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Out of a safe place to be. with terrain like that this could be a very very large debris field indeed. it's not like thinking back to the crash where it crashes in a a tight area and the debris can be recovered quickly. this can be a long drawn out process. >> it was close to nice, which can and does receive a320s all the time. they couldn't do it. bill, thank you for that report. stay with me we're going to be updating this news. i want to go to former commercial pilot jay rollands. he's with us this thunderstorm warning. tell me what you see when you see this large area the plane was going d...

In a fully computerized setup like what you see in the airbus and also the boeing 787, these are are aircraft that are controlled by computers. so when the pilot puts in any sort of change for the aircraft flight controls, it first goes through the computer that mediates it and then tells the controls what to do. i find it problematic, actually. >> to distill this there's no real manual override on the a320? >> i cannot absolutely confirm that at this point, but i know that it is an electrically driven aircraft and you would not have a hydraulic override. >> thank you for your perspective pers...

Pilot, anybody on board and ground control. if during those 13 minutes they go from 35,000 feet to 5,000 feet, it wasn't dramatic but clearly they are dealing with it. is it unusual that at no time between 9:33 and when this happened 13 minutes later, there's no communication with ground control? >> if the pilots manage or the crew manage to get the aircraft into a stable configuration, what i mean by stable configuration is they brought the speed under control, they are pointing towards the destination, the diversion airfield technically they should have a time to put out a call. if you've go...

Being man handled by the pilots in certain circumstances. however, a debris field of five miles suggests and i say suggests because it is so early in terms of developing the facts, suggests that there may have been an in flight air frame failure. when we have impact of an aircraft that is in a state of flying into the ground it just does not leave a debris field that wide and that diffuse. i think perhaps the pilots attempted to save the aircraft and overstressed it or perhaps there was an explosive device on the aircraft. those two factors have to be ruled out. >> and jay rawlings joins us an...

One part of a mountain range, it could have been -- >> let's look at the factors. the factors are did the aircraft break up if it did break, what speed was it going, if it did break, what altitude was it at. usually it would hit a flat area you have components and undercarriage traveling miles and miles, and you have the carbon components fairly close to the impact points. there are a huge amount of factors. >> crevasses on the sides of mountains. >> topography is key, and flight data recorder and cockpit recorder are key, flight data recorder gives us the mechanical aspects, the cockpit voice...