roadblocked up off and it s flowing real hard. now we re just stuck here. reporter: more rain and thunderstorms passing through the area right now. that is making rescue conditions and the search very difficult. thanks. new allegations over hillary clinton s e-mail scandal. documents showing a five-month gap in the presidential hopeful s e-mails. the state department s response and what it could mean for the ongoing investigation. plus, we have this. don t do that. what do you mean look forward? that s the inside of an airplane. violent outbursts on that flight led to the plane being diverted as well as that arrest. what the heck happened?
rescue mission. the search for survivors as dozens of family members await news of their loved ones fate. fred? thank you so much, david molko. let s bring in cnn s aviation correspondent, richard quest. richard, this plane was only 33 minutes into flight when it lost contact and was just about 20 minutes away from its scheduled landing, a relatively short flight. so what are all of the things being considered as to what may have caused it to have problems? a combination, fred, of bad weather, poor piloting, bad maintenance, as david molko says. the plane will have been starting its descent at roughly the time that the accident took place. it may well have been well and truly into the descent. we know the weather was appalling and there were high mountains in the area. now, honestly, none of those individually are lethal to a plane being properly piloted. but this particular airline,
malaysia flight 370. and the moment the mystery begins. you have a series of events that appear to be human driven. you have a transponder being turned off. you have an acars system being turned off, you have the plane being turned not once, but at least twice, probably three times. and most perplexing, no distress call. there are so many ways to notify people that there s a distress. uhf radios, vhf radios. many, many ways. none of that happened? none of it, for seven hours. could the disappearance of mh-370 been deliberate? to answer that question, investigators zero in ton last two men known to be in control of the plane. seen here passing through security on the night of the flight. first officer, fariq hamid was only 27 years old.
plane is some 2,300 miles away. australian officials in charge of the search operation made it clear there are no plans to divert assets from that area to reunion island because of this one piece of debris. they remain confident that the area they re searching is where the plane went down. so they re staying in that area, wolf. rene, thanks very much. as crash investigators quernlg on a french lab to study that critical wing part, what do they hope to learn if they confirm the wreckage came from flight 370? tom foreman taking a closer look at this part of the investigation. what are you seeing, tom? wolf, our own air aviation analysts have been looking at this piece and they noted the front end of this is not nearly as damaged as the trailing edge of the flaperon. and that could tell them something. and this is how. if we re talking about the plane being in a high-speed dive, say it was flying along at cruising altitude 500 miles an hour, the flaperon would be in this position rela
shoots down many of these theories that the plane could have landed somewhere else. indeed. it puts any theory that relates to the plane being in afghanistan or russia or northern corridor. it has to be in in the south. however, of course we still have a long way to go first of all, to find the wreckage recover the black boxes and then understand what on earth went on that airplane to cause it to end its flight in the southern indian ocean. a long way to go and it must be a terrible time for the relatives of those who have those who are on board that aircraft. relatives who have, you know it s been a trying time for them. a trying 16 months and many false alarms. jeffrey thomas, thank you so much for your insights and we ll await to see what is determined with this piece of wreckage.