about whether wreckage from the plane has been spotted under water. a search official told cnn he believes sonar equipment detected the wreckage at the bottom of the see. but the ceo of airasia says that hasn t been confirmed. finding the plane s black boxes is a top priority. the flight data and cockpit voice recorders are key to figuring out what went wrong here. they contain information on air speed, altitude direction, as well as the conversations and the sounds from the cockpit. preparations are under way to identify the remains of the crash victims once they ve been recovered. tents have been set up on the grounds of a hospital in surabaya indonesia, and a sign of the grim task ahead, refrigerated containers where the remains will be kept while waiting for identification. before they re flown to surabaya the bodies are arriving in borneo. and our paula hancocks has the latest from there. reporter: this is the first-stop hospital for the
the disappearance of flight 8501 has raised many of the same questions that surrounded the disappearance last march of malaysia flight 370. how can satellite technology track a cell phone but lose a large airliner? we ve pulled your questions together from twitter. we ve asked you to use #8501qs and we re going to put the questions to our panel of experts. rejoining us we have cnn aviation analyst peter goelz and mary schiavo and david soucie. jump in if you know the answer to these questions. this comes from steven. he tweeted, have some of the airlines become overly confident that their planes and pilots can fly through and around severe storms? i don t think overly
that adjusting the tilt of the radar to see where the most intense areas are, right or left or up or down. but this is a very typical process that we go through to avoid weather and keep it at a comfortable, safe ride for our passengers. right now there seems to be a working theory that the plane stalled, meaning that the plane is essentially ascending and the speed is reduced. it looks legitimate. we here at cnn have not verified that that i m aware of. i guess the 105 knots was what was said but that would probably be ground speed. i don t know what the tail wind would be at that time. so the airplane doesn t care what it is doing across the ground at that altitude. it cares what is happening
jetliner to be brought down by turbulence it s rare. reporter: one theory the plane may have stalled as it climbed to a higher altitude. this was leaked by an air traffic controller and seems to report that. what it shows is this particular flight had an altitude of 36,000 feet and climbing but traveling at approximately 105 miles per hour too slow to sustain flight. reporter: cnn could not validate the authenticity of that image. we know that at 6:12 a.m. pilots asked for permission to climb from 32,000 feet to 38,000 feet. it would be the last known communication from the crew. we are very devastated by what s happened. it s unbelievable but we do not know what has happened yet. reporter: for these two teenage girls whose parents were aboard the flight all they can do is wait holding on to hope that their families will soon be
found. cnn s andrew stevens with that report. for the latest theories of what haf may have happened let s bring in analyst peter goelz and from charleston south carolina, we have mary schiavo and in new york i m joined by david soucie author of why planes crash. why do you think it took so long for indonesian authorities to say there s an emergency here? it took an hour and a half. you are reluctant to call an emergency. you think maybe the pilots have inadvertently switched their radio dials, any number of problems. but people don t like to call an emergency. particularly if in a structure that is a military form of