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Here he is down one, and he had to make a decision quickly to land, right? >> correct. you have to have two pilots. under part 121, the faa regs, they operate with two pilots. if you -- i actually looked at the flight track for the aircraft before i came on. he turned back and went back. he was slightly past syracuse. neil, a lot of times now airline pilots commute to work and they commute. it would not have been uncommon for there to be another captain or co-pilot on the plane to assist. at the end of the day you need to figure out the safest way to get the airline back on the ground. if he d...

We express our deepest condolences to the victims and their families. the united states stands ready to offer assistance and support to the governments of france germany and spain as they investigate this tragedy. that statement from the state department here in washington. let's turn to cnn's tom foreman. he's over at the magic wall with more on what's going on. the terrain over there is 6,000 feet elevation in that part of france. it's pretty rough. >> very rough. if you take a look at it as we fly into the terrain here and take a look at it we'll bring up some of the mountains of the french...

And the flight would have descended to a breathable altitude below 14,000 feet. now, if that's the case pilots were executing an emergency descent, then they would stay on the track that they had been programming the flight to follow. the flight plan. if the airplane was not under the pilot's control or if the airplane was out of control, it probably would have veered off of the intended flight path. so it remains to be seen where the impact site is in relation to the program flight track of the plane. if it's along that track, i would have an idea that it might have tried to execute some sort...

Off. at this point on the flight track that i have seen no it didn't. the flight path that it was using was a normal path. there have been some -- there's been some union action with i think it was french air traffic controllers that may have had something to do with it. i don't know. that's speculation on my part. there has been some french air traffic control union action so that might have e planed the delay in the beginning of the flight. there's certainly no indication they had reported anything mechanical or they had any mechanics on board. i want to report something peter said luftanza ...

Some big part, it is going to come down seemingly a lot faster than a lot more irregularly than it did in the flight track we've seen on top of which all of this wreckage seems to be in one spot, not scattered all over the place. same thing if you had a catastrophic fire on board and made the crew pass out. could that happen? yeah, but they have oxygen masks that drop down immediately if they have trouble. it's unlikely that happened and still produce that steady flight to the ground. >> what about the idea that there was a problem and the pilots reacted to what was going on too late? >> yes. ...