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This flight up to that point everything has been routine. >> mm-hmm, yes. >> everything was routine until now. two minutes after talking with air traffic control, 40 minutes into the flight, the plane's transponder goes dark. >> the plane's transponder is effectively the instrument that sends out a signal to air traffic control. it tells you what height it's at, which direction and what speed it's traveling. suddenly this giant 777 is blind to the world. >> and there's no easy explanation for why it happened. >> either it was intentional and someone tried to turn all those systems off at once ...

>> it's not something i can confirm at the moment, and it's not particularly useful to actually confirm potential numbe numbers. for people who we might be dealing with who might have concerns that a friend or a relative or a loved one might be in that building, we have set up our -- >> nb[ inaudible ]. how many maybe inside. >> that is a tactical, operational imperative. >> why is that so sensitive? >> because at this point everything has to be about the safety of the people in the location. so it's important we don't confirm at this point. >> that's catherine burn, the deputy police commissi...

Are getting new data. it is being refined. and there seems to be an air of confidence, that, sure, it's a big ocean, but we're getting closer and closer to where this airplane might be. >> i'm very interested, david, souci, you keep saying you think it's a real milestone in the investigation, and specifically what angus houston said to make you have that -- to be so optimistic? >> you talk about the planning and everything that was going into this and we've been suffering through that and the families have been suffering through that. but i want people ton when you're in an investigation, it's...

This is the acars system. a system does many things on the aircraft. it allows pilots to send text messages to the ground, allows the ground to do the same with them. an alternate communication system. most important for this scenario, that system would report to the ground every half hour or so parameters of what this is doing. speed, altitude, direction. it did that at 1:07. at that point everything was good. if there was a preprogrammed change, it would have been entered in this thing. this is the flight management system. essentially a robust gps. you could make that course change with eig...

Before or after one of the flight data transmitting systems was turned off. let's bring in don gorelli and captain john cox. good morning gentlemen. let's start with what we just learned. they believe the co-pilot was the last one to talk to air traffic controllers. nothing seemed to be amiss. where we stand right now, what strikes you? >> i think the routineness of the first officer says at that point everything was normal. we know shortly thereafter several of the communication devices were either disabled or failed. the transponder, the communication radios and a system known at acars. it's...