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Erin Burnett Outfront

Search Area For Missing Jet Likely To Shift North; American Detained in North Korea

Aired April 25, 2014 - 19:00   ET

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

ERIN BURNETT, CNN HOST: Next breaking news, a search area for Flight 370 moving. Plus, final texts from the passengers. How to retrieve them. A live demonstration.

And outrage. The South Korean ferry accident was no surprise. Tonight, the builder's record of disasters at sea. Let's go OUTFRONT.

Good evening, everyone. I'm Erin Burnett. OUTFRONT tonight, we begin with the breaking news. Word just in from a U.S. Navy source, the search area for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 is moving. It's shifting north. The targeted underwater search where they were looking is pretty much done. Fifty days after the plane vanished, this hour they are no closer to finding the plane than they were on day one.

Now officials say they're going to move that search area north. If the Bluefin-21 underwater vehicle comes up empty handed when it completes its current mission, which could happen in the next hour or so. Then the search will move towards an area where the first ping was detected.

Meanwhile, the things they have to look for those pings and the leads are diminishing. A British submarine that was listening for more pings is pulled out of the search. That lead has completely gone cold because any pings would be dead now via the battery. And a British Navy ship that was standing in the ocean is now headed back to port and going to refuel.

Miguel Marquez is in Perth tonight. Miguel, the search area has moved many, many times, but now it's moving again, and we should emphasize they have been looking in the most promising area. So they're now moving a little bit off of that. Is there new information or are they just saying we're going to move on to the second best hope?

MIGUEL MARQUEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, they're going with the best information they have and let's keep in mind this is the first place they have searched in the Southern Indian Ocean. We expect that they are probably through 100 percent of that initial search area, and officials here saying they're going to continue search using the Bluefin in adjacent areas of that first search and then this move north.

Now what that actually means is a big question. It's not clear they can do that with the Bluefin or whether they're going to have to reset everything. We know the Ocean Shield that the Bluefin is on cannot be refueled at sea. They can bring supplies on to it, but it can't be refueled. So it will eventually have to come into port, take on fuel, take on supplies and perhaps new gear and then head north that could take some time -- Erin.

BURNETT: Miguel, you know, they obviously haven't found anything under the ocean yet. So they don't really know exactly where the plane is. They think they might know, but they don't know. So are they going to keep looking on the surface, looking for debris? We heard this week a piece of debris may have washed up on the beach. You went to that location. That wasn't it. Are they going to keep looking on the surface or no?

MARQUEZ: Look, we've heard for some time now they want to end this, the surface search. Because even if they do find debris at this point, it's going to be negligible to finding the actual plane. So it's not clear why they've continued to search other than the families clearly want some physical certainty that the plane is down there. The second ping or really the first ping that they're going to go to now is probably the second best hope.

It was certainly of the four pings they got two of them were very strong. They started with the strongest and now they're going to the longest ping. So perhaps this is it, but it's going to be a much more tricky situation to search in that particular area -- Erin.

BURNETT: Miguel, thank you very much. Reporting live on that big news tonight, which is that they are going to be done in that current search area and are moving it away from the most promising search center. So what are investigators going to do next?

Joining me now our own Richard Quest from Kuala Lumpur and Tim Taylor, the president of Tiburon Subsea Services. Richard, let me start with you in KL. What is the next big move in the search?

RICHARD QUEST, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: The next big move is both practical, and it's with the agreements between Australia and Malaysia. Everybody is looking two or three steps ahead. If Bluefin does not succeed in the narrow search or the medium search, you go to a long-term searching plan. That means the assets that will be required, the costs that will be involved. The manpower that needs to be deployed. You can only do that when everybody has sat around and come up with a master plan.

BURNETT: All right, well, the master plan, Tim, is going to involve some changes. Right now, we have been relying on that Bluefin-21. There are several different things they could do. The U.S. Navy has the Orion, the Remus 6,000 and the Remora. Let's start with the Orion. How different is this from the Bluefin, which is obviously down there now looking?

TIM TAYLOR, PRESIDENT, TIBURON SUBSEA SERVICES: It does the same thing as far as collecting sonar images, but it is a towed array. Meaning you have to let it out on a cable. And if it's three miles deep, it's going to have to let over ten miles of cable out to get to the bottom and tow it.

BURNETT: So it can get stuck on things?

TAYLOR: If the terrain down there is rough, it doesn't view the bottom as well. It doesn't contour to the bottom where the AUV will stay with the bottom and get you much better imagery and it does have trade-offs. Everybody thinks because it's down there for 24 hours, it doesn't have to come up --

BURNETT: Sending up real-time data.

TAYLOR: It has to turn. When it goes to turn, it has to reel everything up, driveway up current, and that could be more time than it would take to turn an AUV around. So they might not be getting as much data.

BURNETT: And the data coming up on that wire, yes, you're getting it as it's happening, but I guess, you're losing some resolution as a trade-off for that?

TAYLOR: A lot of these things they say they cover 3,000 meters. But if they do cover 3,000 meters, the resolution is so low and the frequency they use is so low that you wouldn't see a plane. So they have to bring it down to a sweet spot where they can see that bottom. And when they do, it's close to what the AUVs are bringing up and it's not a great -- it's the same option, but a little bit more difficult.

BURNETT: It's pretty incredible when you said it might be down there and not even see the plane. To give everyone a sense of how difficult this is, Richard, they're now moving the search area, expanding it a little bit. They had hoped, right, that they heard this most promising ping, they were going to zone right in on that area and find it. They say that the ocean floor down there is not mountainous. It's rolling. So they thought they might be able to see it. Has the most promising lead gone cold, or do you think they're going to keep combing through that same area again and again?

QUEST: Well, assuming that they have absolute confidence that they have covered this close area properly and thoroughly and there is no reason to doubt that, then going to the next, you're literally moving forward from the bulls-eye to a little bit further and a little bit further and a little bit further. So now they're moving from the narrowest, which was around the second ping, the 13 minutes, they're going slightly northwest towards the first ping because that gave them the longest, more than two hours worth of location.

It's going to take more time because you're doing it slow. You're doing it low, and in this case, we believe that the terrain is slightly more rugged, but it is certainly deeper. So there are no easy options here. Any idea that they're going to have a lot more of a simple solution is simply not true.

BURNETT: Tim, it's also, let's take the Remus 6,000. It doesn't send up images immediately, but you can use more than one at a time.

TAYLOR: Yes. The Remus 3000 is like the Bluefin-21, but it can go deeper.

BURNETT: Which might mean in this new search area Richard is referring to they might need to use that.

TAYLOR: Exactly. And they don't have to stop using the other asset. They can put both in play and the Remus can work in the deeper water and they can pick another search area that is a little shallower for the Bluefin 21.

BURNETT: There is only half a dozen of the Remus 3000s in the world. People aren't doing this kind of thing very often.

TAYLOR: That's true.

BURNETT: Why don't we have something better? How -- how modern is this technology? How often do they update it?

TAYLOR: It's modern, but they build these vehicles and not always for this pressure. So some of these vehicles are Remus 6000 may come out, but they may only put pressure housings in. Although they're rated to 6,000, some will buy them and need half that. So they will build them accordingly. So there are a limited. They're being used. They're being used by the people who bought them for a purpose. They'll have to get them from them because they have business to do.

BURNETT: Richard, Tim points out oil fields. That's why these things often exist. That's the commercial purpose deep under the sea, people are trying to drill for oil and gas.

QUEST: And that's exactly why they haven't got more of them at the moment. This thing was thrown together within a 30-day period because of the pingers. And the Bluefin 21 was available from the U.S. Navy. You can't just go to every oil company and say, would you mind letting us from that submersible, please. And by the way, we need that one as well. You to do contracts.

Who is going to pay for it? How are you going to get there it? Where are you going to get the staffing and the support? You need the analysis. Now they have finished the first most urgent part of it. They can start to put in place as people like David Gallo and others have expressed with 447. You plan. You project, and you get on with it.

BURNETT: All right, Tim, Richard, thank you. And one final thing I want to point out. When they find the debris, if they find it, then you have to perhaps send people down there and that's what the Remora is for. This is a remote operated vehicle, but a person would have to go down with it. They would have to search and see what they could find, which is a pretty incredible thing.

TAYLOR: It's ROVs. It has to have a cable that goes with it. It can stay down there and you can change ships on the top and it can stay down there for multiple days if need. It can lift and dig and recover items and find the black box.

BURNETT: All right, OUTFRONT next, the prime minister of Malaysia on what caused Flight 370 to disappear.

Plus, another emergency on a plane today, a hijacking scare.

And bizarre reports out of North Korea tonight. Why are these women crying?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BURNETT: Breaking news, the underwater search area for Flight 370 is moving north if the plane is not found this weekend and the investigation into what caused the plane to go down is also cold. In an exclusive interview with our Richard Quest, the prime minister of Malaysia weighed in on what he thinks caused the plane to go down.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

QUEST: You've given two statements, one I think on the 14th or 15th, one on the 24th. They are major statements of the direction of this. When you describe it as deliberate action by somebody on the plane, that word deliberate is very carefully chosen. And it doesn't tell us whether it's deliberate nefarious or deliberate because of mechanical, does it? And you deliberately didn't want to say that.

NAJIB RAZAK, MALAYSIAN PRIME MINISTER: Precisely. It was very, very carefully chosen because given the facts, and mind you, Richard, the cardinal rule that we used from day one was always follow the evidence and the evidence that were presented to us meant that was precisely the right word for me to use.

QUEST: Do believe it is nefarious, mechanical? Are you prepared to say?

RAZAK: Not at this stage. It would be wrong for me to speculate because you need hard evidence, Richard.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BURNETT: Richard Quest is with me now in Kuala Lumpur along with Les Abend and Arthur Rosenberg here in New York. Richard, here is the thing. They know a lot more than we know. Let's take for example the one thing the co-pilot's cell phone pinged a tower and they didn't say about anyone else's phone on the tower pinging. I only raise that to make the point that they know more than they have told us. So do you think they have a working theory what happened that they're not sharing?

QUEST: I think that in the back of their minds, they do all have some idea of what they believe happened. And the prime minister was not and would not even privately tell me what he thought. But if you talk to other people here, if you talk to those close to a lot of people, they do move to the nefarious theory. And yet, and yet I'm going to -- I can feel Arthur about to leap himself out of the seat.

And yet all of the sudden out of nowhere, I'll be talking to a 777 captain from the airline who will put forward a perfect scenario for a mechanical option involving the oxygen bottles, which are stored in the double bay under the cockpit. So we're back to square one.

BURNETT: That is good because we have Arthur here and we have Les Abend, a 777 pilot. Les, for a long time you were saying this was mechanical. Have I never fully understood how mechanical could be the issue if there were two turns and all these bizarre flight paths? Do you still think it's possible?

LES ABEND, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: I've always leaned that way, yes, absolutely. And Richard mentioned a 777 captain from Malaysia.

BURNETT: Yes.

ABEND: With a mechanical problem in the oxygen. I've had some e-mail correspondence with Richard. I don't think that's it. If it's mechanical, I think it leads more towards the smoke fume fire issue that shuts down things. Knowing what I do about the fire extinguishing system, how it's automatic once it's initiated.

BURNETT: Bizarrely one in a billion where it was a bad enough of a fire to kill everyone on board but the plane kept flying for seven hours?

ABEND: I could go through the whole scenario on how that could possibly happen.

BURNETT: But you do think it could happen?

ABEND: I think there is a real possibility on that happening, absolutely.

BURNETT: So that's a mechanical explanation that makes sense to someone who knows a lot about this, Arthur. But you do not fall on this side. You have never fallen on this side.

ARTHUR ROSENBERG, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: My slow movement was relatively short period of time. Here is the bottom line. On the mechanical scenario, you look at Swissair 111. You look at Value Jet. From the time they reported fire, electrical in the cockpit, in the cabin until the time they crashed, you're talking minutes. Less than 20 minutes. They also had time to communicate. They announced we have a fire. We have smoke.

This plane had nothing. More importantly, more importantly here, if it looks like a snake, it moves like a snake, it is a snake. You look at the profile of this airplane from the time it took off from Kuala Lumpur. I hear Richard in the background. All the key points, the turn back, the climb to 39,000 feet, the back and forth, the around the northern tip of Indonesia. This is an intentional, deliberate act. It is clearly nefarious in my mind. We just don't know by who.

BURNETT: I love how you both have given very credible, thoughtful explanations for both sides. Richard, I want to get back to your interview, though, briefly. Obviously President Obama is arriving in Malaysia tomorrow. First president to go in 48 years, but honestly, people are thinking Obama is going there? There is this plain controversy, right? This has exposed a lot of weaknesses within the Malaysian government. Perhaps it's authoritarian tendencies. You asked him about that. Here is what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

QUEST: What is the message that you will be giving to President Obama?

RAZAK: Is that we want to be friendly with both the United States and with China, and that we expect the two super powers to play a productive and positive role in the region.

QUEST: Good luck. They both want you on their side perhaps to the exclusion of the other. You know that.

RAZAK: Well, that's life. You just have to manage the two super powers. Do we need to choose? I don't think we need to choose. We need both.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BURNETT: China must be happy they got called one of the two super powers in that answer.

QUEST: And in this part of the world, you dare not call them anything else. Erin, I'm thousands of miles away from you at the moment, and I can tell you where I am sitting, China is seen as very much an economic and a regional super power and a partner that they need to do business with. The United States is aware of it, and that's why Obama's visit here. First president in 48 years is so crucially important not just for Malaysia, but for the United States too.

BURNETT: Thank you all very much. We appreciate it. Still to come, a hijacking scare on an Australian flight and retrieving the final messages from flight 370. A live demonstration coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BURNETT: Following breaking news tonight, sources telling CNN the search area for the missing Malaysian airlines jet is going to shift north. Meanwhile, more airline scares in just the past 24 hours. Fear of a hijacking on board a Virgin Australia flight last evening. Officials saying a drunk passenger tried to break into the cockpit banging on the door before crewmembers took control.

A flight bound for Norway was forced to land today after a passenger made a bomb threat. And last weekend another Malaysia Airlines flight forced to make a landing after suffering problems with its landing gear. Malaysia Airlines has a history of problems long before Flight 370 was on the radar. That includes a hijacking. Ted Rowlands is OUTFRONT.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

TED ROWLANDS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): December 4th, 1977, 93 passengers and 7 crewmembers were killed when Malaysian Airlines Flight 653 slammed into a swamp.

ABEND: It's awful. I can't imagine what it would have been like for the families.

ROWLANDS: The 737 had left Penang for Kuala Lumpur when the pilot radioed there was a hijacker on board. The plane went down just west of the Singapore Airport. Tom Sherrington's father, Richard, was killed instantly.

TOM SHERRINGTON, FATHER KILLED IN 1977 HIJACKING: It marked a moment from where that moment in time it's putting ourselves back together again. That's what happened with all these people at Malaysian. This will be the thing that you refer to for a long, long time.

ROWLANDS: No one took responsibility for the hijacking, and what happened on board is still a mystery.

ABEND: I can't armchair quarterback, you know, what that captain decided to do. But maybe he had an opportunity to disarm the hijacker and felt that he could save his passengers. And unfortunately, it went awry.

ROWLANDS: The 1977 hijacking was by far the worst, but not only the incident for Malaysia Airlines before Flight 370 went missing. In 1983, Flight 684 was attempting to land in Subang in a rainstorm but missed the runway by two kilometers. No lives were lost. Thirty four people died in 1995 when Flight 2133 overshot a runway and crashed into a neighborhood. The cause was determined to be pilot error. In March of 2000, several ground crewmembers became sick when a toxic chemical leaked from a cargo container. It was so bad, the plane had to be taken out of service.

The owner of the cargo was found to be at fault for falsely declaring the contents nontoxic. Cargo specifically lithium batteries is being considered in the investigation into what happened to Flight 370. In 2005, Malaysia Air Flight 124 left Perth, Australia for Kuala Lumpur, but had to turn back after the pilot reported a software problem in the Boeing 777. The pilot was able to land safely.

The history of Malaysia Airlines, which is government-owned, dates back to 1946. Overall, the airline has a relatively good safety record. The former head and founder of Malaysia Air is concerned that that could soon change if nothing from Flight 370 is found.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Let us get the black box. Once we get the black box, then we can have the answer. If we can't find all those, then it will start pointing fingers and so on. They will say all sorts of things, and it's very difficult for us to defend.

ROWLANDS: Ted Rowlands, CNN Chicago.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BURNETT: OUTFRONT next, the South Korean ferry accident. It's not the shipbuilder's first catastrophe. Horrible headlines.

And breaking news out of North Korea. An American detained.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BURNETT: Breaking news: divers tonight recovering more bodies from the capsized ferry off the coast of South Korea, 187 people are now killed, 115 still listed as missing.

And tonight, there are damning new questions about the ferry's builder, and why two of its ships met with the same fate? On the left, you see the ferry's sister ship. On the right, the South Korean ferry.

Kyung Lah is OUTFRONT in Jindo, South Korea.

Kyung, what have you learned about the incidents involving these two ships. I mean, those pictures look identical.

KYUNG LAH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: They're eerily similar. And we're learning that there were already lessons learned several years ago. But the Korean owner of the Sewol either never heard about it or never put them in place.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

LAH (voice-over): The Sewol ferry sinking with hundreds of people trapped inside, shocking Korea and the world.

But in Japan, this is deja vu. November 13th, 2009, a Japanese ferry named Ariake was traveling from Tokyo to Okinawa. Less than 12 hours into the journey, "The ocean current was very rough," says Professor Watanabe, a marine scientist. He says the current shifted the Ariake's cargo to one side, causing the ship to capsize.

The Ariake ferry doesn't just look like the Korean ferry accident, the two ships were made by the same builder, run by the same operator. They weighed almost the same and capsized nearly the same time into their journey.

But here is a major difference, says Professor Watanabe -- when the Koreans bought the ferry from Japan, they expanded it to pack in more people, turning it into a ticking time bomb.

"The Koreans bought a used vessel from Japan and added lots of cabin," says Watanabe and cabins were built on top.

The Japanese ferry accident had only 29 passengers and crew aboard, and the crew saved everyone, pulling them to the upper deck and deploying all the lifeboats.

In the wake of its ferry accident, Japan toughened ship regulations to lock down and limit cargo, especially in poor weather or currents. Since that change in the law, Japan has had zero accidents and vessels of this size.

The Korean ferry company appears not to have known much about the risks of cargo and the current. It bought the Japanese ship in 2012, refitted it to carry hundreds more passengers and launched it as the Sewol, the doomed ferry would carry the passengers to a disaster Japan had already learned to prevent.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BURNETT: Kyung, it's chilling to see that. I mean, now, you're talking about the owners of the South Korean ferry. It's not just this ship. They have a sister ship that they own that was just cited for a laundry list of shocking safety violations.

LAH: Certainly shocking. And let's be very clear, because we're talking about a lot of different ships.

This is yet another ship owned by the same owners of the ferry that just went down, the Sewol. This is the Ohamana . It is still operating.

But what is happening investigators went aboard to see if there might be anything wrong with the Ohamana. They found a laundry list of safety violations -- 40 life rafts did not work. The items, the ties to hold down cars didn't work. The emergency slides to escape off of the ship didn't work. Ties to hold down large shipping containers, they existed, but they didn't work very well.

So this is giving us a picture, a today picture of what this Korean company views of safety and whether it prioritizes it at all -- Erin.

BURNETT: I think that certainly gives an answer that it does not.

Kyung Lah, thank you very much.

Breaking news continues: a source telling CNN an American has been detained in North Korea. We're learning now that the man, identified as Miller Matthew Todd was taken into custody on April 10th.

A Western diplomat tells CNN that the man, 24 years old, actually tore up his visa at customs and that he appeared to go willingly with the North Koreans. This comes as South Korea says the north is preparing a new nuclear weapons test and has completed all the preliminary steps required for that. Jim Acosta is traveling with President Obama who is in Seoul, South Korea, tonight.

And, Jim, what more do we know about this American who is being detained? The story seems really bizarre.

JIM ACOSTA, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: It does seem very bizarre, Erin. And it's just another addition to the president's list of worries over here in Asia.

What we do know is basically what you just said, Erin, and that is American officials are not saying very much right now. They've only heard these reports that this American, 24-year-old Miller Matthew Todd was detained by North Korean officials in the last several days, that he was behaving erratically when he entered the country, tearing up his visa and he was taken into custody at that point.

At this point, Erin, all they can say is they're dealing with Swedish diplomatic officials who they typically deal with in these circumstances with the North Koreans.

BURNETT: Just very bizarre. So many questions.

At the same time, you have -- I mean, it's kind of incredible in terms of a provocation. You have President Obama in South Korea. Not in Washington, not in New York, in South Korea when there apparently the North is getting ready to do a nuclear test. That in and of itself is pretty incredible.

ACOSTA: That's right. And they've been bracing for this possibility over the last several days. They knew going on this trip that it just might be too tempting for Pyongyang to pull off some sort of provocation while the president was in Seoul, South Korea. It hasn't happened yet, but you heard during that news conference the president standing there with South Korean President Park, basically saying that she believes that the North Koreans are prepared to conduct a nuclear test at any point. So, it could happen conceivably now before the president leaves country for Malaysia, his next stop.

What the president said in his news conference earlier today is that this is why North Korea is the most isolated government in the entire world. And he has said that basically, it does seem at this point that the North Koreans are not responding to the sanctions that have been applied in their case.

It sounds like a familiar story. It sounds a lot like what has been going on with Russia and other hot spots where sanctions just aren't having the desired effect. But you heard the president say with respect to North Korea it may be time to add some that have more bite.

And that maybe the next step, Erin.

BURNETT: All right. Thank you very much. Jim Acosta live in Seoul.

And we meanwhile have been seeing a series of bizarre photos by the North Korean government this week. Let me show you this one.

This is Kim Jong-un, the leader, surrounded by adoring, crying female soldiers. Sort of like the images you used to see of the Beatles surrounded by their fans. I mean, they're all bawling.

And then, photos of a very young Kim Jong-un, broadcast by North Korea's state media as well. Already in military garb as a toddler.

Gordon Chang is the author of "Nuclear Showdown: North Korea Takes on the World".

Gordon, nuclear tests, all these photos released. I mean, is this all related? And what do you make -- I mean, we'll keep showing the pictures in the video, but what do you make of all these women crying over him?

GORDON CHANG, "NUCLEAR SHOWDOWN" AUTHOR: Well, the North Korean regime is founded on the myth that the Kim family has the love and devotion of everybody in the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea. This is important for them, especially to keep up appearances now when Kim Jong-un's hold on power is tenuous. We've had so many purges and counter-purges and executions since 2010.

So, they really need to bolster the regime. And what better way to do it than to have women crying over Kim Jong-un.

BURNETT: I mean, you know, because we have seen those reports about him setting dogs that ripped people alive. I mean, absolutely horrific reports coming out of North Korea recently.

Do you think all of that is true, or is this a sign that people don't like this guy?

CHANG: Well, some of the reports are not true. Jan Song-Thaek, his uncle, was executed with anti-aircraft rounds, not by a pack of 120 dogs. But the point is that there is real instability in this regime right now. So, Kim Jong-un has to do something.

You know, most people think that he consolidated power quickly. But there have been just too many signs of stress in Pyongyang to believe that everything is well. And that's why we're having all of this occur, especially while President Obama is in Seoul, because Kim Jong-un needs to show some success. And what better way to do it than to embarrass an American president.

BURNETT: All right. Gordon Chang, thank you very much.

CHANG: Thank you.

BURNETT: And still to come, passengers' final messages from Flight 370. A live demonstration of how they can be retrieved.

And is $60 billion too much to spend on pets? Morgan Spurlock OUTFRONT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BURNETT: We're following breaking news tonight. Sources telling CNN the search area for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 is going to shift north.

In our OUTFRONT investigation tonight, did passengers on board the flight send text messages the night the plane vanished? Those final words could solve the mystery of what happened.

Last night, we showed you exclusively how those messages could be retrieved to simulate conditions in the ocean under three miles of water. Our Ted Rowlands submerged his phone in a saltwater pressure chamber for over a week. He was still able to successfully retrieve text messages, photos, video from the phone.

Tonight, Ted is OUTFRONT from the 4Discovery lab.

And, Ted, that was incredible last night because your phone, it was corroded. I mean, you would have thought there ask no way on Earth you would have gotten the data, you did. A lot of feedback and a lot of people saying it's just not possible that you could have done this.

TED ROWLANDS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, it's amazing, Erin, when you think about it, the condition of our phone. Look, this is our phone that we submerged for eight days. And there is not much left of it. You see all the corrosion there.

It was -- it was in pretty bad shape. This is Chad Gough from 4Discovery. He helped us get the information off the phone. Actually, he did get it off. We didn't do anything. We put the phone in.

And, Chad, it's not the stuff, it's the chip, right? And you have our chip.

CHAD GOUGH, 4DISCOVERY: Correct. This is actually the chip from the phone. So for everything that is on that phone. All of the data is stored in the small little chip. This is the only thing that needs to be intact, that needs to be cleaned, needs to be retrieved for us to read the data.

ROWLANDS: And to get it, they had to do all the things which we showed you last night, Erin, bathing it in this solution, and then the heat. This baby puts 700 degree heat on either side of the chip.

GOUGH: Absolutely. It's extremely high heat. It puts it on both sides of the chip. It loosens it up so we can remove it and read it in a separate device.

ROWLANDS: And last night you saw it worked. Eight days in saltwater, we got all of the information off that we put on, and more information that we thought we had deleted before we gave them our phone.

BURNETT: I'm even more in awe when you're saying that was under three miles of pressure in ice-cold temperatures for weeks. And now, you put 700 degree temperatures on and it's still there. I mean, it gets even more amazing.

But here is a question. Does it matter what kind of phone you have, whether you have a Samsung, whether you have an iPhone?

ROWLANDS: Well, they get all the phones, all different phones in here, as you might imagine -- from the flip phones all the way through to different cell phones. The BlackBerrys, you name it. The only phone that is a little bit of a problem for them is this baby, the iPhone.

Although it has a chip that is embedded here with epoxy which keeps the chip in great condition, Chad, it's pretty near impossible to get the information off of it without Apple's help.

GOUGH: It is. So the data that is actually on the chip is encrypted. So, even though we can remove the chip in the same process we did for your phone, the data is all encrypted and the encryption keys on the phone without Apple's help, we just can't access it.

ROWLANDS: But if the Apple phones were found in this scenario, and apple helped out with the investigation, they would be easy to get the information off because the chips probably would be in pretty good shape?

GOUGH: Sure. It would be the same process.

BURNETT: So, Chad, let me just ask you a question. Obviously with the breaking news tonight that the search area is moving, and there is no leads at this point, what if it takes them months, a year, years from now to find the plane and the phones? After all that time, could you still get the data off?

GOUGH: Sure. I mean, these chips are usually coated by the manufacturers into an epoxy. And that epoxy is very resilient to things like saltwater. So scrape that epoxy off, remove those chips, we could certainly get that up.

ROWLANDS: And the data, Erin, that they get off is not only potentially instrumental in terms of finding out what happened if they get it off on board that plane, but they deal with it all the time, that information, Chad, is so important to families.

You were telling us earlier about a family of a soldier who died in Afghanistan. They had his phone. You guys were able to give that family the information.

GOUGH: Sure. There is all the text messages, the photos on there that are inconsequential at the time but turn out to be very important and sentimental that the families want back.

ROWLANDS: Yes. And obviously, that will be a component with not only this case, but the Korean case as well with all those kids, those families would love to have those mementos, theoretically because it's just so personal.

BURNETT: All right, Chad, please don't go anywhere.

I just want to bring in Mary Schiavo into the conversation.

Mary, obviously, you dealt with cases, cellphone data, obviously, it's a big part of these kinds of investigations for a while. I mean, could this really be the key?

MARY SCHIAVO, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Oh, absolutely, you know, the brave passengers and flight attendants on September 11th really changed the way the world looks at passengers and the cell phones and what you have to do. And they preserved evidence for the rest of the world on what was happening on that plane and managed to get that evidence to preserve on their cellphones, but also sent out. And there were two things that they did. One is they preserved the evidence and told what was happening but they also sent very, very important messages to their loved ones. And sent it in cases where passengers have recorded fires, falls, smoke in the cabin, the underwear bomber, the shoe bomber, a flight attendant going crazy, a pilot going crazy -- I mean, it's just everything is recorded and if they get those phones, there will be evidence of what happened and very important to the families. There will be last messages which they will treasure and which will be very, very important for them.

BURNETT: What if there aren't those messages, Mary?

SCHIAVO: If there is nothing on any of the cell phones that means whatever happened, happened very quickly, because you know from my experience I know that people try very hard to record what is happening in their last messages, and document what is going on. And so, if there is nothing on any of the cell phones we will know that something happened very, very quickly.

BURNETT: Ted and Chad, I guess I'm curious, when these phones are found, are they going to be sent -- I suppose in some sort of a batch, to someone like you, Chad, to go through?

ROWLANDS: Well, the problem, too, and Chad could answer this, Erin, if they're not handled properly when they are pulled out of the water, whether it is the ferry case or Flight 370, that can really make it difficult. So, hopefully, these phones will be treated properly, right? Because if they're not, they could be trouble.

GOUGH: Absolutely, so within an hour after they pulled your phone out of the aquarium and, you know, let it dry off the corrosion on there was so bad. And keeping the chip wet and then giving it a proper solution to clean was key for the recovery of this phone.

ROWLANDS: Yes. And if you think about it, Erin, it's so difficult. You are talking about literally hundreds of phones, whose phone belongs to who. They're going to all have to be treated the same way and someone like Chad or another organization will have to handle those phones to figure out whose they are and what potential information is on there that could be useful for investigators, and then down the line, useful to the families.

BURNETT: And when you recognize, the difficulty if this is a wreckage under the water, I mean, just to salvage and bringing everything up, that you're saying it's really crucial if these phones are somehow put in the air and not immediately -- if they're not kept in water, you might not be able to get the information and data, the information.

GOUGH: The chance for recovery drastically diminishes when they're left out in the elements and they dry off, absolutely.

BURNETT: That, Mary, is a very sobering reality. I mean, do you think, Mary, it's safe to say that these cell phones could be as important if not more important than the black boxes? GOUGH: Well, they certainly can be as important and maybe even more important than the cockpit voice recorder. Because these phones would have been, if the folks were able to do it, would have been able to be recorded upon and record images, messages, until the very last moments of the flight.

And I can say that the NTSB is very much aware of the evidentiary value on what's on the cell phones and they have used it in many cases. They will know. So, if they're helping out with this investigation, they will know the value of these.

BURNETT: All right. Well, thanks very much to all three of you. We appreciate it.

And, again, I want to just make sure everybody knows Ted showed exactly how this is done. And we have that on our blog, also on my Twitter account if you want to go and see how they get that data and extract it from these cellphones. It is an incredible thing that so many people thought would be impossible.

Well, now to the Ukraine crisis, tensions sharply escalating on the border with Russia. The Pentagon telling CNN tonight, Russian planes have entered Ukrainian air space several times over the past 24 hours. Troops, of course, are moving along the border, 40,000 are conducting military exercises.

Our Nick Paton Walsh is in Donetsk and I asked him about what's happening.

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NICK PATON WALSH, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Erin, growing concern about quite where this crisis goes now. We've just heard from the Pentagon saying that they believe there have been several incursions by Russian into the Ukrainian air space in just the last 24 hours. Calling on Russia to de-escalate the situation here.

Russia itself says that Ukraine's use of using the army against its people is a crime and we've heard Ukraine saying that it wants to begin the second phase of what it says is an anti-terror operation here, by encircling surrounding the kind of flash point of the unrest here, a town called Slaviansk. That too is where troubling reports, mostly from the Ukraine, interior ministry believing that some military observers mandated here by the OSCE, observation mission, have in fact been detained by pro-Russian militants. The self- declared mayor of that town saying he may actually be a spy for the central government in Kiev.

So, a continuing drip of troubling news that just edges people towards that moment they're worried, is there a flash point big enough, for the Russian troops to come across the border here? Moscow's always been threatening that.

And behind it all, Barack Obama not particularly positive, speaking today in South Korea. He is quite clear there are sanctions ready but they need to keep some arrows in their quiver in the event that the situation escalates in the days and weeks ahead -- Erin.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BURNETT: All right. Nick, thank you very much.

And still to come, last year, Americans, probably you, spent a little bit of this, you spent $60 billion on something. Morgan Spurlock will tell us what it is, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BURNETT: Sixty billion dollars, that's how much money Americans spent on their pets last year. For more on America's animal obsession, we turn to CNN's "INSIDE MAN," Morgan Spurlock.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BURNETT: People have all sorts of crazy pets.

MORGAN SPURLOCK, INSIDE MAN: Yes.

BURNETT: I mean, you know, pigs are a norm. It's strange.

All right. What is the strangest thing you saw?

SPURLOCK: I mean, when you're work at an animal shelter, and we were getting animal shelter, they'll take any animals. So if you have a horse, you can drop off a horse, you can drop off ferrets, people were dropping off chickens that they had, you know?

But it's -- what you do start to realize is we do have a real connection with our animals. You know, we love our pets. They're part of our family. And in United States, we -- not only do we spend more money on buying pets from pet stores, but we also put to sleep more animals that we could be adopting at animal shelters.

And so, you know, for me, over the course of this, I -- what I realized is no one should be buying a pet from a pet store. There are so many dogs and cats out there that you could take home tomorrow that we should.

BURNETT: I grew up near the beach. And at the end of the summer, there'd be all of these pets abandoned by the side of the road. It must have been heartbreaking what you must have seen.

I have a question, because there's something that bothers me about pets. I love pets, OK? Don't get me wrong people.

SPURLOCK: It's the hair, getting puzzled (ph) every year.

BURNETT: It's pets and clothes.

SPURLOCK: Yes. Well, first, there's two things. One, pets and clothes I hate. You shouldn't put the pets in clothes.

BURNETT: I mean, they have pride even though they may not know how to express it. They've got pride, people.

SPURLOCK: And you shouldn't carry around an animal that has twice as many legs as you, either. An animal that has four legs should not be carried by me.

BURNETT: I love that, I love that. All right, can't wait to see it.

SPURLOCK: Thanks.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BURNETT: And don't miss Morgan Spurlock's "INSIDE MAN", OK? It's Sunday night at 10:00, right here on CNN. And these are some pretty awesome thing, and, you know, who doesn't want to watch a little tiny cat drinking out of a three-inch bottle? Doesn't get cuter than that.

All right. Thanks so much for watching. Hope you all have a wonderful weekend. We'll see you back here on Monday night, 7:00 Eastern.

"ANDERSON COOPER 360" starts right now.