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Geoffrey at this screen grab. reportedly it leaked by an indonesian air traffic controller not verified by cnn. it appears to show airasia flight 8501 was rising in altitude but was losing speed and was at a velocity that was too slow to sustain flight. what does that tell us? >> indeed that came from navaid indonesia. we obtained that. and what it shows is that as we know they requested an altitude climb. it was denied. however, it shows the aircraft traveling through 36,300 feet. the arrow you see indicates it's climbing. but the real thing is the speed. now, on the screen grab it's in knots...

Sky. in a more or less vertical attitude. what happens is we have radar data that shows that the aircraft was found approximately 66 miles from its last known position. now, most airliners have a glide ratio of about 15-1. simply what it means from about 33,000 feet they can glide about 93 miles. so where the aircraft was found from the last known position suggests the glide. however, the radar data suggests a very low ground speed which suggests an arrow die dammic. it's going to be important they find the black boxes. ? >> from what we understand the java sea not too deep relatively 100 150 ...

That adjusting the tilt of the radar to see where the most intense areas are, right or left or up or down. but this is a very typical process that we go through to avoid weather and keep it at a comfortable, safe ride for our passengers. >> right now there seems to be a working theory that the plane stalled, meaning that the plane is essentially ascending and the speed is reduced. >> it looks legitimate. we here at cnn have not verified that that i'm aware of. i guess the 105 knots was what was said but that would probably be ground speed. i don't know what the tail wind would be at that time....

Stage. but the airplane turned left. then something occurred that required the attention of the pilots to the point that they did not contact air traffic control. that's appropriate. first you fly the jet. you maintain control of it. you do the necessary and proper procedures and only then would you advise air traffic control. what occurred we don't know yet. >> some folks are saying this plane may have been flying too slowly around the neighborhood of 400 miles an hour. how could that have contributed what happened? >> this loss of ground speed is indicative that the airplane is flying slower...

The storm or they may have decided to climb regardless of clearance which would be extremely unusual. in terms of the radar plot here the speed given i believe would be the ground speed and not air speed, indicated air speed to control the flight of the air control. one would expect to have a significant difference in speed between the indicated and ground speed. that radar in itself is not entirely conclusive. i believe there were winds of some 40 knots at that altitude. that has to be taken into account too. it is rather difficult to make a decision. as you get to higher altitude air is thin...