set up a team to specifically look in to the flight 370 case. joe, what does this investigative committee supposed to do? well, it sounds roughly similar to the commissions that the get started in washington when there s a disaster, perhaps like the space shuttle commission, the 9/11 commission, don. it s acceptance of the fact that malaysia has questions that need to be answered in a thoughtful way, i think, about mh-370. they will look at airworthiness, human factors, flight recorders, medical concerns, weather, survival factors. all the things that could explain how a jumbo jet could vanish without a trace with hundreds of people on board, don. the malaysian defense minister who s the acting transportation minister raised comments that raised a lot of eyebrows. let s listen to it. our ministry of defense was
of defense was not attacked like the pentagon was, putrajaya was not attacked but we need to consider that as a possible future threat and that, and the sops with the air force may have to be relooked at. so joe, give us the context. why is he bringing up 9/11? well, those remarks were made at this huge defense services expo here in kuala lumpur. we went over there yesterday. people from all over the world, including some u.s. military. and his point is that malaysia needs to upgrade its capabilities, including surveillance in space and under water. although it does sound like he is saying the air defenses here are just not great. so there are a lot of considerations right now for malaysia relating to mh-370,
given the limitations of searching with the bluefin we ve discussed many of them why can t they put more than one robo sub down there? it s a fair question, don. the answer is that there s not that many of these things around. obviously a highly technical piece of equipment. there are others around the world, but they are all in use at the moment. they are in great demand for oil and gas research, like on the bottom of the ocean. they are all at work at the moment. this is the only one that was available. they have their eyes out for others as they become available but this is one they were able to bring in. they brought in it in on a 747 and got it on the ocean shield. that s the other thing, if you pulled in another one to help out, you need another ship equipped to be the mothership. it is complicated thing but a fair question, don. now to joe johns in kuala lumpur. the malaysian cabinet agreed to
we have also learned this afternoon that engineers now believe they can program bluefin to go deeper than originally planned. the probe s first mission on monday was aborted after about six hours when it went below its current maximum depth limit. as the search goes on there are still many more questions than answers. and you have been tweeting us your questions by the thousands and we ve got top aviation experts standing by to answer them for you. like this great question, what other assets exist besides the bluefin that could be used to locate the wreckage? now we want to go to the latest in the search for malaysian airlines flight 370. i want to turn to cnn reporters, michael holmes in perth, joe johns in kuala lumpur. joe johns, good evening to you first. turns out they didn t find data from the bluefin they brought back up yesterday but it had to return hours before it finished
underway. helicopters are in the area. they have other ships in the area as well trying to pick up the people in the water. they say it is ten degrees centigrade so they can survive least one hour in this water. it is springtime and the water is not that warm. they want to get to the people quickly as they can. as far as we know hundreds of these passengers were students. they were high school students. they were on their way to jeju island. 450 people sinking off the southwestern coast. as soon as we get more information we will check in. now the latest on the search for flight 370. i want to turn to cnn reporters in the search zone michael hom holmes and joe johns in kuala lumpur. they didn t find any information of note in the data of the bluefin yesterday.