Urgent and we have reports of smoke on an island in the search area. More than 1,100 search and rescue personnel from australia, singapore, malaysia, south korea, japan, and new zealand are joining indonesias search teams. And the uss sampson is on its way to the java sea where the plane went missing sunday morning with 162 people on board. Cnns reporters live in the search zones for you. And we have got an expert Team Standing by to answer all of your questions. Make sure you use the 8501qs. But lets begin with our reporters. Andrew stevens in surabaya indonesia and will ripley from beijing. Andrew to you first. 11 00 a. M. There. The search area for the missing airasia flight 8501 has expand expanded. If the area theyre searching continues to expand this cant be good news. Absolutely, don. I mean it is still a search and rescue operation, but more and more its in name only given that if the plane is at the bottom of the sea, which is still the working assumption here, well past 40 hours, even the Vice President of this country saying anything after that very unlikely were going to see survivors. But miracles still do happen. 156,000 square kilometers. Thats roughly the size of california. That is the search zone were looking at. Now, you mentioned smoke. Smoke has been detected coming from an island within that search zone. They are on their way. Search crews are on their way there. Were staying in pretty close contact with the search crews out of jakarta, and theyre reporting to us now that they still do not know the source of that smoke. Unlikely to be burning off, which is a pretty common occurrence here but it is rainy season now. So that certainly is an object of interest. And across the other side of the java sea on the eastern side theyre expanding the search into countryside there. This is the southern part of borneo. So it gives you an idea, don, that they are still casting the net very very wide. The sea is shallow. That is a good sign. But there has been no locator pings from the aircraft. All theyre going on still is that last communication and the loss of contact with the plane. That happened early three days ago now. And extrapolating from there basically. Theyve broken the search zone into 13 separate areas. And they are now methodically combing in those areas. 40 ships, 30 planes. But still nothing. Andrew are families there reacting to this change in the search area . Reporter well as you can imagine, don, they just want information. In fact there is a skype call going on now between members of family members of those on board the plane and the head of the search teams, which are still based in jakarta. So they get to ask all the questions they need to ask, but it is as you can imagine, incredibly sort of the moments of anguish here just extraordinary as well as the frustration. We there was a briefing about an hour ago. This is closed obviously to the media. But there are windows. And just looking into the window one image that stood out was a father head bowed, tears streaming down his face. His hand resting on the shoulder of what looks like his young son in front of him. Gives you an idea of what these people are going through. Heartfelt tweets. Social immediate y. Coming from family members of the pilot. Daddy please come home. I need you. That sort of that sort of heartrending pleas. And still many people here holding out hope don. Hope against hope that maybe a miracle will happen maybe there will be survivors here. But as the hours tick past it just looks more and more unlikely. I want to get to will ripley. Youre in beijing. The chinese are one of the many nations assisting in this search. Whats the latest youre hearing in china . China certainly very keen on deploying their assets to assist in the search zone joining those nine other countries, don. Because you remember china, they played a major role. They diverted tremendous resources to try to find mh37 0 for the families of the 154 missing chinese who went through a horrible emotional ordeal that continues to this day. And that search turned up emptyw a lot of indonesian chinese families that are now suffering the same ordeal. China wants to help. And we were speaking with some family members here in beijing today who said like the ones you interviewed earlier, don, this disappearance has brought them back to the day when flight 370 disappeared, where still ten months later there are many people who cannot accept their family members are not coming home. They still believe that theres some chance that their family members may return. Can you imagine this kind of anguish stretching on for months . Thats what the 370 families are going through. They certainly hope for closure for the families involved in the disappearance. China not the only country assisting in the search. What other nations are are involved . You mentioned of course indonesia leading the search area. We mentioned china. The u. S. Has the navys seventh fleet in the region. One ship on the way. Plenty more resources available. Australia, singapore, malaysia, south korea, japan, and new zealand. This is truly shaping up to be an International Effort don, much like what we saw as the search for 370 expanded. And as we see the search area expanding as well. It seems clear that countries want to Work Together to try to find this plane as quickly as possible for these families. Will Ripley Andrew stevens, thank you very much. I want to bring in now our aviation experts matthew wald mary schiavo, former Inspector General of the department of transportation now an attorney for victims of transportation accidents. Also captain tim taylor a Sea Operations specialist and underwater vehicle expert. Jeff wise the author of extreme fear the science of your mind in danger. And cnn aviation analyst and 777 captain less auben. Les, two pieces of information. The smoke and search area expanding. What do you make of these reports . The smoke, i dont put a lot of credence into that. From the standpoint of i think you and i discussed this with mh370, with reference to the emergency locator transmitters the elts. The fact they never emitted a signal was an indication to me that these things may be underwater. And the smoke on an island may be some other related to something else. So i have a feeling that since we didnt get the elt signals either by an impact on land which would have occurred for sure that theyre immersed in water. If you have an emergency like this, i know youd rather not have it, but does it make a difference, land or water for a pilot . You mean if you had a choice of having land or water . Of course youre going to look for a landing strip, someplace to put a piece of concrete or put the airplane on a piece of concrete. But if the other option is to ditch the airplane its not something that we want to do because its a difficult maneuver to do to perform safely enough you that dont have injuries. Mary i want to get your take on the breaking news now. The search area expanding again. And also the smoke. But expanding. And as you heard our Andrew Stevens say, its the size of california. It contains 13 sector zones now. Three days into this and not a single piece of wreckage so far that we know about. As the hours tick on here what do you make of this . How hopeful are you that something will happen within the next few days . Well im still hopeful that something will happen in the next few days. And the search areas expanding because if the wreckage is in the water the currents are just taking it further and further away from the point of impact. So they have to expand it really. And in some ways its just a practical maneuver. As the days have gone on and they havent found, it they have to expand it to take in the possibilities of where the wreckage could be. So i dont take it as necessarily an awful development. Its just something that they have to do because of the way the currents work. The key differences, tim, between the way this search is conducted and the way they conducted the search for 370, is there a big difference . I mean, technically theyre doing the same thing. But here as richard said in the last hour they know they have a good idea where this is. Theres no reason to think its not in this area. Theres no data saying its bugged out or done Something Different like 370. And we talked about this jeff, when we talked about 370. The possibility of because theyre saying its at the bottom of the sea rierkts . The possibility its intact at the bottom of the sea, is that slim and none . We dont know why that official said that. Theres no real reason to assume that if a plane impacts the water its going to do so in one piece. Thats really rare. It has happened but under very special circumstances. I think maybe what he meant, and perhaps something was lost in translation, what he meant was it went into the ocean. But we dont even know that thats necessarily true as weve just been talking about. It might have hit the land. There are islands in the area. So you know one thing we saw with mh370 was early on there were all kinds of reports that would come in and turn out later not to be true. But its very hard to filter things because you dont we know so little about really the basics of the case. Nine months plus later still no siphon mh370. And matthew, similar questions. People are wondering in todays technological age how is it still possible for a plane to go missing like this . 370 set off an International Debate about standards. The problem is that standards are mostly in the hands of i. K. O. The International Civil aviation organization. Its an arm of the u. N. And it operates kind of like the security council. It operates by consensus. So we end up with the least common denominator level of safety. If you cant get everybody to agree, its really hard to put in something stricter. Now, there are cases in which the airlines have felt pressured. The regulators are egging them on. Most of all the public is egging them on to solve a problem. Thats happened mostly on a national basis. I havent really seen it happen on an international basis. After the valujet crash, for example, the airlines signaled they were all willing to volunteer for better standard for onboard fires because the public just wasnt going to stand for it. Whether thats going to happen here and the airlines will agree to adapt a quick standard without a whole lot of International Discussion and negotiation for realtime monitoring remains to be seen. And probably it depends partly on how long it takes to find this wreckage. Stay with me everybody. Weve got a lot more to come on the hunt for flight 8501. How bad does weather have to be to bring down a jet full of people . And do hightech autopilots help or hurt in an emergency . Our experts are standing by to answer all of your questions. Make sure you tweet us using the 8501qs. Daughter do you and mom still have money with that broker . Dad yeah, 20 something years now. Thinking about what you want to do with your money . Daughter looking at options. What do you guys pay in fees . Dad i dont know exactly. 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Hurry in to the sign then drive event and get a fivehundred dollar new years bonus on select new volkswagen models. Offer ends january 2nd. Tripadvisor not only has millions of real travelers reviews and opinions but checks hundreds of websites, so people can get the best hotel prices. To plan, compare book the perfect trip visit tripadvisor. Com today. One thing we do know about flight 8501 is that it encountered bad weather off the coast of indonesia. So joining me now is cnn meteorologist pedram javaheri. Thanks for joining us. How bad were the storms when flight 8501 lost contact . Yeah don, nice seeing you. This part of the world this is a thunderstorm factory of our planet. Sow ask me a question of say between october and april where is the worst weather place consistently on our planet i would direct you don, across the equator. Typically right around indonesia where we have the winds from the Southern Hemisphere meeting with the winds across the Northern Hemisphere and that really fuels some of the largest storms on our planet across those few months of the year. You take a look at the perspective. Surabaya indonesia the sun comes up roughly 5 15 in the morning. That was the case on sunday morning. Thunderstorms began blossoming smortly after sunrise across this region. Unlike north america where storms really peak intensity into the afternoon hours, in this part of the world around the tropics and also the equator that happens in the Early Morning hours. So the plane takes off. Notice major thunderstorm complex to the east of the aircraft there. We know the pilot here asked to deviate to the left. He was given permission to do so. Moved the plane to the left presumably to avoid this thunder head. We know it measured some 53,000 feet high. The plane then shortly after moves over what we call a cold spot. Just like you have major updrafts here in the warm spot of the thunderstorm way rising air, you have major down drafts in the cold spot. Also we know across these areas especially at altitude say 38,000 39,000 feet youre going to experience super cooled water droplets and essentially droplets of water that is are subfreezing, below freezing temperatures but retain liquid form until they make contact wan innot matt object. If the plane goes into this region if that is the case with supercooled droplets that could threeday a disastrous scenario. Shortly after that we lose contact with the plane. The plane then runs into a massive complex of thunderstorms and then the rest remains unknown at this point. So that is the storm system we were dealing with at that point of the Morning Hours. Really for a plane to retain lift, to retain laminar flow youve got to have velocities or wind speeds across the upper portion of the wing to be higher than down below on the lower area of the flap. That happens naturally. But you disrupt the flow whether to be by major turbulence whether with severe thunderstorms in the area or even reduced speed, perhaps too fast of a speed, in this case we know the plane was going too slow, that could lead to a disastrous scenario eventually of course a stall would be i apossibility as well. A typical thunderstorm don, would be 20,000 to 30,000 feet in height. This plane climbs up to about 36,300 as far as we know. The thunderstorm complex in the vicinity was well over 53,000 feet in height. Not a storm you want to be messing with. And this storm again among the tallest on our planet occur across portions of the tropp sxikz thats the theme in this part of the world. Take us into the present with the search area now. Whats the forecast for the search area today . Were in the wettest part of the year. December and january that is the wettest time of theyearold. The search boxes combined roughly the size of new york state or the country of greece if youre watching us internationally. Look at these thunderstorms beginning to blossom right toward that region. Both in the southern portion now. Also in the northern portion of the search box. That is the current perspective at this hour. The model indication shows you in the Morning Hours plenty of weather taking place in the southern periphery. Look at the time stamp. Take you through local time into wednesday morning. Shortly after sunrise thunderstorm complexes begin to pop up here. What i like to call popcorn showers just because theyre literally scattered about all over the place reducing the visibility. And plenty of cloud cover. Look at thursday morning. Similar scenario. Again, this is something you see every single day across this region but i can tell you with the storm that was in the vicinity of the aircraft it was a lot more symmetrical, a lot more organized. And of course getting up to 53,000 feet. And we saw it literally collapse shortly after this plane disappeared. We know it lost a lot of intensity, perhaps way significant downdraft associated with that too. Pedram javaheri meteorologist at the cnn weather center. Thank you very much. I want to bring back matthew wald, mary schiavo, tim taylor les abend. Pilots are trained to navigate severe thunderstorms, correct . Correct. At this particular time they would have been utilizing a very sophisticated form of radar, on board radar, looking at it would have been color radar, we would have been looking at green, yellow, red being the most intense. We do probably had cells that did go up to 50,000 feet. The thunderstorm consists of a lot of cells. Especially something as big and as immense an area that that was in. But not every area not every cell would have gone up to 50,000 feet. So it would have been possible to navigate at least around it if not at least possibly above some of them. We dont know what the pilots were seeing at that particular time. Mary, you know we sit on runways, we sit in the airport and we complain we say its just a little thunderstorm little shower. But in the United States with a system like that thunderstorms, a weather system would that flight have been canceled . I think it would have. And because the United States has additional considerations sometimes just schedule irregularities and repositioning the flight makes it a nightmare. For example, just last month there was a huge storm system moved through and most of the airlines prophylactically canceled flights and waited out the storm. Although i was in a hurricane in florida a few years back and all the u. S. Carriers except for one canceled the flight. One carrier took off. So you never know. Did you agree with that . I think what we would have done id like to modify that what marys saying. I think there m