the airplane for four years and now retired said he s never been down there. is that right? because there s no real need for us to be down there. there s one circumstance that i would go down there and that s simply after an incident there s a diagram on where to pull a particular circuit breaker like what s being pointed out here. if there was a fire on board or smoke, is that part of the procedure to turn circuit breakers off? turn off the in flight system, to turn off the acars? it wouldn t be to go down those steps to do it. it would be something that s done in the cockpit. we have circuit breakers in the overhead panel that might help perform that. most of that are switches as opposed to circuit breakers. that would be a troubleshooting process. if we had a fire situation our objective toys get the airplane on the ground as quickly as possible. john, can you show some of the other systems down there. depressurizing, some of the other things that are possible to look at?
flight in a normal flight would go downstairs. even if there s a mechanical problem. can you see a reason why somebody would? he s right. i was only referring to after a plane is parked at the gate even if there s some sort of mechanical issue you don t see a reason to go down there. that wouldn t be part of the checklist. unless you can see where the smoke is originating perhaps, you d get into that galley, we have a way to access into that compartment. and you bring a fire extinguisher down. jim sciutto, john goleo, thanks for joining us also. also cnn aviation analyst les abend. he ll stick around. a little later on we ve got a lot more ahead. new insight from our panel of seasoned pilots. do they believe that flight 370 was hijacked? we re going to run through the top scenarios that investigators are looking at. and as i said, the frustrating thing if you ve been following this that each of these though possible is
process. if we had a fire situation our objective toys get the airplane on the ground as quickly as possible. john, can you show some of the other systems down there. depressurizing, some of the other things that are possible to look at? they re tough to see. but collins makes radio gear. you can see here, we ll give them a little commercial, collins radios extensively used. hamilton standard makes lots of controls on airplanes and some electronics. we saw cabin pressure controller on the other side. we have here control units for certain actuators. the 777 is a digital airplane. it s run by electronics. even connections from the pilot, there s only i think seven cables in the whole airplane for the flight controls. it s a fly by wire airplane with minimum backup. you can see some of them labeled here. here is the traffic alert and tcas, as they call it. when you get too close to another airplane. there s the cabin controller right here, cabin pressure controller.
mechanic john goleo. we re know not showing our viewers any secret information. this is all information that somebody who is very interested in this can find out online and elsewhere. i just don t want to give people the idea we re showing something we should not be showing. jim, this compartment where the computer maintenance system is known as acars, walk us through this, show us what it looks like. every plane is different, but how would someone go about disabling the system? reporter: i like you thought it was much more difficult to get here and that once you re here it would be much more difficult to disable systems. but it s really not. first here s how you get here this. little ladder here comes down from the cockpit so you d open that trap door, walk down the stairs and then you re in the avionics bay here. and here on the right side, circuit breaker board looks kind of like the circuit breakers you d have at home. simply pulling out one of those black knobs disables the syst
for the most part these boxes, locations are standardized. but it depends on whose installation you have for your avionics package where they will be located. john, can you think of any nonnefarious reason for a pilot or somebody else to go down there and shut systems off? they never should go downstairs, never. there s no reason why anyone in flight in a normal flight would go downstairs. even if there s a mechanical problem. les, can you see a reason why somebody would? no. he s right. i was only referring to after a plane is parked at the gate even if there s some sort of mechanical issue you don t see a reason to go down there? that wouldn t be part of the checklist. unless you can see where the smoke is originating perhaps, you d get into that galley, we have a way to access into that compartment. and you bring a fire extinguisher down. jim sciutto, john goleo, thanks for joining us also. also, cnn aviation analyst les