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Chief and managing director at airlineratings.com and joins me by phone. i understand you're hearing from your own sources that there are multiple radar returns in a search area indicating something is there. what more can you tell us about that? >> look, there were some additional radar returns yesterday, we understand. we also understand that there was some more satellite data that indicates that there is a little bit more debris than the two major pieces that have been identified. but the major focus is on the size of the largest piece of debris, which is the 24 meter, about 65 foot long pi...

The race to identify the debris is happening in one of the most remote corners of the planet. jeffrey thomas is editor in chief and managing director at airlineratings.com and joins me by phone. i understand you're hearing from your own sources that there are multiple radar returns in a search area indicating something is there. what more can you tell us about that? >> look, there were some additional radar returns yesterday, we understand. we also understand that there was some more satellite data that indicates that there is a little bit more debris than the two major pieces that have been i...

Another area they had radar returns. they weren't sure where it was. they had small blips on the radar. they make decisions they went toward the area they were seeing a little radar return. there was no debris there but we have the capability to maneuver. >> have you ever been involved in anything like this before? >> it is really an unprecedented event. over the course of the year we will have 80 exercises 200 or so ports and we practice for this kind of thing. it is something no one has ever

It pops up on our radar. we either fly lower get one of our optical sensors on there or fly lower and get a visual identification. the first thing we do is we see it on radar. >> how many times has this happened? >> all the time. so yesterday the p8 was flying and it comes -- it sees very small specs on its radar. a lot of it is a judgment call. a lot of it is the decision of the pilots and air crew. they were flying and had a choice, they could either fly over an area let's say not yet searched or fly to this area where they were getting very small radar returns. what they did they decided to...

Radar returns that the plane follow followed not only a frac to the west, but a zigzag course over the andaman sea, and that is someone who is familiar with the airline flight, because they were going from weigh poiaypoin waypoint. >> they have to know, and it was preprogrammed in there? >> well, the fact is why would you do that, fly from waypoint to waypoint to slip away? perhaps you were hiding in plane site, and if a military controller was seeing the split moving across the screen, he would think that it is a standard route that the commercial airliner would fly, and now, what is stunning...