Page 10 - Pinger News Today

Strongest ping they detected. what is the latest sign? >> no sign of the plane. at this point it is probably very likely that the bluefin has completed that mission 13 and probably covered 113% of the area. what the -- authorities here are saying now is that they will continue to search the adjacent areas with bluefin to that pinger number one location to see if there is anything they can pick up around it. and then as we understand they will pick everything up and move six miles north at some p...

Planes entire electrical system just catastrophically shut down, no radio, no transponders, no pinger, no way to send a stress call, everything electrical was dead. colonel, youre an experienced pilot, youve had things go wrong but does that sound plausible that everything would just stop? >> all the scenarios out there from hijack sabotage and landing in pakistan and iran this is certainly one of the most plausible. there are a number of actions to an electrical bay. when the electric goes out ...

And in principle, that could have pushed some surface wreckage down. and then theres another current that might have pushed it back up. so i dont think that idea that the wreckage could have been there is entirely unreasonable. sadly, of course, it isnt. so it couldnt have been discounted from the start. >> lets talk about the bluefin 21, jules. it has now scanned more than 90% of the seabed search zone with no signs of the wreckage found. i mean, do you think the plane is likely to be found in ...

Were the pingers, and although the bluefin has almost completed searching that first pinger location, there are others still to go. but, you know, we didnt hit it lucky on the fine-scale search. now we need to broaden it up and cover more ground. >> we know thats something they had to do with the search for flight 447, air france, they had to you have moo the search area. we know that thats reasonable. heres the question. do they change the pings they search around? do they expand? do they redo ...

There is entirely unreasonable. sadly, of course, it isnt. so it couldnt have been discounted from the start. >> lets talk about the bluefin 21, jules. it has now scanned more than 90% of the seabed search zone with no signs of the wreckage found. i mean, do you think the plane is likely to be found in the last 10% of the area? >> i think the chances are one out of ten. i mean, ive been following discussions on your show and other shows. and i think the pinger is there. i mean, we certainly know...

Actually looking in the right place. so hes on the money. he has been saying that. you know, what happens, jeff, when the bluefin finishes the current search area? do you find a new place to look for or use different technology to research the same area? >> im really with jim and david on this one. you know, the australians assured us that they had reason to believe, very strong reasons to believe that these pings correlated with the aircraft and that we would very soon be in possession or know ...

To believe, very strong reasons to believe that these pings correlated with the aircraft and that we would very soon be in possession or know the whereabouts of the wreckage. that hasnt panned out. so then i think we really have to say, okay, this appears that this was a false positive. we dont know what generated this false positive or how it could have come about. seems that it was not the black box pinger. it was something else. therefore, why did australia make this assumption? why did they ...

Gary tuchman, cnn, los angeles. >> lets turn back to our panel. richard and david, david, for full disclosure, the rema 6,000, your pride and joy. youre from woods hole, thats where gary was during the report. besides that, are there -- what other vehicles do you think at this search phase would work in a search like this and was the bluefin 21 not the right -- >> no, i think bluefin was. in fact, remember, the idea was what captain mathews called a tactical survey. they had the pinger, they wer...

Questions, those 26 specific questions. where do you lie? what do you think happened? >> yeah, those 26 questions, we had sent to the authorities. none of the questions have been answered so far. and, if they are searching in the south indian sea, we dont know based on what data they have. we dont know. >> it is the pinger they heard on april 9th. and also the fuel consumption patterns and the satellite data. it is the best clues they have. >> well, what they are saying from -- right from day on...

That we actually are searching in the right place. theres nowhere better to consider. >> rob, i know you think they are probably honing in on the right general area, but if those pings turned out to be a false lead, really, i mean, how much of a problem is it? are they just nowhere, then? do they have to reexamine everything from the very beginning? >> well, you know, when we first heard that the pinger had been located or it had had been heard and the controllers had a great deal of confidence ...