i should say from viewers. what we keep hearing over and over is one about whether the u.s. would essentially allow planes to go through, go around even really take off knowing that this weather is out there. what do you think? well i think that there were a number of planes in front of this aircraft and there were a number of planes behind this aircraft. and i think the take-off was legitimate. the idea that they should have grounded this flight nobody else grounded flights that night that i m aware of. and we should interview the pilots preceding it and following up and see how tough the weather was. but storms, they re living creatures almost. and this guy could have run into a very tough cell. certainly. i want to bring in our cnn weather anchor, chad myers, to talk about that.
confirm that at least according to this screen grab of air traffic control that the pilot appears to have ascended anyway to about 36,000 feet. that request, though to ascend what does that tell you as an investigator? the good news is we have information in this one that there was active communication with air traffic control. they re identifying that there s something that they re concerned about. they feel like either it s a safety risk or a comfort concern for their passengers and they are asking for clearance to deviate from their flight path. and so that s saying that there s something going on. you want to take that in context. look at all of the radar data at the information, understand what the other aircraft in that area are doing. it is not unusual for a pilot to ask for clearance to get around weather. we all know that there are times when we fly. pilots will be working to get around weather or around turbulence that we can have a smoother flight and it really is
flight were indonesians. families are frustrated because they re just not getting information. they say they re getting more information from the television than official channels. but the officials are saying we need more time we need new leads so we can pass that on. very frustrating for everyone concerned at the moment. brianna? thank you for that update. now we want to get a detailed account about what we know from the plane from the moment it took off. let s bring in aviation correspondent renee marsh. walk us through this renee. reporter: we re talking about just 36 minutes after takeoff, the pilot was concerned, and there were problems. that s when the problems began. but why this plan never arrived at its destination remains a mystery tonight. french crash investigators have been dispatched and experts from airbus are there to i.d. pieces of the plane if and when it s found. rescuers believe airasia flight
organization and it will never act without a political jolt to it. i think the public is entitled to be very angered about this situation. five to ten years, everyone can agree is too long. clive, really appreciate your time. the jet s disappearance raises new questions about the malaysian airliner that disappeared earlier this year. later tonight, we report on the mystery of the disappearance of the flight. we re also following the harrowing ordeal off the coast of italy and greece where hundreds of passengers spent hours trapped aboard a burning ferry. 427 people made it off alive. amazing, and yet ten passengers died. let s go now to our correspondent. give us the latest here. these pictures are i can t even imagine how scared the people were on board this ferry.
and you diverge as early as you can to minimize the angle that you have to turn to get around the weather. but sometimes you end up zigzagging for hours on end. the monsoon over india is typical of that. you may have three or four hours of zigzagging around thunderstorms. it s not pleasant but it s what we re paid to do and generally speaking, there are no incidents as a result. miles, take us through, if i guess some scenarios here if this was indeed a stall, as that screen grab indicates, which would put the nose of the plane up and the plane essentially falling out of the sky, if you allow that we saw with air france flight 447, the plane was in a stall, instrument readings were wrong, it took a long time for the pilots collectively to realize they were falling, that