the details they ve discussed, that this was not a deliberate act? there s a couple things and i m really reaching. we need to rule it out. number one, this is the control yoke right here. this is how you fly the airplane, with just a joy stick basically. the thought is here, if he passed out and pushed that forward as he fell forward, it would have gone forward, initiated that rate of descent and overroad this, so the airplane would have continued down. even though it s set at zero, it would continue this trajectory. again, they still say, everything they know is that it is deliberate. that s right. second thing real quick, if the pilot got up from here and his sleeve caught this going in this direction, it would have changed the rate of descent. from what we can tell, he s already out of there. already out of before that
well, they would probably take the control yoke as they say and they would push it forward and then use the rudder pedals down here until it came to a stop. i asked him what the worst-case scenario could have been at laguardia. the worst-case scenario is where the aircraft fails, gets down in the dirt and gets into some type of a spin or even a cartwheel. with much of the fuel in the wings, that could spark a much larger fire. the laguardia accident isn t a first. in june 2007 a southwest 737 had a nose gear collapse in oakland, california. the pilot did have advanced warning then and made an emergency landing. when i asked hyatt if this is a problem unique to southwest airlines or to the 737, he said no. the main issue, he says, is the frequency of takeoffs and
that is just the ultimate clue that there is something gone terribly wrong here. it requires immediate reaction and the reaction has to be full power and try to get the plane away from the ground. explain to the viewers stick shaker. what does that mean? you see the control yoke which is similar to the steering wheel. in this case assuming target speed was 137 knots at about 120 or so or 125 knots, that s already too slow for this approach, the system would start shaking. literally start shaking the control wheel so that there is no way the pilot does not know that he s dangerously slow. the immediate reaction upon that is full power. is it fair to say if that happens, if that starts to shake that you are neigh trouble or about to be? you re about to be. it s a warning system that says you re coming dangerously slow to too slow an air speed where
that s the control yoke, right? that s the stick, that s what controls airbuses. they differ from boeing because in boeing both the pilot and the co-pilot can feel the pressure on the stick, megyn? in airbuses the other pilot in the plane can t feel the pressure so one doesn t know what the other is doing. that s part of it. airbus says absolutely not, we ve been flying millions of hours and aviation experts agree that it was not the stick, but it s one thing they re looking at. megyn: wow. trace, thank you. details about the factors that may have led to this tragedy are outlined in the telegraph newspaper. nick ross is a freelance journalist who wrote this comprehensive article. he is my guest now. nick, thank you so much for being here. hi, megyn. megyn: it looks like a joy stick, and is it you or the crash investigators who are now raising serious questions about whether that mechanism is safe? we don t yet know if crash investigators are going to accept this theory. it is only
happened at altitude. the one thing as a pilot i would wonder as this flight is at altitude probably has the autopilot engaged so any inputs the crew is making is simply done by a dial. you re not using the control yoke to control the plane at that point. there are just dial inputs as you get instructions from air traffic control. when they were turned over to cyprus, they did not make the handoff, so the crew did not report into that new handoff and that s shortly there after when we saw the radar loss. thank you, all three, for that. melissa, we ll have much more on the breaking news throughout the morning, but we ll throw it back to you now for the rest of the show. thanks, richard. we will keep checking in with you. we re going to take a short break. when we come back, why you can thank immigration for an