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It is simply too late to do anything about it. it sounds impossible but that sort of thing has happened before john. >> these are the questions. with the flight recorders in hand, perhaps we'll get answers quickly. tom foreman, thank you. let's bring in our panel. david stoosy a former faa inspector and author of "why planes crash" and les obviousen is a former airline pilot. david, tom foreman laid out some scenarios there. based on what you've seen so far today, do any of you jump out to you as the most likely? >> i see the third one does. it's happened before as tom had mentioned. an l-1011...

See the plane had come off autopilot and fell short of the runway. in this scenario it's highly unlikely, but what we have to look at is this controlled descent. it's almost as if the autopilot had been set at that altitude and this aircraft made that descent because to maintain the air speed at that particular speed, as closely as they did during this entire descent, takes a concentrated effort or the autopilot was engaged. >> 14,000 feet descended between six and eight minutes at a consistent speed at a consistent pitch. that's what david was talking about. unless that six to eight minutes t...

Seemed if indeed they were in a controlled descent, believe me that is a fair amount of time to descend. it's not an unusual rate of descent. it's a descent that indicates some sort of problem to me on board and they were attempting to rectify it through check lists. but the fact that they're in a very sophisticated area of radar control. i've flown out of barcelona. you're constantly talking to air traffic control. the fact they didn't even have a chance to get out one mayday signal, if indeed that's correct because we don't have all the data from air traffic control at this point in time as ...