for what purpose, that certainy is up for grabs at this point. and beyond just taking it s the yoke and turning it to the left, someone was punching in coordinates. let s bring in the rest of our panel, jim tilmon, david soucie, spider marks. we re going to get into the simulator and into his in the pilot s house. but this all right, good night, i saw some questions today. we actually got one from a veteran pilot, also an american pilot, who says that s not how pilots talk to each other, that he would have to usually say roger and put the call sign in there somewhere. jim, what do you think about all right, good night. well, i ve heard both extremes. i ve heard guys just casually say, all right, have a good night, whatever else. most pilots will do exactly what this other gentleman said, they
capable of doing that. we know the transponder was turned off and the acars system did not transmit. so in my mind it s just clarifying the malaysian government is just clarifying that it could be that it was just sent here and it was sent here. they can t verify that it was truly turned off with a switch. it doesn t mean it wasn t off. you can jump in on this, jim tilmon or anybody, if these instruments, the transponder, the acars are so vital, why do they have an off switch? you want an off switch on anything you can turn on in that cockpit. i don t want to fly a cockpit that has electronics in it that i can t turn off if the thing wants to catch fire or something. spider, again, i m layering heavy skepticism into the malaysian investigation on this sort of thing. easy to do. easy to do, yeah. how does that change? at this point we ve got 25 nations involved, a lot of them don t like each other. they don t want to know each other or don t want each
we depend on vie mare radar. when the radar doesn t cover it, they vanish. jeff beatty. it s a big ocean and i would have to say if it went down in the ocean they may not find it for a long time, if ever. hopefully it went down somewhere on land. we have a better chance there. jim tilmon. i agree with the last person. the chances of finding it at the bottom of the indian sea is slim. i pray they are all right. why was malaysian air choosen for richard quest s story a few weeks ago? that was the part of the world that we were filming in and it was an airline with issues about restructuring. and you happened to fly with that co-pilot? pure luck. we have got in sheer numbers of
doing that. if the acars had been turned off, it wouldn t have been capable of doing that. we know the transponder was turned off and the acars system did not transmit. so in my mind it s just clarifying the malaysian government is just clarifying that it could be that it was just sent here and it was sent here. they can t verify that it was truly turned off with a switch. it doesn t mean it wasn t off. you can jump in on this, jim tilmon or anybody, if these instruments, the transponder, the acars are so vital, why do they have an off switch? you want an off switch on anything you can turn on in that cockpit. i don t want to fly a cockpit that has electronics in it that i can t turn off if the thing wants to catch fire or something. spider, again, i m layering heavy skepticism into the malaysian investigation on this sort of thing. easy to do. easy to do, yeah. how does that change? at this point we ve got 25
investigation and this search can be carried out in a way that delivers results for all the interested parties. all right. we appreciate your insight. you are at least trying to frame this with the block of salt we should be taking as we try to figure out what happened to this flight. someone else who has some interesting theories is a gentleman by the name of jim tilmon, one of our cnn aviation contributors, a former pilot with american. jim, thanks for being with us. so does that change your opinion? you, i think, were about to float sort of a more extreme theory about what happened to this plane. are you going to go with that or are you going to pull back? bill, i don t know what to believe. i ve heard just about everything you can imagine. it s like somebody is writing children s stories without any concern for the kids. i ve got to tell you that this whole thing is so perplexing that i ve left a lot of my thinking about the details of