And what next . A plane was swallowed by one of the most vast underwater areas in the world. The search to find the black box before the battery runs out. Welcome to the lead. Im jim sciutto filling in for jake tapper. The 239 people aboard malaysian flight 370 has pleaded for answer. Much of the world is mystified by the planes disappearance and frustrated by the uncertainty. Officials now believe the worse. The airline telling them, quote, none of those on board survived. Now that malaysian officials believe that the flight ended over the indian ocean. The backlash has been intent. A committee representing 154 chinese and taiwanese accuse the officials of deceiving the entire world with what they call a coverup. It reads in part, quote, such despicable acts not only emotionally and physically fooled and destroyed us families of the 154 passengers, but also mislead us. If our 154 relatives aboard lost their lives the malaysian military and government are the real murderers that killed them. They finally got an answer but not the one they hoped to hear. In a lastminute press conference, a grimfaced malaysian Prime Minister confirmed the worst fears of family and friends of those on board flight 370. According to this new data, flight mh370 ended in the southern indian ocean. Reporter for loved ones, the news was simply too much to bear. Translator my son, my daughterinlaw and granddaughter are all on board. All three family members are gone. Im desperate. Reporter Malaysia Airlines sent them a simple text message with this stark conclusion. None of those on board survived. For them, the past few weeks have been heartbreaking. I know this news must be harder still. Reporter seven days after the 777 jet vanished, after an exhaustive and unprecedented study, the British Communications company inmarsat concluded the pings placed it, without question, over the southern indian ocean ruling out the northern arc that had at one point been considered a possible path for the plane. If you look at the plots that we have using our recent adjusted techniques, we can say that the most likely route is the south and the most likely ending is roughly in the area where they are looking now. Reporter the new satellite data comes as aircraft spotted possible debris in the southern corridor search area, including at least one item that appears orange. Satellite i mages from france said that a ship to recover them has so far found nothing. Now, the heartbreaking search is concentrated in the southern indian ocean. China will likely send more ships, including one with a data recorder locater as this Mission Moves from rescue to recovery. Both the malaysian government and airlines will have news Conferences Tomorrow but their comments today mentioned nothing about what happened to those aboard flight 370 and members of the families are not willing to give up hope, at least now. Joining me now is a man whose sister was on flight 370. I want to tell you how much our hearts go out to you and your family on an extremely difficult day after 17 difficult days. I appreciate your concern, thank you. Just as the news came through from the malaysian Prime Minister, how are you and your family reacting and coping as you heard those words come from the malaysian Prime Ministers mouth, sort of the final word on the fate of this plane . The only concern which i have is, jim, i have been a captain in the navy for a very long time. Ive been sailing for 38 years but they have not found ive sailed those oceans several times myself. But they have not found any debris. They have not found the black box and they have concluded on the basis of satellite theres been no i mean, according to me, im sure they have come to a conclusion they have their own must have definitely put all of the facts together but they have not found any debris, neither the black box and i hope they are continuing the search to show just for the relatives to see that there was something and its conclusive evidence. In your experience as a member of the indian merchant navy, you sailed through these waters. You know just how remote they are and how inhospitable they are, just the weather and so on. As you would sale through there, did you see a lot of debris . Did you see garbage and other things floating through the water that would make this search more difficult . Yes. Its one of the concentrated patches for garbage, also. All of the garbage collects together and accumulating together and sticks together and sometimes on the ship i have noted it giving an echo as if it were a small island, you know. I wonder if you could talk more about your sister. She was traveling, on her way to a conference in mongolia leaving behind a daughter in college, a husband, of course, you, the rest of the family. Tell me, what are your thoughts about her today as this news comes through . Yeah. Its very sad. Its definitely very sad. Its yep. Its very sad. Everybodys i mean, has been waiting anxiously 16 days and there have been various stories and, you know, lots of things coming up and finally the Prime Minister of malaysia has concluded and i yes. The only thing i hope, they dont give up the search. Just for i suppose i want to see something from the seas, i just want to see the debris and the black box to know what happened because there are too many unanswered questions. Why did it fly low . Too many questions in my mind. I wonder if you could tell us more about your sister, maybe the last time you spoke with her before she got on board this flight and what you remember of that last conversation or maybe your last meeting. Last conversation, she said she was going i think she said she was going to lumpur, the last conversation before that was, i had just bought a puppy dog and she said, dont scare the puppy dog. She was a very sensitive human being and very friendly with everyone. Like i she was a social worker all her life. Shes done very good social work for the fishermen of the world and shes very sensitive by nature and very caring towards everybody. So that is it what my memory is. I notice you used the present tense. Do you still hold out hope that possibly searchers find debris that they might find survivors . Does that at all sustain itself, that hope sustain itself in your mind and in your heart . Jim, i come from an industry where ships get hijacked and they dont release the people for six months. There have been colleagues of mine who have been hijacked and taken away for six months and they get released after six months, so my resident is a little more than some. I know some of my colleagues have done. Thank you so much for your time. Our thoughts and our prayers are with you and your family. Thanks, jim. And thank you, cnn, for keeping us updated all the time. Coming up next, just how certain are malaysian officials . Well take a closer look at that new satellite data and how experts used the same information from days ago to pinpoint the exact location that the plane went down. Plus, criminal or mechanical . What does this tell us about that theory about what transpired inside the cockpit that night. [ children yelling ] [ telephone rings ] [ shirley ] edward jones. This is shirley speaking. How may i help you . Oh hey, neill, how are you . How was the trip . [ male announcer ] with nearly 7 million investors. [ shirley ] hes right here. Hold on one sec. [ male announcer ]. Youd expect us to have a highly skilled call center. Kevin, neill holleys on line one. Ok, great. [ male announcer ] and we do. Its how edward jones makes sense of investing. Welcome back to the lead. Hope has run out in the search for survivors, but the devastating news today at least offers a new level of certainty about where to look for flight 370. A remote stretch of the southern indian ocean. Malaysians Prime Minister broke the news to the world based on satellite data and what he called about a type of analysis never before used in an investigation like this. So i want to go to cnns tom foreman for a closer look at this. Tom, i was looking at this data trying to understand and i think our viewers would benefit if you walked through how it moves forward and how they look at the old data to make, in effect, a new conclusion. Its never been used quite this way before, you are right about that. But its basic math. This is really mathematics detective work. How did they get this arc . Think about this. If you were to yell out into a canyon and have an echo come back, you would know how big the arc was. Its a really simple part of this equation. Another part is called the doppler effect. You hear weather people talk about it all the time. In terms of the location on the earth, just for understanding it, imagine the satellite is about 22,000 miles above the earth if you went straight down. If it sent a signal out, a handshake with a plane out back, that would mean that the plane is in a certain area. Then, if you did it again and it were further, took longer to get that signal, it would suggest that it was further out somewhere. Thats how they established the pattern of the dots right here a. Series of signals that they received from the plane suggesting it was somewhere along this arc. They knew it wasnt to the north because, as authorities looked at it, there wasnt a lot of there werent any radar hits out there. Plus, the earth is not perfectly round. The signature would have been a little different going to the north than to the south. So they started looking at what they believed the speed to be. They took all of the data they could and plugged it into a mathematical equation and said, how do you get this pattern of dots . And then they compared it against other planes that they knew the location of. Think about this. This is like youre doing a test in math and you have practiced a problem where you know the answer and if you can figure out how to get that answer, then you can get the answer that you dont know. In the end, thats what they did. Thats what led them to this spot to say with great confidence right now the plane must be here. Based on the math, based on the data. Tom, extremely helpful. Thanks very much, tom there in the virtual room. Still, the families say they want more physical proof and while nothing is certain in the search for flight 370, the Senior Vice President of inmarsat spoke with our wolf blitzer and said that he is convinced that the plane took the southern route. I must stress, this is very limited data. We are not saying that we have definitively know where the aircraft came down, only that the direction of travel is almost certainly to the south. So lets talk about that data and how this technology works. I want to bring in ceo of the United States geospacial intelligence foundation, a nonprofit company. Just the kind of guy that we want to break this down for us. Keith, in speaking to you before about this, you said that in making these calculations its a combination of math and science and also a little bit of art here. Explain how that works. Well, jim, i think tom did an excellent job of laying out the science, right, the mathematics behind the equations. I can talk about some of the art piece. This is about indepth analysis, understanding the data and being able to extract information that it was not designed to do. Remember, these inmarsat satellit satellites, 22,000 miles up are there to pass data about the status of the aircraft, status of the aircrafts engines. So youre repurposing that and trying to work the math and work back through the information to determine location data and extract it out of this data that it truly wasnt meant to provide. And its interesting because when they were analyzing the radar data, a number of the analysts said its a bit of an art, too. You have to bring in all that you know. The other comparison that was brought, the doppler effect played a role here and i remember from high school physics, the trained whistle is coming towards you, it has to do with wave lengths, i assume, being sent up to the satellites. Can you talk about how that would affect the calculations . Right. Its that way shift in the phase form. You must have done well in high school physics. The other example is ambulance. Youre standing on a street corner. You hear an ambulance approaching. Its different when it goes past you but you havent moved and the ambulances siren hasnt changed. Its how that wave form arrived at your ears and how it was processed. Theres a way to measure that time and that wave form and to expect information out of it, which is what they have done at inmarsat to determine the location. Heres a lot of frustration from viewers. The satellite data, we heard about the northern and southern arc. Its been more than a week now. Why did it take so long to do this kind of analysis to then say, forget that northern arc. Were all about the southern arc . Jim, what we try to do is strive to be accurate. We want to give the best information so that someone can make decisions and take action. In this case, narrow down a search area or direct search aircraft and youve got to think, if youre an inmarsat and youre trying to do something that your data was not trying to do and youre trying to do this math and trying to make sure that youre accurate and dont want to give false hope to the grieving families that weve had our hearts go out to in the past few weeks, you want to get it right. They are taking all of the information that they had into account. The variations and what they are able to get from this older Lockheed Martin satellite in this area and really make sure that they had something as near to definitive as they could, as you heard from their spokesman, before they released it to the public. Keith, how confident are you that this data is conclusive . I think this is pretty compelling information but with all of the usual caveats. It narrows down the search area, jim, but not nearly as all of us would like. Thats helpful. You helped me understand it better. Keith of the Geospatial Intelligence station. The u. S. Navy is moving equipment into place that could help with an underwater search. How hard would it be to locate even if a debris field is found. Plus, rescuers are looking for signs of life as many are listening at a washington landslide. The number of those missing rises to 108. Thats right after this. No matter how busy your morning you can always do Something Better for yourself. And better is so easy with benefiber. Fiber thats tastefree, gritfree and dissolves completely. So you can feel free to add it to anything. And feel better about doing it. Better it with benefiber. Gunderman group is growing. Getting in a groove. Growth is gratifying. Goal is to grow. Gotta get greater growth. Growth . Growth. I just talked to ups. Theyve got a lot of great ideas. Like smart pick ups. Theyll only show up when you print a label and its automatic. We save time and money. Time . Money . Time and money. Awesome. 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That secured the data that directed the turbines that powered the farm that made the milk that went to the store that reminded the man to buy the milk that was poured by the girl who loved the cat. [ meows ] the internet of everything is changing everything. Cisco. Tomorrow starts here. Welcome back to the lead. More on the latest developments on the search for flight 370 in a moment but, first, on the national lead, another desperate search is happening right now in the u. S. 108 people are still unaccounted for after a massive landslide in rural washington state. Saturd saturdays landslide covered a remote square mile. Its really incredible to see. Eight people we know were killed and with the mud flowing like quicksand in some spots, its been difficult for those to search for survivors. King 5 spoke with one Woman Holding out hope that her father will be found alive. Its really scary not knowing what is going on. Our correspondent George Howell is live. How concerned are they that many or the bulk of the 108 are under the rubble there . Reporter well, jim, you know, its still unclear because were not talking specifically about names with that 108. Its very generic. Were talking about anything from reports that family members would have put out on websites to reports on social media and twitter. Were talking about vague references. For instance, a neighbor who said, hey, i havent seen neil there at his home. Its part of the 108 collective that they are looking into and want to narrow that number down and hope to do so within the next couple of days. Also, we just got information in the latest News Conference from officials that they are pulling back the search today. Simply because the ground is too unstable. The ground here in many parts and ive been told and i know from experience from covering these landslides here in the pacific northwest, i used to work here as a reporter here in the seattle area, its basically glacial tilt that is porous when it gets a lot of rain there are problems. Weve heard from officials that their search effort is moving forward. They are optimistic but they do say that things are not looking so good. I want to you take a listen. Were still in a rescue mode at this time. However, i want to let everyone know that the situation is very grim. We are holding out home that we may be able to find people still alive but, keep in mind, we have not found anybody alive on this pile since saturday. Reporter and heres the thing. We know that there is rain in the forecast. Right now its a sunny day. Thats great. The ground there is unstable. They are pulling back off the ground, jim, with rain coming in, it will make the mess even muddier. George, incredible to think that you have a harrowing search there in washington like the one going on out in the south indian ocean. When we come back, experts are still examining every bit of information to determine what happened to flight 370 and one detail isnt sitting well with some. If there was a mechanical failure, why didnt the pilots send a distress sig