Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsroom

"Ocean Shield" Searching For Black Box "Pings"; Pistorius Takes Stand In Own Defense

Aired April 07, 2014 - 14:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: Bottom of the hour now. I'm Briana Keilar and this is CNN's special live coverage of the disappearance of Flight 370. And today, a possible breakthrough. A ship using advanced U.S. technology has picked up a signal in the water, not once but twice. These pings consistent with a plane's black box pinger. Using gear from the U.S. Navy, the towed pinger locator, seen here, an Australian ship carrying it heard pings twice, once for more than two hours. Later, for 13 minutes. And, importantly, these sounds were distinct from one another as you would expect from two pingers, one each on the flight data, as well as the cockpit voice recorders.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CAPT. MARK MATTHEWS, U.S. NAVY: What I would like to do before I absolutely say with certainty that it is the aircraft is one reacquire the signal. Two, deploy the autonomous underwater 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. But certainly, you know, we are jumping to conclusions here. We need to definitely reacquire the signal to confirm that it is the aircraft.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: Back in Malaysia, authorities confirm that flight 370 was never picked up by radar in neighboring Indonesia. A source inside Malaysia's military tells CNN the plane purposefully flew around Indonesian air space before heading south. This is the only sound people on to hear. The so called pings.

Sounds a bit like a metro gnome and this could indicate that they have found the black boxes from Flight 370. Find the pings with that towed pinger locater, they can find the plane. CNN's Brian Todd has more on this angle. How do exactly does this pinger locater work, Brian?

BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Brianna, it's got some very sophisticated capability. It can go down to about 20,000 feet below the surface of the ocean. It can detect the pinger from up to two miles away. So it does have that sophistication to it and that capability. It also has limitations. They say bad weather and stormy seas could conceivably obstruct the pings from reaching the pinger locater.

Consistently they've said the manufacturers have told us that really it's most effective when you have a confirmed piece of wreckage already found therefore it has a place to start and you can narrow down the search area. Well, clearly, we don't have a piece of wreckage that was found so they put this pinger locater in the water last week.

It was considered a Hail Mary pass, kind of a last ditch effort and lo and behold, it did find something over the weekend. We are cautiously optimistic that it may be the black box signal, but now comes the hard part. They have got to go back over the area where they detected this. They have got to reacquire the signal, Brianna.

It's going to take some parallel runs and perpendicular runs so they can home in on it, triangulate it, and the animation that you're looking at now, that's another device that they're going to deploy. That is the autonomous underwater vehicle, the Blue Fin 21, which is going to go down and take pictures and side scan sonar images of the area where they heard the pings and try to map out a debris field. So these are the procedures coming up. Brianna, they are hoping for the best right now.

KEILAR: And Brian, you said normally they start with debris and then they know where to look for the black box. Has this worked before in this situation where there isn't debris and in a way they can hear the pinger, but they're kind of going in blind?

TODD: It's not worked in this way before. To my knowledge and from what our discussions are with the manufacturers, this is unprecedented. The tow pinger locator has worked in at least instance before where major commercial airlines have had crashes in water, but in those instances the search area was much smaller. They had a point to work with where they knew where the plane went down.

This time they did not. One of those instances was the Egypt Air crash in 1999 in the Atlantic Ocean. The only time that the pinger locater has failed in one of these instances was in the Air France crash in 2009. It went right over the black box. It did not detect the pinger there. The pinger came loose from the black box and may have been damaged so it does have a pretty good track record.

KEILAR: All right, Brian Todd, thank you so much. And I want to talk a little more about this. Joining me now is Jeff Wise. He is a CNN aviation analyst and Sean Crushniki, air safety expert and accident investigator. Jeff Wise, to you first, if these pings are not coming from Flight 370, what else could explain them?

JEFF WISE, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Well, really it's anyone's guess and we will probably never know. There are a lot of things in the ocean that make a lot of noise. This is a very artificial sounding noise so it boggles the imagination that something natural could create it. But we just don't know, really what could cause a false positive. We do know that there have been numerous false positives in this pinger locator search already though. So it is very much in up in the air whether this is real or not.

KEILAR: And obviously, the science tries to avoid this, right, this 37.5 kilohertz is a frequency that doesn't occur in nature, right, so maybe it's a user error situation or what would you think?

WISE: User error might be the answer. As someone pointed out earlier on CNN, there is a lot of material and vessels down in the water in that part of the ocean. Maybe somehow they are picking up one another. It's really hard to say. We don't know. It hasn't been analyzed yet what the other false positives were caused by.

KEILAR: Shawn, this process of evaluating the pings, can you explain why it takes so long, what all it involves, who all is listening to this?

SHAWN PRUCHNICKI, FLIGHT 5191 ASSISTANT INVESTIGATOR: Well, there is certainly numerous agencies that are all trying to listen to this at this point and it wouldn't surprise me if more aren't on the way. Part of the reason why this takes so long is this is a non-directional signal. What that means is when it emanates the sound it goes 360 degrees in all directions.

So that makes it more challenging to try to home in on the location as it were. If it were in -- coming from one specific direction, that might enable you to find it faster, but it would be harder to find it in the first place. That's an important design feature. That's a good thing, but it does take more time.

As we had I think alluded to earlier, we really are kind of doing this backwards out of necessity. That we don't have a debris field where we're trying to pinpoint it. But rather we're casting a wide net and hoping to find it before the batteries go out.

KEILAR: Well, let's say for instance, the battery does go out, Shawn. We just heard a few minutes ago from one expert who said they need to reacquire the signal. But I guess if the battery goes out is there enough information in what they have already been able to gather to help lead them to the right location if this is indeed from the airplane?

PRUCHNICKI: Boy, that's a really challenging question. Here's the problem. I think it is going to be based on the terrain of the ocean in the area. Should we have, should we get really lucky and this general area that they could say, well, we have it pin down to this several hundred square miles.

If we have a really flat seabed, if we get lucky, they might be able to find it with sonar by mapping the ocean floor. However, if the terrain is really rough or rugged, basically mountainous and really rugged that is going to make it extremely difficult to map a large area and hope to find such a small device in a rugged terrain.

KEILAR: Yes, you can imagine with one of the autonomous underwater vehicles we've been talking about, that would be some sort of search. Stick around guys. We are going to have you answer some questions from our viewers in just a few minutes.

Plus up next, we will give you the four reasons to believe that signals the Chinese picked up, separate signals, are from the missing plane and also the six reasons to doubt it. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEILAR: Two ships in two spots heard potential pings 370 some miles apart. Are they hearing the same pinger or is one of the ships picking up something else perhaps? The signals that China's ship heard were picked up using an unconventional method. There are also good reasons to believe it. Number one the frequency doesn't occur in nature. The Chinese ship heard the pulses at a frequency of 37.5 kilohertz.

Also black box beacons are specifically designed to be at that frequency. Number two, there were two separate instances when the pulse signals were heard. The two sets of pulses were heard about a little more than a mile from each other. And number three, you usually know a ping when you hear one because this is what the black boxes should be sending out, which sounds like a metronome. And number four, they're in the right spot. The leader said over the weekend that revised analysis puts the focus more to the south of the search zone.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANGUS HOUSTON, CHIEF COORDINATOR, JOINT AGENCY COORDINATION CENTER: The area of highest probability we think is now probably in the southern part of the area pretty close to where Hiaxun 01 is operating.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Now detractors have a lot to back their doubts, too. Number one, the ocean is a pretty noisy place and the HMS Echo, a British ship in the area picked up sounds that turned out to be nothing. Number two, only one pulse was detected at a time. There are two reporters, the cockpit voice one and the flight data recorder, each has its own pinger. Experts say the devices are not linked so the pings would not sync up.

Number three, these are not ideal conditions and that is really an understatement. Plus video of the searching shows them listening with ear buds, not headsets that would block out ambient noise. Number four, this is fascinating, a spare pinger on the boat could have sent the signal. It's not clear why the crew had it, but a black box manufacturer says if the pinger gets wet, it will start transmitting.

Number five, the pinger locator used is the device meant for divers to hold by hand in shallow water. It is not meant for depths like this. We are talking about water that is 3 miles deep. And finally the underwater search of the vast area started only recently so what are the odds?

But some could say finally searchers cut a lucky break after one disappointment and false lead after another. Next, we are answering your questions including the possibility that the plane may have tried to land in the northern part of Indonesia and whether the black box batteries could last longer in shallow water. Plus the blade runner taking the stand accused of murdering of his girlfriend and a memory from his childhood is raising eyebrows. This is CNN special coverage.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEILAR: Welcome back. I'm Brianna Kielar. You have got questions about Flight 370. We have the experts to help answer them. So let me bring in CNN aviation analyst and author, Jeff Wise and Shawn Pruchniki, I think I have it right there, air space safety expert for Ohio State University, and Com Air Flight 5191 accident investigator.

Jeff, to you first, Kevin asks, can the black boxes be removed and be thrown out of the aircraft? I mean, Jeff, it sounds unlikely, but let's just say is that possible?

WISE: No. It's not possible using -- it's not possible the way the planes are built today. It has been suggested that maybe in the future, manufacturers should consider a system in which black boxes or some kind of recorder are ejected before a plane crashes that would aid in recovery, but that's not how it's done now so the answer is no.

KEILAR: Aid and certainly recovery of what happened if not immediately. That makes sense. Our next question comes from Tamara and she asks so we found more than one potential ping, how long should it take to get a sonar in the water? Shawn, do you think?

PRUCHNICKI: We don't have enough information to go ahead and put that sonar underwater. It's important to understand that that is a much more precise instrument and looking at a much closer area so we need to narrow the field down a little bit more and get some more pings.

KEILAR: Or else it's just a gigantic range where you would have one of these AUVs going down there with sonar trying to find it, right?

PRUCHNICKI: Exactly. You're not going to be able to cover thousands or hundreds of square miles by dragging this around. You will need to fine tune it by getting more data points.

KEILAR: OK, so Patrick has question number three, he asked what is the probability of hearing a cockpit voice pinger within range of the separate tone of the black box pinger out in the ocean? Jeff, what is your answer to this? We have been hearing two pings on some of these kind of audio recordings but not always.

KEILAR: You know, I was trying to get my head around a way to characterize how incredibly unlikely it would be to find these pingers without having any wreckage on the surface to help narrow it down. If you imagine that I write down the name of a random town in the United States, anywhere in the United States, could be in Alaska or Rocky Mountains or Maine and you guess what the name of that town is? The chances are pretty slim. And that's what we're dealing with. If this doesn't pan out, we have got nothing. It is a daunting task.

KEILAR: Let's hope it is something as promising as some of the experts are hoping. Shawn Pruchniki and Jeff Wise, thank you so much to both of you.

And still to come, former Olympia Oscar Pistorious taking the stand. He offers a dramatic apology to Reeva Steenkamp's family.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OSCAR PISTORIUS: There hasn't been a moment since this tragedy happened that I haven't thought about the family.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Was it a murder, though? Was it a deadly mistake instead? Plus just into CNN, model and socialite, Peaches Geldof has been found dead. She was just 25 years old and a friend of Paris Hilton. We have that next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEILAR: Back to our special coverage of Flight 370 in just a moment. But first news just in to CNN, model and socialite, Peaches Geldof, has been found dead, daughter of musician, Bob Geldof and close friend of Paris Hilton. Peaches was just 25 years old, a mother of two children. Her body was found in her U.K. home today. Police say that her death is sudden and unexplained.

She had just posted a picture of herself in her mother's arms. Her mother, TV personality, Paula Yates, died of a drug overdose in September of 2000. Her father in an Irish musician, Live Aid organizer. He writes in a statement that quote, "We are beyond pain. What a beautiful child."

In South Africa, his voice so low that the judge actually asked him to speak up, Oscar Pistorious took the stand for the first time in his own defense today. The Paralympian known as "Blade Runner" is charged with murdering his model girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, last year. He says he mistook her for an intruder. Pistorius often appeared tentative and shaken during his testimony. He broke down and gave a tearful apology to Steenkamp's family.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OSCAR PISTORIUS: I would like to apologize and say that there is not a moment and there hasn't been a moment since this tragedy happened that I haven't thought about the family. I wake up every morning. I can't imagine what I have caused you and your family. I was simply trying to protect Reeva. I can promise that when she went to bed that night she felt love.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Pistorius also said that he continuously has nightmares about the shooting. He then went on to describe parts of his childhood.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PISTORIUS: I grew up in a family where my father wasn't around much so my mother had a pistol. And she would often get scared at night and she would phone the police.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Where did she keep her firearm for instance?

PISTORIUS: She kept her firearm under bed and under her pillow, you know?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Well, here now to examine today's testimony is CNN legal analyst, Sunny Hostin. Sunny, this was pretty dramatic today, what did you make of the testimony?

SUNNY HOSTIN, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: You know, I think he certainly struck the right tone at this point because he really came out of the gate with this apology. It did come across as heartfelt although my understanding in the courtroom is that Reeva's family is stone faced. I think what we heard today is the beginnings of this foundation that he didn't intend to kill her and that his mistake was a reasonable one because, you know, he was the victim of crime in South Africa. He was not on his prosthetic legs, but on his stumps, making him feel more vulnerable.

He was in a state of terror when he thought that Reeva was in bed. We heard a lot about that. I thought it was actually a pretty good day for the defense now. Remember, this prosecutor is known as being a very good cross examiner. So I think the real fireworks will happen tomorrow.

KEILAR: Still to come, one of the questions is was Pistorious on his stumps as he said or was he standing on his prosthetic limbs. He testified that he can't balance himself on his stumps. That he takes them off at night. How key was this testimony to his defense?

HOSTIN: I think it was certainly key because we know that Oscar Pistorious has had this disability since he was a year old. And he has also testified that at night he takes his prosthetics off, puts them next to the bed and in the morning it's the first thing that he does is put them back on. The fact that he would be facing, in his mind, an intruder, without the aid of the prosthetic limbs he has worn his entire life, he would feel vulnerable and his actions were reasonable. That's very key in this case. If the prosecution can't prove premedication that he intended to kill her, they still have this theory of culpable negligence.

KEILAR: And we will be talking to you tomorrow as well about this. Big day tomorrow too. Sunny Hostin, thank you. I'm Brianna Keilar and CNN special coverage of Flight 370 starts now.