pings to determine whether it was a great circle route, which would mean that the way points were punched in and the pilots selected that route or more of a ghost plane. also, a fire in 2011, a flash fire in the cockpit of egyptair flight 667 and the question is, could this have been the scenario? you know, an oil field worker actually saw a fire above in the sky and it happened so quickly, there s no possible way of getting any communications in there. so, there s lots and lots that the malaysians know. now, american investigators don t sit by side with the malaysians. boeing, ntsb, faa behind the scenes have been complaining about data flow. this calculation that was done on these various ping points and what not they ve done themselves but it took them weeks to do. this is 19th century physics. the kind of thing that if all of this data had been made more transparent, many more mind working on this to find this
this left engine shut down, this engine still operating as it should, right? yes. what we note is the attitude of the aircraft itself and we re maintaining an altitude set it at 10,000 feet. we re still at 10,000 feet. i m looking at a cruising speed of 285 knots. so the aircraft is stable. the aircraft is not losing altitude. it is flying with just one engine because it s compensated. the thrust asimilar mettymme compensator that s his job. miles you brought this up because we were talk about if the plane was a ghost plane where the pilots were somehow incapacitated and the plane gradually run out of fuel, one engine shut off, you were wondering whether the plane would balance itself out and would continue flying gradually lowering? the question was, did the auto pilot have enough authority, enough strength if you will, to overcome what we call asymmetrical thrust.
you level off. you apparently have figured out it s not that severe and you get it on automatic pilot or you put it on automatic pilot and you re overcome by smoke or lack of oxygen. you pass out, passengers pass out. airplane has plenty of fuel, on a predetermined course and it will now fly for hours until it runs out of fuel. so that s the scenario. we don t know if it really happened that way, but many speculate it could have. miles o brian, though, the plane did make several turns. so would that be possible under an autopilot scenario? that is highly unlikely. what that pilot would have done is what marty and his friend, mitchell, did in the simulator. they would turn around, do a 180, head back to land, get back
to 10,000 feet and if they were overcome, the plane would continue on that heading. what we see from the data that was released today are two additional turns. two additional turns. one tend sends them up to the northwest, the other to the area where we re searching. so in the heat of that battle, as it were, were they have put in extra wait points? it didn t take him to an airport that was close by, so unfortunately, that s where this theory tends to fall down. there must have been something else going down. richard, as you look at the map and we were looking at it, it does lock as if there s an argument to be made that the plane was trying to avoid indonesian air space. if you look at the map, that turn that miles was talking about to the northwest, then to the south, it s not just that
australian naval vessel has a goal. remember we were telling you about the debris on monday. debris spotted by an australian plane. green or gray or orange. they dropped a beacon. this australiaen naval vessel now knows it has a place to go. it s going to try to find that debris, pull it out and bring it back for those families. the problem is because of all the weather yesterday they re not sure if that beacon is next to that debris or not. so they are steaming to that area and they re going to try to recover it, anderson. kyung, thanks very much. david mckenzie as well. let s bring in our panel. cnn safety analyst david soucie, author of why planes crash . cnn aviation correspondent richard quest who originally flew in the cockpit of a malaysian airlines 777 with flight 370 s first officer weeks before the crash. cnn analyst, and director of