was it sabotage, was it some kind of hijacking? we do not know the answer to that. nobody at the moment really knows the answer to that. because they have no definitive intelligence or information that leads them to believe it was an act of terrorism, sabotage, a deliberate act, pilot suicide, any of the theories we ve all heard for the last several days. what they do have is data, information now, technical, highly technical data that tells them the likely path of the plane. in other words where it is not why and how it exactly got there. there is also a very key radar blip if you will from the malaysians that show the plane turning around. instead of heading to china, it s heading off the west coast of the malai peninsula. that was one of their first indications. now they have the correlating other satellite data. so they re beginning to put the clues together, beginning to put the pieces together. all of this leaving them now to turn their attention to the indian ocean.
is no correlating transponder information. and as we know now, the transponder for some reason turned off, was turned off, stopped working. so they have a flight out over the indian ocean correlates to this exact type of airplane with no transponder. that s where they believe the flight has come to rest. piers? barbara, why are they so convinced it may have gone to the bottom of the ocean when many other people are theorizing from this information about the pings that it could potentially have been hijacked or stolen to order and landed somewhere. why would they believe it has actually crashed into the sea? reporter: well, i think there s a couple of questions here. one is, what caused the plane to disappear if you will? was it a deliberate act? was it sabotage? was it espionage? was it sabotage, was it some kind of hijacking? we do not know the answer to that. nobody at the moment really knows the answer to that.
which is a company that disperses the information. but that information then goes to rolls royce, it goes to boeing, it goes to the manufacturer from there. so to me the pings are very viable. it s what should be happening. what s confusing to me, two things that are confusing to me about that is that those pings that are coming off of there, why then is there not a transponder still on? that was turned off. that s the only explanation i would have. because if the electrical system failed to the extent where there s no communication, there s no satcom, no uhf, vhf, way for that pilot to communicate, why then would just that acars pinging be going on? okay. let me just take a break here. matthew robinson, when we come to you after the break i want to get really a sense from you about the mounting theory through the day today that this plane could potentially have been stolen to order. who knows who or for what purpose?
because they have no definitive intelligence or information that leads them to believe it was an act of terrorism, sabotage, a deliberate act, pilot suicide, any of the theories we ve all heard for the last several days. what they do have is data, information now, technical, highly technical data that tells them the likely path of the plane. in other words where it is not why and how it exactly got there. there is also a very key radar blip if you will from the malaysians that show the plane turning around. instead of heading to china, it s heading off the west coast of the malai peninsula. that was one of their first indications. now they have the correlating other satellite data. so they re beginning to put the clues together, beginning to put the pieces together. all of this leaving them now to turn their attention to the indian ocean. barbara starr, thank you very much indeed for that report. joining me now on the phone with more on the trail of the plane
discover that they had these ping signals and this data information, presumably they had that pretty immediately and yet we re just hearing about it now. why is it taking so long? reporter: well, i think behind the scenes, u.s. officials will tell you that they have some frustration with this entire situation. it is the malaysians who are essentially running the show here, running the search operation. u.s. officials say it was only in the last 24 hours that the malaysian government shared this specific technical data with them. the u.s. has a number of very highly trained imagery and radar and satellite specialists out there looking at every scrap of information. but if the malaysians don t share what they know, they don t share what they have, it becomes very difficult. that s why they say there has been some delay. and really, as richard quest has been saying on cnn all week long, it is just an