the scene of oil slicks found to check them out. the offering any assistance needed. greg from my experience in military aviation oil slicks are sometimes the first things you see when looking for a crash site. are there any clues to what caused this? reporter: too early for that, leah, according to all the reports. a definitive clue with be recovered black box with telemetry on there showing what might have happened but in fact attention is being paid to bad weather or the pilot s reaction to the bad weather or combination of both of those. while it is a budget airline asia air has a very good safety record. the airbus aircraft has a very good record. one of the workhorses of the aviation industry. nothing is being ruled out. that includes technical malfunctions, even foul play. there was no may day signal, no distress call other planes were in the area. scenes in the airport all too
leah: and in this particular aircraft, it had fly-by require which we ve talked about that, essentially, you put controls in, a computer decides what to do with those control inputs, and it could potentially fight the pilot. the computer system might actually say no, i m not going to let this plane climb any higher because it s already going outside its operating end slope. i think that s a great point and that s one of the fundamental differences between a boeing and an air bus aircraft is that aircraft on the airbus side wants to have the health of its aircraft it doesn t want to depart controlled flight and it will fight the pilot. so in some cases it could be detrimental to the aircraft at the end of the day. leah: right. because the pilot could essentially end up sort of fighting the flight controls, fighting the you were a and get so focused on that and we ve seen this in military accidents that they just kind of lose sight of the big picture. but in terms of fighting this cras
way to singapore sunday morning local time. the pilot of the plane radioed in that he was facing bad weather and requesting a course change before losing contact with indonesian air traffic control. the u.s. asked indonesia if it needed its help in the surgery, but so far in the search but so far the offer hasn t been taken up. families are continuing to wait for news at airports in both indonesia and sing pore one woman waiting anxiously says her fiance was onboard. i listen to the radio, and i just, and i brought in internet and i knew that it was his plane, yeah. it was supposed to be there before we got married. reporter: and the grim wait, of course, continues for all those families. back to you leah. leah: david piper in thailand, thank you. trace: a big focus of this
area about 700 miles from where the plane lost contact with air traffic controllers early sunday morning. that plane disappeared shortly after the pilot asked to change the route. listen. well, it sometimes is, but it s the radar blip the transponder onboard the aircraft that s giving information back to the air traffic controllers. it ll tell the direction and the altitude of the aircraft. in this case he was asking for a higher altitude. why, we don t know. that s a big question. trace: i want to bring this a former ntsb investigator and the author of air safety investigators. doctor, from your experience, i want to pick up on the point you just heard the gentleman talking about, will they, in your estimation pinpoint exactly where this plane went in in the coming hours? well, it depends on whether or not the floating wreckage, debris pans out. you know, we saw the false leads in malaysia 370, so if this turns out to be really part of the our craft, the floating
grateful. this was wide television coverage from sky news and in this country the odds are some people were actually watching this unfold in front of them on their seatfront televisions. more on this story as we get exactly what happened on that plane, it looks like all s well that ends well in london. but in the meantime, there is tragedy in southeast asia because there is still a plane missing. flight 8501 airasia went missing yesterday morning about 6:17 in the morning. that is, i guess that s not singapore time but singapore s an hour ahead. the better part of 24 hours now. and the this plane has been gone. it disappeared after the pilot requested a change of altitude as well as direction because they ran into severe thunderstorms. he wanted to go from 32,000 feet to 38,000 feet and then change direction to go around the