Page 138 - Flight Path News Today

Overnight, a pilot reported seeing large, solid debris floating in the ocean during a flight from hong kong to kuala lumpur. was it anything? here is cnns jim clancy. >> this morning, search and rescue teams are expanding their scope, looking beyond malaysia airline 370s flight path. cnns saima mosin, riding along with the crew searching for any sign of the ill-fated flight as it enters its fourth day. officials are including the western peninsula of malaysia and the strait of malanca in an expa...

Unplanned and they had a lot to deal with quickly. >> captain sullenberger, you know what its like to have to make a quick decision when something goes wrong on a flight. you say that when faced with a sudden emergency, pilots have a list of priorities, can you explain what those are? >> absolutely, in fact, most pilots know them by heart. theyre very simple. first aviate, then navigate and only last, communicate. the pilots would have been working together as a crew, there would be one pilot to...

Starting at the last known contact point of the airplane. i believe they should have started there and gone up the intended flight path, and fanned out from there. >> but what do you make of the report the plane may have done a u-turn shortly before it simply disappeared from radar and the fact that no, none of the beacons normally placed on the planes, that hasnt been located. no signals whatsoever. its like the thing just disintegrated. >> well, it wont have just disintegrated because if you h...

Its very distressing for the families and quite frankly, we remain clueless. >> let me just ask you. in terms of coverage, if the transponder was taken off there is still a chance that while it was -- the plane was not picked up on civilian which is to say air traffic control radar the military picked it up which is one reason they are exploring the western part of the country and a flight path would have taken the plane potentially over malaysia and over populous parts of the country. >> it doe...

This is something i promise the families. >> reporter: we flew to the malacca straits to the west of asia. this wasnt the scheduled flight path, but its a possibility the search team is taking seriously. in case the plane turned back and lost its way. there are 16 ships surveying this area. thats more than 12,000 nautical square miles. joined in the air by 14 aircraft. and thats just the area to the west of malaysia. there are more than 30 aircraft and more than 40 ships in the entire operation....

Because of that search crews are now expanding their search looking beyond the flight path of malaysia. a speculation about what caused a flight to vanish from radar, from a catastrophic failure to hijacking terrorism to pilot suicide. they could get no definitive answer until search teams find the black box, the data recorder. >> they have an accuse cal beacon. they are salt water activated. they are only good for about 30-days, the battery. when that battery runs out it will be much harder to ...

That as an investigator. but lets make sure we know whats happened to the airframe and the folks that were on it before we start to suppose what happened. >> captain, good information. captain funk, thank you very much. i want to get straight to cnns tom foreman. you have a better picture of exactly what happened. >> well, like all of us, were trying to figure out what happened here. it seems like all of this evidence is almost not helping us. this was the original flight path. it takes off, its...

Transponders were turned off. that -- thats indeed indicates that the radio bus was not active, so if we had some sort of a -- for instance a deep depression event of some sort, it would have to make contiguous damage, along with the electrical system, to do that. consequently the -- the issue of damage from depression doesnt look very liable at this time, but, indeed, theres a big tangled web out there, and weve got an aircraft that perhaps if these radar signals are correct indeed it has conti...

Images of the two men before they boarded the plane and investigators are asking anyone who recognizes the second man and might know why he was traveling to come forward. the search is also expanding today. authorities are hunting well beyond the flight path to both the east and west coasts of malaysia for any signs of wreckage. that would be approximately 750 miles across. that is an enormous area. nbcs tom costello joins me now. tom, where are we in this investigation? >> reporter: ill tell yo...

Made a turn, the first thing if he made a turn a pilot in command of the aircraft why didnt he radio his new heading? that is very strange. then people are now beginning to ask whether, in fact, he voluntarily turned the transponder off. if he did that, it raises all kinds of other issues including pilot behavior, including complicit and perhaps a hijacking and puts terrorism on the table when interpol and cia and everybody has said the passport issue doesnt lead to maybe much more drug smugglin...