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Mystery of Flight 370; HMS Echo on the Scene of the Search; Family Members in Beijing Jaded by Search; Testing Theories in a 777 Flight Simulator
Aired April 06, 2014 - 20:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR: You're in the CNN NEWSROOM, everyone. I'm Don Lemon. Thank you for joining us. For so many dead ends, days on end, excuse me, no clues came out of the search for that long missing airliner.
Now this weekend, they are faint but they are clues. And searchers are chasing them with the best stuff they have got. Right now a British navy ship is in the area where a Chinese crew detected some electronic pulses on a frequency used by aviation locator beacons. Our analysts warn us not to get too excited about this.
These pings could turn into nothing. The Australian official heading up the multinational search missions calls these new leads the most promising. We just heard from the search coordination center that nine military planes, three civilian planes, and 14 ships are out scanning the search areas today.
Here's another mystery. Did the plane try to avoid Indonesian air space? It apparently steered a mysterious course around the country. That's from a senior Malaysian government source. Why would it do that? Was somebody on board trying to avoid radar? No one knows.
I just want to bring in our senior international correspondent now, Matthew Chance who is live in Perth, the hub of the search operation and also Jim Clancy is in Kuala Lumpur. Matthew, I'm going to start with you. The British Navy ship HMS Echo is now on the scene. Tell us what's happening.
MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. For the past several hours, according to the British Ministry of Defense, it's been on the scene and has started its work trying to verify what the Chinese say they detected with pretty ordinary kit, as we've been reporting, some pings on two separate locations, two kilometers apart and 12 hours apart as well which have not been verified to be anything to do with the missing Malaysian airliner but enough to warrant a redeployment, a significant redeployment of resources by the Australian-led search teams here.
And that involves the deployment of Australian aircraft in the skies and of course this deployment of HMS Echo which is one of the world's most sophisticated mapping ships. On an oceanographic survey. And it's equipped with some of the most high-tech equipment that there is available to try and verify these pings and to try and map this -- the bed of the ocean where this missing Malaysian airliner could be. It will be a big contrast with the kind of equipment that the Chinese say that they identify these apparent pings with over the course of the past couple of days or so. And so we'll see whether they're able to verify. Again what the Chinese say they detected -- Don.
LEMON: Jim Clancy, to you now, you know, you have been in Kuala Lumpur since day one of this investigation. Malaysian authorities just today confirmed they believe the plane deliberately skirted Indonesian air space? What are they saying about that?
JIM CLANCY, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, you know, this source has given us some good information about how this plane traveled. This extends that information and it may reflect the cooperation of neighboring states giving up their military radar records to help confirm the flight course. But we have known for some time that it went up through those Straits of Malacca and did this.
It is more circumstantial evidence to say that the plane may have been purposely steered in the manner that it was. But does it really answer any questions? Not necessarily. We still need that evidence that Matthew is talking about. The flight data recorders that are somewhere believed to be in the South Indian Ocean. That's still very much needed because we have all the theories that have come together and we have no facts.
These two things collide and we're unable to really fathom what really happened in that cockpit on board that flight, Malaysian 370 -- Don.
LEMON: Jim, thank you very much for that. We appreciate you and we also appreciate Matthew Chance as well.
Time to bring in our panel of experts. CNN aviation correspondent Mr. Richard Quest, also Tim Taylor, sea operations and submersible specialist, and you see he has one here on the set, Paul Ginsburg, forensic audio expert, and Alan Diehl, a former Air Force accident investigator. And Rick Gillespie is executive director of the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery.
Alan, I'm going to start with you. Let's talk about this very curious route, skirting Indonesian air space. Looking at this as an investigator, is there anything suspicious about this for you?
ALAN DIEHL, FORMER AIR FORCE ACCIDENT INVESTIGATOR: Well, of course, this hasn't really been verified. It is some leaked information. It may well be true. And if it holds up, it would be curious. It says that somebody had to be at the controls, Don. And I'm not sure where we go with that. Like so many things in this investigation. But incidentally, I've done -- I know you were talking about in the last segment, a jetliner landing in the water at night and what happened.
That was the first accident I did for the National Transportation Safety Board was one of those and it was interesting, too.
LEMON: Yes. Richard Quest, do we know if this information is true?
RICHARD QUEST, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: Back on the 25th of March when we got the very first Inmarsat data, if you look at the map, the examples of the southern track, I mean, I'm just going to -- I'm only really showing it just to show that it's -- you know, what we have is actually exactly that.
It goes north, it then goes to the west and it does an arc around the northern tip of Banda Aceh in Indonesia. What is different now, Don, is that sources in Malaysia are saying that this route is part of the reason why they're now saying nefarious. But they use both radar pings and the Inmarsat handshakes to determine yes, it went up, round, out, and across -- around back to Indonesia.
LEMON: OK. So, listen, you have -- Tim, you've got the submersible here on the desk. So what happens now? Does this change anything as far as the search for this plane? The search for the black boxes now that they've heard these pings in certain areas?
TIM TAYLOR, SEA OPERATION AND SUBMERSIBLE SPECIALIST: It kind of does. They've got a ping, whether it's legitimate or not, the only way, really if it goes away, unless they can reacquire it and zero it in, they're going to have to put the bigger brothers of this into the water and go looking -- do some kind of search pattern.
LEMON: And explain to us what that means, the bigger brother --
TAYLOR: This is autonomous underwater vehicle that scans the bottom with sound. It takes long range pictures, a mapping of the bottom, 1,000 meters on each side if it is the bigger vehicle and brings them back so we can try to locate the wreckage.
LEMON: What is that on the front -- on this side here that's point --
TAYLOR: This right here.
LEMON: Yes. What is that?
TAYLOR: This is where they will emanate the sound out. A way the sound out and it will also pick it back out.
LEMON: OK.
TAYLOR: And recorded it. It's recorded on the internal hard drive and you recover the vehicle and you download that data. You plug in and --
LEMON: And what is this right here, the things that can --
(CROSSTALK)
TAYLOR: This is --
LEMON: Yes.
TAYLOR: It's antenna. And this is -- on the bigger versions, everything will have an antenna but it'll have an iridium connection in it so it can talk to satellites, it will have GPS so it will pick up the GPS. It'll have RF's so you can send it commands while it's on the surface. But it brings all the navigation data while it's on the surface. When it dives it's got internal navigation, INS systems, and a few other complicated updating systems that will send signals from the boat. As well as Doppler velocity logs.
LEMON: You're looking awfully curious.
QUEST: I could hear the viewers at home. There is only one question they want to know, how much?
TAYLOR: How much. This system loaded with an INS is $300,000.
LEMON: That small?
TAYLOR: Well, it's a little bigger. This one is probably $200,000.
LEMON: But the ones they're using?
TAYLOR: The ones they're using are $3 million to $5 million.
LEMON: Three to $5 million dollars.
Ric Gillespie is an accident recovery, you've recovered what historic aircraft, right? So what is this -- what does this change with the new information? I'm not sure if the route, you know, around Indonesia changes anything for you. But now that they have heard these possible pings in two different locations of the ocean, how does this change anything if at all for you?
RIC GILLESPIE, INTERNATIONAL GROUP FOR HISTORIC AIRCRAFT RECOVERY: Well, the idea that there seems to be purposeful invasion of air space falls in line with something I've been saying for a long time, that this aircraft was probably abducted by someone and they had a purpose in mind. They were on their way somewhere. Maybe they never reached their destination but this is looking more and more like a deliberate act under human control.
And incidentally, I have rather extensive experience with AUVs, apparatus underwater vehicles. And I can tell you, we used one in 2012 on our air hertz search. And in that case we were searching a steep coral reef. And when you have steep terrain, the AUV is not an appropriate technology.
They have tremendous difficulties with those -- with that kind of terrain. We had repeated malfunctions, aborted missions, it was a nightmare. So it's going to depend a lot on what kind of terrain. Assuming we do get pings and we get an idea where the airplane is to go look for it, it makes a big difference whether the terrain is flat, sandy bottom where you get a nice clean sonar return or steep canyons or a coral environment. That's going to be really difficult for an AUV.
LEMON: What do you say?
PAUL GINSBERG, FORENSIC AUDIO EXPERT: It's just difficult.
LEMON: Makes it difficult? GINSBERG: We agree, of course.
TAYLOR: Well, I'll tell you, it's going to be difficult for any sonar system, towed array or AUV, if it's in heavy -- in rocky terrain. It just goes with the territory.
LEMON: But --
TAYLOR: It's going to be difficult.
LEMON: That's just how it is.
TAYLOR: It's just how it is. You can't tow stuff through it, you can't run stuff through it.
LEMON: So everybody, sit back and listen now because, and we're going to you, Paul, so you can tell us about this. They're looking for the cockpit voice recorder, right, and the flight data recorder. And you were -- you know, many people have been saying, well, you know, we're listening to the audio recordings, you can't distinguish much. You're not going -- but you can tell those can provide -- there are specific ways to figure out who is talking and you're better at explaining it.
GINSBERG: Absolutely.
LEMON: Go ahead.
GINSBERG: Well, we've got -- we've got the pinger to try and locate --
LEMON: Right.
GINSBERG: -- the most valuable piece of evidence that we have with the most information.
LEMON: Right.
GINSBERG: Both the cockpit voice recorder and the data recorder.
LEMON: Right.
GINSBERG: As far as the voice recorder, we can -- we can certainly determine who is speaking because there are four discreet channels. One for the pilot, one for the co-pilot, one for the cockpit area microphone which picks up all of the sounds within the cockpit.
LEMON: Right.
GINSBERG: Whether they're human voices or engine sounds, alerts, alarms, anything that can be heard in the cockpit. And the fourth one is generally the intercom system.
LEMON: And you said through all of that you can tell if the plane is operating properly, if it's operating normally and he'll tell us how he can distinguish that just by using sound coming up right after this break. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)
LEMON: Underwater sounds heard at three sites in the Indian Ocean, two of them very close together. The question now, were they from the Flight 370's missing black box pinger? A British ship with advanced sound locating equipment just arrived in the area where a Chinese ship detected pulse signals on consecutive ships.
And an Australian ship is also investigating a noise it detected about 350 miles to the north. So let's back my panel now, Paul Ginsberg, an audio -- a forensic audio expert.
So let's try this again. We've been talking about this. We'll get to the pulse and all those things. But you were saying once we do get those things, right? If we do get them, you don't even need to hear -- you said we can distinguish whether the pilot or the co-pilot or who was talking. Something very interesting you said to me is that we don't even need to hear them talking. You can, even just from listening to the airplane sounds, the ambient noises in the plane, you can tell what was going on?
GINSBERG: We can track the engine sounds, we can track any of the alert sounds. The alarms, to see whether there was anything that they should have been addressing. There are ways -- on one air case that I had recently, we were looking at a reverse thruster on one side of the aircraft. And I was able to determine which side it was because I compared the level coming through the pilot's and the co-pilot's microphones. One being closer to the side on which the reverse thruster had been activated and the other one hadn't.
So there are lots of clues. I can even tell whether the condition of the power supply on the aircraft is stable or is changing from the hum component that is embedded within the audio signals on each of the channels.
LEMON: And you said something about, you can tell if the plane is going into a stall and --
GINSBERG: There's something called a stick shaker which is a --
LEMON: Right.
GINSBERG: -- safety mechanism built into aircraft. Such that if the plane is going to stall, if you're climbing too quickly and the plane can't handle it, and it's going to just drop and not fly anymore. Before that happens, the plane senses it and sends a vibration through the yoke, that is the steering wheel for the pilots.
LEMON: Right. Right.
GINSBERG: And physically vibrates it. And we can quantity what that sounds like and detect it and put it on the cockpit voice recorder transcript.
LEMON: That's why it's essential, we keep saying, you know, the -- right? GINSBERG: To recover it.
TAYLOR: Absolutely.
LEMON: That's why it's important to get these boxes.
GINSBERG: Absolutely.
QUEST: What's it like for you as an investigator to listen to these tapes which are absolutely private, they are never released, the tapes, because obviously the transcripts are but you never -- you never hear the voices. It is always maintained very closely. It's never released. What is it like for you as an investigator to hear those tapes? Because very often those who were involved have died.
GINSBERG: Correct. It's not easy. Once tapes come to my attention, it is because there is litigation as a result of a plane that has crashed. And so the end of the recording, which is recorded, is -- can be very unpleasant to listen to. And certainly I don't share that with anybody. But it is part of my job.
LEMON: So they never release them. But wasn't United 93, didn't they release the last -- because we heard, what is it -- we heard their voices. Weren't those released from United 93 from 9/11?
GINSBERG: I -- on Flight 93, that is the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania.
LEMON: Right.
GINSBERG: What happened was the -- one of the hijackers thought he was talking to the passengers over the intercom.
LEMON: He was talking to those (INAUDIBLE).
GINSBERG: And he radioed what he was saying.
LEMON: Gotcha.
GINSBERG: In fact, he said words to the effect that ladies and gentlemen, please remain seated.
LEMON: There's a bomb on board.
GINSBERG: There is a bomb. We're going back to the airport to see if our demands will be met.
LEMON: Right.
GINSBERG: And that was transmitted and received. And I've heard that recording.
LEMON: And then you hear the other planes going, United 93, United 93, come through. And then the other planes around it saying did you hear United 93 saying -- someone saying there is a bomb on board. Did you copy that? Then other planes are going yes, did you copy? And so that was a reason that those were released. Is that correct?
GINSBERG: Yes.
LEMON: Right.
GINSBERG: It wasn't -- it wasn't the cockpit voice recorder.
LEMON: It was the tower recordings -- got you. Got you.
QUEST: Yes. There was a day it was a released into different environment.
LEMON: Yes. OK. Don't go anywhere. We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
LEMON: Day 31 and not a single shred of concrete evidence. The information or lack of information is still too much for families of those aboard Flight 370. Some are heading back to Beijing waiting for bit of news.
CNN's David McKenzie is in Beijing now.
David, you know, you're hearing from relatives of the people who were on that plane. How are they taking this news that the search has some new energy?
DAVID MCKENZIE, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, that's right. This is new energy. But really, the family members, Don, are jaded. They're numb. They've had information like this before, if not the same type of information, certainly leads that have been being extinguished. And though the Australians are calling this important and encouraging, the family members really want more concrete evidence. And they said, you know, it's just a process of waiting now.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
STEVE WANG, MOTHER WAS PASSENGER OF MH-370: Maybe this is a time. Maybe the next couple of days, the next of couple months, the next couple of years, we will find the ending. But there will be a time that it will end.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MCKENZIE: When that ending is, no one knows at this point. And these family members certainly are kind of readying themselves for a very long wait. And that anger that we saw is no longer there. I think really, Don, many of them are just totally exhausted.
LEMON: You know, David, is there any controversy about how this information about the possible audio contact came out? It came out from, you know, a reporter instead of from the official agency.
MCKENZIE: Well, there were a lot of questions over this weekend, Don, about how this came out. It came from state media, Chinese media which is obviously state controlled. It is unclear at this stage how the information flow is working from the Chinese to the Australians and the Malaysians, although the Australian head of the search is saying he is satisfied with that information, although there might be some language barriers. When we put questions to the Chinese government on that that have not responded to this point of a day later. Though it is a long weekend in China.
But there is a little bit of confusion as to whether the Chinese are conducting the search just like the others in the same command and control or whether they are reporting directly here to Beijing. Certainly it appears, though, all of the countries, and the more than dozen planes and ships out there today searching are all sparing no effort to try and find this plane at this point, of course -- Don.
LEMON: All right. David McKenzie, thank you very much for that. The biggest clue in many days came from the Chinese. They're looking in their own search areas and reporting to their own chain of command. Is that a problem for the other seven countries involved? We're going to talk about that next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
LEMON: New leads that's new bigger into the search for Flight 370 and right now a British Navy ship has arrived in the area where the Chinese crew detected some electric -- electronic pulses on a frequency usually used by aviation location -- locator beacons. But analysts say don't get excited. It could be nothing at all. And we're also learning Flight 370 deliberately skirted Indonesian air space as it went off the grid and veered off course. Possibly to avoid radar detection according to a source.
But why would someone steer the plane that way and where is it now? Those are the key questions that investigators are trying to answer. And they're trying to answer that fast.
Our panel is back with us. Les Abend is a CNN aviation analyst and a 777 pilot. Tim Taylor, sea operations and submersible specialist. Paul Ginsberg is a forensic audio expert. Alan Diehl is a former Air Force accident investigator. Rick Gillespie, executive director of the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery.
OK, Les, start with you. China heard these pings outside the specified search area. Is this a case of China playing by their own rules and they may know something that they're not telling us or something that we don't know? Everyone else doesn't know?
LES ABEND, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Possibly. I mean, but what's the endgame? You know, let's make that water under the bridge. Let's move forward and see what the situation is with what they found.
LEMON: And what would the endgame be?
ABEND: The endgame is to find those black boxes.
LEMON: Yes. But I wonder why would -- why would China be doing these things on their own? Alan Diehl, what do you make of this? DIEHL: Well, they may have just looked in the right part of the haystack. Clearly, though, there is a problem when you're trying to run a coordinated effort if you've got elements going rogue.
LEMON: Right.
DIEHL: You may have double coverage in one area and no coverage in another. So we'll have to wait and see. If they found the black boxes, they're going to be the most famous Chinese people since the guy in Tiananmen Square.
(LAUGHTER)
LEMON: So, Ric, there is something to be said about coordination though. And you heard Alan Houston -- excuse me, Angus Houston last night saying, listen, you know, I understand that there are journalists out there and they may get ahead of us. I understand the perils of working this type of story but there is something to be said about coordination and about funneling the information through the proper source first.
GILLESPIE: Absolutely. I keep coming back to the 1937 U.S. government search for Earhart because there are so many similarities here. And you can consider it a template for, in some cases, what should be done and in other cases, what definitely shouldn't be done. But that search started out as a purely U.S. Coast Guard search. And then the U.S. Navy got involved and for a while, each was doing their own thing and then fortunately, it was all brought under command of the commandant of the 14th Naval District at Pearl Harbor, and then it was coordinated. But, yes, it is absolutely essential that everybody be playing on the same team on this case.
LEMON: Tim, if you have, you know, what is it, AUVs, and you have got ships out there and you have got people listening with the hydrophones, and then you have got planes in the air, you have got -- someone has to keep track of all this. And they have to report to one person, right, one agency?
TAYLOR: Well, you hope so.
But, you know, these guys disagreed with the logic behind the -- and started their own search in a different area. There's so little to go on here that two people can look at the same sets of data and come up with two different sets of conclusions. OK?
So maybe the Chinese did that and said, hey, we're going to go look over here because we got strongly here. Maybe they got lucky, or maybe not lucky. Maybe we're unlucky looking someplace else. They just looked at it the right way. We don't know.
And they may have some proprietary data that they're not sharing. We don't know that. So, I would think they would, but it may be military technology that...
LEMON: That they don't want to share.
TAYLOR: they don't want to share.
ABEND: Don, you and I were all on late last night, and we saw the press briefing live.
And my impression was that the Chinese were cooperating. It was just a matter of trying to coordinate it properly. And I got the impression that he didn't have issue -- granted, he was being diplomatic, but I just -- I got the impression that he didn't have issue with what the Chinese were doing as far as where they were searching.
LEMON: Well, at least not publicly.
(CROSSTALK)
ABEND: Not publicly, I understand.
LEMON: Alan, China does have the most to gain and the most to lose, having most of the passengers on board.
DIEHL: Certainly.
And they also, I think the air marshal said, have the most resources there if you count the surface ships and the aircraft. So, certainly, they're very motivated to try to solve this problem. But maybe there was some logic that this particular Chinese patrol boat captain was using.
I'm sure he's probably aware in general what is being said. And maybe he just said, hey, maybe it is in between these patterns so let's go look there. And he put the inflatable boats over the sides, or the semi-ridges, I guess they were, with the hydrophones and lucked out. We will have to wait and see, though.
LEMON: Yes. They are using those rudimentary hydrophones. You just stick them in the ocean and then listen.
TAYLOR: But I take a little umbrage of that. These are the pictures they're releasing and people are drawing conclusions.
LEMON: That may not be what...
(CROSSTALK)
TAYLOR: That may not be what they're putting in there.
And, frankly, it is just a picture that you saw and making a judgment on. I think that they quite sophisticated gear. We use these same hydrophones to track animals, sharks that we tag or turtles that we tag and we run around with tenders and operations to track them for scientists.
So the tools they are using, obviously, they can use them too, but I think they have more sophisticated...
GINSBERG: I think the end of the story will be that when we hear the next ping, especially in the same area the Chinese claim that they heard it, that will bring everybody together.
And I think that it will be more unified and everybody will be in the same direction, and there will be more believability by everybody. And I think that is really what everybody is hoping for.
LEMON: Our panel is sticking around. And then last hour, we played some pinger sounds that the search crews are listening for. We will hear those again and discuss those coming up.
Meantime, airspeed, the amount of fuel and whether or not there was an experienced pilot at the helm, questions investigators are desperate to know.
Martin Savidge and Mitchell Casado are standing by to show us a scenario in a simulator next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
LEMON: All right, let's head back to the flight simulator now and CNN's Martin Savidge and Mitchell Casado. And 777 pilot Les Abend joins me too.
Les, you had a question for Martin and Mitchell about a scenario you would like for them to try right now.
ABEND: I did. I think, gentlemen, we discussed this earlier. Did we get to the point we could have set it up? Or did I miss it?
MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: We have, yes. No, we're there. We're at that point.
ABEND: OK.
So you're at 12,000-feet altitude. And what would be the max airspeed, Mitchell, that we could go? And what would be the fuel flow per engine?
SAVIDGE: Just so people understand what we're talking about here, VNO is what we were talking about. Just explain that in layman's term.
(CROSSTALK)
MITCHELL CASADO, PILOT TRAINER: ... maximum operating speed for the aircraft at a particular altitude
SAVIDGE: Why don't you show us where we can see both altitude and speed readout right now?
CASADO: Altitude is here. This is barometric altitude above sea level. This is your airspeed in knots.
SAVIDGE: k. So we are at 12,000 feet, Les. Our speed right now is -- what is it?
CASADO: Well, 318 knots.
SAVIDGE: Right. Now we come to the critical issue, which is what is fuel consumption at this particular attitude?
CASADO: So, our fuel consumption is down here about, so 2,600 kilograms per hour per engine.
SAVIDGE: We're reading this off the computer screen that you would know, Les.
CASADO: That's right.
SAVIDGE: And that number, what does it mean?
CASADO: It means that -- it it -- it is a number. It just means that it is a parameter, just like anything else. At this altitude, at this speed, we're getting this much fuel consumption from the engines. If you were to compare that...
SAVIDGE: OK. I was going to ask you to demonstrate something. Do an over speed for us, so we can see how fuel consumption would increase. Just this is for the general public, not the aviation expert of Les.
ABEND: Marty, what was the speed? I'm sorry.
SAVIDGE: We were at 318 knots.
CASADO: And 318. It is going to get a little noisy here, so...
(CROSSTALK)
SAVIDGE: We're going to push it to an over speed.
CASADO: And now your fuel consumption is over 9,000 kilograms.
SAVIDGE: Triple the fuel consumption.
CASADO: Exactly.
SAVIDGE: But again we would fly at this speed because this would actually be hazardous for the aircraft.
CASADO: But this is going beyond not just VNO, but beyond VNE, which is the never exceed speed, in which is the structural integrity of aircraft would be in question at that point. So, you would never do that, no.
SAVIDGE: And to really do this right, Les, I think the way we would have to do it is put the aircraft on the course, which it is on, fly at 12,000 feet at this particular speed, and run it all the way until the fuel runs out.
And then you could in theory see where you go down and pinpoint it on a map, not that that will locate 370. It is not, because we're using very broad, general parameters. But you would at least get to see if it is in the area where the ships are looking and if it could even go that far.
(CROSSTALK) ABEND: That's exactly where I wanted to go with that, Marty, was for that purpose. And 318 knots is interesting, and I would have thought exactly where you would have put it, because my airline charts put us at 310 at that speed.
That makes a difference in the calculations as far as distance and as far as fuel consumption. So you said it exactly. Thank you.
LEMON: Right.
ABEND: Did they calculate the final impact using those parameters also in addition to being higher at 35,000?
LEMON: Marty, where would that put us?
SAVIDGE: Well, we don't know. We would have to run it. In essence, we would have to fly the full seven hours or so to really do this.
LEMON: Right.
SAVIDGE: There is no way to speed it up and project. We would have to do it, which we haven't done yet.
LEMON: Yes. And that would take seven hours.
(CROSSTALK)
ABEND: Marty, you have been in the airplane for 30 days now. You might as well start now.
(LAUGHTER)
SAVIDGE: We might as well. We will get on that, Les.
LEMON: Thank you, guys. Appreciate it, Mitchell. Thank you, Marty.
That's actually a very good point, where at 12,000 feet, if it is actually indeed possible. And it may be part of the calculations that they -- those Inmarsat sat calculations...
(CROSSTALK)
ABEND: That was the impression I got. And I wondered if they factored in all the probabilities of and using that particular scenario.
TAYLOR: If you take a model and you take a tsunami and Japan and stuff washing up on the shore in the United States, you know the beginning and the end point.
If you take this ping as an end point, and you plug it into the formula, then they can start to make sense of some of the other stuff and make some other assumptions. So this is another clue, this ping. Potentially, it may be the wrong ping, the wrong area. But if that take that assumption and they work it, they may be able to answer some more questions. LEMON: All right. Stay with us. Stay with CNN for continuing coverage of missing Flight 370 and the latest on the effort, much, much more ahead here.
Plus, this U.S. Air Force paratrooper and a rescue on the high seas to save the life of a very sick 1-year-old.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
LEMON: We are going to get back to the hunt for Flight 370 in literally just one minute, but we have some other stories that we're keeping an eye on for you.
U.S. Air Force parajumpers came to the rescue of a very sick little girl almost 1,000 miles off the coast Mexico. She and her family were on a sailboat when they called for emergency help. The 1-year-old girl is now on board a Navy ship. And last we heard, she is in stable condition.
President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama will attend a memorial service for victims of the shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Texas, on Wednesday. Three soldiers were killed and 16 were hurt when investigators say Specialist Ivan Lopez opened fire before taking his own life. They say that Lopez struggled with depression and anxiety. And after the shooting, President Obama vowed to -- quote -- "get to the bottom of exactly what happened."
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel will get to board China's new aircraft carrier during a trip to China this week. A U.S. defense official says the tour was requested, and China agreed to it. And he will be the first American to board a Chinese aircraft carrier. Hagel's visit is significant, as the U.S. and China try to improve relations and comes on the heel of China participating in the multinational search for the missing Malaysian airliner.
Teams searching for Flight 370 are racing to confirm the pulse signals detected by a Chinese ship. It's the latest and best lead, but one that won't last long with the pingers of the black box dying, if they're not dead already.
These signals may be the black boxes from the Malaysia Airlines plane. But, interestingly, they were heard outside the search zone. Another acoustic event was also detected by the Australian ship Ocean Shield about 300 miles away.
So I go now to my panel. Paul Ginsberg, he is an audio expert.
And then, Paul, what do the words acoustic event mean to you?
GINSBERG: Well, I was wondering exactly why they used that term. I assume that it means they weren't sure, that there was something that could or could not have been the pinger.
It may have been distorted, as others have said, by the propagation through the water, the variation in speed of the sound between the pinger and the receiver. And it may have been slightly off-frequency. It may not have had all the characteristics of what the pinger signal should have, or it may have had those characteristics, but they were distorted so that they did not want to come out and be firmly saying that this was what they were looking for.
LEMON: You said that there are so many, I guess, distractions is a way of putting it. But there are so many, so many different variables, the water, the currents, how deep it is, the topography, all those things, if the plane is sitting on top of the boxes, if there's debris on top of that.
They may not have all the characteristics, but it still could possibly be the pingers.
GINSBERG: Absolutely. It is something worth looking into.
And, of course, once there are more ships in the area and there are more receptions of this type of signal, then perhaps we would have something more definitive. And, of course, we're still working against the battery life, which is coming to an end.
LEMON: Right. So they just -- the batteries don't just go, all of a sudden, poof, they're done. The signal gets weaker and weaker as the battery strength...
(CROSSTALK)
GINSBERG: That's correct. And some of the other characteristics may change as well.
LEMON: Meaning longer pulses, longer intervals?
GINSBERG: Depending upon the design of the unit, it either will retain those characteristics and just get weaker or perhaps the signal will start getting slower and slower, as well as weaker. It depends on the manufacturer.
LEMON: All right, stick around. Our panel of experts will be here for a little bit longer.
Last hour, we played some of the pinger sounds that the search crews were listening for. We will hear those again and discuss next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
LEMON: A couple things just into CNN, first up, new video.
This is a Ilyushin Il-76 taking off from Perth in search for Flight 370, again, a Ilyushin Il-76 taking off from Perth in search for Flight 370, getting an early start before the sun comes up, because it wants -- it takes them a while to get there. They want to be there as the sun come up over the search area.
They're searching for Flight 370 and they're racing to confirm also the pulse signals detected by a Chinese ship. It's the latest and best lead that they have, but one that won't last long with the pingers, the black box dying, if they're not dead already. This is a new search map. There, you see it. It shows three areas that they will be searching today. The Australian government, maritime agency just releasing this today just moments ago.
And as you can see, they will be leaving from Perth, and then another search crew leaving from -- I can't read the top of that (INAUDIBLE) so there you go. Those are the three search areas for today. And then you saw the Chinese Ilyushin taking off.
Let's bring in our panel of experts now. Paul Ginsberg is an audio expert here, with Timothy Taylor and also Les Abend.
OK. We were talking about those acoustic events, right, that they heard. Let's hear the -- let me get my notes that I have on you. It's a chirp and then a pulse, right, or a tone.
GINSBERG: There's a pure tone pulse possible, or a chirp tone pulse.
(CROSSTALK)
LEMON: Right. Which one do you want to hear first?
GINSBERG: OK. Let's hear the pure tone pulse.
LEMON: The tone first.
GINSBERG: Like an alarm.
LEMON: OK. Again, this isn't the exact one, but this is -- you're giving us an example.
(CROSSTALK)
GINSBERG: Correct, one that we can hear. The actual one is above our hearing.
But this would be something like a smoke detector telling you that its batteries are weak, a pure tone.
LEMON: OK.
GINSBERG: The next one is one other way that they can program the pinger to put out a unique type of wave form.
LEMON: And that's a chirp.
GINSBERG: That's correct. It's a chirp.
LEMON: Let's listen.
GINSBERG: And you can see it has a different shape as well.
LEMON: Yes.
I wonder if any of these, either of these is, I don't know, what they prefer, is preferable, is easier to hear. Or does it make a difference?
GINSBERG: I might ask the rest of the panel.
LEMON: Alan Diehl, would you know that?
DIEHL: Depending upon where in the ocean they are, other possible...
LEMON: I'm sorry. Ric Gillespie. Sorry.
Ric Gillespie, would you know that? Are either of these two preferable, or, no, it doesn't matter?
GILLESPIE: I wouldn't know. Yes, there are a lot of sounds in the ocean. I would think you would want to pick something that is least likely to emanate from biological sources.
GINSBERG: Anything else, correct.
LEMON: Tim Taylor?
TAYLOR: Well, they have done that with the frequency. They have honed in a frequency that is less likely.
But it is a signature that they -- if it is a known signature, they can look for it. And then that's where guys like Paul come in.
LEMON: And that's the thing, because many people were saying, this could be ocean life, it could be a whale, it could be a tagged dolphin. It could be any sort of military signal that they use for testing.
But you're saying there are signatures that are specific to these boxes.
GINSBERG: I think dolphins have high intelligence, but I don't know that they could repeat the exact pulse shape to within...
(CROSSTALK)
LEMON: The tag that they use on the dolphin to track them.
GINSBERG: Ah, possible.
LEMON: Yes. Yes.
GINSBERG: I was going to say that the animals aren't that quite good enough to do one-ten-thousandth of a second.
(CROSSTALK)
TAYLOR: When they use tags for biologicals, for animals, they don't run for a second, because the battery life would be in months.
Usually, if they're tracking pelagic animals, sharks, dolphins, whales, they will put it so it will beep every 10 minutes, every half- hour. That way, it lasts for five years. And then they will put arrays in different areas that they're studying that will pick them up and record them.
They don't usually track them, although they can. But they will put different arrays in the ocean that will pick up and then collect that data. Then you collect that data and you find out if that animal came through there at what time of day and year and whatever. The pinging rate of one per second is highly unlikely that it would be used in tracking underwater animals.
GINSBERG: Different settings for different applications and expected lifetimes.
LEMON: Sir, if you go through ocean with this hydrophone, right, how often would you detect that a frequency? Is this a frequency that -- is it rare?
TAYLOR: There is no -- my understanding, there is no law saying that people can't program frequencies. Manufacturers and the science work that we have done with certain animals actually have the same frequencies for different research groups.
So you will have actually the same data showing up on, you know, a turtle study and a shark study or a whale study. It is not proprietary. And no one has exclusivity to it.
LEMON: All right. Stick around. We got a lot more to talk about. All right.
We appreciate you guys.
Along with new signs that searchers could be nearing the missing Malaysia Airlines black boxes, a fresh mystery surfaced today. A senior Malaysian government source said the aircraft may have deliberately skirted Indonesian airspace in an effort to avoid Indonesian radar.
Meanwhile, a good weather -- good weather is expected in the search area today. A few of the nine military planes helping in the search have just taken off from Perth. Three civil aircraft and 14 ships will assist in today's search.
The race is on to find the pings coming from the black boxes before the batteries fail. Three reports of possible audio contact have been reported, two from a Chinese ship, one from an Australian vessel, still no confirmation if they are connected to Flight 370.
I'm Don Lemon. I will be back here for you in one hour from now after a special CNN report. But we are going to have a CNN special report on the mystery of Flight 370 in one hour.
And don't forget, you can also get the latest on CNN.com.
But, first, a brand new episode CNN's original series, "DEATH ROW STORIES." That begins right now.
