plane, they buy a big plane. and in terms of an organized terrorist network, i think it s really highly, highly unlikely that any sort of network sophisticated enough to pull something like this off wouldn t actually be under super under, you know, study by the intelligence community in malaysia or elsewhere. and people simply don t see that. we don t see that here. we don t see that in the region. in that sense, i really don t see this as a network event. always possible, but really not very likely right now. greg, let me ask you in terms of data, the two fundamental questions where is the plane and what happened. in terms of the satellite data that we re getting which is suggesting that the plane followed this navigational path, the new york times writes, the information from the company that owns the technology, inmar sat, could be the first big break in helping narrow the frustrating search for the plane. they may actually have geographic data that they can
this is still a real weakness. what we re also seeing is an inability to know where aircraft are and potentially being susceptible to actors on the plane keeping folks on the ground from knowing where those aircraft are in certain areas of the world. that s clearly a very significant security concern. do you see any policies on this front changing in the aftermath of this? regrettably, these sorts of issues that are really global can take significant time. i think on the screening of passengers globally, i would like to tell you this is going to be a quick fix, but if we re 13 years post 9/11 and one of the greatest aviation tragedies we ve seen in the lifetime and haven t gotten the fix, i don t think there s going to be a huge push. but there may be some and the u.s. should lead that. on the tracking of aircraft, this is something that could be done. i m a little more optimistic on that front. all right, thank you so much. i m going to turn to my friends in the studio. greg, yo
holt and greg and michael lighter in washington, d.c. appreciate you re weighing in. all right, stick around, later this hour, we re going to look at the science behind that search we just discussed with renoned author. look at this video right here in the united states. evacuating the plane, oh, my god. the plane is on fire. oh, my god. my plane just crashed. you re looking at dramatic moments in philadelphia where passengers had to evacuate a florida bound plane last night after the front tire blew and the plane bounced and skidded down the runway leaving terrified passengers running to escape the smoking plane. this cell phone video captured the dash down the emergency slides and out the window exits. it was carrying 149 people and
process of difficult anguished searches for them. we have nbc news anchor lester holt. thank you for joining us. i m a big fan and greg fife, ntsb investigator and michael lighter. i ll start with you, mike, this story has been a reminder of how precarious international travel security can be. what are the specific vulnerabilities that are revealed here? one thing i would stress, ronan, we don t know if any of those vulenerabilities led to the result that we have but clearly highlighted weaknesses in how lost and stolen passports are reported and the extent to which that information is really used in a dynamic way to keep people who we don t want on airplanes out. this is really strong in the u.s. post 9/11. and it gets progressively weaker as you move away from the united states and areas like malaysia,
they were heading towards the andaman islands, is there any possibility they could have landed? greg and i were speaking with and michael as well. i think as a journalist, i say getting too far into this whole speculation thing. but we ve got nothing after a week here. we crossed into far fetched land. everything is on the table, including that possibility. it s a big jet. what would you figure, greg, 7,000, 8,000 feet of runway? easily. assuming he s burned off his fuel that s not present on the andaman islands? no. one of the things that has searchers moving in the area, one of the four pings happens to be in a generalized area right over that island. so that s really what caused them to start to concentrate their search in that particular area. whether it pans out or it s another ping just like the last radar hit where the only reason there was no more radar hits on the military because that s