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China, Australia Discuss International Search; Search Area Combined Size Of New Hampshire; Search "Most Difficult In Human History"; Five College Students, Five Adults Killed In Crash

Aired April 11, 2014 - 10:00   ET

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

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: The flight's so-called black boxes are now dead or dying. Hopes rise on this morning's upbeat assessment from Australia's prime minister. He met a short time ago with China's president. They discussed the international search effort and each other's vital role in it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PRESIDENT XI JINPING, CHINA (through translator): We expressed our sincere gratitude to Australia. China will continue to take part in the search and maintain close communication and cooperation with the Australian side.

TONY ABBOTT, AUSTRALIAN PRIME MINISTER: They are going to provide ships for the search and we have been very grateful for their help.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: CNN's Matthew Chance is at the heart of the search in Perth, Australia. Let's talk about what he said about the search area. He said they were within some miles of those black boxes, what did he mean by that?

MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: He was referring, Carol, I think to the fact that the search are has shrunken dramatically over the course of the past several weeks since it's been focused here off the coast of Western Australia. Remember, about a week ago, the search area was somewhere in the region of 80,000 square miles, now today it was more like 18,000 square miles.

So still a large area, but one that's much narrower than it was previously. Even despite this, though, he was in Beijing, the Chinese capitol meeting with the Chinese president and he went a little further than any Australian officials have so far done in terms of characterizing the progress that's been made in this crucial multi- national search for the missing Malaysian Airliner. Take a listen to what he had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ABBOTT: We have very much narrowed down the search area and we are very confident that the signals that we are detecting are from the black box on MH 370. I don't want to say any more than that. I want to get the most up-to-date briefing. From what we are very confident is the black box is starting to fade. And, we are hoping to get as much information as we can before the signal finally expires.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CHANCE: All right, well, to pour some water some of the expectations generated by those comments by the Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott. The man in charged with coordinating the multinational search effort, Angus Houston, said that in the past 24 hours or so, there has been no significant breakthrough in the search.

On another negative, there was a fifth ping that was detected by an Australian aircraft above the search zone yesterday. It has now been disclosed that has now been discounted from the investigation and from the search as not being related to the missing Malaysian aircraft. So a very mixed bag of developments over the course of the past 24 hours -- Carol.

COSTELLO: All right, Matthew Chance reporting live from Australia this morning. Let's talk more about this. Jeff Wise is a CNN aviation analyst and author of "Extreme Fear" and Dr. Thomas Altshuler is the vice president of Teledyne Marine Systems, which makes pinger locators. Welcome Gentlemen.

Good morning. Nice to have you here. Jeff, the prime minister said they have narrowed the search area to 18 square miles, which I guess is good, but then the prime minister went on to say that the area where those black boxes maybe is defined by some miles, a smaller area. What do you suppose he means by that?

JEFF WISE, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Well, you know, this is really a crucial time for this investigation. We are getting into our 5th week now. We have no tangible clues, no wreckage, and no debris. This is on pace to be the most expensive aircraft search in history. We have nothing to show for it. The pinger now is dead or dying.

Within the next few days if we don't have something, we are not likely to have anything anytime soon. I think the prime minister is really trying to bolster a sense of optimism especially when he is visiting the Chinese obviously.

Most of the passengers on board the plane were Chinese. Tempers have been running hot because a lot of the passengers' families are complaining that they haven't been given full information. So I think it's really a game of managing expectations trying to keep people's hopes up.

COSTELLO: But Thomas, do you agree with nothing to show for it? They do have these four separate instances where they did pick up sound and they are fairly sure that those pings are coming from those black boxes.

THOMAS ALTSHULER, VICE PRESIDENT, TELEDYNE MARINE SYSTEMS: They have some information that leads them to think that they are in a good position to start doing more aggressive searching and that is what they were doing with the sonobuoys and that is what they ultimately do with underwater vehicles as they put those in. It's a lot of this is how well the data that they've seen coming off of the pings that they have located with the toad pinger locator, how well they correlate or match to what they are expecting to see and how they can model that back to understanding a general location. So as they work on this, they will need to keep on looking for acoustic events until they really feel confident that the batteries are dead and they have deploy AUVs.

COSTELLO: So Jeff, let's assume that the batteries are dying or dead because they are passed their lifetime, their life span, right. They supposed to last 30 days or 35 days past. Are you saying that if those batteries die today perhaps that this could mean catastrophic things for this search?

WISE: Well, I think yes indeed. I mean, even what they are doing right now is unprecedented. The way that you look for an airplane in the ocean is to find floating debris then work backwards to try to figure out where the plane went into the water and then search the area under that presumed point.

They have never been able to find wreckage. They sort of struck out at random and hoped that they would find something in the random part of the ocean. They are putting their hopes on this one signal, but isn't a particularly good match. It doesn't really fit what we would expect to find. And so that is why I think it is a long shot and --

COSTELLO: That is not exactly what they are saying.

WISE: No, not at all.

COSTELLO: They are saying that the signal does match a signal that is coming out of the black boxes. They said that didn't match but that was different technology that came from above and these four separate instances of sound came from below with that high-tech hydrophone, right?

ALTSHULER: Probably what happened there is that either the frequency or signal characteristics didn't look like the simple aviation pinger. I wouldn't want to judge them. But think about what they are built for. They are built to detect submarines which are running quietly. They are 1,000 feet and well below the noise that is coming from the surface of the ocean. They are very, very sensitive. It is probably discounting that detection.

COSTELLO: OK, so Jeff, I guess, I'll just ask you this in spite of what you have just said. Will they deploy those submersibles fairly soon?

WISE: Yes, I think they are going to have to. They haven't had a TPL signal in four days now. It has been quite a while since they have gotten any indication that the pinger is still alive. So the next thing to do is clearly to send down that AUV that under water robot. See if you can locate something that would correspond those pings that were detected.

COSTELLO: Jeff Wise, Thomas Altshuler, thanks so much. Still to come in the NEWSROOM. Lessons from the titanic. And ask why he believes the technology in the search for this missing plane may not be enough to get the job done. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: The search for Flight 370 has been called the most difficult in human history and it is an act comparison to the search of the Titanic. Hunting for wreckage at the bottom of the Atlantic took more than 70 years and like the search for Flight 370 it was also filled with difficulties to focus on some of the problems with the technology.

I'm joined by Jules Jaffe. He is researched oceanographer at the University of San Diego. He helped design the optic technology that discovered the Titanic. Welcome, Jules.

JULES JAFFE, SCRIPPA INSTITUTION OF OCEANOGRAPHY, UCSD: Thank you, Carol.

COSTELLO: I'm excited to talk to you. Thank you so much for being here. You called the technology in the search for Flight 370 lame, why?

JAFFE: I'm sorry if I used that expression. I would say, the technology is inadequate and we could do a better job if we had better marine technology. I think the disproportionality between the size of this boat that they are using and this little yellow fish with one hydrophone on it is a tough thing. You are only in one place at one time and right now we have much search tactics using fleets of unmanned vehicles, which would be a lot less expensive.

COSTELLO: Why don't we have those things available?

JAFFE: We are in a pretty primitive state for doing that partly because it's mostly research and partly because there is not a huge commercial market. I mean, if one of these slides goes down every five years and retroactively realize we don't have the tools to do the job, there is not a huge financial incentive to develop those tools.

COSTELLO: Well, maybe there will be now, who knows. We'll let's talk about the pings --

JAFFE: I hope so.

COSTELLO: Me too. Let's talk about those pings they are detecting. The pings are far from -- the pinger battery could die at any moment. Should we switch to a visual search like the one that you developed in the search for the Titanic?

JAFFE: Yes, you know, the thing about sound is it goes much further underwater, which is why many of the experts you've been having online have been talking about using sonars. You know, you can see a couple of football fields to decide whether an underwater vehicle while you are mapping along. With the visual system, I was trying to think of analogy, sort of limited to half or a quarter of like a basketball court at a time.

And the other thing you have to remember is that these vehicles are moving very slowly, you know, probably the same speed as a fast walker. Given the limited field of view and the limited vehicle sort of movement, it is going to be a long time before you can search 19,000 square miles.

COSTELLO: It's 18,000, that is the number today anyway. Do you see any parallels in the search for this missing jet in the search for the Titanic?

JAFFE: Well, you know, it is a long time. I think it's 70 years later, we've got a lot more stuff going for us in terms of new technology. The technology, the Titanic, when it was lost, there were a number of ships that were close by that had a locus. We knew the path of the Titanic. We didn't see it make a left turn and then go a 1,000 miles in a different direction. So I think we really had a much better idea where it was, maybe uncertainties of a 100 square miles, certainly not the kind of numbers we are talking about today.

COSTELLO: And I've been dying to ask you this question, so why it take 70 years to find the Titanic if we kind of knew where it went down?

JAFFE: I don't think we have the technology for deep submerges. I mean, of course, the Navy has been running submarines for a long time. As you probably are aware of the search for the Titanic was really paid for sort of up-front by going back and looking at Scorpion and Thresher, which were these two Navy assets that we lost. So I just think we didn't have the technology at the time.

It was still pretty deep over 12,000 feet and the best way of going that deep has always been in these (inaudible). And as Bob Bard once described to me when I first started working with him almost 30 years ago, it's a long elevator ride down. You got two or three hours on target and then it's a long elevator ride back up.

COSTELLO: And another question I wanted to ask you, why do you think we had this continued fascination with the Titanic?

JAFFE: Well this is something I've thought about for a long time. These natural disasters that occur with public transportation like the one we are seeing now sort of get us all kind of anxious. I mean, we all fly, we all take planes and trains. The Titanic was a great leveler as you probably recall. They were people in all different classes. You had people in steer age. So I think from a humanistic point of view, it was sobering for everyone to realize that we are here and have the same liabilities in terms of what we do and where we go. That made it a warm story. Plus sort of the fame of the people that were on that ship.

COSTELLO: OK, one more question because I'm finding this really fascinating. When you guys finally located the Titanic after decades. What was that feeling like?

JAFFE: Well, I was on shore. I was fielding media much like this. There was a big feeling of elation. It was a victory for the technology in terms of us that are very interested in ocean exploration. It was really a demonstration to the public that we can go places. We can discover things in the ocean that we haven't been able to do before. It was a huge success.

COSTELLO: Thank you so much. I appreciate your being this morning.

JAFFE: You are very welcome.

COSTELLO: Still to come, a bus filled with students looking to tour a Northern California university ends in tragedy. Stephanie Elam is at the crash site this morning. Good morning, Stephanie.

STEPHANIE ELAM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: A very tragic, tragic turn of events here and we are going to tell you why there are several high schools in Los Angeles that are upset by this event here in Northern California.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: A school trip for students to visit a perspective university ends in a fiery crash in North California. A FedEx crossed the median on a highway and slams head on into a tour bus. Five students, three chaperons and the drivers of both of the bus and the truck were killed. Nearly three dozen more were taken to the hospital after the crash. It happened in Orland, California about 100 miles north of Sacramento. Stephanie Elam is at the crash site this morning. Good morning, Stephanie.

ELAM: Good morning, Carol. We now know the cause that there were 45 children on that bus representing 15 high schools. At those 15 high schools they will have counselors there to help them get through this tragic loss.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ELAM (voice-over): The images are horrifying. A bus full of high school students burst into flames on the side of a California highway after a head-on collision with a FedEx truck.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Everything was in flames already. It was a couple of explosions after that.

ELAM: The truck slamming into the bus full of high school seniors after police say it crossed over the median and into oncoming traffic.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: All of a sudden I heard a sonic boom. When I got there everything was engulfed and it was still spewing up black smoke.

ELAM: The collision leaving both drivers and multiple passengers dead. Eyewitnesses helpless as flames consumed the bus.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A lot of people screaming and begging for help with all the flames and all the smoke. It was just cover your eyes.

ELAM: Emergency crews raced to the scene to help the injured students.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Many of them had cuts, contusions, bumps, minor burns. The ones I saw I know that there was one person when we arrived on scene that was unfortunately on fire.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Screaming for help, don't let me die, just help me.

ELAM: At least 34 people were rushed to local hospitals. Helicopter airlifted survivors. Others were taken by school bus and ambulances to local care centers.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I saw one gentleman on a board and his clothes were gone pretty much. I couldn't tell if his injuries were significant. I just kept praying.

ELAM: The high school students were on their way to visit Humboldt State University this weekend. Just hours after tweeting a picture from inside the bus, crash survivor, Jonathan Gutierrez, posted this picture of the crash scene writing, "I can't believe what just happened. I was asleep and next thing you know I was jumping out for my life."

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ELAM: Can even imagine how scary that would be, but coming out here live, now that the sun is up, you can see they are out here starting to move parts of the bus and the trailer, which is unrecognizable behind it as the investigation continues. We also know that members of the NTSB, Carol, are on a plane making their way out here to continue this investigation, which they say may take months.

COSTELLO: Stephanie Elam reporting like from Orland, California this morning.

Pope Francis has made his strongest condemnation yet of sexual abuse of Catholic clergy. He is asking for forgiveness and pledging to penalize priests who harm children. In is comments at the Vatican, the pope said he felt compelled to take on all of the evil that some have done and said the church must step up it's effort to prevent those from abusing children.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, Malaysia said it will lead the investigation, but needs help with the most critical, the black boxes. Are they up to the task? We'll talk about that next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: For some families of the passengers aboard Flight 370 the leadership of the Malaysian government has inspired much confidence between conflicting reports and misinformation, which is why the statement you are about to hear has some people very concerned.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KHALID ABU BAKAR, MALAYSIAN POLICE CHIEF: We will be leading the investigation. All right, but of course, we don't have the expert to open up the black box and analyze what are the contents of the voice data and the flight data. We have to get experts to do it for us.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: In other words, once those black boxes are found.