Page 3 - Radar Returns News Today

Chief and managing director at airlineratings.com and joins me by phone. i understand youre hearing from your own sources that there are multiple radar returns in a search area indicating something is there. what more can you tell us about that? >> look, there were some additional radar returns yesterday, we understand. we also understand that there was some more satellite data that indicates that there is a little bit more debris than the two major pieces that have been identified. but the majo...

The race to identify the debris is happening in one of the most remote corners of the planet. jeffrey thomas is editor in chief and managing director at airlineratings.com and joins me by phone. i understand youre hearing from your own sources that there are multiple radar returns in a search area indicating something is there. what more can you tell us about that? >> look, there were some additional radar returns yesterday, we understand. we also understand that there was some more satellite da...

Another area they had radar returns. they werent sure where it was. they had small blips on the radar. they make decisions they went toward the area they were seeing a little radar return. there was no debris there but we have the capability to maneuver. >> have you ever been involved in anything like this before? >> it is really an unprecedented event. over the course of the year we will have 80 exercises 200 or so ports and we practice for this kind of thing. it is something no one has ever

It pops up on our radar. we either fly lower get one of our optical sensors on there or fly lower and get a visual identification. the first thing we do is we see it on radar. >> how many times has this happened? >> all the time. so yesterday the p8 was flying and it comes -- it sees very small specs on its radar. a lot of it is a judgment call. a lot of it is the decision of the pilots and air crew. they were flying and had a choice, they could either fly over an area lets say not yet searched ...

Radar returns that the plane follow followed not only a frac to the west, but a zigzag course over the andaman sea, and that is someone who is familiar with the airline flight, because they were going from weigh poiaypoin waypoint. >> they have to know, and it was preprogrammed in there? >> well, the fact is why would you do that, fly from waypoint to waypoint to slip away? perhaps you were hiding in plane site, and if a military controller was seeing the split moving across the screen, he would...

Many flights. is it possible that somebody could have commandeered this plane and got as far as somewhere like pakistan as some people are suggesting? >> absolutely. there was enough fuel on the airplane to do that. whether without -- you would think that if that airplane had been over a land mass, someones radar would have been able to pick that up. and it certainly at this point, political pressures alone, i would think, would have determined that the pakistani government or another government...

The crew trying to regain control of the plane in some fashion for some reason. it may have been something totally nefarious. it is leading them conclusion they have to consider there was serious human intervention in all of this. what we also know, the radar returns, dramatic changes in altitude, to underscore what my colleague was saying a moment ago, the malaysian radars may not have that much accuracy. the plane was flying a good distance. that reduces the accuracy. we do know the plane made...

Data. the flblips coming off the plan. so definitive, no. but good reason to believe it was malaysia airlines flying there. so they have the blips out four to five hours over the ocean. they technically analyze, use computers to figure out the calculation, where was the satellite in relationship to the earth, where were the radar returns, where do the pings come from. >> how do they get it didnt end up on land? >> reporter: well, it may well have, anderson. nothing is definitive. what we are rep...

Radar is not clear its not clear whats happened at this point. >> barbara, when we spoke last night you broke the news that you believed american officials were pretty convinced now that this plane had gone down into the indian ocean somewhere. putting together the new revelations weve heard about the trajectory of the plane, about the fact it may have been taken over by one or more people who deliberately tampered with the systems, what can you now tell me with all that also bringing in your in...

Wasnt human intervention it. >> barbara, i want to ask you a question which david gallow put to us a few moments ago and its an excellent question about it, and we talked to andy pasztor about it. but officials you were talking to believe the plane ended up in the ocean. how can they believe that if we were led to believe this plane went for some five hours, how are they saying it ended up in the water? are they saying that definitively? what leads them to that conclusion? >> let me start with, ...