when and if flight 370 is ever found, the task of putting the pieces back together, this wreckage, to retrace, to figure out what led to this crash will be a lengthy one. because all the parts and the pieces have to be put back together just like a puzzle. to stephanie we go live in los angeles, inside the university of southern california s aviation institute accident lab. tell me what they do there, stephanie? reporter: well, brooke, it s amazing. they ve got wreckage of other plane accidents here. they re saying when you take a look at accidents, you learn so much from it. when you learn what something looks like, you don t for get it. michael barr is a aviation safety expert. when you look at the cockpit of this plane, for example, when does your investigation begin? actually, when i cross the field and first see the airplane, the wreckage, i m starting my investigation right
i can go back and look at the wings and tell by how they re bent and malshaped. sooner or later, i will break this down to find out if there s any mechanical problems, in this case. there was absolutely no mechanical problems. this aircraft stalled, icing conditions, and it was a human error, and not a mechanical error. when it comes to many plane accidents, do you need to discern if it was human problem or if it was mechanical problems? i would say it s never easy, but i could do the majority of the time, i will come up with probably a 90% to 95% chance of what happened in this aircraft accident. you can do that even if you don t have all the parts? that s a part of the puzzle, if you will, that makes it hard? i will never have all the parts. never. about you the more parts i get, it s like a mosaic. the more bits i can put in the mosaic, the better the picture will be, the better i can come up with an understanding of what happened. and so brooke, when you think about it, t
it just gets easier for the search crews. not easy fier for the recovery crews. but some specifics we can backtrack. how big of a setback is it right now that they series sended the certainly for 24 hours because of the weather? can they afford this at this point? no. it s a devastating set back. even if we started the search today and had just a hundred square mile area to look, it would be difficult to get this done before weather sets in. no knows where the data could be tomorrow. mary, i want to shift gears right now to the families. you work with families of victims of plane accidents and mishaps. we now know they ve been offered $5,000, that s just to cover the logistics of the last few days and few weeks.
ones. the distraught father of one passenger says he still believes everyone from the missing plane is alive somewhere. he spoke with our david mckenzie in beijing. translator: i can t sleep each night because all i think about is my son. up until now, what else can we do? this is about his flight. there is nothing you can do to help. we can only wait for further updates. reporter: is this the hardest thing you ve ever had to go through? translator: this is the first time in my life to experience something like this. in the past, i just watched other people s stories on the news. i watched explosions, ships sink and plane accidents. those were other people s stories. this time it is my turn for bad luck. it is my turn to actually experience this. this is not watching news, it is living it. reporter: do you still believe your son is alive?
numbers, they re real people. wen chang was a 30-year-old businessman on the plane. i spoke to his father. and he s holding out. translator: i can t sleep each night because all i thing about is my son. up until now what else can we do? this is about his flight. there is nothing you can do to help. we can only wait for further updates. reporter: is this the hardest thing you ve ever had to go through? this is the first time in my life to experience something like this. in the past, i just watched other people s stories on the news. i watched explosions, ships sink and plane accidents. those were other people s stories. this time it is my turn for bad luck. it is my turn to actually experience this. this is not watching news. it is living it. reporter: do you still believe your son is alive? translator: i firmly believe that my son, together with