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Search for Flight 370; Ukraine Police Exchange Gunfire with Pro-Russian Activists Today

Aired April 12, 2014 - 21:00   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. I'm Don Lemon. Thank you for joining us. Sunday morning in the designated search area, 1300 miles off the coast of Australia. Again, like the day before and the day before, search crews onboard ships and planes are looking and listening for any sign of Malaysian flight 370.

We just heard from the search headquarters, they tell us that 12 airplanes in all will spend the day visually patrolling the ocean surface while 14 ships will sweep the deep water listening for sounds.

Australia's prime minister says there is not a moment to spare.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TONY ABBOTT, AUSTRALIAN PRIME MINISTER: What we are now doing, given that the signal from the black boxes rapidly fighting, what we are now doing is trying to get as many detections as we can so that we can -- so that we can narrow the search area down.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEMON: Search crews both in the air and on the sea have confirmed zero audio detections in the past 24 hours. One group of people's whose patience ran out long ago is the families of those who are on board Flight 370. A group of them met again with airline and Malaysian officials. The mother of a missing passenger is not happy. She says they keep telling her the same things, nothing useful.

CNN's Michael Holmes is in Perth, Australia right now. And that's where this massive multinational search mission is being run.

Michael, this is a drill. Every day the planes take off at daybreak. They return in the evening and report. They saw nothing. What's the frustration level that you're sensing there, if any?

MICHAEL HOLMES, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, you're right, Don, I mean, it must be frustrating for those crews up there. Some of them are doing, you know, 150 hours a month up there in the air and scanning back and forth. And it really does seem had to believe that sixth weeks into this -- we're into our sixth week now and they found absolutely nothing from this plane other than those pings from the flight recorders or believed to be from the flight recorders.

And as you heard the Australian prime minister, Tony Abbott, say there everyone here who's involved in this search really is starting to get close to the opinion that they might not get another ping, that these batteries may indeed be dead. If that is the case they've got to work with what they've got, those four confirmed pings or -- from the data recorders and try to bring down the search area as much as possible and why do they have to do that?

Well, the next step is this submersible, the Bluefin. Takes two hours to lower it down. It can go for 16 hours down. Two hours to bring it back up again, and then time to download the data. It is a very time- consuming process and it travels literally at walking pace which is why they're getting the vessels, the Ocean Shield and the British ship, the HMS Echo, to go up and down and sweep those areas for as long as they can before they finally have to accept that those pingers aren't going to ping anymore.

And then they go to that submersible option, but that's going to be very, very slow and covering an enormous amount of ground and with a very silty bottom there, any wreckage that's down there, all those flight data recorders that are down there, could be buried meters deep in the darkness and depths of the ocean a couple of miles down -- Don.

LEMON: All right. Thank you, Michael Holmes. We appreciate that.

I want to bring in now, CNN aviation analyst and retired British Royal Air Force pilot Michael Kay, CNN aviation analyst and pilot Les Abend, 777 pilot as a matter of fact. Also Mission 31 expedition leader and ocean explorer Fabien Cousteau -- you may recognize that last name, recognize him as well, he's a famous dude.

Also audio expert Paul Ginsburg and CNN aviation analyst and former Transportation Department inspector general, Mary Schiavo.

So how many more days of listening ahead? When is it really too late for the pingers?

It's good to have you aboard now, Mary. When is it really too late?

MARY SCHIAVO, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Well, I think it's probably now they're going to just try to ring the last little, you know, iota of battery life out of it. But I think it's done. Going these many days without it, it's time to wrap the listening session up.

LEMON: Yes. You know, if the black boxes are found, who gets them? Does the U.S. have a stake here? Mary, I want to ask you quickly.

SCHIAVO: No, officially Malaysia technically gets them but they've already said they don't have the expertise so they won't keep them and there's several countries that are able to analyze them. Australia can. They have that capability. Obviously the United States can. Britain and France. And that's about it. So they've got -- you know, they've got four to pick from or put them all on the task force. And they'll have the -- literally the best people in the world.

LEMON: OK. So all four signals detected were within 17 miles of one another. That seems like a relatively small area. Do you agree with that, Fabien?

FABIEN COUSTEAU, OCEAN ENGINEER: I think it's still an enormous task. I mean, yes, in general but I don't know. What you guys think?

(LAUGHTER)

I'm passing the ball on to you.

LEMON: Michael Kay?

MICHAEL KAY, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: I mean, just before the hour we heard Paul just talking about the complexities of not only the analysis but the enhancement. And then you overlay on top of that the problem with temperatures, salinity and pressure, and the way that it propagates through water.

I just think it makes an incredibly difficult task so when we're looking at these four pings that we've heard, I think any one of them could be slightly spurious. And the fact that we're hearing in that specific location is obviously doesn't mean that we're right on top of it. It doesn't geolocate. The pings are all about the strength of the signal rather than geo-locating the signals. So, you know, when you take into -- account all of these factors, it's a hugely complex things.

LEMON: Yes.

COUSTEAU: It makes me feel uncomfortable because at the end of the day, I mean, this is a tiny little sliver of evidence if that -- if this were forensic files so to speak. I mean, we need a lot more to go on. And yet this is the only clue, the only tangible clue we have is those four pings.

KAY: And you look at how we actually to the pings as well. It's through the Inmarsat analysis, through the AAIB. It's not through the normal route which is visual identification of debris.

LEMON: Paul --

KAY: So that makes it even more (INAUDIBLE).

LEMON: Paul Ginsburg, go ahead. I can hear you wanted to weigh in.

PAUL GINSBERG, AUDIO EXPERT: Well, I -- I just wanted to say that we were on a cruise last month actually in the (INAUDIBLE) China and I specifically asked the captain, how far is the horizon from your bridge, the height of your bridge. And he said it's between 17 and 20 nautical miles. And that is -- really once you are down on the ocean, it's enormous area. It's really daunting task.

LEMON: Yes. And I mean, you're the expert on these pings and trying to find then. We haven't -- I haven't spoken to you at least since, you know, we heard about the other pings being located last week. And then hearing, you know, three and then four. I mean, what's your assessment? Many people are saying it's kind of a miracle that they're actually able to hear this.

GINSBERG: Yes, but I -- I agree with Mary. I think that we've heard the last dying gasps unfortunately and now we have to do the best we can with analysis of what we do have. And move forward from there.

LEMON: Yes. You mentioned, Fabien, you said that you were uncomfortable because this is a very small sliver of evidence but it's the best evidence yet. I guess the other evidence would be any sort of physical debris or wreckage from the airplane which we have found nothing and we haven't heard anything about any visual sighting. No one has even mentioned a visual sighting since last Saturday.

COUSTEAU: There are a lot more questions than answers, obviously, and as far as the basis of knowledge it's almost nonexistent except for those four pings. If we could find some physical evidence floating we could track it back through the currents and everything else to a general location and that -- would certainly enhance the -- the idea that the area is a quantifiable, qualifiable area. Or if the sonar, whether it's the Bluefin-21 or other, would pick up a nice trace at the bottom of some object that would really give us a good visual on that possibility, I think that would make it a lot easier.

LEMON: Mary, you know, I was talking to Les Abend in our last show. Les actually did his real job this week. He actually went to -- he took a -- flew to London as a 777 pilot and he said people in the industry, the crew of the planes, the pilots, the flight crew, everyone is talking about this particular story and how to improve and, you know, come up with their own theories.

And you as well, I know that you attended a conference a couple of weeks ago. But I would imagine an investigator just when you're not on CNN, which is probably not a lot of your time, but people are talking to you about this and have many questions about it. This is really -- I mean, people have (INAUDIBLE) about this.

SCHIAVO: Yes, I was at the Air Crash Investigators Conference a couple of weeks ago, is what Don is referring to. And oh, yes, everybody has theories and I get e-mails and things every day. And people -- I mean they're thoughtful people. People send me pages and pages of theories. And everyone wants to help solve it. And it's really kind of encouraging as the whole world cares so much and really wants to contribute.

LEMON: Yes, but how -- I mean where do we go from here? I don't -- is there a lesson to be learned yet because we don't even know what caused it. I think the lesson is, though, in tracking an airplane and how not to lose an airplane.

SCHIAVO: Absolutely. And that was the number one discussion at the Air Crash Investigators Conference is how can we make sure this never happens again. Of course, everyone's conclusion was the constant downloading, the glass box as opposed to the black box theory, or, you know, there are still some other possibilities out there, make everyone subscribe to the systems status update messages, you know, those constant messages of the health of the aircraft through ACARS which goes back to either the engine manufacturing, Boeing, or the -- or the airline, however they set it up or choose to set it up.

But I think the inclusion of everyone is something has to change. Particularly when the cost of this operation is going to be tallied, you'll have a real incentive to change because it's just too expensive to go through again.

LEMON: All right. Thank you. Everyone, stick around. When we -- when we do find this wreckage, someone is going to have to put it together, are they? Are Malaysia or Australia up to this task? I think Mary can weigh in on next. She's actually weighed on this whether or not we would have to put this back together. It depends on if they find the black box and if there's information on it they may not have to assemble this aircraft.

But we're going to talk about -- or reassemble this aircraft. We'll talk about that next and what they're up against.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: When and if Flight 370 is found the task of figuring out what caused it to crash will be a lengthy one, of course. All the pieces, all the parts need to be put back together like a puzzle, maybe.

CNN's Stephanie Elam went inside to the University of Southern California Aviation Institute's accident lab.

STEPHANIE ELAM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The investigators here tell me they go through it piece by piece. They want to get as much of that wreckage as possible together and even then, even with all of that they're able to cull together, they still may not be able to find that one piece that brought the plane down in the first place.

LEMON: Well, let's get back to our panel now. Also joining us is Geoffrey Thomas, the managing director of Airlineratings.com.

Geoffrey, thank you. I have a question for you but I want to get to Mary quickly.

Mary, we may not have to put this plane back together. I've asked you this question before and you've answered it. If the data recorders are found and the information is intact, which you think it will be once they are found, the plane, they won't have to reassemble this airplane.

SCHIAVO: Right. That's correct. And in most crash investigations they do not reassemble the plane. Obviously they sift through the wreckage looking for important clues and major component to failure, et cetera. But if the black boxes have the answer and they can glean what happened from them, then they won't put the plane back together. It's just -- it's a very expensive proposition and it's rare that they do that, actually.

LEMON: Yes. So, Geoffrey, let's just say that, you know, they've been looking for the black boxes so far, they haven't found them. If it comes down to relying upon debris, if Australia handles piecing together the wreckage, are they up to the task?

GEOFFREY THOMAS, MANAGING EDITOR, AIRLINERATINGS.COM: Look, Don, I really do believe they are. I mean, Australia's Aviation Transportation Safety Bureau is one of the best in the world. They've helped nations in the near proximity like Indonesia. They've helped them with their crash investigation. They've actually helped the Singaporeans as well.

So they've got a very, very good track record, very methodical and certainly in the same class as the NTSB and the AAIB, and the BEA in France. So, yes, they are up to the task but I agree with Mary, hopefully the black boxes will give us the information we need because actually recovering this airplane from 4,500 meters down would be an extraordinarily difficult thing to do and hopefully we won't have to do that.

LEMON: Yes. And listen, I'm not -- I have to ask you to double down on my question because -- and this is a compliment really because the air safety record in Australia is really -- is a really good one, especially when it comes to Qantas. And so one wonders if you haven't really had that many air investigations to deal with whether or not you're good and/or experienced at dealing with this kind of investigation.

THOMAS: Well, that's an interesting -- very interesting observation. You're absolutely right. We have never had a jet -- a fatality in the jet era with jet powered airplanes but unfortunately we've had lots of crashes of piston powered planes and also turbine prop planes as well. And as I said earlier, we have helped other countries with their investigations which have involved large commercial aircraft. So I believe absolutely the expertise is there.

LEMON: All right. Do you have a question, Mike?

KAY: I agree with Mary in terms of, you know, it would be best case scenario if the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder deliver absolute conclusions.

LEMON: Yes.

KAY: But one thing that concerns me slightly is this the -- is the whole nature of this mystery and how we can even understand why the aircraft go into the position that it did. And for me that leaves a lot of open questions that I'm actually not sure the FDR and the CVR might answer. So it's best case scenario but the wreckage would allude to a lot more, I think. But I mean, that's probably as everyone else has alluded, that's going to be an impossible task trying to salvage that.

LEMON: Yes. And, Mary, was a TWA Flight 800 and then you also mentioned another crash not in the distant -- too distant past that where they had to reassemble the aircraft to get the information from it.

SCHIAVO: Well, the big reassemble was TWA 800 because the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder combined, they just didn't contain the clues. All there was is a very loud noise at the end of the tape. And that's because the explosion ripped all the wires, and just ripped the plane apart. And there was no more transmission. So it was -- it was an investigation need-based reason to put that plane back together. And it was largely put back together. It was quite a sight to see. It's a training tool now in Virginia.

LEMON: Les? Yes. Les?

LES ABEND, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: I think Mary would agree with me that it depends. I mean it depends upon what the flight data recorder shows us. And if it shows us, you know, enough evidence that we have a definitive idea of the cause, great. But otherwise we may have to reconstruct that airplane, depending upon, you know, what we find out from both of those recorders.

LEMON: Hey, Fabien, at this depth, I mean, how -- is that a monumental task? Or, I mean, is in some way the -- I don't know, maybe the temperature of the ocean sort of preserves the aircraft? I don't know.

COUSTEAU: Well, at any depth this task would be a monumental task. At depths of three or so tons per square inch, to try and bring up a plane or pieces of a plane is certainly an exercise in forensics. That said, it's absolutely feasible with today's technology and with the amount of effort that all these people are putting in there.

You know, it becomes a little bit, to me, a question of prevention or at the very least being prepared for these kinds of issues and this, you know, afterthought of cost should be more of a prevention. For example, the Gulf oil spill or some of these other issues that we've had -- the nuclear meltdown in Fukushima.

All of these are cost benefit analysis of what's the minimum acceptable risk that we take in terms of safety factors versus what the maximum amount of safety we can put into these different platforms so that next time we're ready for it.

LEMON: Yes. All right. When we come back -- right back, our coverage is going to continue of 370.

Also the White House hates scenes like this, masked men lined up behind coils of razor wire. Was Crimea the end of revolution in Ukraine or the beginning?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: More on Flight 370 in just a moment but first we continue to follow the new developments in the crisis in Ukraine.

Secretary of State John Kerry spoke with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov tonight about the escalating violence in the eastern part of Ukraine. Kerry says he expressed strong concern that attacks today by armed militants in eastern Ukraine were orchestrated and synchronized similar to previous attacks in eastern Ukraine and Crimea.

Kerry also threatened additional consequences if Russia did not take steps to de-escalate the situation. The White House responded earlier to the reports of violence by announcing it's sending Vice President Joe Biden there on April 22nd.

Here's a reason for that reaction from the White House. In Kramatorsk, Ukraine police exchanged gunfire with pro-Russian activists today. About 20 men wearing matching -- military fatigues, excuse me, took control of the city's police headquarters. And just about 70 miles away gunmen stormed two buildings including one belonging to police. Three officers were hurt.

Nick Paton Walsh is in Ukraine where the violence is definitely escalating.

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Don, a troubling escalation here in the last 24 hours. We've been traveling around Donetsk to see what's happening in these towns where gunmen, pro- Russian militants have been springing up almost overnight. Once in Sloviansk, they've taken the police station and the local security services building as well.

Very well equipped and armed men. Often in matching camouflage uniforms getting some help from locals who give them food and pull up barricades. Also aggressive towards many Western journalists, too.

Another town, Kramatorsk, we went there to find protests had taken down the Ukrainian flag from the center of that particular town and put up Donetsk separatist one instead. Calm relations with the police who seem to be able to coexist with them but merge later on in the day, reports of gunfire, the Interior Ministry claiming that in fact pro-Russian militia had exchanged fire with Ukrainian police there as well.

So deep concerns now we seem to be seeing weapons more readily involved in the standoff here in Donetsk many are worried, too, because protesters forced the resignation of the local police chief just today. Many concerned, too, about the final response we might see from Kiev where the central government is struggling to work out what to do and we're not seeing many police here really coming out to stop these pro-Russian militants -- Don.

LEMON: All right, Nic, thank you very much.

Malaysia hasn't impressed many people with its handling of this investigation. If the black boxes are recovered, will we trust them to uncover the secret of what happened to Flight 370?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: Frustration with the Malaysian government started early on, beginning with an incorrect flight path that was eventually resolved by the UK company Inmarsat. Now after being told by the Malaysians that every passenger on board Flight 370 had been cleared of any suspicious involvement in the plane's disappearance we have just learned this is not the case.

The Defense minister saying this is still a criminal investigation. And quote, "Everyone on board remains under suspicion as it stands." It's just the latest in a long line of flip-flops from the Malaysians.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SCHIAVO: Very clear we have some big holes and problems and a bit of a cover-up over the Malaysian radar and the Indonesian radar. There's been so many different stories. I mean, I think they have a credibility problem.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEMON: Well, if and it's still a big if, Flight 370's black boxes are ever recovered, it is unclear who would handle the crucial information inside. Malaysia's government admits they don't have the know-how, how to deal with these black boxes.

I want to bring in now Joe Johns, he's live in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Joe, Malaysia is under for its handling of this investigation. What do we know about their plans in the event the black box is found?

JOE JOHNS, CNN SENIOR CORRESPONDENT: Well, we do know they have already said they will actually have to call in an expert to look at this because they do not have the expertise on their own. And we also know that there are at least three countries that can handle it, that would be the United States, the UK, as well as Australia. It's not clear which one of these countries might be preferred.

It's also possible certainly that they could bring in an international working group, a number of different countries involved in this, and they're also concerns about bringing in China because China has a very close relationship with Malaysia and China also had a number -- actually a majority of the passengers who were on board the plane -- Don.

LEMON: So, Joe, Reuters is reporting that Malaysia is investigating its own initial chaotic response. What do you know about this?

JOHNS: Reuters is reporting based on sources that Malaysia's government has begun investigating civil aviation and military authorities to determine why opportunities to identify that plane, to track that plane were missed in those very chaotic hours after the plane vanished.

And note, we here at CNN have been reporting the Malaysian Air Force sent search aircraft on March 8th to the South China Sea and the Strait of Malacca according to sources. But apparently the military did not tell civilian authorities until later. The government has denied this and it's one of those issues that is still under contention -- Don.

LEMON: Joe Johnson, in Kuala Lumpur. Joe, thank you very much.

You know, starting at the ocean, praying for a sign, staring at the motion, I should say, praying for a sign of Flight 370. The search for the missing plane would take a toll on anyone.

And straight ahead, could fatigue make it even harder to find the airliner?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) LEMON: Right now search crews are scanning mile after mile of the Southern Indian Ocean on this the 37th day since Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 went missing. Not a shred of debris has been turned up. Search crews have been doing the same thing. Day after day, and they are getting tired.

The mission may be all that sustains them and find debris, find answers, for desperate relatives of 239 families waiting for any word on their loved ones.

CNN's international correspondent Matthew Chance flew alongside a weary crew.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In the skies over the Indian Ocean search teams scour the surface for any sign of Flight 370. But after more than five weeks into this grueling mission a thousand miles from land, not a piece of debris has been found. And this painstaking work is taking its toll.

(On camera): Let me ask you, we've been looking for this plane since March 8th. And you've been a significant part of that search team. Like huge. Are you frustrated at all that nothing, nothing has yet been found?

SQUADRON LEADER BRETT MCKENZIE, ROYAL NEW ZEALAND AIR FORCE: I would say frustrated. We are -- we're are -- we're disappointed that we haven't found that, none of the aircraft have found anything. From experience, it takes time.

CHANCE (voice-over): On board this Orion P-3 aircraft there's advanced radar and optical equipment to monitor the ocean below. But search teams say their greatest asset is the human eye.

To avoid fatigue, crew members are switched out from the 11-hour flights every other day. In the search zone they scan the water in 30-minute shifts to maintain concentration.

(On camera): Have you spotted anything on this ship?

SGT. SEAN DONALDSON, NEW ZEALAND AIR FORCE: No, no, unfortunately not. We're just going to carry on though. So, yes, next shift of three will be in half an hour. So, we'll just see how it goes.

CHANCE (voice-over): Even after so many weary hours of searching, fatigue has yet to dampen hopes of finding Flight 370.

Matthew Chance, CNN, over the Indian Ocean.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LEMON: So right now 12 planes, 14 ships involved in Sunday's search. They may face rough weather, possible isolated showers. Time is running out. The battery-powered signals from the black boxes may soon go silent. I want to bring back in our panel now. Mary Schiavo, first question is to you.

How would fatigue play into this investigation? I mean, with each passing day does the effectiveness of the search teams fade?

SCHIAVO: Oh, yes, I mean, they know that from various studies that transportation entities have performed. Sometimes even just staring at -- you know, screens we're talking about how could the air traffic controllers have missed this plane. When you're staring at a repetitive task be it a screen or staring at the ocean looking for something, fatigue and kind of a zoning out, if you will, can set in, in as little as 30 minutes. So you have to keep rotating the people just like the gentleman said. They're doing it the right way.

LEMON: And, Paul Ginsberg, what about fatigue for audio technicians working this case? If they get too tired could they miss something important?

GINSBERG: Absolutely. And it does happen. When you are trying to get something that you -- you just can't perceive, you can't hear quite enough, if you're tired you just -- you know, as Mary said, zone out. You need to -- you need to -- unfortunately you need to get up and just come back in half hour and pick it up or be relieved by another shift.

LEMON: I've got a question for you. Do you remember when we were talking about -- when you're talking about sea life being able to listen or hear pings, right? And -- or being able to hear sea life or whatever frequencies, higher frequency, younger ears. Is it better to have someone -- and I'm being quite honest here -- with younger ears to listen for that frequency? Might they hear better because the older we get the higher frequencies go away, right?

GINSBERG: That's correct. And also any hearing loss is additive and irreversible. So it just keeps getting worse and worse and worse. If you were raised in a forest your hearing would be excellent throughout your lifetime. Whereas if you're in a city, it starts to degrade quite quickly. But you're right, on the other hand, what we have here is something that really is above the range of hearing and what they're listening to are translated frequencies down below so that they are within the audible frequency like our simulation.

LEMON: All right. All right. Very good point. Thank you for answering that.

Michael Kay, you were a pilot in the British Royal Air Force. How do you keep motivated here when you're not finding any success? And as you were saying, as you were listening to the story, you said these guys and ladies, they take this personally.

KAY: Yes. It's a great question. I think it's something that we need to be cognizant of in day 37 of this search. I've been involved in a couple of search operations on a much, much smaller scale, but you become emotionally attached and you take it personally responsible. You know, you want to be that crew that finds something. And I think on day 37 there are all sorts of human factors that come into this which ultimately will affect not only operational effectiveness, as Mary was saying in terms of the analysis on operations in the past, but also safety. Safety is absolutely paramount in this. You've got lots of aircraft and ships floating into the area. People are going to start getting tired because of the long nature of the flights on obviously the long nature of the search.

And I think the last thing that Angus Houston needs at the moment is to have some sort of incident in the search area that would just compound the primary objective. So I think it is absolutely key and as someone that's led teams in these sort of types of scenarios, motivation is key, safety is key, making sure that you can identify people are getting fatigued because when you're searching you don't want to be the person that stands down and says, you know, I'm too tired here and hand it over to someone else. You keep going.

(CROSSTALK)

ABEND: And that's where rest is extremely important.

LEMON: That's what I'm going to say. That's why they have rules in place for airlines, especially for pilots, because they can become monotonous when you're flying --

ABEND: Exactly. And that was what I was going on to what Michael Kay is that, you know, as an airline pilot perspective, the mundane part of our tasks, when we're at cruise, you know, keeping a watch over systems and so on and so forth, that's the most fatiguing part of it. Now when we get involved with the approach phase, you know, we're energized, we know we've got a task to perform. But, you know, this stuff prior can be mundane and that's really more fatiguing than anything else for us.

COUSTEAU: And on expeditions, typically you have four-hour or eight- hour shifts and you have multiple crews that relieve. So that you don't get to that point of fatigue and, of course, overlooking something or, worse yet, making a mistake.

LEMON: I'm going to go a little bit more in depth about this but Mission 31, is it 31 Expedition? What is it called?

COUSTEAU: Mission 31.

LEMON: Mission 31.

COUSTEAU: Yes.

LEMON: You're going to be under the ocean for a month.

COUSTEAU: We're taking a team --

LEMON: That can be tedious and monotonous.

COUSTEAU: Yes. Yes. And not only that -- well, not so much monotonous but very tedious because we're tasked with multiple different tasks on the level of science, education, and, of course, filmmaking. In a habitat and outside a habitat that also gives us a slight euphoric sense because we're at pressure depth, we're saturated, right? So that kind of feeling does lend itself to enhancing any kind of effects of fatigue and all that so that there could be mistakes and we have to be extra vigilant not to make any mistakes at that depth.

LEMON: You guys are coming back but quickly, do you get that euphoric feeling -- like, in the air sometimes you get it, like problems are so easy to solve in the air. And then once I land I'm like, what was I thinking when I was flying?

(LAUGHTER)

KAY: It's associated with hypoxia. When you get above a certain level, 10,000 to 12,000 feet, and you have starvation of oxygen you get that feeling of euphoria which makes it harder to identify which is the point about this.

(CROSSTALK)

LEMON: It's almost like -- I noticed it's almost like running when sometimes -- OK. Stand by.

High-tech tools are front and center in the search for Flight 370. Next, we're going to look at sonobuoys and how they could find the black boxes.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: As the underwater sweep continues, sonar buoys dropped from the sky could help to find Flight 370's black boxes deep in the Indian Ocean.

CNN's Brian Todd has been looking into these high-tech devices.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): They are dropped out of a plane, plummet into the sea with a parachute. Descend below the surface, open up their payload and hunt for their target. These aren't bombs or torpedoes, they're called sonobuoys.

COMMODORE PETER LEAVY, ROYAL AUSTRALIAN NAVY: Sonobuoys are essentially a sense of package that's parachuted out of the aircraft. Floats on the surface of the ocean and will deploy a hydrophone.

VAN GURLEY, FORMER NAVAL OCEANOGRAPHER: And once it hits the water surface then it's got some saltwater switches that starts activating different deployments. Everything that's in this canister starts to unwind. There's a bunch of gear in there. Just packed in very nicely. Some of it floats to the surface so there's a radio antenna that talks to the aircraft, so the buoy in the aircraft are constantly in communication, and then the microphones, the hydrophones that actually listen for the signals went a very long strain and they deployed below the canister. TODD: The Australians got this batch from American manufacturers, sent a cargo plane to Indiana in recent days to pick up more than 1,000 sonobuoys. The device was first tested and deployed by the U.S. Navy but not for this purpose.

GURLEY: In an anti-submarine warfare this is one of the tools the Navy has to look for and track enemy submarines so they're under the ocean surface, they don't have a radar signature and you need to use sound in smart ways both actively and passively to find them and then track them.

TODD: On this mission the sonobuoys and the Orion planes deploying them have been modified to detect sounds in the frequency range of black box pings. Sonar operators on board the aircraft are manning computers to receive and analyze the signals.

Sonobuoys are dropped in a pattern, 84 of them at a time. They have a shorter range to detect signals than the towed pinger locator, but they're durable.

GURLEY: The beauty of these things, the sonobuoys, once you put them out they stay out there for a long time, up to eight hours.

TODD: Then they expire and sink to the bottom.

(On camera): While they're deployed the sonobuoy can go about 1,000 feet down. So how can they detect signals possibly from black boxes which could be as far down as 14,700-plus feet? Well, experts say the sound moves through the water in a manner that it can be detected further away and with good weather, signals are a lot easier to hear.

Brian Todd, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LEMON: All right. Brian, thank you very much.

With time running out or already ran out on those black boxes, what's next? We'll talk about that, coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: Back now with our panel of experts.

Fabien Cousteau, we've been talking a lot about challenging marine environments. You're working with a unique underwater project that we have been talking about a little bit. Tell us about Mission 31.

COUSTEAU: So Mission 31, I'm taking six aspiring aquanauts to live and work underwater at the only undersea marine laboratory for 31 days. And that allows us to experience the underwater world in a way that is very rarely afforded.

LEMON: And you know, it's -- we've learned a lot about the ocean in this particular case. It's sad that it took this incident to do that, but there's so much about the ocean that we don't really know. Much of the Indian Ocean that they're searching for this plane and the black boxes. It hasn't even been mapped.

COUSTEAU: You think that the last three generation or last 100 years of ocean exploration, we've explored less than 5 percent of our oceans and presumably it's -- represents 99 percent of our world's living space within which about 95 percent of our biodiversity lives and thrives. So there's a lot down there for us to explore and discover, and we just haven't had the opportunity to live on that frontier long enough to start really digging up those mysteries and being able to get that human ocean connection.

LEMON: How far down will you be?

COUSTEAU: Well, we're at three atmospheres, which is pretty reasonable. If we can still breathe air, and three atmospheres is 66 feet, that where we're going to be based, but it allows us -- as opposed to being based on a ship, it allows us to go scuba diving for 10, 12 hours at a time and come back to that habitat instead of having to go up after 45 minutes.

Of course, it's depth and pressure dependent, but basically it does afford us to go deeper, longer and further, to film, to do some scientific experiments, bring back data and, of course, to be able, in this particular case, for 31 days, to broadcast live to the world and connect with people through the advent of Twitter and Facebook and using your Nokia device, or whatever you want, to communicate with the average person, which has never been able to happen before.

LEMON: Yes. And Fabien has invited me. I'm going to go if the bosses will let me.

(LAUGHTER)

OK. So we'll go down --

COUSTEAU: We look forward to having you down there.

LEMON: Yes. I -- it's fascinating. I've been telling everyone I'm fascinated by the ocean. And especially my favorite documentary is "Blue Planet" with David Attenborough from the BBC. It's just amazing. It's like six or eight different hours of things, you know, from the deep, to aquatic life, to everything. And so it's amazing.

You know, we've been talking about different scenarios of what happened to the plane, you know, before it presumably ended up in the Indian Ocean. And you remember we were doing a simulator, with Mitchell and with Martin, and you were saying, if in some of these scenarios they would have had masks on, oxygen masks on, right, and Les, when flying, did his normal job as a 777 pilot and went on a trip, and then demonstrate to us, tell us about what these pictures that we're going to see.

ABEND: Well, it's just a demonstration of how cumbersome it can be in an emergency situation, if you've got a smoke/fire situation, even a situation where you have a decompression. That would be the same mask in either case. And you have to communicate through that mask. With a switch on the control wheel, and go through a checklist and your vision is limited, as it would be very even more limited by smoke and visibility in the cockpit.

So it's -- it's something we don't practice very often. Even in a simulator, because it takes so much time to do it.

LEMON: Yes. Go ahead, Mike.

KAY: We've been talking a lot about this. Is there a scenario that you can envisage where you had some sort of mechanical failure and wouldn't be able to get those masks on? Because from what I'm led to believe, through our conversations, that's the number one priority in any emergency.

ABEND: Well, we were talking about that today coming back from London. And you know the possibility could have been that it might have exhausted their supply of oxygen by having a high pressure, high- stress environment like you would scuba diving. The other thing was, if it wasn't maintained properly, it could be that those valves were off for the crew.

LEMON: Right.

ABEND: And that's -- I don't want to make any speculation on that, but that it's happened.

(CROSSTALK)

LEMON: And we have talked about that. Mary Schiavo, remember when we -- I think, Mary, your response was, who knows. If they're in an emergency situation, it's a catastrophic failure of some sort, if they're going to, you know, go through all of the motions, they're just trying to keep the plane in the air and to save all the passengers and to get to an altitude where they can get fresh air.

SCHIAVO: That's right. Exactly. The Valujet scenario.

LEMON: Go ahead, Mary.

SCHIAVO: Well, again, in the Valujet scenario, they didn't get their masks on. It turns out that the pilots weren't adequately trained. It's not the pilots' fault, they didn't have the training. But there have been other situations where they haven't been able to get the masks on. And it's something that they have -- Les said, I mean, Les is so right. It's all in the training. You have to know where it is, how to get it on and how important to do that. And so it all just comes back to, you know, basically how well were they trained, if they had an emergency, how well were they rained to do it?

LEMON: Yes. And it's interesting, as Paul said. Pre-planning, as everything is out there looking now for the black boxes and listening for the blacks boxes. When you have an emergency, Paul, you know, you may have go -- you may have a check list in -- were training. But then when it actually happens, you go, oh you know what? And you don't know what's going to happen.

GINSBERG: That's right. That's right. When the real event happens, you just try not to panic, to be calm and to go through whatever procedures you've been trained. This is just a function of how well you've been trained. How experienced you are.

LEMON: Yes.

ABEND: We call it muscle memory.

LEMON: Muscle memory. Yes. All right. You guys are amazing. Thank you so much for helping me out through this hour. Thank you, Mary, thank you, Paul. Appreciate you, Mike, and of course, Les and Fabien Cousteau.

I'm Don Lemon. Thanks for watching. "BOURDAIN PRIME CUTS" begins right now.