the south indian ocean is one of the most remote places on the planet and not only that it s incredibly hostile to searchers with huge waves and strong currents and depths that are ice cold. for more on the technical challenge of a deep-sea search, we turn to the director of research and conservation at the aquarium. alistair, we know how did i feel this is, 1,500 miles south and west of australia. beyond its remoteness, what else is did i feel about thfficult a terms of searching for a plane like this? the conditions on the surface of the water are part of the problem. it s also a poorly surveyed part of the ocean. we don t have a lot of data buoys that provide a lot of realtime information about what the ocean is doing so we lack a lot of basic information that is
attorney for victims and families of transportation accidents. ric gillespie, airplane recovery clan, author of amelia earhart, another mystery, kit darby, head of his own aviation consulting firm, an cnn s david soucy. the panel is familiar with this but viewers just joining might not have heard this new development from malaysian authorities this morning saying that as far as their analysis of the data is concerned, they saw no indication from the plane that that turn to the west away from its original course towards beijing from kuala lumpur was preprogrammed into that flight computer. this had been a development about a week ago that had raised a lot of questions about why the pilots would have preprogrammed the turn before very calmly and in a friendly manner saying their last good night, their last communication with the ground. i just wondered with this new development and i m going to give at least a couple of you a chance to comment, but mary, does this eliminate any
good afternoon, jim. i initially had a theory myself that something happened that was immediate required immediate attenti attention. the whole concept of acars reporting information contrary to that sort of dashed that theory. we re back to the point where the pilots easily could have been dealing with an internal problem or had a gun to their head. they can t really say. but the fact that it would be premeditated would take away all those other scenarios. so acars is doing its normal job, they have normal communication, they have normal acars reporting, and then a line is drawn and things change drastically. we have to look at what things could cause the pilot, for instance, to turn back. and a pilot would turn back if he his plane is in trouble. and that s why he wouldn t descend and land. there are other issues. every theory as holes in it. we don t have enough information to make a complete picture. but the fact that akors and prepamming of the flight management system didn
malaysian authorities are contradicting that this turn had been preprogrammed 12 some-odd minutes before the plane took that turn, it gave an indication at the time that when the cockpit said good night, an odd communication to give, to say everything s fine when in fact you prepam programmed a turn off course to the city of beijing, the sequence in key raised questions about whether this was intentional. now, again, to reiterate, we re being told by malaysian authorities that in fact at 1:07, that last wireless communication from plane via the acars system, there was no indication this turn had been preprogrammed. i wonder if i could bring you back, as well, mary, just for someone who s investigated incidents like this before, just explain to our viewers why that sequencing is important and why this new information changes that. as you said earlier, undermines the theory that this was intentional. all right. well, in prior accidents and things that are similar and at least for my
investigators have. the plane had lost cabin pressure and all on board were dead. jet fighters shallowing the plane could do nothing to save it as it eventually ran out of fuel. could flight 370 have become a so-called zombie plane. at some point overtaken with smoke, fire, some kind of problem. the plane then left to fly itself. that s what we call the zombie option. happened with flight 522 which flew on autopilot before crashing outside athens in 2005. pilots forgot to turn the pressurization switch from manual to auto at 34,000 feet. all 121 on board cast out and froze in their seats. so par we know the malaysian flight flew seven hours based on