that struggle or whatever was happening in the air that caused that variation, it had to have been on auto pilot to fly so far so long to get here. and then, jeff, had to be on auto pilot and no communication. i mean, you do have the possibility here that there was nobody alive for the vast majority of this flight? not really. listen, there s a lot of holes in that story. very popular theory. les is a very smart guy. but maybe thinks there is a bit of problem we could clarify here. the fact that a plane is on auto pilot doesn t mean that the captain isn t on duty and flying it. you could be having a cup of coffee or chatting and playing tetras and, so, to say that the plane must have been on auto pilot doesn t rule out the fact that you have two people or one person in the cockpit making decisions, actively engaged in flying this plane. another problem to reinforce what miles is saying, if the zombie plane theory is accurate,
the crew. you are changing altitudes because you re coming down to land safely and you re changing direction and you re changing heading. and professionally and by training, you would let somebody know, air traffic control, so an emergency signal would have been broadcast. it may be that they did try to send a signal and for maybe the signal was sent and no one was listening. this was like 1:20 in the morning over the pacific. reporter: in the case of payne stewart s crash, no distress call was made either. just a sounding of alarms including one for a loss of cabin pressure. what is behind the credibility of the zombie plane theory. this is an investigation of mechanical failure or an investigation into a criminal act. whether the crews switched off the aircraft systems or they just failed giving everyone on board little time to respond, wolf, or even survive. that s a theory out there.
airliner, what s your sense? are they on to something or is this another false lead? it s an awfully large piece for an aircraft to have hit the water and generated something that large. i m a little skeptical. but what we need to do is identify something that s tagged to that plane and then the real search begins. if we can reverse drift these pieces back 12 days to when the impact occurred, then our work s cut out for us. we re going to have an area probably even bigger than the air france area and we re going to have to employ a lot of assets to look at the bottom at that point. colleen keller, richard quest, guys, thanks very much. just ahead, we ll continue the breaking news coverage on the search for flight 370 including a frightening new theory that s picking up steam among some experts and analysts. could deadly fumes or a lack of oxygen have created a so-called zombie plane?