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Nancy Grace
The Search for Flight 370
Aired March 21, 2014 - 20:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
ANNOUNCER: Tonight, new information just released in the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight 370. Are search crews from around the world any closer to finding the jetliner, as time runs out to retrieve the plane`s voice and data recorders before they go dead? Will an international effort ever reveal what brought the plane down and why?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: ... co-pilot told air traffic control, "All right, good night."
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The search area is so vast.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Two pieces of debris.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Satellite imagery of objects.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: New and credible information has come to light.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Possibly, possibly from flight 370.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
NANCY GRACE, HOST: 227 passengers, 12 crew members. The Malaysia Airlines flight 370 vanishes without a trace March 8 after the takeoff from Kuala Lumpur en route, Beijing.
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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Some new twisting (ph) in the disappearance of flight 370.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Somebody deleted stuff from the flight simulator found at the pilot`s home!
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: New details about the planned sharp turn west.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Someone rerouted the flight a full 12 minutes before the co-pilot said, "All right, good night."
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: The plane disappears over the gulf of Thailand, somewhere between Malaysia and Vietnam. And quickly, theories mount about what happens to the Boeing 777.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: As each day passes, the search widens and the clock ticks. With batteries designed to keep pinging for 30 days, searchers may only have 19 days left to find the box with the flight data and cockpit voice recorders, and the batteries might be down to 63 percent.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The odds of finding the pinger are very slim. Even when you know roughly where the target is, it can be very tricky to find the pinger. They have a very limited range.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And you can`t find that box until you find the plane.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is an enormous search area, and it`s something that Malaysia cannot possibly search on its own.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: ... 2.24 million square nautical miles, to be precise, an area nearly the size of the continental United States. Dozens of planes, ships and helicopters from 26 countries are scouring this massive region. China and Kazakhstan are taking the lead in the northern corridor, stretching from Thailand to Central Asia. Australia and Indonesia take the lead in the potential the southern route, patrolling the Indian Ocean. The Australians are focusing their search on this area, the possible flight path they got based on the final pings from the plane to a satellite.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: New and credible information has come to light relation to the search for Malaysia Airlines flight MH-370 in the southern Indian Ocean. The Australian Maritime Safety Authority has received information based on satellite imagery of objects possibly related to the search.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The U.S. Navy is deploying a P8 Poseidon, built on a 737 frame, and a P3 Orion, both high-tech submarine-hunting planes that can each can cover more than 10,000 square miles in one nine-hour flight. If the plane is in the water, another set of challenges. Search specialist Rob McCallum (ph) helped find the remains of Air France flight 447 in the Atlantic. He says if Malaysia Airlines flight 370 is found in the Bay of Bengal off India, a key focus of the search, teams will have to go very deep to recover it.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The depth range in the Bay of Bengal is between 4,000 and 7,000 meters, which is around 12,000 to 24,000, 25,000 feet. So significant depths.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If and when the wreckage is found at sea, Rob McCallum says, the crews will then send submersibles down, either manned ones like this one, or remotely operated submersibles that can take pictures of the black box and recover the black box with those. That silver arm there is used to recover the black box.
Only a handful of countries have the heavy equipment needed for that kind of recovery, McCallum says, but some of them are involved in this search.
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GRACE: Mechanical failure, hijacking, pilot error, terrorist attack, or something even more bizarre? How does a huge commercial jumbo jet just vanish into thin air?
Tonight, inside the mystery of Malaysia Airline flight 370.
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GRACE: Straight out to Marty Savidge, CNN correspondent. Marty, it becomes more and more curious what we are hearing. And another thing I don`t understand, Martin, is that I believe that a black box simulator (sic) emits a ping for 30 days. So why can`t we at least find the black box?
MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: OK, couple of things there, Nancy. First of all, I`ll tell you where we are. We`re outside of Toronto, Canada, and this is a simulator, a cockpit simulator of a 777, the same kind of aircraft that 370 is, and is now missing. Mitchell Guzada (ph) is a pilot.
And we should say that the black box you`re talking about, of course, is the device that records everything that happened to the airplane when whatever happened to it. The problem is, we don`t know where the plane is right now, and that box is with the plane. If it`s in the water and if that box is pinging, as you say, putting out this kind of emission that can be picked up on sonar, first you have to know where it is to look.
And that`s the problem. They don`t know where to look. The area where this plane was lost is so geographically huge, it could include all the way up to Kazakhstan or all the way down by Australia. So there is a massive effort under way by 26 nations to try to locate that wreckage, if, in fact, the plane crashed. And right now, we don`t even know that for certain, but of course, it doesn`t look good, it`s been missing for so long.
GRACE: Now, that`s another thing I don`t understand, how we can -- I just happened to have come from spring break, Marty, with my children at JFK Space Center. And I`ve been thinking that we can put a whole space lab up in the air for six months with people living in space, and we can`t find this plane? It doesn`t make sense to me.
And then we hear that other countries spotted on their radar -- they spotted the plane, but they didn`t tell anybody about that until days after? You know, Martin, I truly believe that they did that because they don`t want the rest of the world to know the defects in their security systems. That`s what I think.
But how has that hindered things?
SAVIDGE: Right. I think that you`re absolutely right. From the flying public`s perception, not necessarily professional pilots, we always thought that every plane, no matter where you were -- and I just did a trip coming back from Australia -- you always figured you`re on somebody`s radar or somebody was watching you by a satellite or controlling or tracking you to always know where you are.
How is it that a jumbo jet in this modern day and age can vanish? That`s why this story is so captivating to so many people.
We now find out that there are places on the earth where big modern planes can disappear, that radars don`t necessarily follow the same kind of things at the same time, different countries, different procedures. You put your finger on what is the real issue here, that most people had no idea that in this day and age, a jetliner could simply vanish. And you can bet there`s going to be a lot of calls for change on that.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Could a clue be found in the pilot`s home flight simulator? Malaysian authorities said data from the simulator was deleted on February 3rd, more than a month before the plane went missing, the FBI today saying it has sent a copy of the simulator`s hard drive to its forensics lab in Quantico, Virginia, hoping to recover the deleted files.
Malaysian authorities also disclosed a tantalizing detail. They have new radar information about the plane`s path provided by another country. But what exactly it shows, the Malaysians aren`t saying.
Meanwhile, operational crews are beginning to narrow their search, believing it`s more likely the missing jet traveled along the southern corridor, away from the heavily populated Asian continent. Australian teams combing large swaths of the southern Indian Ocean say they are focusing on an area roughly the size of New Mexico about 1,600 miles off their southwest coast, using what information they know about currents and the plane`s possible last position to make an educated guess on just where it might be.
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GRACE: When we come back, a look at the crew and the pilots of Malaysia flight 370.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Where is Malaysia Airlines flight 370?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: As more evidence comes to light, suspicion is shifting from an accidental crash to a deliberate action.
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GRACE: The missing plane`s pilots become a main focus of investigation. Malaysia`s prime minister says someone may have deliberately steered the jumbo jet off course.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The pilot and co-pilot are coming under scrutiny, with their homes being searched.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Can you tell us what you were doing inside the house?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The initial investigation indicates it was the co- pilot who basically spoke the last time (INAUDIBLE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: But despite more than two dozen countries searching with state-of-the-art technology, somehow, the jumbo jet has gone undetected.
GRACE: The missing plane`s pilots become a main focus of investigation. Malaysia`s prime minister says someone may have deliberately steered the jumbo jet off course.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Since last weekend, when their homes were searched, investigators have doggedly pursued the possibility the 53-year- old pilot and 27-year-old co-pilot maliciously steered flight 370 off its path. If they have any proof, it has not been shared publicly.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: ... because I`ve worked on many cases where the pilots were suspect, and it turned out to be a mechanical and a horrible -- a horrible problem. And I have a saying myself. Sometimes an erratic flight path is heroism, not terrorism. And I always remind myself of that, not to jump to that conclusion because sometimes, pilots are fighting just amazing battles, and we never hear about it.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Investigators in the U.S., as they have done in past days, pointed out details to support their theories. The latest is that the sharp turn to the west was pre-programmed into the plane`s navigation even before the co-pilot told control, "All right, good night." But that isn`t evidence of foul play. The pilot could have done it protectively in the event of an emergency.
Theories based on hijacking have also fallen short. Thus far, no one aboard flight 370 has been linked to any known terror group. China says background checks cleared all 153 of its citizens. As Malaysian officials have repeatedly stressed, in order to have the evidence, they must find the plane.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The entire search area is now 2.24 million square nautical miles.
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GRACE: Suspicion immediately cast on the younger co-pilot after reports he allowed passengers in the cockpit. Homes are searched, authorities set to review the pilot`s performance records and their psychological evaluations. Tonight, who are the crew? Who are the pilots of Malaysian flight 370?
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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Anxiety erupting, the search growing, and new clues surfacing, like the surveillance video of the pilots, as the focus on the cockpit of the Malaysia Airlines flight 370 intensifies, the homes of Captain Zaharie Abdul Shah and co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid searched this weekend by authorities. They seized the flight simulator featured in this YouTube video posted by the 53-year-old pilot, raising many questions and feeding theories about what exactly it was used for.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You can compare one flight to another flight as far as your own performance to see if you`ve improved as far as the ability to maintain altitude or the ability to stay on the glide slope during descent, things like that. You can have, like, a rating on that. So it`s possible, yes, that the flights that he had been taking on his flight simulator would be recorded on that flight simulator system.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Also on tape, surveillance video posted on YouTube showing the captain and first officer going through airport security. CNN cannot independently confirm the authenticity or the date of the video.
The captain`s family posting this tribute on line, describing him as loving, generous and supportive.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Investigators aren`t saying what data was deleted, or if Captain Shah or someone else deleted it. The deletion is not necessarily evidence of ill intent. As one simulator user said on a Web forum, All of us load and delete files in the simulator continuously. 777 pilot Les Abend (ph) attorneys Captain Shah may have simply felt there simply wasn`t enough space on the simulation hard drive. He may have deleted a basic recurrent training exercise, or...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He may have simply been embarrassed with his performance, you know, on a flight simulator and didn`t want a memory of that particular occurrence.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: But others say the deletion of data is unusual, even suspicious. Simulator manufacturer Jay Lebauf (ph) says space shouldn`t be an issue. The files in simulator software are tiny. And...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If they were just in a casual flight just for entertainment or for practice, that flight would never be saved, and there`d be no need to delete it because it would not exist.
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(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: Bombshell tonight. Breakthrough. Has Malaysia flight 370 been located? We go live for the latest. First to CNN correspondent Martin Savidge. Martin, what do you know?
MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Nancy, the big information is that satellite imagery has apparently picked up two large objects in the area where it is felt that -- is the focus of the search effort, two very big pieces. The thing is, though, the satellite imagery does not clearly identify what they are. It`s only thought perhaps this could be wreckage from the missing airliner.
But they need to get a visual verification on that. The only way to really get out there is by sending out navy aircraft, and Australia has been doing that. The problem is, in that area all day today, the weather has been very bad, very treacherous, and so far, they have -- the aircraft, that is, has not located the pieces. They`re continuing to try to look. So it`s not confirmed.
For investigators, a sign of hope because they need the pieces to begin to put together the puzzle. But so far, no positive ID.
GRACE: With me, Martin Savidge, CNN correspondent. Martin, here`s the thing. China burst onto the scene saying, Oh, we found it. But the Australian PM -- prime minister -- was much more cautious in saying that, Maybe possibly we found something that could be the wreckage.
It`s basically in a no-man`s land. It`s not on a shipping route. It`s way -- in fact, if you wanted to wreck a plane and not be found, this is where to go, right?
SAVIDGE: Correct. It is. And keep in mind that this wreck would have happened nearly two weeks ago now, which means, obviously, any debris has drifted, and depending on the currents and the weather, could have drifted a long, long way. So just because you find pieces -- and again, it`s not confirmed -- doesn`t mean that you have found the wreck site. You need the wreck site because that`s where the black boxes are. So it is still way too premature. The Australians were right to be cautious.
GRACE: Everybody, we are showing you a mock-up of where the wreckage is believed to be.
Martin, can you tell me why this is basically a no-man`s land? I mean, it`s so far out, it`s my understanding that when pilots took off from the tip of Australia, it took them four hours just to get to the debris.
SAVIDGE: Yes, let me kind of show you on this map that we have here. It`s a rough idea of where we are simulated to be flying, because remember, this plane -- we`ve loaded up in the simulator to be just like 370. We`re right down by where this pin drop (ph) is, and according to our coordinates, we`re about 1,600 miles away from Perth, which is right there. The flight originated up here at Kuala Lumpur.
So you can see the wide open ocean gets even more wide open. There`s no land there. There`s no -- not even really islands in the area. It`s very difficult to find anyplace other than water for this plane to land. Winds are extreme. Currents are extreme. The weather is extreme. It`s about the ends of the earth.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Based on satellite information, satellite data, they have identified two pieces which could possibly be debris.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: But the biggest concern I have is the clock that now starts ticking. If it is truly wreckage, they`ve got to really get on figuring out where it came from, start getting close to those boxes, because to find the black boxes -- the underwater locater beacons are only going to be on there for 30 days, and they only have a range of between 3 and 7 nautical miles.
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GRACE: Is a mechanical failure to blame or something more sinister?
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SAVIDGE: This is essentially the waypoints. And these are real waypoints. It wasn`t like we made something up. And we can`t say that these are waypoints that in any way 370 used because right now, those are not publicly known.
But this is the system. And now you can just start to see the aircraft making this turn, and this is what`s going to send it hurtling off at 287 knots now, 35,000 feet in the direction of that new search in the southern Indian Ocean.
And I did it with one finger, essentially. It just shows you the technology of this aircraft and what can be done, even if it is heading off into a mystery.
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GRACE: The mystery surrounding the sudden disappearance of Malaysia Airline flight 370. How does a plane just disappear undetected?
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They might not look like much, but this set of objects are enough to renew new hope in solving the mystery of the missing Malaysian Airlines jet.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (INAUDIBLE) while credible, are still to be confirmed.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Australian satellites located them four days ago. They were floating in unforgiving waters 1,500 miles from the southwest coast of Australia. One of the pieces is an estimated 79 feet long.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If that`s, indeed, a wing, it could have hit in such a nature, like so, and then broken off with a fairly large piece, and then the rest of them fell into chunks.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This latest discovery has searchers scouring the southern Indian Ocean. A massive Norwegian merchant ship is already on location. Australian officials resume the search by air at daybreak. This is not the first time hope hangs on a set of blurry pictures. Similar satellite images were captured over the South China Sea last week. That turned out to be a false lead.
Each development continues opening up emotions for the families of the vanished passengers. The partner of Philip Wood, the only American adult on board the flight, was praying for a miracle.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: If this debris is, indeed, part of that plane, then it kind of dashes that wishful thinking.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Her steadfast faith now tested by a couple of pictures.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The investigators have discovered that the aircraft went to two specific waypoints away from the course that it was scheduled to go towards Beijing. So what they believe this indicates is that whoever was doing this, whoever moved the aircraft off its scheduled course, specifically was directing it to these particular waypoints.
GRACE: And what would be the motive, some even floating theories of a meteor, a military shootdown, or the plane landing on some remote island. Tonight, conflicting theories and conspiracy theories mount.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The search area is so vast and the facts so few, is it any wonder that this monster void is filled with every possible theory, from plausible to outlandish?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A lot of conspiracy theories are wrong, but that doesn`t mean all of them are wrong. It could be that one of them in this case actually is right. We just don`t know yet.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The most desperate need for resolution comes, of course, from the most disastrous of events, the kind that must -- must! -- have an explanation aside of indiscriminate fate or a lone gunman.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Did you kill the president?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Conspiracy theories still swirl around the Kennedy assassination, of course, the death of Princess Diana, even crashes like TWA 800, even though those events had images, sounds, witnesses and exhaustive investigations. But here, now, with no concrete clues, imaginations can run even wilder.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: One of the risks in the Internet age is that our natural tendency to believe our own ideas and to ignore other people`s ideas gets exacerbated because it`s too easy to go to a Web site that supports your own theory and not go to a Web site that counsels for the other theory.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Especially coming from an authority figure like the Malaysian politician who tweeted that the flight may have vanished into a new "Bermuda triangle." Others were quick to echo and even map that bizarre idea. A local police chief floated the concept that this could be all part of an elaborate life insurance scam.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (INAUDIBLE) somebody there on the flight who has bought huge sums of insurance who wants the family to gain from it.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Then there`s a theory that the flight could have been spirited to North Korea. Hey, it had enough fuel, they`re saying on Reddit. And hiding it? Oh, easy, with the stealth technology of military invisibility cloaks.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A lot of our theorizing in general is influenced by something called motivated reasoning, which means that we look for things that make us happy, when, in reality, that`s not very likely.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: On Thursday, a shaman known as, quote, "king of the witch doctors" performed rituals at the Kuala Lumpur airport, chanting, praying for guidance on the flight`s whereabouts and the 239 souls on board.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The more unknowns there are, the more room for people`s minds to race ahead.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Or maybe we could all just go with Occam`s razor, the belief that the simpler theory is usually the most accurate. If only we had one.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Another theory getting tons of attention on Reddit focuses on the bizarre numerical coincidences tied this flight. For example, the flight number, 370, the flight disappeared on the 3rd month, 7th day of the year, and Malaysia Airlines flies nearly 37,000 passengers every day. Curious, but we`ll keep hunting for facts.
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GRACE: Next, what happened to Malaysia flight 370? Was it a deliberate act?
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GRACE: Evidence shows Malaysia flight 370 flies off course for hours, abruptly changing direction, making a sharp left turn to the west. This may have been carried out by computer, programmed by someone in the cockpit.
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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Out of the public eye, the U.S. is using some of its most highly sensitive technologies and top secret government and industry intelligence analysts to help find flight 370.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I wouldn`t get into the specifics of each and every one of those tools because, you know, some of those tools, we don`t talk about.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The U.S. believes Australia`s search area off its west coast is the logical place to find the wreckage. Sources first told CNN on Friday that based on a classified analysis, U.S. officials thought the overwhelming likelihood was the plane went down in the Indian Ocean. The most recent clue, these satellite images, which may or may not show the plane debris about 1,500 miles off the coast.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It is probably the best lead we have right now, but we need to get there, find them, see them, assess them to know whether it`s really meaningful or not.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Australian analysts went over the images, but it`s who took them that is the most telling. They were taken by Digital Globe, a Denver-based commercial satellite company that has a $3 billion contract with the U.S. intelligence community and military. The company positioned its satellites in recent days over the search area after talking to U.S. intelligence agencies and the Australians, according to an industry official, this as American intelligence, military and aviation officials continued to analyze and refine bits of data to knit together the likely path of the plane.
The likely scenario took them into the Indian Ocean, several officials tell CNN. That initial classified analysis concluded it was likely the plane crashed into this specific area of the southern Indian Ocean. Then the analysis was updated as the days passed, the search moved south to here, along Australia`s west coast. And hints of another big secret from Malaysia.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I can confirm that we have received some radar data, but we are not at liberty to release information from other countries.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Many believe a secret U.S. and Australian radar and satellite system in the outback may have picked up some signals about the flight.
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GRACE: Thai government receiving normal communication with the plane until 1:22 AM, when the plane disappears from all radar, six minutes later, Thai military detecting an unknown signal, possibly flight 370, heading in the opposite direction. Malaysia says evidence suggests it was deliberately flown off course, turning west, traveling back over the peninsula, out into the Indian Ocean.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: From miles up in space, a possible breakthrough in the search for Malaysia Airlines flight 370. Australia says these satellite images of two objects floating in the southern Indian Ocean 1,500 miles off the Australian coast could be part of the missing jet. One object is 18 feet across, the other 79 feet, and surrounded by smaller pieces of debris. They were located 14 miles apart and just southeast of the main search areas now defined by U.S. and Australian analysis.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It is credible enough to divert the search to this area on the basis it provides a promising lead to what might be wreckage from the debris.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Officials caution the debris could be just ocean garbage or containers fallen off ships. Still, the U.S. and Australia immediately sent advanced surveillance aircraft. So far, the debris still has not been located.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Poor visibility has been reported, and this will hamper both air and satellite effort. AMSA (ph) continues to hold grave concerns for the passengers and crew on board.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: These new clues are leading to a redirection of resources from the northern corridor to the southern one. China announced it is descending nine navy ships to the southern Indian Ocean. In total, four out of five aircraft involved in the search effort are now in the south or heading south.
The search for clues from the flight crew could also soon turn up new leads. FBI investigators tell CNN they are confident they can retrieve deleted information from the pilot`s flight simulator and his and his co- pilot`s computers.
An unprecedented international force is now converging on the southern Indian Ocean, among them an Australian warship that would be able to recover debris if it turns out it is part of the plane. The Australians say they are also studying new satellite data which they hope will give them a clearer picture of what debris actually is.
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GRACE: We all can make a difference. Need proof? Check out this week`s "CNN Hero."
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GRACE: At one point during the search for missing flight 370, Chinese officials say they capture satellite images that could be wreckage. But it turns out not to be the missing flight, the search covering over 2 million square nautical miles, nearly the size of the U.S., 26 nations involved, trying to find the plane. Tonight, the search and the clues.
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GRACE: Jim Tilman, CNN aviation analyst and retired American Airlines pilot, when I get on a plane and I`ve got my two 6-year-olds with me on either side of me, you know, maybe I`m bamboozled, but I trust the pilots. I take a look at them. I try to speak to them if I can. And I trust them.
This is scary to me that you could have a pilot that is drugged (ph) out of his mind, he`s in the middle of a divorce, like this pilot, angry, upset, distraught.
Let me get down to the brass tacks. He said "Good night." I think it was about 12 minutes after the Malaysian flight veers off course. Is "Good night," is that a typical transmission from a pilot?
JIM TILMAN, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: No, it`s not typical, but it`s not alarming, either. I mean, I don`t know what the conversation was like between the pilot and air traffic controllers up to that moment. They may have been having a nice little chat session in the middle of the night, and then the guy, rather than give the normal report, just says, OK, all right, good night. I mean, and it would follow.
Look, Nancy, we have been dealing with bits and pieces of information from the very beginning, and we`re not ever getting quite the whole story. And I would really like to know what that conversation was like up to that point, and it would help us understand something more about this. We`re caught in between, was the pilot dirty, getting ready to do something really criminal and awful? Was he coerced somehow with a gun in his ear? Or were they just inept, or what? I mean, there are all kinds of scenarios.
GRACE: Well, you know, let me go with that, what you`re just saying. Jim Tilman with me, everyone, CNN aviation analyst. Jim, the fact that he is saying very calmly, "Good night" -- this is 12 minutes, I believe they`re saying, after the plane takes a diversion, veers off course -- that says to me nobody has a gun to his head, nobody`s storming the cockpit because we would have heard something along those lines. He had already veered off course. I mean, he`s flying instrument. He would have to know that he was off course.
TILMAN: Tell me, have you ever listened to the communication from a cockpit of an airplane that was doomed to crash or in really difficult straights and listened to the quality of the voice and how calm and relaxed it sounds?
GRACE: That`s true. That`s true.
TILMAN: OK, that`s how pilots communicate. We`re trained to do that. One of the first things you do in an emergency is slow down, think. And you know...
GRACE: Got it.
TILMAN: ... this whole business about putting too much faith in that -- I don`t go there.
GRACE: With me right now, Clive Irving, contributor to the DailyBeast, senior consulting editor, Conde Nast "Traveler." Clive, what can you tell me about the timeline here and about the Malaysian government?
CLIVE IRVING, CONDE NAST "TRAVELER": Well, I think one thing that will make people more scared than they ever need to be about this situation, apart from the fact that the most scary thing about it is the chaotic handling of the press statements each day -- but one thing that will unnecessarily freak out people is if the whole thing gets criminalized from the beginning.
This has been -- there`s been an attempt here, clearly, by the Malaysian authorities to impugn in some way, to take the fragments of factual knowledge that we have about this dreadful situation and impugn either the pilots or passengers if they were potential sky-jackers. This is not a neutral investigation, as it should be. It should be neutral. It should be very forensically pure...
GRACE: I agree.
IRVING: ... which it doesn`t seem to be. If this were a court case and you were handling it, you would see tainted evidence right from the start of...
GRACE: You know what, Clive? We`re just getting an update. Martin Savidge, now I understand the "Good night." They`ve pinpointed it may have been before the plane changes course. How does that change things?
SAVIDGE: Well, I mean, it`s believed that what is being said, as you said, is the "All right, good night." And actually, what is happening -- you have to understand where we were. And we`re actually flying the same route. But at that time, they were transitioning from Malaysian airspace to Vietnamese airspace. To do that, you have the Malaysian air traffic controller telling the plane, All right, we`re saying good-bye to you. You`re switching over to Vietnamese air traffic control on frequency blah, blah, blah. That`s when the co-pilot allegedly says in response, "All right, good night" -- in other words, very matter of fact...
GRACE: OK.
SAVIDGE: ... and very typical. But then you have the course change. That was not typical because this course change is, like, at least, I believe, 120 degrees, veering away sharply from the course that should have been continuing on to Beijing. The reason we don`t know is why that course change. It was pre-programmed in by about 12 minutes, as you point out. And that can be easily done using this particular device.
This is the flight management system, and it`s very easy here. I think, you know, Mitch can maybe demonstrate on his unit how to do it. But it`s literally a series of key strokes that turn the plane. We still don`t know why. Were they threatened? Was it an emergency, or something else?
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GRACE: Senior U.S. Officials reveal Malaysian radar spots dramatic changes in altitude, the plane going up to 45,000 feet and then down to 23,000 feet while moving across Malaysia. Was the plane flying erratically to eliminate the possibility of being spotted and tracked on radar?
Next, just who were the passengers of missing flight 370?
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GRACE: For those of you that feel this is all the way on the other side of the world, which it is, look at this. That is a mother! That is a mother screaming to find out what has become of her child.
To all of you out there that love your family like she does, let`s send our prayers tonight to find the missing flight.
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GRACE: Inside the mystery of Malaysia flight 370. At 1:19 AM, the last verbal communication with air traffic control comes from inside the cockpit. Someone, believed to be the co-pilot, says the final words, "All right, good night." 227 passengers vanish without a trace, the youngest just 2 years old, the oldest 76. Mothers, fathers, children, relatives, friends, their loved ones hoping, waiting, and now demanding answers.
Tonight, a look at the passengers of Malaysian flight 370.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Philip Wood, an IBM executive, the father of two, 33-year-old Mohammed Sofwan Ibrahim (ph) was traveling to start a new job. He`s seen here on board the flight in a photo he posted to social media. French students and teen sweethearts Jao Yang (ph) and Adriane Batrillu (ph), seen here on Facebook, were traveling together, returning from a trip to Malaysian with his mother and younger sister. Australians Robert and Katherine Lawton (ph) raveled often, posting photos such as this to Facebook. The couple boarded flight 370 with fellow Australians Rodney and Mary Burrows (ph) to begin another adventure. Mukatesh Mukharjee (ph) and Shalmo Bey (ph) left their two young sons with other members of their family as they embarked on a vacation together.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They had left the two boys with her mom back in Beijing. He was very much in love with her. And as parents, nothing was more important to them than those kids.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A dozen crew members are also missing. The daughter of chief steward Andrew Nari (ph) continues to tweet messages to her missing father. "My dad must be busy serving the passengers food and drink," she tweeted today. Among Nari`s fellow flight crew, first officer Fariq Abdul Hamid, age 27, and Zaharie Ahmad Shah. The experienced pilot is seen here in one of many YouTube videos posted under his name.
ZAHARIE AHMAD SHAH, PILOT: It`s very effective, and it will last you for a very, very long time.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Teaching others how to do household repairs. Comments such as, "Come back, Captain," flood the page. But with each passing hour, that cheer (ph) seems increasingly, tragically, impossible.
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GRACE: Tonight, our thoughts and our prayers to the loved ones and all those aboard Malaysian flight 370.
END
