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Flight to beijing, this aircraft would have flown straight for seven hours until it ran out of fuel and ran straight into the ocean. >> and martin, the pilots have said that the priority is to stabilize the plane and navigate before they communicate back with the ground. but would there not be any opportunity in there just to make it clear to those on the ground that something was happening or would there even with be an automatic signal to the ground that there is an emergency on board? >> well, both of those could have happened. the acars system if it was working is an alternate communicatio...

In that theory, does the fire do serious damage to the structure of the aircraft? because if the smoke and fumes are so bad, surely there could be structural -- the structural integrity of the plane could be at risk and the comms box, which we can you earlier in the week, wouldn't they be affected, too? >> yeah, of course. if you're talking about a fire like that, structural damage is going to factor into this equation. >> reporter: you want a fire that knocks out the crew, knocks out apparently the transponder and the acars system but stops short of destroying the aircraft or the autopilot. s...

Have to give it more cable. you can as much as 55,000 feet of cable to get down to 6,000 feet, which is the maximum depth of operating. the remus 6,000 is much deeper than that. the problem with doing that is you have to have more cable. so by the time you get that much cable out and make a turn -- >> we were talking about something during the break relating to the elt conversation. we don't know for a fact -- we were trying to figure out why didn't this elt go off? we don't know for a fact that malaysian airlines bought these systems for these planes, correct? >> we haven it on reliable autho...

So-called acars system that we've heard a lot about in this investigation that allows the system to communicate with ground control. that was shut down on this aircraft. but you have managed -- your satellites managed to continue to communicate with the airplane anyway, how? >> okay, in very simple terms just like a cellular phone system if you imagine the satellite network, whoever you choose, the box on the plane, the classic arrow product from inmarsat, is the project, and then there are various apps that may include different text messaging of different sorts that go through that box. now,...

Authorities today confirmed there were lithium batteries in the cargo hold, which weren't regarded as dangerous, although they can be prone to overheating and have been known to catch fire. is this the kind of detail that raises any red flags for you? >> in my mind, nothing is off the table. there are some possibilities that a fire could have been onboard, but there's evidence that says probably not. that is the fact that electrically, we know the airplane continues to function. we know that through the acars system. if there were a significant fire, one of the things that they would do is unp...