Week. Youre live in the cnn newsroo newsroom. Good morning. Im carol costello. Thanks for joining me. Day 35. The search area shrinks, but a sobering reality settles in. It may not shrink anymore. Five weeks and the batteries on the flights socalled black boxes are dead or dieing. Still this mornings upbeat assessment is encouraging. We have very much narrowed down the search area and we are very confident that the signals that we are detecting are from the black box on mh370. Were now getting to the stage where the signal from what we are very confident is the black box is starting to fade and we are hoping to get as much information as we can before the signal finally expires. Cnns Matthew Chance is at the heart of the search in perth, australia. Good morning, matthew. Reporter good morning, carol. Thats right. The search is continuing. Remember its a 24hour search now. Even though darkness has fallen here in perth and in the area a thousand miles off the coast of perth, as the search operation is continuing, were trying to determine more pings off the water. Optimism was briefly raised despite the fact theres been no breakthrough reported by the mission, the search organizers in western australia. Optimism briefly raised by comments by Prime Minister tony abbott. Hes on an official tour of china where the majority of the victims of the missing airliner came from. He went a little further than any other australian official had gone by basically saying theyve limited the search area down to a few kilometers and said he was confident the signals they were detecting were from the black box flight recorders. Nobody has gone that farment within a few minutes afterwards, the head of the search operation, Angus Houston has been saying theres been no actual breakthrough since last time we spoke in the past 24 hours. It was merely the Prime Minister summarizing his characterization of that on going search, carol. Matthew chance reporting live from australia. As mathew said, australias Prime Minister briefed chinas president on the flight for 370 as the two men met today in beijing. Sky News Reporter brook court joins us live from the chinese capital. Brook, tell us about this meeti meeting. Brook, are you there . We dont have brook. Basically the australian Prime Minister briefed the families of those missing aboard flight 370. He told us the latest information and well transcribing to get back to brooke in just minute. Lets bring in rob mccallum who helped in the search for air France Flight 447 and david funk, a retired pilot for northwest airlines. Welcome to both of you. Good morning. Good morning. Australias Prime Minister says they very much narrowed down the search area to within a few miles. Im a little confused about that. Seriously . Have they narrowed it that much. The Prime Minister is privy to a lot more information than i am. That does sound a trifle overconfident. Were moving now into a world thats incredibly dark. Working on a slope, working at incredible depths. We still have a little ways to go. He has room for confidence, but not exact confidence. Room for confidence. The entire search area still the size of maybe a little smaller than new mexico now. Then the Prime Minister seemed to intimate that the search area for the black boxes themselves is much smaller than that. Is that what he meant, rob . Hes saying hes implying that the pinger location is an area of high probability within the overall search area. Again, were not dealing in an exact environment. When youre dealing with acoustics or sound under water, sound can bend, it can bounce, it can be inflinsed by a lot of factors. Until you actually have eyes on the wreckage, you cant be completely confident. David, let me ask you this, because those searchers searching by air, they were pretty pumped up by the australian Prime Ministers comment. They should be. The fact that weve got it narrowed down, to maybe say the state of massachusetts, instead of new mexico, thats a lot smaller area for us to look at. Frankly, with the screwedup information we continue to get from the malaysians and knowing the gio politics from that part of the world, some of the talks about the wide turns and the tracks and the altitude, how much of that information coming from the malaysians, they kind of want to tell us whats going on but are afraid to reveal to their neighbors what their true capabilities of the radars are. Im far more interested in hearing what were getting from the pingers. Its going to be a very, long hard slog to get to it. Well get the black boxes and have a much better idea what happened to this aircraft and why it ended up in the indian ocean. Rob, the reason theres so much optimism is because four separate times searchers picked up these pings that theyre sure, fairly sure are coming from the black boxes. But there was a fifth ping they said they picked up by sonar buoy that proved to be a false lead. So should they not do that anymore, drop buoys from airplanes with the sound detectors on them . Should they not use them anymore . To be honest, at this stage with the batteries dieing out, almost everything is worth a shot, to try and get another fix or two. Any noise detection at all on those pingers. The fifth ping was a distraction, but weve got four good pings and that gives us a much better idea of where to deploy side scan sonar than we had a week ago. David, youre a pilot, of course. Theres a theory out there this maybe the perfect crime, someone flew the plane to the middle of the indian ocean to make it disappear. Is there any way to obscure the information recorded on those black boxes . Other than the fact that the cockpit voice recorder only goes back two hours and the plane flew much longer and well only know what happened the last two, no way at all from the flight deck or inside the airplane that im aware of or anyone in the business has ever said you can modify whats on that flight data recorder. There are thousands of bits of information that goes back more than 30 days goes back at least 30 days. Were going to have a lot of info once we pull those things out, positions of flight controls, the temperatures the engines were producing, amount of fuel flow. Theres a huge amount of data there. Once we get them up off the bottom. Getting off the bottom is robs area of expertise. Its a very difficult environment as we all understand. Once they pinpoint where those black boxes are exactly or come close at least, rob, its still going to take months, maybe years to actually find the physical boxes, right . Thats right. Once we move to side scan sewn nor mode its detected by autonomous under water vehicle or a sled towed behind a ship. With an auv you might be searching 30 square miles a day, with a towed sled, maybe 120 miles per day. Its a slow and painstaking business. Once we find the debris field, then and only then can we operate the remote operated vehicles to go down with lights and cameras andaman into late around to explore the wreckage to recover the black boxes. Rob mccallum, david funk, thanks for your insight as always. Great to see you. Thank you. Still to come, a desperate search to find the black boxes. If and when they are found, you heard little bit about it, but well go into it more. How will the teams retrieve the black boxes . Well be right back. Co sometimes you dont know you need a hotel room until youre sure you do. Bartender thanks, captain obvious. Co which is why i put the hotels. Com mobile app on my mobile phone. Anyone need a coupon . I dont. 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Officials are rushing to find the black boxes before the signals go silent. They also have to retrieve them from ocean waters nearly three miles deep. George howe has more on how they can do it. Reporter once you find the needle in the hey stack, how do you extract it . Thats what investigators are up against as they try to hone in on the black boxes. Season operators found the needle before they found the hey stack. Its quite unprecedented. Reporter once you know where to look, how do you get down there, some 14,000 feet below the indian ocean . Theres one of two ways you do it. You either do it with a remote vehicle that is not tether ed t a ship on the top or you do it with a tethered remote vehicle. Reporter former managing director of the National Transportation safety board says similar types of vehicles went almost 13,000 feet deep during the search for the cockpit voice and data recorders from the 2009 air france crash off the coast of brazil. The recorders were found about two years after the crash, long after the pingers had died. Under water vehicles were also used to create artifacts from the titanic. Before sending the vehicles down, investigators must first map the terrain. A step that takes time and requires patience. If its in rocky or cav very nous terrain, it could be challenging. Once the wreckage is identified, these vehicles and the operators have extraordinary capability. Locating them is one thing, but pulling the black boxes from the incredible depths is another. The Remote Controlled vehicles, armed with sonar, cameras, lighting and Remote Control arms may sift through silt and potentially through wreckage in pitch dark waters. It can be painstaking. It can be very difficult. Sometimes the boxes have separated from the wreckage. Sometimes the boxes have separated from their pingers. So this is going to being a long process. George howell, cnn, chicago. Joining me now, less aben, a pilot for 777s. Good morning, les. Good morning, carol. How are you . Youve been with us for these 35 days. Are you still hopeful . Ive always looked at this with rosecolored glasses. The Prime Minister is being optimistic. I like to hear from marshall houston covering this operation more than anything because hes very guarded with what he says. I think the information is a little bit more technical and accurate. Yeah, im very hopeful. This is great news. Im going to jump way far ahead and ask you this question. Once they find those black boxes and bring them up to the surface, how long does it take to retrieve information from them . It depends on where they go. Im thinking theyll send it to the ntsb headquarters in washington, although i dont know that for a fact. But this data can be disseminated probably in a weeks time or less from what i know. Its a process. Once that process starts occurring, you can put in a program that will actually show what the airplane was doing, both from a profile point of view and from within the cockpit. So it will be exciting stuff. In addition, the fact that you recover black boxes, you can recover part of the wreckage with it which might mean youll find the tail depending on how the airplane impacted. That will tell us a lot, too, just by finding wreckage. Obviously these black boxes are critical to solving this mystery. Is there any way to tamper with this black box while the plane was in the air or on the ground or is it impossible . Your brooef yous guest today, buck, indicated it really is. Theres nothing you can do with the digital flight data recorder. Theres no way of tampering with that. The only way you can do anything is to pull a circuit breaker. Thats not accessible to us in the cockpit in the 777. Theres no way you can possibly erase data, move data. Its not something we as pilots have the capability of doing. So ill ask the big question. From your observations these many days, what do you think happened . Thats the 64 million question. Ive been going over this in my head. Ive taken every aspect from a terrorist event to a passenger going berserk getting into the cockpit and the crew itself. Nothing makes sense to me from that angle. The only thing that makes sense is some sort of mechanical issue. Weve really got to get credible information on this radar tracking from malaysian because it just seems impossible on what was performed. But if you takt it from the steps of nefarious, there are a lot of holes in it. Granted, there are holes in the mechanical theory if you do a smoke or fume type situation also. But, you know, i lean toward the mechanical side. Im open to it because everything seems to have holes to it. Youre right about that. Les abend, thank you for joining us. My pleasure. Ten people now dead after a fiery crash in Northern California. Stephanie elam is at the crash site. Stephanie . Reporter carol, a devastating loss of some young minds and some people who probably love them. Coming up youll hear from people who were first on the scene. At od, whatever business youre in, thats the business were in. With Premium Service like one of the best ontime delivery records and a low claims ratio, we do whatever it takes to make your business our business. Od. Helping the world keep promises. I and i got the tools ira to do it my way i got a lock on equities thats why im type e thats why im tyyyyype eeeee, i can do it all from my mobile phone thats why im tyyyyype eeeee, if i need some help im not alone were all tyyyyype eeeee, weve got a place that we call home were all type e make every day, her day with a full menu of appetizers and entrees crafted with care and designed to delight. Fancy feast. Love served daily. Because the more you know, the more we can help you. Cut. Lower. Shave. Chop. And drop your insurance rates. If you want to save hundreds, talk to farmers. We are farmers bum pa dum, bum bum bum bum [announcer] the more you know, the more you could save. Farmers could help you save hundreds on your Auto Insurance. Call your local agent or 18004708496 today. It will be several more hours for the cleanup to finish after a threevehicle accident in Northern California that killed ten people. A fedex truck crossed a median and slammed headon into a bus, a tour bus carrying students headed to a college tour last night. Five students, three chaperones and the drives of both the bus and the truck were killed. Nearly three dozen more were taken to the hospital following that crash. It happened in orland california, about 100 miles north of sacramento. Stephanie elam is at the crash site. Good morning, stephanie. Reporter good morning, kirl. Its devastating when you take a look at the loss of life. Take a look at it as you can see day breaking here in california. I can tell you nine of the people on the bus died on scene, one person died at the hospital from their wounds, but as this Investigation Continues, you can hear from the people who were first on scene just how dramatic it was and how scary it was. Take a listen. A lot of people screaming and begging for help, with all the flames and all the smoke. All of a sudden i heard a sonic boom. When i got there everything was engulfed and it was still spewing up black smoke. Reporter we do know that some of the people who were there, who were in that bus have been discharged from the hospital already, but still when you look at the fact that five High School Students lost their lives, three chaperones and the two drivers of the cars. There was another car involved that was sideswiped by the fedex truck, they are believed to be okay. That is a little bit of good news. When you think about these young minds who were coming up to take this college tour, to have this devastating turn of events its just really tragic, carol. Do police have any clues at all about why that truck crossed over the median . Reporter it is really a bizarre one. At this point they say they dont know. We do know the n trnlthssb is coming here to investigate. The side here, the median is actually just bushes, shrubbery. No metal line between it or anything. These plants is pretty much what separates northbound from southbound. You talk about a semi truck coming through there, theres nothing really that slow it down. A very scary situation. Stephanie elam reporting live this morning. Thank you. Still to come on the newsroom, the socalled black boxes for flight 370. What happens when or if investigators recover them. Make every day, her day with a full menu of appetizers and entrees crafted with care and designed to delight. Fancy feast. Love served daily. Making moves that would put an adult in the emergency room. Yet all they really want to do is grow up. Its funny, everyone i know wishes they could go back and feel younger. Sound familiar . Then test drive one of these. Current nongm owners and lessees use your 1,500 allowance to lease the 2014 cadillac ats for around 359 a month with nothing due at signing. Take this simple test. Press your tongue against it, like this. It moves do you feel it . It can happen with every denture. These movements may irritate your gums. But you dont have to bear with it. You can try fixodent plus gum care. Thanks to its formula, your gums become one with your denture. This helps stop movement and helps prevent gum irritation so you can keep enjoying life. [ apple crunches ] fixodent. And forget it. Good morning. Im carol costello. Thank you for joining me. Its day 35 in the mystery of Malaysian Airlines flight 370. The search area has shrunk again and the best window of opportunity is now closing. Here is australias Prime Minister earlier this morning. Were now get together the stage where the signal from what we are very confident is the black box is starting to fade and we are hoping to get as much information as we can before the signal finally expires. We have very much narrowed down the search area and we are very confident that the signals that we are detecting are from the black box on mh370. Here is what else is new this morning, todays search area narrowed to about 1