flotsam and jetsam we want to talk about the next steps to getting information about this piece of debris. david sousa is a safety analyst and author of why planes crash. also, les abenda, a boeing 777 pilot and aviation analyst. david, you have been honing in now on how far these objects are from the australian coast. how difficult it will be to get to them. and really, the key pieces of information we still need. yeah, what i d like to do is set some expectations for the families, because this investigation from this point
now we have the prime minister of australia who says he s called his counterpart in malaysia, and i ve just never seen an accident investigation like this. thanks to steven wallace for pointing that out. i think that s a key point, because this announcement overnight came from the australian prime minister, who was speaking to his parliament, alerting them, really alerting the world to the fact that australia has now located two possible objects, two pieces of possible debris some 1,400 miles off the southwestern coast of australia. you re looking at the images right now. this is really simply in the middle of nowhere. i want to talk about exactly where that is in the southern indian ocean. let s bring in former pilot and aviation consultant alastair rosenschein. he joins us live from london. alastair, this location south of the southern-most area of that southern arc that they ve been searching right now. talk to me about the significance of where this possible debris has been
also, less abenda, a cnn aviation analyst and pilot. david, i want to start with you, because you ve been talking about the length of time that it will take to get to this area where the debris has been spotted. yeah, the ships take a long time to get there. it s just simply that. even at flank speed, even at their highest speed, it could take 40, 50 hours to get there. but more importantly, i think what i m impressed with is the amount of resources from so many different countries working together. that s unprecedented in any accident investigation i m aware of. let s talk about the orion just for a moment. those are some of the planes that are now headed to that area, presumably have actually flown over it at this point. right. right. the orion s been around since the 60s, designed for antisubmarine, so it s got equipment on it that is the best you could hope for as far as finding not only what s floating, but what s submerged in the water. so, i give good hope that they ll fi
is a landing possible? would it crash into the ocean? well, i mean, if it was under pilot control, i mean, certainly, me as a pilot, i would attempt just like, you know, the miracle on the hudson, i would certainly attempt a decent landing on the water. of course, you know, this would have been a rough water situation from all the information that i ve been seeing. but regardless, i probably would have landed, you know, parallel to the waves. i mean, this is stuff that we read about, not necessarily practice, because it s just the likelihood of that happening. david, one of the things we thought we heard the defense minister say was that it was a commercial vessel actually fairly close by where they believe this debris has been spotted. what kind of help can that provide? well, that s really good news, actually, because in order to identify whether it s an aircraft, you have to be on the water, if it s an aircraft part. looking at it from the air, you won t be able to really te