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Flight 370 Families Blame Airline for Late News; Flight 370 Families Hold All-Night Vigil; A Look at Black-Box Technology; Viewer Q&A With Experts; Blade Runner Takes the Stand; Mickey Rooney Dead at 93

Aired April 07, 2014 - 15:30   ET

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

KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Right now, it's the bottom of the hour. I'm Kyra Phillips.

And this is CNN's special live coverage of the disappearance of Flight 370.

And, today, a possible breakthrough. Right now, search crews are working around the clock trying to find the source of two mysterious pings. The question now, are they from Flight 370? U.S. Navy equipment, seen right here, has picked up electronic pulses deep in the Southern Indian Ocean.

These signals are on the same unique frequency as pings emitted from black-box recorders and both are unique which is what we would expect, one on the flight-data recorder, the other from the cockpit-voice recorder.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CAPTAIN MARK MATTHEWS, U.S. NAVY: What I would like to do before I say with certainty that it is the aircraft is, one, reacquire the signal, two, deploy the autonomous underwater vehicle to map the debris field and, three, switch out that sonar with a camera unit to take photographs.

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

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIPS: Now, it is Day 31 since the plane vanished, and those batteries on the black boxes may die at any moment, if they haven't already. This fact is only adding to the urgency.

The air search is set to resume at daylight -- as daylight breaks, rather -- and high-tech devices will continue to comb the sea looking for any sign of this aircraft.

Now, it's been an ongoing issue. Flight 370 families say they learn the latest on the search after news outlets do, and in the case of the possible pings, well, it was a Chinese reporter on the ship, not the Australian search command, that actually broke that news.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This afternoon, the rescuers have heard the ping signal every second, and the signal lasted for one minute and a half -- one and a half minutes.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIPS: Now, my next guest didn't speak with Flight 370 families, but he has helped them behind the scenes.

He actually advised Malaysia Air in the days immediately after the plane vanished, spending 10 days in country.

Ken Jenkins is an aviation crisis consultant, spent 10 years handling emergency response for American Airlines. He's joining me now from Dallas.

So, Ken, first of all, how difficult is it for a company to control information when there is such intense scrutiny and media coverage?

All this happened so fast, and as you well know, families have not been happy with the way information has been disseminated.

KEN JENKINS, AVIATION CRISIS CONSULTANT: Good afternoon, Kyra.

It's very challenging for the airline and the government actually to control the amount of information and how it; coming out in the age of social media, as you know, with Twitter and Facebook.

And in one of the briefings I saw last night on -- I believe actually on CNN, Angus was talking about having reporters on the ships, and they're sending out information, right away.

So, I'm not surprised to hear that families are hearing it from the media oftentimes before they hear from the airline itself.

PHILLIPS: Now, you were right there within the control center, and you say -- well, I was reading that you said, from what you saw, Malaysia Air was prepared, and it was doing a good job.

But as you know, from the very beginning, families have not been happy with the way the airline has handled all the information, because they get a piece of information, it ends up being wrong, or they are told one thing and it ends up being changed to another.

It's just this constant back and forth. So, how do you justify what they're doing is a good job, and do you think they're getting better?

JENKINS: The reason I think that they were doing a good job is because, one, the number of people that they had deployed to respond to families. They had Malaysia Airline employees that were sent to Kuala Lumpur family assistance centers and also to Beijing.

They also established a family support center that was operational 24 hours a day. And they would reach out through the family support center call center and also would take calls from family members as they came in.

But understanding that the families were upset, I could certainly see their perspective, as well. They suffered through a traumatic event, and not having any kind of debris or wreckage to understand how their loved ones are doing, they're frustrated and they're angry.

But the airline can only provide information that they know to be factual at the time they give it, and that information is coming from individuals outside of the airline like the Malaysian government, the Australian government and others.

PHILLIPS: So when you were there in the control center, you got a vibe from the entire environment.

How did you advise these leaders? What did you tell these guys within Malaysia Airlines?

JENKINS: We would share with them information such as how often they should brief families, particularly when they had new information that they could vet to be factual, to not hide any information, to share everything upfront, to work with families on a daily basis, establish family assistance centers so that family members would be comfortable.

They would have a place to stay where they could feel safe. They were housed. They were fed. They had grief counselors if they wanted access to a grief counselor and medical attention, as well.

So, we were trying to make sure that those kind logistical items were taken care of so the families would be comfortable, knowing that many of them weren't at their home location.

PHILLIPS: I know you may be headed to Perth soon. I hope you'll talk to us again. Ken Jenkins, thanks so much.

JENKINS: Thank you, Kyra.

PHILLIPS: Now, in Beijing, families are holding a one-night vigil to mark the month since the plane disappeared and turned their live upside down.

CNN's David McKenzie is joining me now from Beijing. So, David, one month, this must be an enormously difficult of a milestone for these families.

DAVID MCKENZIE, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: It is extremely difficult milestone, Kyra, and we have hardly seen a dry eye in the room.

In the hotel behind us, they've lit candles through the night and praying, holding vigil for the family members of theirs that were on board Flight MH-70, you know, some of them still telling me they have some kind of hope, but mostly at this point, they are exhausted and they're waiting for some kind of concrete information.

All the leads that we have been talking about through the last few days, especially in the last 24 hours, they don't want to necessarily believe that this is proof that this plane went down.

They want some kind of physical evidence, and through the night here, over the hours, they are in effect mirroring the flight that happened a month ago.

At different times during the night, they are remembering when the transponder went off, when maybe the plane changed direction. They are really tracking the flight, a month on, and, yes, it's a very, very difficult time.

Kyra?

PHILLIPS: David McKenzie, we will stay in close touch. Thanks so much.

And you've heard a lot of talk about the black boxes and the pingers on them. We have actually got black box in studio, and Kit Darby is going to come back with me, the pilot whom we heard from earlier.

He's going to explain exactly how this worked from the outside and the inside. That's coming up, next.

Plus, a lot of people tweeting questions about the latest developments of Flight 370. We have our experts on hand to answer those questions, ranging from taking another look at satellite images to an actual moving debris field.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PHILLIPS: And welcome back to our special live coverage.

Finding the wreckage of missing Flight 370 would only answer some questions around its disappearance, but for more answers, investigators need the black boxes, right, like the one that I have with me now?

They could give vital clues to the plane's fate. How exactly do they work? That's why we're keeping Captain Kit Darby around with us to really go into the details of why this is so important.

I think we've pretty much set the stage for that, but a lot of people don't understand what is in here, how it works, et cetera, and how far we have come, actually, right, from a lot of the older black boxes.

KIT DARBY, RETIRED UNITED AIRLINE CAPTAIN: The old days it was etched on metal tape.

PHILLIPS: The foil recorders, and we were talking about that.

DARBY: And then Mylar. Then it was plastic.

Now we have it's basically like a thumb drive. We have a solid-state drive inside, encased and insulated in a stainless steel container designed to protect it from incredible deceleration, water pressure down to 20,000 feet, incredible temperatures from fire.

As a matter of fact, the whole can burn away. As long as that little capsule with the memory in it, they can read it afterwards.

PHILLIPS: So, basically, inside this box, would you say somewhere in the middle, with insulation and also that thermal block that you mentioned, we would find -- like how big do you think? How big of a flash memory?

DARBY: Looking at the pictures of it, which, I mean, as a pilot, it sort of operates behind the scenes for us, pretty much always on from the time you start your checklist until the time you park the plane, so it's always there. So, we don't get our hands on it very much.

In this case, the drive is pretty large. It takes about half of it on one side.

PHILLIPS: Oh, wow.

DARBY: And then controller boards and basically a computer that has software.

And what it generates you can't read directly. You have to take it into a software program to interpret the information.

PHILLIPS: OK, but that's inside. We will go back inside in a minute. This is the locator beacon.

DARBY: They are 30 days guaranteed. And there is a 90 day model that most airlines have not chosen to implement yet.

PHILLIPS: Why is that?

DARBY: I don't know. It may be a cost item. They don't just have one, they have back ups for every airplane so airlines are buying thousands of these at a time.

But there is a stronger battery, and a few airlines have chosen to take it. In this case, it looks like we found it.

There is also other information coming in. There is a box near the cockpit that gathers all of the information up to 146,000 data points go into it.

That's also -- there is another recorder that we don't talk about much that is used for tracking the flights and checking pilot performance, and that's a removable recorder. If this airplane is intact that may survive.

This one's designed to survive the worst conditions.

PHILLIPS: OK, and there are obviously two very important things in here. There is the data, and then there is the voice recorder.

Now --

DARBY: Two boxes.

PHILLIPS: Two boxes? DARBY: Another box similar to this.

PHILLIPS: Two boxes, that's right. Two separate boxes.

But let's say -- I mean, data is our best hope here, right? And you were -- explain why.

DARBY: Well, the --

PHILLIPS: Versus the voice.

DARBY: What the plane is doing, if we have the flight-data recorder, we're going to know what the plane did, where it went, how fast it went, how high it went.

We're going to know all about the plane, about its control surfaces, its engines. We're going to have everything we need to know what the plane did.

The trouble is the motivation for why it did whatever it did is contained in the voice recorder, and the voice recorder is only good for two hours. This flight went many hours past that.

PHILLIPS: So it records over?

DARBY: It records over.

PHILLIPS: It loops.

DARBY: It does. Think of it as a loop tape. It's not that same way, but it works the same way.

So, the event when it happened, when he turned around, perhaps descended down and flew south, eventually, that information is not going to be recorded, so unless someone is talking to us towards the end, we're not going to know the motivation.

We will know exactly what the plane did, but not why it did it.

PHILLIPS: So when it comes down to it, we want the box that has the data?

DARBY: That one's going to have current information. The voice one's going to be recorded over. Unless he's talking on the way down, we may not know why he did it.

PHILLIPS: Wow. And that's what everybody wants to know.

DARBY: Yeah, the motivation is the secret.

PHILLIPS: The motivation.

Kit, thanks so much.

Next, we are answering your questions about the missing flight. Chris writes in, "Now that the probable crash area is found, have the archive satellite images from the beginning been reexamined?"

Our experts are up next to answer that question and many more.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PHILLIPS: So you've got a lot of questions, and we've got the experts to help answer them.

Let me bring in, once again, CNN analyst and ocean-search specialist Rob McCallum. Also, Steve Wallace is back with us, former director of the FAA's Office of Accident Investigation.

Rob, let's go ahead and start with you. Sammy writes in and says, "Where is the debris? If they are in the search, then why don't they see any pieces of that plane?"

ROB MCCALLUM, CNN OCEAN SEARCH ANALYST: You know, it could be for a couple of reasons. The first is that there may not be a lot of debris. The aircraft might not have broken up in a big way on the surface, and so there might not have been a lot of debris generated.

But if there was debris generated, it's a very, very big ocean out there, and you know, it was several days after the accident that searchers first got to this area. It could simply have drifted away.

PHILLIPS: So, Steve, here's one for you. And actually I have another question and follow up, but let's get right to the viewers, first.

Chris asks, "Now that the probable crash area is found, have the archived satellite images from the beginning been reexamined?"

We don't know, but should they be reexamined, Steve?

STEVE WALLACE, FORMER DIRECTOR, FAA'S OFFICE OF ACCIDENT INVESTIGATION: I really don't think so. We had images that have been completely discounted, you may recall, like on day one or two.

They had these Chinese satellite images, which analysts concluded that the things on those images were just way too big to be the type of debris that would see small, floating objects.

So, I think the investigators would do as this questioner suggested if there were any reason to, but I'm not aware of one at this point.

PHILLIPS: OK. This next question is for you, Rob. A viewer asks, "Can the plane be partially afloat underwater with the black boxes inside and moving, explaining the two audio events 300 miles apart?"

You were sort of going there, which is why I wanted to follow up with the first question that was thrown to you about how intact that aircraft could be.

MCCALLUM: No, I don't think the aircraft could float in the water column. Once it floats with water, it's got very weighty components to it, the landing gear and the engines, of course.

So, it's not going to remain afloat in the water column. It's going to be negatively buoyant. It'll go to the bottom.

PHILLIPS: OK, last question, Steve, who is a viewer, asked, "Flying as high and slow as possible to save fuel, would it have been possible to reach Australia with the original fuel quantity?"

What do you think, Steve?

WALLACE: Well, we have to calculate that. Actually, the airplane -- you don't want to fly as slow as possible. It's not -- it doesn't get better mileage at a slow speed. The airplane is designed for one purpose, which is to be highly fuel efficient at a fairly high speed at a high altitude.

Now, you would have to look at the fuel load and the power settings to calculate as to whether it could have reached Australia.

I think that this Inmarsat data with the pings is some of the best data that we've had in this investigation, and that would show that it did not go to Australia.

PHILLIPS: Let's see if we have time for one more question. That does it for what viewers throughout this hour have for you guys, but, Rob and Steve, maybe both you can both jump in on this.

Chad and I were just talking about the fact that the cyclone came through this area and the speeds, right, the current, the speed of the current.

What are your thoughts about that impacting finding something, You know, a piece of that aircraft? Rob?

MCCALLUM: It certainly could have had an impact. You know, if you had a piece of debris which is partially afloat, once you put a cyclone through there, a hurricane through there, you're getting a lot of wave wash, a lot of wave action and eventually something is going to fill up with water, lose buoyancy and sink.

So there may have been debris for a couple or three days, and then after the storm, it's gone.

PHILLIPS: Rob, Steve, we'll talk a lot more. Thanks so much.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you.

PHILLIPS: Much more coverage of the missing plane coming up.

Plus, a big day in the Blade Runner's trial, Oscar Pistorius taking the stand in his murder case, he immediately apologizes and then reveals something about his childhood that has a lot of people talking, now.

You're going to hear his testimony, coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) PHILLIPS: All right. From 68 to two, the NCAA basketball tournament final is tonight with a matchup that features two basketball powerhouses, of course.

The 2011 and 2012 champions will face off tonight for this year's title. Number eight seed Kentucky features five freshmen starters, and seven-seed Connecticut -- 70 seconds?

Only 70 seconds to talk about this -- coming off a win against the tournament's top-seeded team. Tipoff tonight at 9:10 Eastern.

We will be back in 70 seconds.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PHILLIPS: Oscar Pistorius took the stand for the first time in his own defense today in South Africa. The Paralympian known as Blade Runner is charged with murdering his model girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, last year. He said that he mistook her for an intruder.

Pistorius appeared shaken during parts of his testimony, his voice at times so low that the judge asked him to speak up.

He began a tearful apology, though, to Steenkamp's family.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OSCAR PISTORIUS, BLADE RUNNER, ACCUSED MURDERER: I'd like to apologize, and say that these low moments and there hasn't been a moment since this tragedy happened that I haven't thought about your family.

I wake up every morning, and you're the first people that I think of, the first people I pray for.

I can't mention the pain and the sorrow and the emptiness that I've caused you and your family.

I was simply trying to protect Reeva.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIPS: Pistorius opted not to appear on camera while he was on the stand. He went on to describe parts of his childhood, detailing how his mother slept with a pistol underneath her pillow for protection.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PISTORIUS: I have terrible nightmares about -- about things that happened that night when I wake up and I can smell -- I can smell blood and I wake up to being terrified. If I hear a noise, I wake up just in a complete state of terror, to a point that I'd rather not sleep than fall asleep and wake up like that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIPS: Pistorius spent just over 90 minutes on the stand. His lawyers asked to end early because the 27-year-old was exhausted.

Well, he wasn't the tallest, but of all of the actors who had grown up in front of the camera, Mickey Rooney may have been the biggest.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MICKEY ROONEY, ACTOR: They say there's something about a high-class ice-cream soda that makes a fellow feel as though he's (inaudible).

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Ain't that the truth?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIPS: Mickey Rooney died Sunday at the age of 93, his death confirmed by the L.A. County coroner.

As you know, Rooney sang. He danced. He acted. He married eight times, by the way, and he worked for 90 years, give or take a decade or two when his popularity waned a bit.

But here at the time of his death, Mickey Rooney was still working and still irreplaceable. Rooney was 93.

Thanks for watching, everyone. "THE LEAD" with Jake Tapper starts right now.