Plane Commander News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Day to you, and to all of us who are forever indebted to your service, and for someone who you served with who is buried at arlington. >> that's right, today i'm thinking about lieutenant william donnelly. he and i deployed to afghanistan together, he was my plane commander. i outranked him, but being plane commander is not a fun job so we gave it to the lieutenant. he did it with great humor and spirit. it takes a couple of days to deploy to afghanistan. we had 275 marines on this plane with him in charge. we got stranded in bulgaria for a day, got left in kyrgyzstan for a couple of days, and...

>> had a chance to fly along to see what kind of challenges search crews are up against. >> reporter: the american crew of this p3 orion is facing another grueling day, searching the massive indian ocean for malaysian airlines flight 370. plane commander has to stay motivated, even as mission after mission turns up nothing. >> we cleared that area of the ocean. so, we know it's not there and we can look somewhere else and focus our efforts on trying to find it somewhere else. >> reporter: this plane is their home for up to 12 hours a day. living conditions are less than luxurious. so, the firs...