so i guess i m skeptical of anybody, of a country who doesn t cooperate and doesn t provide the information for 30 days. and then comes out with a statement and says, oh, by the way, you know, they didn t come through our radar, radar didn t detect them. well, i m just skeptical after almost 30 days, they make a pronouncement and we re supposed to change our thinking. no, i need a little more than that. i told you you were skeptical. you know, as a commercial airline pilot, jim tilmon, i would imagine it s not far fetched to understand how to fly around certain air space, but would an airline pilot know how to avoid radar, is that a military pilot s sort of m.o., to know how to do that? the military aircraft have facilities on board to detect when they are being absorbed on radar. it s we don t have that in commercial aviation. we don t have anything in the cockpit to let us know whether we have are being seen on
to three days to go down these seven-mile tracks three times to try to triangulate and locate it. i think the next two to three days will be essential to where we go next. even if it s run out, at least there is somewhat they have somewhat of a location. jim, in a matter of hours or days, the pingers from the cockpit of flight data recorders may have stopped transmitting if they haven t stopped already. if that does happen, do you think there s enough information that searchers are, as i say, in somewhat the right location? we now have the best information we ve had since this whole thing started. i could be just as critical as anybody else on a scientific level. but i ve got to tell you, from just a strictly emotional level, i m uplifted by the fact that we do have something that sounds sound, sounds like it s scientifically derived, and it gives us hope that we might be on the right track and i certainly hope that we are. this is the first time that i think i ve heard optimis
well, i don t think so, unless it s a very well-trained mammal, who has good laboratory technique. we can measure to ten thousandths of a second on the repetition rate. and we expect that not to vary. and we talked about certain signatures, because you have certain repetition rates and certain signals and all of that. and some aquatic life or ocean life, an animal or mammal would have to do the same sort of thing in order to repeat that and that s highly, highly unlikely. let s move on now. leyla says, where exactly are each of the black boxes located on the plane? jim tilmon? well, there are a number of places they generally put them. generally, most airplanes will have the boxes in the tail, in the vertical fin. some place, they think, is going to survive the worst part of a crash. a few of them have been, from time to time, put further forward and high in the fuselage, but most are near the tail.
could be human remains. and i think we have to maintain a lot of sensitivity right now. we have to be very, very careful the way we describe anything we say, so it s just a point of mind they just wanted to bring up. point taken, thank you very much, jim tilmon. coming up, you heard it at tonight s news conference. the pinger locator search goes on. but just how difficult is that search? we ll show you when we come right back. and tea parties. i ll have more awkward conversations than i m equipped for, because i m raising two girls on my own. i ll worry about the economy more than a few times before they re grown. but it s for them, so i ve found a way. who matters most to you says the most about you. at massmutual we re owned by our policyowners, and they matter most to us. ready to plan for your future? we ll help you get there. hooking up the country whelping business run build! we re investing big to keep our country in the lead.
but what they really want are truthful and honest answers. and some finality to the search. jim tilmon, you know, they talked a bit about searching for debris here, not as much as searching for the pinger here. it s been 133 missions so far. do you think the investigation now really focuses on listening to this pinger rather than searching for a debris field? i think it has to be two-fold. i think we have to continue to look for a debris, because that s going to make a significant difference. and as i keep hearing, debris can get spread all over the place. so the longer we wait, the more difficult it s going to be, to use that debris to pinpoint something. i want to just caution everybody about something, about the way we discuss debris and how it s handled. today, watching cnn, i heard someone say that, you know, the currents are like a washing machine or a blender. and it does all those crazy things to any debris. understand something. some of the so-called debris