hearing the results that have. miles, if it was in the air, do that in and of itself indicate it was an incendiary device or could you get a heat flash from an engine malfunctioning or exploding on its own? that could happen. the number of flashes are the key. if there was a muffle launch you d get an infrared flash for the launch itself and a second flash, a second infrared signature for the impact itself, and possibly even a third when the structure struck the floor of the desert as further fuel might have exploded, so the number of heat signatures is crucial. if in fact only one was detected, that in some respects might steer one away from a missile launch and on to some idea of an explosion on board the aircraft. there s been so much focus on a missile, but there are other ways, you know, as we ve learned
there were children, and it s really struck a chord in this country, and so, yes, they want to get this get some closure on this, but they also want answers. was it terrorism, or was it technical failure? and the investigators have to answer that, john. 25 children on board. matthew chance in st. petersburg, thank you so much. let s bring in our aviation expert. cnn safety analyst david soucie, former faa accident investigator and pilot and aviation expert miles o brien and let s start with the breaking news, the infrared activity, heat flash detected by a u.s. satellite over the sinai peninsula at the time of the incident, what does this mean to you? it means a lot of things, and what s most important is did that flash start on the ground, or did it flash happen in the air? very conclusive. if it happened on the ground, it could indicate that there was some sort of missile launched. if it happened in the air, that means there may have been something on the aircraft as far as i
similar to the debris field of twa 800. in that case there was a flash in the air at explosion. twa 800 was a mechanical failure, center wing tag exploding and the center of the plane went one way and the rest of the plane went the other and it did pitch up before it finally crash, something that they believe happened here. colonel, again, back to the satellite imagery here, one of the things this will tell next to immediately is if there was a flash from the desert floor itself. the question is could have have been some kind of surface-to-air missile? a lot of people say it s unlikely because it s unlikely anyone in the sinai peninsula has such a device that can hit something at 31,000 feet. yeah. there s a difference in the signature of surface-to-surface missile which would give a might brighter signature and easily detectible by this system. a surface-to-air missile doesn t give off that train of a flash. i would be hesitant to say they could detect the launch of a surface-to-a