Page 9 - Flight Level News Today

Does that mean anything? or is it simply a striking coincidence? joining me now is jay rollins, retired american airlines captain and a former u.s. navy pilot and jim cavanaugh, an nbc law enforcement analyst. thank you both for coming on the show tonight. >> thanks, reverend. >> you bet. >> jay, let me start with you again. we havent confirmed this news report, but if it is true, it certainly lends the impression that everything was pretty much normal right up until the transponder shuts off. w...

Increase your range. huge stretch of ocean. no real clear idea where the wreckage is. if there is wreckage, it is a big problem. >> the cargo manifest is something that investigators will be looking at as part of their on going investigation. malaysia airlines talked about the fact that there was a small collection of lithium eye on batteries. we talked again earlier about the possibility they could have caught fire. it happens, although rare. the indications would be that if that had happened, ...

Your point about calling out the altitudes, every time you make a frequency change, the proper protocol which they are good at is to announce either if you are climbing, what level you are climbing through and have been cleared to and once you reach there if you are in cruise at 350, you announce that to the controller that malaysian 370 is with you at flight level 350. thats not unusual at all. >> you would announce it twice if you are changing frequencies? >> you announce it with every new con...

They can look at the read out on the screen and it shows this fire is emanating from the front cargo area. could be that the front wheel overheat and there is a fire in the electrical system. so the pilots immediately one of them might go down one level below us into that unit and look at the problem. you could be going to another airport. that is what commences the turn. while that is happening, the transponder shuts off. maybe the fire affected that or the copilot is unplugging the wires to sh...

They really cant deploy and make use of a lot of the technology that they have. they are having to fly out there at a level of 1,000 feet. at that level, you are pretty close to the ocean. thats so they can pick up every object possible around them on this equipment. its taking a lot of time and they are not able to get up to high altitudes because they really dont know what they are going to be looking for. it could be something as big as a large piece of an airplane or something as small as a ...

Cnn has not been able to independently confirm that the transcript is genuine. this is what we are getting. joining me now, aviation and government correspondent and miles obrien, pilot and cnn aviation analyst. i will kick it off with you. me what you have seen. does anything jump out as unusual? >> i havent seen enough to make a at the same time. they got ahold of the acars transmission. thats the automatic e-mail component. it talks about it being a technical conversation. what you get are th...

Will say, so and so 170 flight level 230 roger or whatever else. or give the frequency that hes been asked to change to and once he says that frequency, then he can be acknowledged on the ground and make sure he has the right frequency if theyre going to have to change. i agree that its out of the protocol, but im not sure that it wasnt just somebody that was really casual. >> yeah, i mean this guy was suggesting that they do some sort of voice recognition. david soucie, what do you think, "all ...

It looked as though there had to be two people in that cockpit aware of what was going on. so if there was a change of course, its not something you can really do surreptitiously, is it? >> no, its not. its something -- any change of course, altitude, flight level, as we refer to it, it has to be verified. so with that white line i showed you there, when we verify, i would say to the other pilot, left turn to a heading of whatever, verify, and he would say confirm. and thats when i would enter t...

Problems? >> not at all. the last reported contact with the aircraft was the aircraft was flying at flight level 350 about 35,000 feet. and its about two hours from kla. and there was no calls from the crew or no indication from the tower that the aircraft is having any kind of difficulty. >> what are the theories that you are working on as an airline as to what may have caused this plane to go out of contact? >> at the moment it is material for us to speculate right now. anyway, were having a p...

>> i have seen a little bit of light precipitation over south and central china, reports of that. but that is well below the flight level. and skies were clear with light winds, the temperature, 26 degrees celsius, which is about 26 degrees, there is no bad weather that i can see for the flight path on the malaysian plane. the flight reached 32,000 feet which is expected if youre two and a half hours into the flight. so there is nothing that i can see on radar or on any other weather sources tha...