i m an air safety investigator with the national transportation safety board. i want to express my condolences to the family members of the victims on board of the airplane. secondly, i would like to express my gratitude to local and state authorities who helped us with this investigation. today we re here to document facts and circumstances and we will not be looking at probable causes and not discussing probable cause. on january 2nd about 6:00 p.m. a piper pa34 impacted trees and terrain west of the kentucky dam state airport. there were five okccupants on board. four of them occurred fatal injury and one of them sustained serious injury. today is our first day on scene. we ll be documenting the accident sight. the salvage facility is working
this time for two months with bronchitis and persistent cough. this time his condition is far less serious. any day that he is with us is a good day. i agree. great man. did you see him jump out of the airplane? 90th birthday. the landing was a bit spotty and he walked away. jacob, thank you. we appreciate it. there are many unanswered questions about the missing airasia flight with 162 people onboard. here with us now, former senior air safety investigator with the national transportation safety board, greg feith. weather was a huge factor in the disappearance of this flight. before they take off, the sophistication of weather apparatus, we ll leave bill out of it because he s not very sophisticated, but the sophistication is such that you can get ten-day forecasts. they are flying out. they know what s out there.
as we cover the breaking news on missing flight 370 and the possible debris found off the coast of australia, we want to now turn to denver, colorado where we are joined by senior air safety investigator with the national transportation safety board greg feith. you have been on this story with us from the very beginning and it looks like we are zoned in on an area that you brought up to us very early on here. the latest information about this debris field that is being found, the size and scope of the pieces that are being seen on satellite images but also the fact that those images are four days old and those pieces could be well under water and we are talking about water that is two and a half miles deep. please pare down what hope we can have here at confirming anything about what might have been seen. one of the big keys in all of this is that when the search effort up north really failed to turn up any kind of evidence,
play. with a search grid of 2 million square nautical miles, malaysia is relying on other countries. a huge portion of the yar is in the southern indian ocean, southwest of australia where american aircraft are combing through rough waters for any sign of debris. the area is just too big for underwater sonar. much of the focus remains on the pilot and first officers. first officer, i may. the officials say nothing suspicious turned up in homes of either men. so we begin there. and then we try to branch out, just like investigators are. joining us now, former senior air safety investigator with the national transportation and safety board, greg feith. greg, i guess the biggest development is knowing this was planned in the 12 minutes before the u-turn. what does that tell us, and what does it not tell us? well, i think you characterize it right, mika. the problem is that pilots will typically put an alternate
i mean, we re believing there is a miracle in this. hang on, brother. you know? and we will see you soon. joining us now former senior air safety investigator with the national transportation safety board, greg feith. good to have you on the set bus. good morning. first, the agony of the families. you were mentioning at some point a decision has to be made and made me stick to my stomach to call off the search. that agony with them will go on forever if that happens. at what point does the search get called off? how much time do we have to work with here? you re looking right now the u.s. has scaled back its effort in the search effort and leaving a couple of airplanes on the station and one is down in australia. the other one will be covering probably where they are now in that northern part of the indian ocean. but, of course, india has already pulled out. i think a lot of the other countries will start pulling out because you have to look at the return on investment. you re