Singapore. Unlike flight 370, it went missing over the java sea in a heavily traveled shipping channel with shallow waters. 1,126 searchers are deployed from australia, singapore, malaysia south korea, japan, and new zealand. Along with Indonesias Navy army air force, and police force. And the uss sampson is also on its way to the java sea, where its already tuesday morning. We have an expert Team Standing by to answer all of your questions. Make sure you use the hashtag 8501 qz. But i want to get to cnns reporters in the search zone. Andrew stevens is in surabaya indonesia. Will ripley joins us from beijing. And cnn aviation correspondent Richard Quest here with me this evening in the studio. Hello to all of you gentlemen. Im going to start with you, andrew. Reports of smoke we have seen, that has been seen on an island in the asia air flight 8501 search area. What do you know about the smoke . Don, thats the key. Within the search zone. Remember this search zone continues to widen rather than focus down at the moment. So the authorities really are looking at every possible angle on where this plane could be. Reported smoke from a small island on the eastern excuse me on the western side of that java sea closer to where im here in surabaya. What we know so far is smoke has been reported it has been confirmed by the search and rescue authorities. They are sending people to investigate. Theyre still on their way at this stage. But as i say, don, this search area grows ever bigger. 156,000 square kilometers now split down to over 13 zones. As they just try to find out what happened to the fate of this plane. And there are now Something Like 40 ships, 40 surface vessels, 30 planes 30 aerial reconnaissance in the air. So it gives you an idea of just how big this search is becoming. So many countries are involved. But as yet as we go through day three of this search, nothing concrete don. And the u. S. Of course now involved in this as well. Andrew its still being called a search and rescue mission. Were going to get to those details very soon. But what is airasia telling these families right now . Well theyre telling them pretty much what they can. And this is the frustrating thing. There is no new information at the moment. The authorities, theyre basically posting what they know what the search area is. And all airasia can do really is relay that message. They have specific people targeted with specific family members to try to keep that information flow going. There are professionals on standby here being provided by both the authorities and by airasia Counseling Services as well. But you can imagine, don, the frustration. Theres just been a briefing actually just in the room behind me in the Crisis Center thats close to the media and you can see, though through windows, its just a heartwrenching scene. One of the scenes was a father with his hand on the shoulder of what looked like his son. The father just weeping copiously. And so many people here in surabaya perhaps 90 members of or 90 people in the community here in surabaya have relatives. I want to read you one tweet. It is from the daughter of the pilot and it is so poignant. It just says dad please come home. I still need you. Please return dad. You have to come home. That gives you an idea don, the anguish, the frustration, whats going through their minds at moment as we wait for concrete information. Were going to discuss more in the coming hours. It is heartbreaking. I want to get to will ripley. Will is in beijing, china. The weather in the area is it hampering the search effort at all . In this part of the world, don, it is monsoon season and while the weather youre talking about rain if you look at the forecast and the weerth pattern in the area its thunderstorms, some of them very strong predicted for the next several days. That means big waves. And as we know from mh370, don, when you have a visual search and youre up in a plane and youre looking down at the waves, the white caps on the waves can look like debris it can really play tricks on your mind after a while. And when so much of this search in the critical days after a plane is presumed to have gone into the water, youre looking for floating debris but every day that passes theres less and less debris on the surface, don. So the weather certainly not helping right now. Stand by. Richard quest, i cant believe here we are talking about this again. There are many theories and speculation. Were going to discuss that throughout the coming hours on cnn. What do we know about what happened to 8501 . He we dont know thatch other than the fact the plane took off. It headed toward singapore. Im going down to the basics. The plane took off. It headed to singapore. It requested a lefthand turn and a climb. The lefthand turn was approved. The climb wasnt. And then it goes missing. And we know there are thunderstorms in the area. They are really the only facts we have got. I am not surprised that its taking quite so long to locate any wreckage. It is a large area by any definition. The plane was at altitude. So its going to be more tricky. Its not as if the plane is like asiana or Something Like that where the plane came down on landing and you actually had it there. This came out of the sky by all accounts or what seems likely. And therefore, the search area is by definition going to be large. Lets talk about the smoke that has been spotted. Local news is reporting that. And also it is a Dolphin Helicopter crew Indonesian NavyDolphin Helicopter crews are saying they found smoke on a small island in the search area. What does this mean . What should we read if anything into this . The implication would be that somehow the plane had crashed on to land and what youre looking at is the smoke and the smoldering thereafter. Its quite a while after the incident that makes me concerned. But as in all these incidents theyre going to trace every possible lead. We saw that with 370. We saw it with 447. Remember it took several days with 447 before they saw the first piece of wreckage. Its going to take that time just to get the assets into the region before you start searching. Its a methodical slow process. The fewest aviation crashes in 80 years, but the most deaths in 2014. Whats going on here . And what a beautiful example of how statistics tell truth and statistics lie because you have yes, the fewer number of incidents, but of those incidents you have three which raise that number to the largest number since 2005. 17 370, and 85 the airasia incident. Those three will make up more than 50 of that number of fatalities. So its not as accurate as it seems to point to those numbers. All right. Our thanks to will and also andrew stevens. I want you to stick around though, Richard Quest. I want to bring in now jeffrey thomas, editor in chief of airline ratings. Com. He joins us via skype from perth, australia. Jeffrey, what do you make of this smoke thats spotted on this small island in the search area . Look don, as we found with mh370, they were finding all sorts of debris oil slicks smoke in the south china sea, and the plane wasnt there anywhere near the south china sea. Im very skeptical at this stage. I really want to see some concrete evidence before we put too much store in these sightings. I think were going to get a lot of misinformation unfortunately from this search. As we learned with mh370 as well. I want you to take a look geoffrey at this screen grab. Reportedly it leaked by an Indonesian AirTraffic Controller not verified by cnn. It appears to show airasia flight 8501 was rising in altitude but was losing speed and was at a velocity that was too slow to sustain flight. What does that tell us . Indeed that came from navaid indonesia. We obtained that. And what it shows is that as we know they requested an altitude climb. It was denied. However, it shows the aircraft traveling through 36,300 feet. The arrow you see indicates its climbing. But the real thing is the speed. Now, on the screen grab its in knots, which is 353. In fact that converts to 406 Miles Per Hour. What we also know that the plane was traveling at 540 Miles Per Hour. So in a very short space time a couple of minutes, it has lost 134 Miles Per Hour of ground speed. My colleagues, a320 check captains, tell me at that altitude at the aircrafts weight that speed is not enough to sustain flight. They believe its possible if this screen grab is correct that this would indicate an aerodynamic stall, a highaltitude upset similar to what we saw with air france 447. Richard, i know you want to get in there. What is a typical procedure for a pilot to gain air speed . I just wanted to come up to geoffrey if i may, don. Go ahead. Geoffrey with that reduction in speed and bearing in mind the 320s Alpha Protection and envelope protections that it has, that would suggest an extraneous incident that bled off the speed because obviously if the pilot was misflying the aircraft then the protections would come into play if it was in normal law. Indeed. And this is it is very perplexing. And the pilots that ive spoken to, you know theyre shaking their head. They dont understand what has happened because youre absolutely right. The protections should be there. However, you know they say if by chance he has somehow blundered into the middle of a massive thunder cell misread the radar, got a bad return on the radar, then possibly all of that goes out the door. Stand by. Quickly, if you can answer the question. Youre talking about the redundancy in the system. But what is the typical procedure to get out of a stall if someone is going into a stall . Oh it depends on the severity. The traditional standard procedure is lower the nose bearing in mind the stall happens because theres not enough air flow. So the typical procedure is to get speed up. The way you get speed up lower the nose. That will pick up the speed and the plane will start to climb again. But if its a very deep stall, if the tail is stalled so youve no longer got any Forward Motion then that becomes much more difficult because cant this is what they discovered with 447. You cant get the nose down. All right. Stick with me. Richard quest, Geoffrey Thomas thank you very much. In perth, australia. Weve got a lot more to come on the hunt for flight 8501. Our experts are standing by to answer all of your questions. Make sure you tweet us using the 8501qz. And weve got another big story tonight. The sony hack that turned into an International Incident. What if north korea wasnt behind the hack after all . What if it was an inside job . Im going to talk to an expert who says the culprit may be a former sony employee. Well be right back. Get ready for some german engineered holiday excitement. At the volkswagen signthendrive event. Right now, for practically just your signature, you could drive home for the holidays in a new volkswagen. Like the sporty, advanced new jetta and the precisely engineered passat tdi. Ah, the gift of clean diesel. For the new volkswagen on your list this year just about all you need, is a pen. Festive, isnt it . 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Already midmorning on tuesday off the coast of indonesia, where the search for airasia flight 8501 is under way. Lets review what we know about the missing jet. Joining me now is matthew wald aviation safety expert and former New York Times reporter. Also mary schiavo, former Inspector General of the aviation david susy author of Malaysia Airlines flight 370. And captain tim taylor a military vehicle special specialist. And Richard Quest. Maryi want to get to you. So far theres been an oil slick, a faint ping. They have been discounted though. Now local reports of smoke. That smoke has been seen on an island in the search area. How careful do we need to be with these reports . We need to be pretty careful because its been now a long time since the crash. I think there was 8,200some kilograms of fuel on board. Not completely full, but thats a lot of full. And they were still in the beginning of the flight. So it would be a hot and longburning fire. But this is a long time for smoke to be rising. But its possible. Particularly if it was in a densely wooded area. Its possible but i wouldnt put i wouldnt just assume that this is it. David, how long would we know if its actually smoke from the plane or how soon would we know if theres at this point and three days later. Yeah, three days later wouldnt make sense to me. Ive been at accident scenes three days later and theres still smoldering going on but i wouldnt call it smoke. Unless as mary said there ways afire that caught on to the surrounding vegetation. But i would think after that time it wouldnt be intense enough to cause that black really distinct smoke from an aircraft accident. As Geoffrey Thomas says well get a lot of these reports and some of them may render something and some may not. I want to get to matthew. I want to ask about that leaked screen grab. The pilot asked for permission to climb to 38,000 feet because of poor weather. Air Traffic Control then denied that request. Now the screen grab shows the pilot may have ascended anyway. What does that tell you . The screen grab this is really early, and if i were an investigator in this case i would look at the screen grab and say not whats in it but what is it telling me. What its telling me is it came off the airplane. The numbers in there came off the airplane. There have been previous crashes where the crash occurred because the airplanes internal sensors werent working right. We know what the screen grab says the air speed was. We dont know what the actual air speed was. Maybe its a clue about a malfunction. Or maybe it really had slowed down. I wonder what circumstances, richard, would a pilot ignore the air Traffic Control saying dont climb and theyll do it anyway. In extremis. When theres danger. When the aircraft when he has to do it because theres grave peril of the aircraft. But even then you dont do that sort of maneuver. The captain is already in charge. Air Traffic Control is offering an advisory. The captain has to make those decisions for the protection of the aircraft and those on board. So if he believes that its necessary to make that climb at that moment to save life then hes of course he will do it. But of course he will have to telegraph to anybody and everybody nearby that hes doing it because of course of their separations. You dont just drive your car down the wrong way down the interstate. Without sort of telling everybody youre about to do it. If they had communications with him or they saw him on radar theyd be saying what are you doing, theyd be trying to speak to him, right . Right. And air traffic then once its an emergency, you look in the airman information manual what it tells you in there is emergency procedure is that you do notify and then at that point if you declared an Emergency Air traffics responsibility is to get rid of Everything Else in your way. You go where you want to go and theyll get rid of the traffic. But in this case they didnt. And so thats where the problem lies. Usually its a domino effect right, mary . Because usually its not just one thing that happens. Its a confluence of Different Things that happen to cause an air disaster. Well i agree. And i was suspicious about that because so many things can happen. If he was going ahead and climbing after air Traffic Control said no you would assume that you had traffic above you. And then that would set off another chain reaction. That would set off your Collision Avoidance system, and that would do that on both planes which would further complicate things. So it doesnt appear that that went off. So im wondering if something was happening to force that climb, some kind of weather condition or something with the planes with the attitude indicators for example. That seemed unusual the pilot would do that because of a risk of midair. Tim, im sure you heard of one of the daughters of one of the pilots on social media saying dad, please come