Page 4 - Ghost Plane News Today

We know at 2:20 a.m., that plane made a turn. after that urn it, there were three pings in rapid succession. they believe that those rapid pings have to do with a rapid change in altitude. that may be why those pings were generated. so with this final ping, which was a failed hand shake, it may be that that too was generated by a rather rapid change in altitude, which, of course, could mean the planes final path into the ocean and could give them a great lead in terms of pinpointing where the pl...

To connect. >> and les abend, we talked to miles obrian in the 8:00, he suggested that partial ping could have been from an electrical surge or even the plane hitting the water, which would really help investigators zero in on an area to search. >> i contemplated that for a little bit. what i thought it might be was the fact that the last engine shut down or flamed out, because of fuel exhaustion, which would have -- this airplane is designed to deploy a ram air turbine, which operates one syste...

>> if these various pings show a radius of x miles where the plane could be, on the sixth one, youve got up to an hour out of it where it could have been. but a ping only eight minutes later, you can drill down and prove the significance of that. and suddenly you are honing in on a much smaller area to search. it will still be huge, but it will be a significant improvement. >> family members in beijing today protesting out in the streets, wanting journalists to see them being held by back author...

Other incident. >> reporter: ghost plane, zombie plane, plane without a brain. it would begin with an alarm, could be fire or sudden decompression. pilot puts it into a very steep decent. at the same time the aircraft begins to turn. the idea is you want to get this plane heading back to some airport. so we would head back to kuala lumpur or the closest airport. but youre descending, because you only have so much oxygen. the passengers have had the mask flop down in front of them, they only have...

Voice recorder was too charred to offer anything of value. >> it flew in with such force, and the fire was so intense, that nothing could have survived that impact. >> reporter: if the black boxes are ever recovered from malaysia airlines flight 370, investigators still may have questions. the cockpit voice regarder starts recording over itself after two hours. so the moment something went very wrong may remain a mystery. randi kaye, cnn, new york. >> david gallo joins me now. he co-led the sear...

>> reporter: this is the sound of a pilot in trouble. that was the pilot of swissair flight 111 talking to air traffic control just minutes before he crashed into the atlantic ocean in 1998. everyone on board was killed. when crash investigators found the planes black boxes at the bottom of the ocean, they were stunned. >> both the recorders stopped recording about six minutes before the aircraft actually hit the water. >> reporter: leaving investigators to wonder why they suddenly lost control ...

Surrounded by stainless steel. theyre built to withstand temperatures as high as 2,000 degrees fahrenheit and catastrophic impact. after twa flight 800 went down in july 1996, just 12 minutes after takeoff from new yorks jfk airport, the planes black boxes were recovered but they offered little. >> both the voice recorder and the data recorder terminated their operation within a nano second of each other. when the explosion took place. >> reporter: still, despite all the conspiracy theories inve...

Generally. thats the custom. lets assume the left engine flamed out first. if you guys could put it -- lets go with the 12,000-foot altitude which weve been talking about. i dont believe a lot of these altitude numbers weve been hearing about. so put it on auto pilot, 12,000 feet. give it asymmetrical thrust with the right engine going and left engine off. im curious if the auto pilot has enough authority to compensate for that asymmetrical thrust. in other words, if one engine is going full gun...

New debris sightings and a more focused search area still havent answered a key question about the missing jet liner. why did it fly for hours and hours to one of the most remote areas on earth. cnns martin savidge plays out a haunting scenario from inside a boeing 777 flight simulator. >> reporter: morning, carol. its called the zombie plane or its called the ghost plane or the plane without a brain. whatever you call it, it is an aircraft that is now no longer in human control. heres a scenari...

How, well have views on that. but how or why this half ping is relevant. but if they can prove the integrity of that half ping, then it adds one more if you like dot in the chain and you start to now know a little bit more about where the plane went down. because youre no longer -- youve got another point of reference. and you can coordinate that with how much fuel there was and what point you believe the plane would have been in. >> let me say its great to have you back on cnn though not under ...