library that. just nothing in the natural environment that would create anything even similar to that. david gallow, let s assume they don t hear any more pings. they just have the pings they got on sunday. randy said these can be heard for two plus miles. to a layman that doesn t seem like a huge amount of area to cover with sonar under the water, with side scanning sonar and underwater vehicles. is that naive to think that? no, it s not naive to think that. seems like a small amount. under the sea there s no gps navigation. it s pitch black. fairly hostile environment. where they are working right now is on the north facing side of an underwater feature called the wallabe plateau. that place will be covered with land slides and steep cliffs. working in that area even though
but sophisticated listening devices are the water with crews hoping that the batteries in the plane s black boxes have not been drained quite yet. this morning the search zone is more focused, narrowing to some 30,000 square miles. but is that enough? joining us now from boston is cnn analyst david gallow. he was a leader in the search for air france flight 447 and is currently director of special projects. david, i great to see you again. hi, kate. likewise. of course. i want we need to lean heavily on your expertise this morning. i want to start with what we know and a little bit about what we don t know and get your take on it. we know a ping was detected that they kept the they detected it for over two hours but since then, when they ve gone back, they have not been able to reconnect. is that a bad sign in your experience? no, given well, this whole thing for the past month, this whole mystery, we ve had ups and downs and we go from optimistic
the water, don t break up and sink. but big aircraft like a 777, it s very hard to bring them down and there s been cases where they intentionally tried to land on water and usually on the ocean a wing will catch a wave and break up. it s very unusual. i won t say it s impossible but this would be a first for modern jet line fer it remained intact. david, if the boxes are recovered, who actually takes control of them? would it be australia, malaysia? australia would take control of them. right now they are under a mandate by the joint committee to have everything that s located come back to australia. so australians would contain that and then the malaysians would decide where things go from that point but there s a central locating area for all debris including the black boxes. a lot more to talk about for more on the story. go to cnn.com. i want to go into the 77 flight simulator exploring a riddle.
unlikely. he s being diplomatic. every expert i ve spoken to says, no. i guess we can create a scenario that has those pings relevant. but we could also create a scenario in the world of fantasy. and at the moment we have to sort of basically call it as it seems to be. what the experts are saying no. unless any of my colleagues, miles or david want to put their neck out in the opposite direction i would say it s not relevant. miles, you agree with that? i think it s a red herring, anderson. as much as anything that was a little handout after all they had the cameras there. that was a piece of photo opportunity to send some images back to china to let people know they are doing their best to do some searching. what they heard is a different matter. they had a pinger aboard that
unless any of my colleagues, miles or david want to put their neck out in the opposite direction i would say it s not relevant. miles, you agree with that? i think it s a red herring, anderson. as much as anything that was a little handout after all they had the cameras there. that was a piece of photo opportunity to send some images back to china to let people know they are doing their best to do some searching. what they heard is a different matter. they had a pinger aboard that vessel which helped them test their vessel. but you re not supposed to put it on the boat when do you a real search because you could end up hearing yourself. just looking at it sharing the iphone buds and the pole, given the relative sophistication we have to defer to the ocean shield. we ll take a quick break. we ll have more. how much longer can the pingers last?