Transcripts For CNNW CNN Newsroom 20140407 : vimarsana.com

CNNW CNN Newsroom April 7, 2014

I need to be honest with you. It could take some days before the information is available to establish whether these detections can be confirmed as being from mh 370. In very deep oceanianic water, nothing happens fast. And when he says deep, he means water some three miles deep. A u. S. Underwater drone is being prepared to scour the ocean floor near where the latest pings were heard. And as the search continues, so does speculation about what happened inside a cockpit. We are told the plane may have steered a curious course around ind neezian air space, a route that suggests an intent to avoid radar detection. We are in australia and talked to the u. S. Navy captain in charge of the operation aboard the ocean shield. Will . If this really is the missing plane and thats still a big if, how could you even begin to describe such a discovery . It certainly would be a miracle if this does turn out to be the aircraft location. A strong word with a stronger warning from u. S. Navy captain from u. S. Navy captain mark ma thus. I caution not to be overly optimistic. We have got some work to do before we can say we have a true contract. Matthews team is on the shield listening for pings for over three hours. What i would like to do is reacquire the signal, two, deploy the underwater vehicle with the sight scan sonar to map the debris field and three, switch out that sonar with a camera unit and take photographs of what would be the wreckage. Slow and tedious work, nearly 15,000 feet almost three miles down. The extreme depth pushing the limits of the underwater drone, the blue fin 21 that would do a visual search for wreckage. Certainly were jumping to conclusions. We need to reacquire the signal. Their biggest obstacle . Time. The black box batteries are rated for 30 days, a deadline thats already passed. Cautious measured optimism. We certainly want to reacquire it before we say yes we have done something good here. Caution definitely a keyword. If you think about it were one month into this search. One month ago, flight 370 vanished into thin air. As of right now we still dont have any physical evidence verifying that the latest leads are in fact the missing plane. If it does turn out that the plane is in this spot in the southern indian ocean, it will be so remarkable. Remember there was no physical evidence guiding the ocean shield to this spot. It was simply a team of experts who did some amazing math and said look, go here, this is our best guess where youre going to find something. They put down this tpl and happened to hear a ping in the final hours, really, of the black box battery life. We dont have any confirmation yet. It will really be quite remarkable. An amazing stroke of luck if it does. Thank you so much. Now for weeks, Sea Operations experts have been saying its not about finding the needle but figuring out the hay stack. How do you track down the needle after finding the hay stack. We have the president of the company that made the original flight data recorders. Thanks for being with us. As you know, the sophisticated equipment on board this australian ship has twice picked up the signals. Do you think they are the pings from the black boxes . What would lead us to believe that they could be . Well, as we have talked ab, its a very unique signature, the 37. 5 kilo hertz. It sounded like a steady continuous signal from one of our pingers so we are very cautiously optimistic. 37. 5 kilohertz doesnt happen in nature. That means that the battery has lasted longer than 30 days. We knew that the batteries could have expired by that point. Whats the best Case Scenario on how much longer the battery can power the pinger . Well, we have some design margin. We have always said that we could get a few extra days. After that the battery is going to degrade and the sound output is going to slowly diminish. I would say a matter of a few days. So its going to weaken meaning that you would need the towed pinger locater to be closer to it . Realistically, yes, as the sound power diminishes we will have to get closer and closer to it. You said over the weekend that the two rosecorders would t be able to sink their signals. Is it possible that maybe the battery has completely died . It could be. Or its just in a different location. They just havent picked it up but they are two independent devices that are not sink row nized. You should hear two signals. Two sequences of clicks. If you have search crews and they can find the signal again, is it just about following where the signal gets stronger . Is this a Straight Line process. I dont think its that simple. Its like a game of marco polo. Youre going to have to listen for the sond, make another pass and try to get closer until you get on top of it and then you can do some visual surveillance, map the floor and try to locate these things for real. And i think it probably strikes a lot of people that no one is really jumping to the conclusion that hey, this is the black box from the plane. We havent drawn that connection yet. Obviously its promising. Is there a situation where the signal could turn out to be false and if so is there a source that could be making this signal . These are very unique simple devices designed to emit this type of frequency and pulse ping. So this is exactly what they do. Its a very unique signature. For it to turn out to be Something Else would be highly unlikely. That is fascinating. Thank you for explaining that to us. Just ahead, its one thing to fly around air space but it is another to completely avoid radar detection. A malaysian source tells cnn that this jet may have done just that. But something doesnt add up here. We will go to the Flight Simulator to tell you how the flight could have avoided detection. This is cnn live special coverage. Cut [bell rings] this. Is jane. Her long day on set starts with shoulder pain. And a choice take 6 tylenol in a day which is 2 aleve for. All day relief. Hmm. [bell ring] roll sound action welcome back. If malaysian flight 370 skirted ind neezian air space, how did it happen . The plane takes off and then flying around the northern end of indonesia possibly to avoid radar detection. Martin, give us a sense of what this would even look like. We can show you how it would look from the cockpit and the flight Management System. The triangle is us flying on a course that would have taken us to beijing. You can see where things dramatically changed and this flight veered off course. So we have entered in the points that would make it come off course and then you see this sort of arc here . Its actually the outline of indonesia but off shore, so skirting around the island. To do that would be how many way points . About 18. But not hard to do. You can program that in fairly quickly. Use Something Like the flight Management System here. Thats right. And program those in and be on your way. You dont have to use the auto pilot. We are assuming that they did. There is another way. There is. Its a very simple switch. We dial in the direction we want to turn. In this case im turning left and you press the button and it turns. You could make subtle adjustments not necessarily felt by the passengers or anyone else on board. You could also fly it manually. It would be a little more taxing to do that but technically it could be done. Whether this was truly done to hide an aircraft or get around radar is unknown. I dont know that they were doing it for clthose reasons. It seems easy enough to fly around air space. But avoiding radar, does that make sense to you . You know, its counter intuitive to what were trained so i have to get out of my training. Youre trained to always stay in contact all the time. But if youre thinking about this line of trying to get outside of normal operations, it is possible to do. So im not going to think impossible but its a lot of work. We do have a scenario, it is my personal one, my personal favorite. We will show you one idea that has been discussed and that is the shadowing of another jumbo jet and this is what were trying to simulate for you here. This is somewhat how it would look. Youre trying to fly so close to another large aircraft that your blips on radar would literally merge together. So 370 would hide behind, you know, American Airlines 88 in regards to what was seen by radar. Its nerve racking to look at whats it like to fly it . You would be hitting all kinds of turbulence, you would be in danger of hitting the other aircraft. If we had turned off our transponder and other devices . No, i dont think they would know. And it would have been dark as well so that would have hidden our presence. Its out there as a thought but reality wise, i dont know. Its like something if it were in a movie we would scoff at it as completely unrealistic. Thank you for explaining that. We have this tantalizing flu but clue, but we cant say what it means. Why not cut straight across. It starts up here and comes around the top and this is the area where everybody is focusing on. Because the plane appears to skirt around the tip of indonesia. Many people will suggest that the reason it did that was to avoid radar. Many people are suggesting that but what i hear from you is that might not be the whole story . I think depending on the theory that you hear at any given moment, i think what it suggests more rather than just radar. Most pilots will tell you they dont know where radar starts and where radar finishes but they do know where air space starts and finishes and therefore it could have well been trying to avoid going over indonesiian air space as well. What indonesia has said is that there is no sign and no evidence of mh 370 being picked up by ind neezian radar how could they not . Thailand picked it up, malaysia picked it up. You think this is not the full story . I dont know. I would hesitate to say that but i think you have to raise an eyebrow. Look. It went vastly up the northeast part, around the tip, down near the side and indonesia says there is no sign of it on ind neezian radar and we have asked them several times. What you end up with down here is exactly what to use the polite words of running out of fuel, that is exactly the endurance. Fascinating stuff. We will be talking much more about the new mysterious clue and the malaysian minister saying it could be days if now weeks before more is released. We are live next and were going to take a closer look at the pinger locator technology. What it can and cannot do. Thats coming up. Stay with us. On the one hand, the new find would end a month of frustrating uncertainty but it would also end hope that families and loved ones are still alive. Authorities suggest that moment may not be far away. We are cautiously hopeful that there will be a positive development in the next few days if not hours. Cnn Nick Robertson is in kuala lumpur. How are families handling this possibility that the plane did crash into the indian ocean . Reporter i talked to a Union Representative who represents some of the air crew that are still missing. He says for these families they are beginning to recognize that perhaps theyre soon going to get some definitive information but there are a lot of families here, the chinese families who came to malaysia who left over the past couple of days frustrated and disappointed. They just dont want to believe this until they get hard evidence. Either some debris or a real confirmation that it is flight 370 that is at the bottom of the ocean, a photograph or stronger confirmation. In the meantime they are just going to be patient and wait for that information. They have had their hopes dashed too many times but clearly as this gets closer, the pain is going to increase for all of these families, they will ultimately have to face the inevitable. You really feel for them and this investigation throughout hasnt been handled very well and that has been the most taxes on them. Is i possible that some family members might not be persuaded by anything . Youre always going to face that type of situation and it may depend on how much of the aircraft is recovered and what bodies if any is recovered. One of the things that just doesnt go away here and we heard it again in the government briefing today here in malaysia, that this notion that some people have survived on life rafts was knocked down by the defense minister today. Some people really holding out hope that there will be survivors and you can kind of understand that, i think. Nick robertson, thanks so much. If you are wondering how you can help the families of those missing, go to cnn. Com impact. There are many pieces on how the families deal with losing a loved one so unexpectedly. Cnn. Com impact. Coming up we will take an inside look at the pinger technology. Our brian todd visited the very facility that makes the devices. What the pinger can and cannot do. Also were focusing on the search area as well. Without any physical evidence, should authorities be looking in an entirely different region . Stay with us. Marge you know, theres a more enjoyable way to get your fiber. Try phillips fiber good gummies. Theyre delicious, and a good source of fiber to help support regularity. Wife mmmm husband these are good marge the tasty side of fiber. From phillips. But add brand new belongings from nationwide insurance. And well replace destroyed or stolen items with brandnew versions. We take care of the heat, so you dont get burned. Just another way we put members first, because we dont have shareholders. Join the nation. Nationwide is on your side bottom of the hour, this is cnn special live coverage of the disappearance of flight 370 and today a possible breakthrough. A ship using advanced u. S. Technology has picked up a signal in the water not once but twice. These pings consistent with a planes black box pinger. Later for 13 minutes. Importantly these sounds were distinct from one another as you would expect from two pingers, one each on the flight data as well as the cockpit voice recorders. What i would like to do before i say with certainty that it is the aircraft is one reacquire the signal. Two, deploy the autonomous underwater unit and then switch out the sonar with a camera unit and take photographs of what would be the wreckage. We need to definitely reacquire the signal to confirm that it is the aircraft. Back in malaysia, authorities confirm that flight 370 was never picked up by radar in neighboring indonesia. A source inside tells cnn the plane purposefully flew around Indonesian Air space. This is the only sound people want to hear. The so called pings. [ clicking sound ] sounds a bit like a metro gnome. If you find the pings you can find the plane. How does this pinger locater work . Its got very sophisticated capability. It can go down to about 20,000 feet below the surface of the ocean. It can detect the pinger from up to two miles away. It does have that sophistication and capability. It also has limitations. Bad weather and stormy seas could obstruct the pings. Consistently they said the manufacturers have told us its most effective when you have a confirmed piece of wreckage already found therefore you can narrow down the search area. We dont have a piece of wreckage that was found so they put this in the water. It was considered a hail mary pass, a last ditch effort and low and behold it did find something over the weekend. Now comes the hard part. They have got to go back over the area where they detected this. They have got to reacquire the signal. Its going to take parallel runs and perpendicular runs so they can home in on it, triangulate it. And the animation that youre looking at now, thats another device that theyre going to deploy. That is blue fin 21 which is going to go down and take pictures and side scan sonar images of the area where they heard the pings and try to map out a debris field. These are the procedures coming up. And brian you said normally they start with debris and then they know where to look for the black box. Has this worked before in this situation where there isnt debris and in a way they can hear the pinger but theyre going in blind . Its not worked in this way before. To my knowledge and from what our discussions are with the manufacturers, this is unprecedented. The tow pinger locator has worked where major commercial airlines have had crashes in water but in those instances the search area was much smaller. They had a point to work with where they knew where the plane went down. This time they did not. One of those times was in 1999 in the atlantic ocean. The only time that the pinger locater has failed was in the air france of 2009. It did not detect the pinger there. The pinger came loose from the black box and may have been damaged so it does have a good track record. And i want to talk a little more about this. Joining me now is jeff wise. He is an aviation analyst and we also have an air safety expert. If these pings are not coming from flight 370, what else could explain them . Well, really its anyones guess and we will probably never know. There are a lot of things in the ocean that make a lot of nois. This is a very artificial sounding noise so it boggles the imagination that something natural could create it. But we just dont know, really what could cause a false positive. We do know that there have been numerous false positives so far. It is very much in up in the air. The science tries to avoid this, the 37. 5 kilohertz is a frequency not heard in nature . User error might be the answer. As someone pointed out earlier on cnn, there is a lot of material and vessels down in the water in that part of the ocean. Maybe somehow they are picking up one another. Its really hard to say. We dont know. It hasnt been analyzed yet what the other false positives were caused by. This process of evaluating the pings, can you explain why it takes so long, what all it involves, who all is listening to this . There is certainly numerous agencies that are all trying to listen to this at this point and it wouldnt surprise me if more arent on the way. Part of the reason why this takes so long is this is a nondirectional signal. What that means is when it emanates the sound it goes 360 degrees in all directions. So that makes it more challenging to try to home in on the location as it were. If it were in coming from one specific direction, that might enable you to find it faster but it would be harder to find it in the first place. Thats an important design feature. Thats a good thing but it does take more time. We really are doing this backwards out of necessity. That we dont have a debris field where were trying to pinpoint it. But rather were casting a wide net and hoping to find it before the batteries go out. Lets say a battery does go out, shawn. We just heard a few minutes ago from one expert who said they need to reacquire the signal. But i guess if the battery goes out is there enough information in what they have already been anyone to gather to help lead them to the right location if this is indeed from the airplane. Thats a really challenging question. I think it will be based on the te ra terrain of the vehicle. If we have a really flat seab

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