boxes, they have been recovered and they are being sent to cairo right now. a lot of mysteries and a lot of questions but you think many if not all of these questions will be answered quickly. i think the likelihood is that the black boxes will tell us the cause of why this plane suddenly decelerated, very fast. this wasn t just a gentle deceleration. it was almost the equivalent of hitting a brick wall. it went from 400 knots almost down to 90, 60 knots, quite extraordinary, and the rate of descent at one point, 6,000 feet a minute, it tells me that whatever happened was dramatic and catastrophic. and we also know now, by looking at the parameters on the black boxes, what were the engines doing? were the flaps doing? what were the control surfaces and what were the pilot s inputs and what were the pilots saying to each other? that s why i think it s going to give very, very strong clues. you say 20 minutes into the
and catastrophic, and we also know now, by looking at the parameters on the black boxes, what were the engines doing? were the flaps doing? what were the control surfaces and what were the pilot s inputs and what were the pilots saying to each other? that s why i think it s going to give very, very strong clues. you say 20 minutes into the flight, which is roughly when this all happened, that s a very unusual time for accidents, for crashes to take place. why is that? because it s known as in the cruise phase of flight, the early cruise phase of flight, and that s a very, very safe section of flight. the plane and the pilot are under the maximum stress at takeoff and landing, and if you look at statistics, about 40% to 50% are on landing, 30 odd percent are on takeoff, but only 8% to 9% of accidents are in the
out, what other parts of the plane from your experience and vast experience in this area, what other parts do you think would still be floating? well, in the case of air france 447, where there was a lot of debris on the surface, many of those floating things were, in fact, control surfaces like bits of the flap and from the main wings and the tail section of the plane. similar items would be floating. on the other hand, many items like the galley from inside the aircraft were floating as well. it all depends how light it is and how well it s able to keep water out. all the focus now still in the water. the focus in that lab in france to figure out what they can learn from that flaperon. thank you. it s great to see you. for us next, cnn is learning that bill clinton called donald trump. they spoke on the phone just before donald trump announced his run for president.
that? joining me again, cnn aviation correspondent, richard quest. also with us, former ntsb board member, and pilot miles o brien. so richard, this is a picture on the big board, the electronics system of the akarr system. it s the computerized system that allows the aircraft to communicate information about engines, its control surfaces, all the way down so the in-flight entertainment system working, what date you ll be arriving at. acar standing for going out of satellite. here is something known as the eand ebay. the electronics bay, and it s literally outside the cockpit. it s outside the cockpit on the floor. you put a ladder down and come down to the in ebay. it s just besides first class by
after the incident. so it certainly has taken months to get across the ocean. but has it been sitting there in the waters for a month, six weeks, two days? absolutely. we don t know. shawn, when will they be able to they keep talking about looking at this. in the component number on this flaperon. i should back up and have you explain what a flaperon is and then the next question being how would they match it to a 777 and then match it to mh-370? okay. so the flaperon is one of the control surfaces of the airplane. it s part of the surface that moves on the wing or other parts of the airplane that helps us steer the aircraft. so a flaperon is an example of one that is out on the wing and it plays a role in helping us bank the aircraft. it s one of those surfaces that you see moving around out on the wing when you re over the wing and looking out the window or flying. that s what it does. as far as matching goes it just depends on what numbers they find.