keep this going?

WEEKS: Hugely important. Hugely important. As I said, we need something. The families need something. And we need answers. Not just for me, but for my children.

NEWTON: Have you started to think about the possibility that Paul's sons will grow up, your sons will grow up, and not know what happened to him?

WEEKS: I've thought -- I've thought of that possibility, yes. Am I willing to accept it right now? No, I'm not at that point. Because if -- if this was me on that plane, Paulie would be fighting. Going everywhere asking every question, chasing down to find out what happened to me. For our sons and for himself. So I just have to do my utmost right now and keep going to find the truth. And I -- this will all encompass me, completely.

NEWTON (voice-over): And Weeks says it's now a measure of comfort to know she's so close to the search and that the last moments of her husband's life could have been so close to his home, so close to the people who love him.

Paula Newton, CNN, near Perth, Australia.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BANFIELD: And our thanks to Paula Newton. I'm Ashleigh Banfield. Thanks so much for being with us this hour. CNN's "NEWSROOM" continues with Don Lemon right after this break.

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