Page 8 - Flight Pattern News Today

Flight 17, what we believe to be an attack, several ukrainian aircraft were shot down over eastern ukraine. thats led many to question, why aviation directors felt it was safe to send flights over a conflict zone. renee marsh has that story. >> reporter: the signs of danger were all around. >> this also follows a pattern of actions by russian-backed separatist. >> reporter: june 13th pro-russian rebels shot down a military transport plane, killing 49 people. june 24th, rebels shoot a ukrainian h...

>> indeed. quickly to you, jim tillman, as a former pilot. accident is a cogent explanation. the flight pattern, the size of this kind of aircraft is readily apparent from the ground or is there something about the altitude that a plane like this would fly that would be in any way similar to a it intoer jet or a military aircraft? >> no, not at all. the fact that you have avionics on the 777 to let the ground know who they are, where they are going, their speed and direction, all of that informa...

Son is there was absolutely no, apparently, from the satellite pings, is that there was no deviation or change in the planes flight pattern. now, people think that its easy to fly straight and level and continuous, but as a former pilot, i can tell you, perfectly straight and level and no deviation flying is actually very difficult, because your plane can be buffeted by the winds, i mean, even a slight change in the positioning of your aircraft or the ailerons or the rudder can change its course...

>> exactly. had it not been in autopilot, had the pilot been controlling the aircraft it would have had a different flight pattern and it would have gone -- the altitudes may have been different. we dont have a lot of altitude information, but what we do have is the track that it went. so the fact that it stayed exactly on that track, tells us a lot of which mode of autopilot it was in. >> as we wrap up, david, one of the things about this area theyre going back to do the underwater search, it h...

But with agencies like the cia as well. but the question is, who was he trained as a spy by? theres plenty of evidence to support that maybe he wasnt trained as a spy for the united states but in fact for russia. if you look at some of the testimony -- and this was outlined in "the wall street journal" earlier this month from general dempsey saying the majority of the documents he took and was distributing, they didnt have to do a spy on americans but on military locations and military strategy....

>> i think you have a phobia of being a professional flight attendant. i was going to stay stewardess. >> dont you dare. that is a stewardess outfit. i like it. >> i like the hat. whats with the white gloves? am i reading "life" magazine? look at me. i should be paying attention to the flight pattern. >> is that pan am, paa, pan am airlines. >> how about that? i didnt realize you were that old. youre holding up great. >> thank you, john. now you have to read the whole thing by yourself. >> a fun...

Just the above water search. expand on that for me, will you? >> i think when they finish this search, if they come up empty handed, it definitely should be ended. we want to know what happened, but i think at this point weve determined that the airplane did not fly itself, that airplane, the pattern, the flight pattern, the route of flight, the airplane couldnt have done it. we had human intervention, so we know a pilot, somebody, a person was in there and did that. so to find the airplane, if ...

Motivation. what were really talking about is i understand knees officials saying they think there is a motivation. if they were trying to go somewhere, where were they going? theres effectively nothing out here, carol. >> supposedly if a skilled person was flying the plane, thaw knew how much fuel was available, right? >> they would know. theres no way they had extra fuel on board. they would know where they were going. yes, there are tiny islands in some places out here and a lot of conspiracy...

Part of the team that helped find air france flight 447. good morning to both of you. another day, another set of developments we need to discuss. >> marry i want to ask you, last week, kind of where we ended, it was always thought to this point that we were going to detect debris in from the air. and then youre going to send in the pinger locator and youre going to then start the underwater search. how surprising is it for you, of course, a healthy dose of caution, because we dont know what it ...

>> so, mary elen, as a profiler, what is this potential route tell you, what does it indicate to you and what do you say to these reports, the second one now, coming from authorities who say this was an intentional turn? >> well, if the information is correct, i have a couple of observations. if it required an expertise from a pilot, someone flying the plane that knew what he was doing, understood the plane and understood how to fly the plane, then i would assume that that person is also aware o...