follow a set pattern so perhaps other pieces have been lost. the best bet for them in the next several days is to comb the beeches and see if anything else turns up that might be part of that plane. that might move the search area closer to reunion island and that would be very helpful for the investigators. so tom castillo says the sort of top working theory is this plane was intentionally crashed but as you re pointing out we really don t know that for sure. what are the chances that we are ever going to be able to completely solve this mystery? well you know so looking at the flaperon will give us some indication of the angle the plane perhaps went in the water. we re missing the vertical stabilizer heavy metal of the aircraft and the black boxes. there s a pretty good chance it s going to take a very long time and maybe they ll never reach those boxes. there s five miles down. there s a shelf under it that s three miles long that perhaps it s under there. without them they cann
could most definitely move the debris thousands of miles from where they believe the flight went down. sources confirm that the part number spotted on the wreckage is from a boeing 777 and mh-370 is the only missing 777 in the world. the initial debris, a wing flap and a suitcase are now heading to a facility in france. the same one that analyzed the wreckage after air france flight 447 back in 2009. the debris is now expected to arrive at the lab tomorrow. some experts speculate that the flight was intentionally crashed. nbc s tom castillo is following the investigation from washington. tom, once this debris arrives in the south of france, what will the investigators be looking for? well listen, i think they ve got their work cut out for them to try to discern anything from that one flaperon they picked up off the coast of reunion, and the challenge is going to be when you look at the metal, is there any signs of deform deformations in the metal that might suggest at what
chris, back to you. nbc s tom castillo. thank you very much for that. when i first started seeing information about asiana s flight 214 on twitter, saw pictures of a smoking plane, reports that the tail of the plane snapped off, i got the horrible plummeting feeling you get when first encountering breaking news. we were looking at a situation where hundreds of people may be dead. then i saw these incredible pictures coming in of the survivors of the crash walking away. walking away from a boeing 777 whose tail had broken off. more than 300 people were onboard and all but 2 survived. seeing those people reminded me of the miracle, the truly global civilizational miracle that is the safety of commercial air traveling. not that long ago, airline travel was much more dangerous. before this weekend, there had
correspondent, tom castillo. tom has been reporting on this story since the crash. and tom, what do we know about the possible array of possible causes at this moment in the crash? reporter: well, let me set the scene for you here. behind me is the remains of flight 214. sitting out there on runway 28-left. you can see that, well, in a minute you re going to see planes have been coming and going right by it all day. what we know now is that there were three captains onboard that plane, as well as a first officer. and one of those three captains was training to training may not be the exact precise language but was in his final hours of learning how to fly the 777. now, he had flown many other aircraft for some time including the 747. he had 10,000 hours of experience, but only 43 on the 777 and he was on his first approach attempt ever to san francisco with a captain who was checking him out. now, in addition to that, there was another captain onboard and
plane safely. chris, back to you. nbc s tom castillo. thank you very much for that. when i first started seeing information about asiana s flight 214 on twitter, saw pictures of a smoking plane, reports that the tail of the plane snapped off, i got the horrible plummeting feeling you get when first encountering breaking news. we were looking at a situation where hundreds of people may be dead. then i saw these incredible pictures coming in of the survivors of the crash walking away. walking away from a boeing 777 whose tail had broken off. more than 300 people were onboard and all but 2 sir sooifed. seeing those people reminded me of the miracle, the truly global civilizational miracle that is the safety of commercial air traveling. not that long ago, airline travel was much more dangerous. before this weekend, there had not been a fatal commercial jetline crash in the united states since february 2009. it was less than 20 years ago we watched two crashes in the united states in ju