difficult. karen, do you agree with what ross was saying before this basic principle of how confident you as a pilot would be under these conditions to be able to land that plane if there wasn t some catastrophic mechanical failure, if you had to get it down, you could? absolutely. we have anboard computers. we can type in the destination. it s kind f like using your iphone and google maps. follow where you need to go. there was nothing wrong with the airplane, it sounds like. it was just the transponder. there should be no difficulty getting it somewhere. ross, every time that we ve had big, catastrophic commercial air disasters, there has been a kind of engineering response to it or regulatory response to it. and, of course, that s part, right, that s part of why getting to the bottom of the mystery is so important, just in terms of improving the system as a whole which is really kind of a miracle if you take a step back and recognize just how many planes are whizzing through the
layfolks like me? procedures are to turn on the transponder right before we take off and then we push it off off we land. i don t see any reason to turn it off en route at all. it sends out a signal so the air traffic come can see where you are. have you ever had an occasion where you lost a transponder for a reason where there was some kind of mechanical difficulty that would take it out? i have, however, we have backups. if one side went out, the other side started working. i ve never had a case where it didn t work. okay. so, so here is the issue as i see it, ross. you say we don t know anything. we do know a few things, right? and that set of facts bring us nowhere. i want you to respond to what latane was saying, this process of inference folks are doing which is coincidence, coincidence, coincidence. is it not the case that catastrophic crashes, in this day and age, the product of a string of unlikely events
there s no one that understands exactly how difficult that would be than the people who fly these sorts of planes. joining me now, latane campbell. 14 years of experience flying international. captain karen pellicone. pilot for another major u.s. commercial airline and ross amer. he spent five years flying the boeg 77boeing 777. now ceo of aero consulting. ross let me start with you. in the dark, with no ground control and presumably, it appears, certain automatic functions of the plane turned off, could you get this thing to ground in any way? or is that just an impossible task? no, chris. it s a simple thing for a pilot of that caliber that gets to fly a 777. that aircraft has onboard equipment that could be used to find your way basically anywhere around the world by itself. so you do think that even
the plane landed somewhere. those people somewhere someway are walking the earth, they re somewhere. for that to be the case, something miraculous and improbable and bizarre would have had to have happened but a lot of improbable and bizarre things have happened in the ten days since this flight disapp r disappeared. until still, the reality is this. the jetliner was flying in the dark. it could have had to find a way to land without getting word out despite its massive size and worldwide effort to locate it. there s no one that understands exactly how difficult that would be and the people who fly these sorts of planes. joining me now, latane campbell. 14 years of experience flying international. captain karen pelacore. retired united airlines pilot ross amer. spent five years supplying the 777. now ceo of aero consulting.
the jetliner was flying in the dark. it would have had to find a way to land without getting word out despite its massive size and the worldwide effort to locate it. there s no one that understands exactly how difficult that would be than the people who fly these sorts of planes. joining me now, latane campbell. 14 years of experience flying international. captain karen pellicone. pilot for another major u.s. commercial airline and ross amer. he spent five years flying the boeing 777. now ceo of aero consulting. ross, let me start with you. in the dark, with no ground control and presumably, it appears, certain automatic functions of the plane turned off, could you get this thing to ground in any way? or is that just an impossible task? no, chris. it s a simple thing for a pilot of that caliber that gets to fly a 777. that aircraft has onboard