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Signals Heard; New Flight Path; Flight 370 Search

Aired April 07, 2014 - 14:00   ET

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

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: Hi there. I'm Brianna Keilar, in for Brooke Baldwin.

We have huge developments in the hunt for Flight 370. Officials say major developments could happen in days if not hours. The U.S. Navy's towed pinger locator has detected two signals consistent with an airplane's black box. This ship, the Ocean Shield, first detected a series of pings that lasted approximately two hours and 20 minutes. It then lost the signal. It turned back around and again the towed pinger locator picked up another signal, this one lasting about 13 minutes. But the head of the search task force says until they have evidence, they can't be sure it's the plane.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AIR CHIEF MARSHAL ANGUS HOUSTON (RET.), CHIEF COORDINATOR, JOINT AGENCY COORDINATION CENTRE: I need to be honest with you. It could take some days before the information is available to establish whether these detections can be confirmed as being from MH-370. In very deep oceanic water, nothing happens fast.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: And when he says deep, he means water some three miles deep. A U.S. underwater drone called the Bluefin is being prepared to scour the ocean floor near where the latest pings were heard. And as the search continues, so does speculation about what happened inside the cockpit. A senior source inside the Malaysian military tells CNN the plane may have steered a curious course around Indonesian air space, a route that suggests an intent to avoid radar detection.

Let's get straight to the search now. CNN's Will Ripley is in Perth, Australia. He talked to the U.S. Navy captain in charge of the operation aboard the Ocean Shield.

Will.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WILL RIPLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: If this really is the missing plane, and that's still a big if, how could you even begin to describe such a discovery?

COMMANDER MARK MATTHEWS, U.S. NAVY: It certainly would be a miracle if this does turn out to be the aircraft location.

RIPLEY (voice-over): Miracle, a strong word with an even stronger warning from U.S. Navy Captain Mark Matthews.

MATTHEWS: I caution not to be overly optimistic here. We've got some work to do before that we can - before we can say that we have a true contact here.

RIPLEY: Matthews' team is on the Ocean Shield using a towed pinger locator, or a TPL, listening for pings from MH-370's black boxes. Over the weekend, they heard two promising signals in the southern Indian Ocean. One of them held for more than two hours.

MATTHEWS: What I'd like to do before I absolutely say with certainty that it is the aircraft is, one, reacquire the signal, two, deploy the autonomous underwater vehicle with the side scan sonar to map the debris field, and then, three, switch out that sonar with a camera unit and take photographs of what would be the wreckage.

RIPLEY: Slow and tedious work nearly 15,000 feet, almost three miles down. The extreme depth pushing the limits of the underwater drone, the Bluefin 21, that would do a visual search for wreckage.

MATTHEWS: But certainly, you know, we're jumping to conclusions here. We need to definitely reacquire the signal to confirm that it is the aircraft.

RIPLEY: Their biggest obstacle, time. The black box batteries are rated for 30 days, a deadline that's already passed.

MATTHEWS: Cautious measured optimism, right? We certainly want to reacquire it before we say, yes, we've done something good here.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RIPLEY: Caution definitely a keyword out here because, if you think about it, we're now officially one month into this search. One month ago, Flight 370 just simply vanished into thin air. And as of right now, we still don't have any physical evidence verifying that these latest leads are, in fact, connected to the missing plane. But if it does turn out that the plane is in this spot in the southern Indian Ocean, Brianna, it will be so remarkable because, remember, there was no physical evidence guiding the Ocean Shield to this spot. It was simply a team of experts in Kuala Lumpur who looked at the satellite data, did some amazing math and basically said, look, go here, this is our best guess to where you're going to find something. They go there. They put down this TPL and happened to hear a ping in the final hours, really, of the black box battery life. So if it all does shake out, and, again, we don't have any confirmation yet, it really will be quite remarkable.

KEILAR: Yes, an amazing stroke of luck if it does. Will Ripley, in Perth, Australia, thank you so much.

Well now for weeks, sea operations experts have been saying that it's not been about finding the needle but figuring out the haystack. And now that we have what could be that, quote, "haystack," how do you track down the needle. Well, with me now is Anish Patel, president of Dukane Seacom, the company that made the original flight data recorders on Flight 370.

Anish, thanks for being with us.

ANISH PATEL, PRESIDENT, DUKANE SEACOM: Glad to be here.

KEILAR: And, you know, as you know, the sophisticated equipment on board this Australian ship has twice picked up the signals. Do you think that they are the pings from the plane's black boxes? Or what -- what would lead us to believe that they could be?

PATEL: Well, as we've talked about, it's a very unique signature, the 37.5 kilohertz. They shared with us what they heard. It sounded very much like a steady, continuous signal from one of our pingers. So we're very cautiously optimistic.

KEILAR: Yes, 37.5, I think, kilohertz, right, doesn't happen in nature. So it is this very unique signature. You know if it - if this turns out that the full signals are coming from the plane's black boxes, that means that the battery has lasted longer than 30 days. We knew that the batteries could have expired by that point. What's the best case scenario on how much longer the battery can power the pinger?

PATEL: Well, we have some design margin. We've always said that we can get a few extra days. After that, the battery is going to degrade in power output and the sound output is going to slowly diminish. So I would say a matter of a few days.

KEILAR: So it's going to weaken, meaning that you would need the TPL 25, this towed pinger locater, to be closer to it to hear it until ultimately the battery dies?

PATEL: Realistically, yes, as the sound power diminishes, we're going to have to get closer and closer to it.

KEILAR: You said over the weekend, Anish, that the two recorders would not be able to sink their signals. And there's been, at this point, only one signal. Is it possible that maybe the battery on one recorder has already completely died?

PATEL: It could be. Or it's just in a different location. They just haven't picked it up. But they are two independent devices that are not synchronized. So you should, if they're both functioning, at some point hear two signals.

KEILAR: Two sort of sequences of clicks here.

PATEL: That's right.

KEILAR: You know, let's look forward here. If you have search crews, they can find the signal again. How do you find it's source? Is it just about following where the signal gets stronger? Is this sort of a straight line process or it's not that simple?

PATEL: I don't think it's that simple. It's like a game of Marco Polo. You're going to have to listen for the sound, triangulate, get closer, make another pass, try to get closer until you get on top of it. And as Captain Matthews said, then you can do some visual surveillance, map the floor and try to really locate these things for real.

KEILAR: And I think it probably strikes a lot of people, Anish, that no one's really jumping to the conclusion that, hey, this is the black box from the plane. We haven't drawn that connection yet. Obviously it's promising. Is there a situation where the signal could turn out to be false? And if so, is there another possible source that could be making this signal?

PATEL: These are very unique simple devices designed to emit this type of frequency, this type of pulse training (ph). So this is exactly what they do. It's a very unique signature. For it to turn out to be something else would be highly unlikely.

KEILAR: All right. Well, that is fascinating. Anish Patel, thank you for explaining that to us. Appreciate it.

PATEL: Thank you.

KEILAR: Now just ahead, it's one thing to fly around air space, but it is another to completely avoid radar detection. And a Malaysian government source tells CNN that this jet may have done just that. But one analyst says something doesn't add up here.

Plus, we'll go live to the flight simulator to show you how Flight 370 could have avoided detection. This is CNN's special live coverage.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEILAR: Welcome back. I'm Brianna Keilar.

If Malaysia Flight 370 in fact skirted Indonesian air space when it turned toward the Indian Ocean, how did it happen? This new track officials are investigating shows the plane taking off from Kuala Lumpur, then flying around the northern end of Indonesia, possibly to avoid radar detection. CNN's Martin Savidge is inside the flight simulator with trainer Mitchell Casado.

Martin, give us a sense of what this would even look like.

MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, we can show you at least how it would look from the cockpit and on the flight management system and the navigation screen. Take a look here. The triangle is us flying on a course that would have taken us to Beijing. It's at waypoint Agari (ph) here that you can see where things dramatically changed and this flight veered off course.

So, Mitchell Casado has entered in the points that would make it do as described, in other words go off course, cut across the northern peninsula of Malaysia. And then you see this sort of arc here? It's actually the outline of Indonesia, but off shore. So, skirting around the island. To do that would be how many waypoints?

MITCHELL CASADO, PILOT TRAINER, 777 COCKPIT SIMULATOR: Probably 18 waypoints, Martin. SAVIDGE: But not hard to do.

CASADO: No.

SAVIDGE: I mean you could program that in fairly quickly. You'd use something like the flight management system here.

CASADO: That's right.

SAVIDGE: And program those in and be on your way. You don't have to use the autopilot. And we're assuming they did. I mean they - we could be going out on a limb. There is another way to make these kind of maneuvers.

CASADO: There is. It's a very simple switch here. We just dial in the direction that we want to turn, in this case I'm turning left, and you just press the button and the airplane turns.

SAVIDGE: Yes, you can see. So every time you go to where you wanted to skirt around Indonesia, you could make subtle adjustments, not necessarily felt by the passengers or anyone else on board. You could also fly it manually.

CASADO: You could. A little bit more taxing to do that, but technically it could be done, yes.

SAVIDGE: Yes. And then, you know, whether or not this was truly done to hide an aircraft or try to get around radar, that's - that's the real question. I don't know that there is proof positive that they were doing it for clandestine reasons, Brianna.

KEILAR: Yes. So what about that, Martin, and maybe this is a question for Mitchell, it seems easy enough to fly around air space there, but avoiding radar, is that realistic, Mitchell? When you hear that, does that sort of make sense to you?

CASADO: You know, it's counter intuitive to what we're trained, so I have to kind of get out of my training because you're trained to always stay in contact all the time. But if you're thinking about this line of, you know, trying to get outside of normal operations, it is possible to do. So I'm not going to say it's impossible. But it's a lot of work. These guys --

SAVIDGE: We do have a scenario - it's actually my personal one. This is a -- personal favorite here. We'll show you one idea that has been discussed and that is the shadowing of another jumbo jet. And this is what we're trying to simulate for you here. And this is somewhat how it would look. I mean in order - what you're trying to do is fly so close to another large aircraft that your blips on radar would literally merge together. So 370 would hide behind, you know, American Airlines 88 in regards to what was seen by radar. The problem with this, Mitchell, one, it's nerve-racking to stare at a plane this close.

CASADO: Yes.

SAVIDGE: What's it like to fly it?

CASADO: Oh, it's - I mean this is something that goes - again, it's counterintuitive to what we're trained to do. But, I mean, you'd be hitting all kinds of weight turbulence here. I mean you'd be in danger of obviously hitting the other aircraft. I mean it's insane. It's an insane (INAUDIBLE).

SAVIDGE: Would that plane know we were here if we had turned off our electrics (ph) - you know, our transponder and other devices?

CASADO: I couldn't -- no, I don't think they would know if we had our transponder turned off.

SAVIDGE: And keep in mind, Brianna, it would have been dark as well, so that would have hidden our presence.

KEILAR: Yes.

SAVIDGE: It's, you know, it's out there as a thought, but reality wise, I don't know.

KEILAR: Yes. It's almost like something if it were in a movie we would scoff at it as completely unrealistic. Martin Savidge, Mitchell Casado, thank you for explaining that.

So a month into the probe, that's where we are. We have this tantalizing clue now, but we can't (INAUDIBLE) suggest why would the plane go around Indonesia before heading south over the Indian Ocean? Why not cut straight across? CNN's Richard Quest takes a shot at that one.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RICHARD QUEST, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: It starts up here (INAUDIBLE) it comes around the top and this is the area where everybody is focusing on because the plane appears to skirt around the tip of Indonesia.

KATE BOLDUAN, ANCHOR, CNN'S "NEW DAY": Right.

QUEST: Now, many people will suggest the reason it did that was to avoid radar.

BOLDUAN: Many people are suggesting that, but you're -- what I hear from you is that might not be the whole story.

QUEST: I think, depending on the theory that you hear at any given moment, I think what it suggests more rather than just radar -

BOLDUAN: Yes.

QUEST: Because radar - who -- most pilots will tell you, they don't know where radar starts and where radar finishes.

BOLDUAN: Begins and ends. QUEST: But they do know where air space starts and finishes and therefore it could well have been trying to avoid going over Indonesian air space itself right across the country. Now what Indonesia has said, and it's said several times -

BOLDUAN: Show that - show that tighter animation while we - while Richard finishes his thought because I want to make sure people see that.

QUEST: What Indonesia has said is that there is no sign and no evidence of MH-370 being picked up by Indonesian radar. None.

BOLDUAN: Right.

QUEST: Now, what is interesting is, when you look at this, you've got to question, how could they not?

BOLDUAN: Yes. Right.

QUEST: Thailand picked it up. Malaysia picked it up.

BOLDUAN: So you think this is not the full story?

QUEST: I don't know. I would hesitate to say that, but I think you have to raise an eyebrow as to why - look at the way it went. It went vastly up the northeast part, around the tip, down near the side and Indonesia says there is no sign of it on Indonesian radar. And we've asked them that several times concerning that issue.

It then comes down - and what you end up with down here is exactly what -- to use the polite (INAUDIBLE) of running out of fuel, that's exactly at the end of the endurance.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Fascinating stuff. That was CNN's Richard Quest and Kate Bolduan.

We'll be talking much more about the new mysterious clue ahead. And coming up, the Malaysian transportation minister saying it could be hours if not days before the missing plane is found. That's what he's saying. Well, how is this affecting the families of those on Flight 370. We are live in Kuala Lumpur next and we're going to take a closer look at the pinger locator technology, what it can and cannot do. That's coming up. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEILAR: Finding Flight 370 would be a bittersweet moment for many people. On the one hand, it would end a month of frustrating uncertainty, but it would also end any hope for the families that their loved ones are still alive. Malaysian authorities suggested that moment may not be far away.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) HISHAMMUDDIN HUSSEIN, ACTING MALAYSIAN TRANSPORTATION MINISTER: We are cautiously hopeful that there will be a positive development in the next few days, if not hours.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: CNN's Nic Robertson is in Kuala Lumpur.

I mean, Nic, we've heard from some of the families. This has really been a nightmare for them. How are they handling this possibility that search teams could soon confirm that the plane did crash into the Indian Ocean?

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, I talked to a union representative today who represents some of the air crew on board the aircraft who are still missing. He's talking to their families. He says that for these families, they're beginning to recognize that perhaps they're soon going to get some definitive information and that - that, if you will, is sort of helping them at the moment.

But there are a lot of families here, the Chinese families who came to Malaysia to get information from the government. They left over the past couple of days, disappointed, frustrated. They've been saying they just don't want to believe this until they get hard evidence. Either some debris or they get a real confirmation that it is Flight 370 that's at the bottom of the ocean there, a photograph or stronger confirmation.

In the meantime they're saying, look, we're just going to be patient, we're just going to wait and wait for that information. They've had their hopes dashed too many times, but clearly as this gets closer, the pain is going to increase for all of these families, that they will ultimately have to face the inevitable at some point, Brianna.

KEILAR: You really feel for them, Nic, and this investigation throughout hasn't been handled very well and that's been most taxing on them. Is it possible that some family members might not be persuaded by anything?

ROBERTSON: You know, you're always going to face that type of situation and ultimately it may depend on how much of the aircraft is recovered, what bodies, if any, are recovered from the aircraft to convince some family members. There have been conspiracy theories. You know, one of the things that just doesn't go away here, and we heard it again in the government briefing today here in Malaysia, that this notion that some people have survived on life rafts, even that wasn't knocked down by the defense minister today, Brianna.

KEILAR: Yes, some people really holding out hope that there will be survivors. And you can kind of understand that, I think. Nic Robertson, thanks so much.

If you are wondering how you can help the families of those missing on Flight 370, go to cnn.com/impact. There are many pieces there discussing how those families deal with the grief of losing a loved one so unexpectedly. That's cnn.com/impact.

And coming up next, we'll take an inside look at the cutting edge pinger technology and the high-tech drone that is set to scan the ocean floor. Our Brian Todd visited the very facility that makes these devices. What the pinger locator can and also what it cannot do.

Also, we're focusing on the search area as well. Without any physical evidence, should authorities be looking in an entirely different region? Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)