much for your time. >> thank you. that's it for "the lead". i am jake tapper. i'll turn you over now to mr. wolf blitzer who is in "the situation room." wolf? jake, thanks very much. happening now, the mystery of flight 370. the search for clues as dozens of ships and aircraft hunts for traces of the airliner that disappeared three days ago with 239 people on board. new details of the passengers who officials say were traveling on stolen passports. we're now learning about their ticket purchases and the images recorded by airport surveillance. and if they are eventually found, the plane's data recorders should reveal what went wrong. but why don't airlineser use live-streaming of data giving real-time information about an airline? i'm wolf blitzer. you're in "the situation room."

new clues in a series of frustrating dead ends as the search is stepped up for malaysia airlines jet that disappeared in mid-flight three days ago. the search zone for flight 370 has been expanded and now covers a larger portion of the gulf of thailand between malaysia and vietnam. there's new focus near thailand's border following indications that the plane may have turned around. an iranian purchased two tickets for two men traveling on stolen passports. they were not asian. and a group is claiming responsibility for the plane's disappearance but a u.s. official says that group has not been identified and intelligence sources have nothing now to indicate terrorism. our kor spocorrespondents will

you the information that only we can deliver. let's begin with the search, cnn's rene marsh has the story. >> it's a vast area and winds and currents complicate things. this mysterious disappearance of the jumbo jet has gone hand in hand with lots of false leads and reports of the missing plane. what do we know and what remains a mystery? here's what we can tell you. >> reporter: now, by air and by water, 34 planes, 40 ships and crews from ten countries are locked into a massive search. the boeing 777 lost radar contact 170 miles east of the malaysia peninsula. the search started there in the south china sea and has extended

west and over land. >> we need hard evidence. we need parts of the aircraft. >> reporter: crews must find the plane. that's about the only certainty in the mysterious disappearance of flight 370. they have plenty of false leads. vietnamese search crews spotted an object believed to be the missing plane's door. but it wasn't. a plane found in oil slick in the gulf of thailand, was it jet oil from the missing plane? test results say that it wasn't. >> we have confirmed that the oil is not from an aircraft. >> reporter: a vietnamese rescue team recovered a yellow life vest from the plane. wrong again. it appeared to be the cover of a cable reel. it's not conclusive if it was a part of the plane. the other question, did flight

370 go off course? malaysian military officials say radar data suggests it may have turned around before disappearing, but they are not even sure of that. well, until they find this plane, the investigation is essentially paralyzed. there are members from both the ntsb and faa. they arrived there today. the investigation cannot officially begin until they find this plane. wolf? >> rene marsh, thanks very much. as the search continues for the airliner, the investigation is starting to pick up some steam. let's get the very latest from our justice correspondent pamela brown. what are you learning? >> wolf, we still have more questions than answers but authorities are now at least chasing leads that will help them better understand the motives of the two men who boarded flight 370 with stolen passports. images have been shared with the u.s. government. the latest twist in the

mysterious missing plane centered on this thai travel agency. thai police tell cnn that an iranian middle man contacted the agency for looking to buy cheap tickets. he first contacted the agency march 1st. the booking expired so the travel agent rebooked the men on the same plan on march 6th. ali paid cash. two days later, the plane disappeared. >> they had goals to achieve. whether it was illegal immigration, committing a crime, trying to protect their identity. >> reporter: authorities were able to i.d. the two passengers through kuala lumpur airport and neither were asian. they are checking airline databases to see if those particular stolen pass board

numbers have been used to obtain other tickets in the past. >> i have hereby here to confirm that all security protocols have been complied with. >> reporter: passengers trying to board a plane with stolen other fake passports isn't uncommon. every year people board a flight more than one billion times without having their passports checked at interpol's lost and stolen database, leaving a gaping hole in the security of international flights worldwide. so far there are no credible claims of responsibility by terrorist groups and the intelligence community hasn't picked up chatter of terrorism so far. until the wreckage remains on the table as one law enforcement official told me earlier, we haven't gotten closer to an answer than where we were 48 hours ago. wolf? >> i know this must be so, so

frustrating for everyone involved. dozens of crews are involved and the u.s. navy is dispatching a second warship. both u.s. vessels can send sonar capability. aboard the "uss blueridge," joining me is a commander. have you heard anything, any indication that you're getting any closer to rec wreckage, if you will? >> we have not. and it's a very large search area and it's still a mystery and question marks. we've had coverage over the strait and nothing from any of the u.s. navy assets and, quite frankly, i haven't heard anything from the large national

contingent here. >> are you looking over land areas in vietnam? could this plane have crashed over land? >> we are not looking over land. we are looking at a large search area in the gulf of thailand. now it's a search area 100 miles big. >> tell us about the instruments that you are using. what's the smallest amount of debris that may be picked up? >> our best asset here from our helicopter, i'll give you an example, our p3 will fly at an altitude of 10,000 feet and from

there they can find something a size of a basketball or soccer ball in the water. yesterday we saw a wooden crate kind of floating by. so it's a very sensitive radar. so it's not a matter of if we can find it. we can certainly find anything that is in the water. >> and how do you know that the wide area that is expanding is even a wide area? >> i have to give a lot of credit to the government of malaysia. they are coordinating and 40 ships or so. we are in the middle of vietnam where thailand and malaysia

connect. it's a huge area. all we can do is wait for the next tactics. >> commander marks from the uss navy fleet. we'll stay in close touch. let's get more now from the former managing director from the national transportation safety board. he helped various investigations help coordinate responses to several airline disasters. you and i have spoken after these kinds of incidents. how unusual is this one? >> it's a very unusual accident. it obviously reflects air france 447 but this is a very solid aircraft with a great safety record and that it just disappeared from the radar screen is very perplexing. >> how does that happen? a plane -- a 777, boeing 777 flying 35,000 feet simply

disappeared? what are the possible scenarios? >> you start with a catastrophic event but apparently that has not been picked up by any satellites in the area. you go back to egypt air flight 990 and the co-pilot actually flew the plane into the water during a suicide mission. so you have a range of really unusual events. right now, it's a needle in a haystack would be an easy assignment. >> let's say if the pilot was trying to go below the radar and put it into the water, wouldn't there be indications of that? >> well, you would think that

there would be but one of the issues that we have here is that the plane was at the outer reaches or outer capabilities of the malaysian radar. the further the object is away from the radar base, the less accurate the radar is. so it could be explained that it was at the outer reaches but it's very perplexing. you would have thought that you would see the plane going down, you would have picked up hits on it. it's very, very unusual. >> it's a mystery to be sure. peter, thanks very much. up next, other clues in the investigation. the u.s. is getting images and bio metric information about two men who boarded the missing airliner with stolen passports. and the plane's data recorders should reveal what went wrong if they are located. but why don't airlines live-stream that data?

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liberty mutual insurance. responsibility. what's your policy? we've been getting new information about the information of the missing malaysia airline flight and the two men with stolen passports. let's go to jim sciutto. update us on what you're learning. >> wolf, a u.s. intelligence authority tells me that both the images and biometrics of the two men have been shared with stolen passports, including things like fingerprints. officials continue to tell us they have nothing to indicate so

far that this was an act of terrorism. however, they are exploring all possibilities and this would fall, i think, under that category. they are going to take this information and compare it to u.s. terror databases that would include people with links to terrorism or suspected links to terrorism, no fly lists, et cetera. this shows that they are continuing to show the standard step in light of the mystery surrounding this but they are taking it very seriously and even though they have no indication that it was an act of terrorism, they want to chase down all leads, in effect. wolf? >> and this notion has been widely reported that an iranian was involved in the purchasing of these two tickets for the individuals that flew with stolen as ports. wh >> that's right, a fixture, you could say, who made phone calls to a travel agency in southeast malaysia to purchase the trip.

this is the receipt that you can see there for buying these tickets, paid in cash. interestingly, one-way tickets. some of these are red flags. buying it in cash, one-way tickets, it was a middle man who the agency had a relationship with. had he been doing this before for other clients and did it again so not an unknown figure there. it raises questions. it's an unconventional way to buy tickets for an international flight and some of the circumstances are interesting, including cash and one-way tickets. >> and stolen passports. jim sciutto, thanks. let's dig deeper with the former fbi assistant tom fuentes and an attorney investigator formerly did this work for the work for the government. tom, what does this say to you, that there was an iranian who helped purchase these tickets with cash? >> wolf, i'm not exactly certain

that they've been able to verify that it's an ir anian. the travel agency gave the name as the person who bought the tickets. he's using false identity. how do we know that his identity is correct when he goes in there. he paid cash. it's not as if he used a credit card or something that could be traced. so the fact that the travel agent who may be involved with organized crime and in dealing with fraudulent tickets all the time for other people that he gentleman, we don't know if that information is trustworthy. we know that it's a lead and has been provided to the royal thai police. they've furnished it back to the other agencies but as far as i'm concerned, it still needs to be confirmed who this gentleman was. he needs to be taken into custody and find out why is he involved with fraudulent passports or stolen passports. >> i assume, mary, you would

agree with that? >> i do. and if it was somebody who did not want to leave a trace, al qaeda or somebody, they would probably, you know, cover their tracks more. so i think there's a lot of trails here to follow but certainly it's outrageous and unacceptable that in a post 9/11 world, this kind of lack of security goes on. >> you've spoken throughout the day, mary, and i'll let you update our viewers on this whole notion of a trial run. you say there's some sort of his store rec precedent. explain. >> there is. long before september 11th , 2001, there was a plan where they were going to take out jetliners, u.s. jetliners across the pacific but they did a trial run, first on a filipino airliner. they were also going to take a plane into the cia headquarters and other things they had and

they did get the trial run done and they did it with false passports so no one would know who was doing this initial operation. they wanted to save up their identities and operation for the big, final it had. luckily law enforcement caught on when one of their bomb-making operations caught on fire. it was a huge alarm bell which sadly went unheeded in many circles in the united states and then 9/11 followed. >> you remember that incident back in the '90s, tom, don't you? >> yes, exactly. and what happened is in january of 1995, the apartment that ramsey who master minded the first world trade center attack in 1993 was sharing with a colleague who were making bombs in that apartment. now, ramsey had left the apartment and was down the street when there was a small explosion and a fire ensued. the police found ramsey's laptop

and turned that over to the u.s. authorities. ramsey then flees to pakistan, again using false passports to get out of the country. in the laptop, when it's decrypted, they find what is called the plot and that was going to be blowing up 12 airliners over the pacific ocean en rogue to the united states and their theory was that this was going to be so disastrous that airliners worldwide would shut down because the debris would be scattered all over the pacific ocean and this hasn't been found yet, the malaysian crash. the trial run was that he used a small explosive in an aircraft, just enough to know that it would get media attention but not enough to destroy the aircraft to tighten down the security. in a trial run, you don't want to do something so terrible that

causes the world to tighten up and have increased security, such as checking future bookings for stolen passports or travel documents. so that's the only difference. the trial run is not supposed to be the actual run. it's supposed to be an attempt just to ping the system and see what security measures are in place. >> tom few weuentes, mary schia thank you so much into what happened to airlines flight 370, we're going to look at some of the troubling theories. and it's the only way to know for certain what went wrong but finding the data recorders could be extremely challenging. i'll speak to someone who has done it underwater. ♪

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he had a big, big heart. he liked to travel. >> if he was here right now, he

would comfort me and he would just say, don't be sad. >> i'll never really give up hope but that doesn't mean i won't accept that he may never come back. odds are we won't ever see him again. >> that was a family of phillip wood, one of three americans identified as being among the passengers aboard flight 370. so what could have possibly happened to this plane? let's bring in cnn's tom foreman. you've been digging deeper into what possibly could have gone wrong. what do you come up with? >> we've been talking a lot about terrorism. it's true. a bomb could cause instantaneous failure to an aircraft and no time for a distressed signal. if a bomb was the case, we'd see debris scattered all over the ocean and as those pieces were recovered, they might show scarring from the blast. but here's another possible scenario. catastrophic equipment failure.

it's rare for a wing or a tail to rip off a plane but bear in mind this wing had damage that had to be repaired. should be safe but you never entirely know and if such a thing happens, it can look like terrorism. for example, a lot of people thought that a terrorism missile brought down the twa flight in long island in 1996. although, investigators later concluded a short circuit near the fuel tank is the most likely reason that it exploded. here is another type of failure. explosive depressurize. if a door or window was to fail, the cabin would be filled with a de deafening roar and everything would be sucked towards that open. the outside temperature is so cold, some 60 degrees below farenheit that the moisture in the plane would turn to a cold,

freezing fog and the crew would actually only have seconds to get their oxygen masks on or risk disorientation, blurred vision and complete incapacitating problems. the air france flight that crashed over south america, some equipment malfunction but the pilots responded improperly and that's what brought the plane down. there are many, many possibilities out there and until we have more evidence, they are all in play. >> yeah, good point. tom foreman, thanks very much sf let's get a closer look now with mark wise. mark, you've actually flown a 777, right? >> absolutely, wolf. >> tell us, what does your gut tell you? what does it look like in mechanical error, terrorism? pilot error?

what are the indications, at least based upon what we know so far? can we make any conclusions? >> wolf, i think anybody's ideas are absolute speculation. my thinking at this point would be that there was some foul play perhaps involved with this. if you had had something like an exclusive decompression, that's something, by the way, that pilots train for on a regular basis when you go into a simulator. there would have been time to alert somebody, you would have had a radar signature. the same thing with pilot error. there still would have been a radar signature. explosive -- explosion on the aircraft, the parts would have come down, there would have been a debris field. i think you would have seen that. that's why that leads me to speculate that there was something that happened instantaneously or something or somebody happened within the cockpit that forced their airplane to deviate from their anticipated flight path.

>> and just go straight into the water? is that what you're saying? just fall down, if you will? >> absolutely. that certainly could be a real possibility. that that airplane just absolutely went straight down and that could have been exactly why it took so little time for that to happen. to get down from 35,000 feet to hit the water would have taken around two minutes, perhaps a little bit less time than that. >> and wouldn't there be any recordings, any gps that would have recorded a major object, like a boeing 777 going into the water? >> well, yeah. and that's one of the strange things. even if somebody had gotten into the cockpit, had turned off the transponder which is emits data return to ground-based radar, if they were within radar coverage, you would have had even a primary target that would have shown up on radar screens. >> so the fact that they haven't

found any debris, what does that say to you? >> well, at this point i think that's not uncommon. if you recall, during the air france 447 off of rio, it took quite a number of days to find that. now, he recognize that this is a smaller area but you're still searching in quite a large amount of water and even over parts of land. >> so the bottom line in all of this is that we don't know yet. there could be any of these explanations. we're just going to have to wait and see. you can't draw any conclusions at this early stage? >> until you get the black boxes, the flight data recorder and the voice recorder, it's all speculative. >> is there any guarantee that we're going to get those data recorders or any of those devices? >> i think there's enough pressure in the international community, particularly in today's environment where people are very heightened security conscious that you're going to find this aircraft. it just may take some time. >> mark weiss, thank you very

much for joining us. >> thank you. all right. so based on that conversation, here's the next question. should those flight data recorders stream information live? and would that have prevented this missing plane mystery? i'll talk to an expert who helped lead the search for air france flight 447, eventually found them at the bottom of the atlantic ocean.

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the mystery surrounding the missing malaysia airlines flight is raising new questions about flight data recorders and whether they should stream

information live. brian todd is looking into this information. brian, what are you finding out? >> wolf, we'll likely only be able to find out what happened to malaysia airlines flight 370 when that data recorder is recovered from the crash site. that may take a long time or there's a possibility that it may never be found. it's time to install the technology to get the information while the plane is in distress. so much of this information lies in a metal container that in a moment has disappeared with flight 370. they were once called black boxes. they are actually orange. they have the cockpit voice recorder capturing what the pilots say and the flight data information with the speed. it can function from the bottom of the ocean but the clock is ticking. >> the locators on those devices only last for 30 days. >> safety experts say with this

incident it's time to figure out how to stream that information live instead of waiting for the box to be recovered from the crash site. >> you can get a lot of information out quickly and this could be recorded information for the last ten minutes that is sent almost instantaneously if the aircraft is in distress. >> data would stream live from the aircraft to a satellite, then to the ground. if the plane goes into a rapid roll or sudden loss of altitude, it would automatically trigger the data stream. the technology exists. why haven't airlines installed it? >> it takes a certain amount of money to retrofit the fleets and it costs money to stream through a satellite. >> reporter: plus, the airlines would have to build ground stations to take in the data. expensive, since this kind of incident is rare. >> when you have it, it is extraordinarily expensive, hundreds of millions of dollars are spent searching for air france had 47.

>> reporter: searchers took two years to search for that flight that went down in the atlantic killing 228 people. experts say there's another possibility as well, a deployable recorder, a box that would automatically eject from a plane when it's in distress and land separately on the ground or in the water. those already exist in some military planes. wolf? >> and that air france plane five years ago did transmit some data in realtime, right? >> it certainly did. basic maintenance data which gave includes about what they call the pitot tubes. that turned out to be the problem on that aircraft. that did not give out the specific information about what the pilots were saying in the cockpit, it did not give the flight information, the speed, altitude, location. that's all on the event data recorder and that's what experts say they need to now install. >> i guess the pressure will

mount to do that. brian, thank you. let's get more now with david gcallow with the oceanographic institute. flight air france 447 that crashed back in 2009, is there a way to upgrade the flight data recorders to make them easier to find under water because you spent two years looking for the air france recorders. >> sure. i'm not an expert in the flight data recorders but i'm sure that technology exists. we hear it more and more often now. the technology exists. why isn't it being brought into play? it's amazing in the case of air france that with all of that data never once -- and by the way, here i am, just a little bit more knowledge with a long time off the search that went into finding the aircraft. >> it took five days to find any of the debris, right? >> yeah. it was five days after the

tragedy that the first bits of the plane were found and mind you, that was in the middle of the atlantic ocean between africa and brazil, south america. in this case, i thought for sure in a highly traffic area where there's lots of air traffic not far from shore that for sure this would be a more rapid finding of some remnants of the plane. nothing, there's no evidence that this plane ever hit the water right now. >> it looks like it just disappeared, for whatever reason. if in fact they do find some debris floating around, it's much more difficult to find, let's say, the recorder if it's under water, deep under water than all of a sudden it becomes a much greater challenge. >> well, yeah. once they -- now we're getting to the third and fourth days here. so once a piece of the debris is found, if it did impact on the water, then you've got to backtrack that debris to try to find the x marks the spot on

where the plane actually hit the water because that would be the center of the haystack and in that haystack you're trying to find bits of that needle. in the case of the flight data recorders, you're looking for a tiny bit of that needle. so our job, our world is to study the ocean and explore the ocean. we track floats in the ocean because we are interested in currents and we do explore the bottom of the sea because there's a lot going on there. it's uniquely suited to this. it's ten times shallower than the search area for air france. that doesn't mean it's easier. in some cases it's not easy. >> and timing, how crucial is timing? >> every day that goes by it makes that search area much, much harder. we've only explored 7% of the sea. it's slow going and it's difficult. with every day that passes by, crucial time is passing. that search area, that haystack

is getting bigger and bigger and bigger. again, wolf, i heard you say it, we don't know what's going on. we don't. there's no evidence that the plane hit the water. the only clue we have is the last known position and that turns out to be an important point of position they are sure. the mystery started there. just ahead, we're getting new information about the co-pilot. richard quest did a cockpit interview with him just a few weeks ago. and in other news, a major new development in the ukraine. details about what the pro-russian parliament in crimea has just voted to do. like this before. but something about spending this time together -- sailing past ancient glaciers in alaska -- makes you realize how old time is and how short life is. she can take all the time she wants. princess cruises.

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we'll get back to our special coverage of the mysterious disappearance of flight 370 in just a moment, but first we're following new developments in ukraine where the pro-russian crimean parliament has appoint its prime minister commander in chief of the region clearing the way for him to form an army for the autonomous republic of crimea. and pro-russian forceses are tingting their grip on this region by seizing military bases and in one case, allegedly kidnapping a commander. cnn's senior international correspondent nick paton walsh is in crimea. >> reporter: the man calling himself prime minister of crimea today swore in a number of people into what he called the new crimean army here. but a key question remains, what happens to the thousands of ukrainian troops still loyal to the government of kiev here but often ma rooned in their bases.

we got a glimpse of some of the new tactics being used to pressure them. this is the new face of power at one military base in crimea. it's not friendly but very much in charge and apparently pro-russian. the ukrainian flag here pulled down fast. let me show you how in a matter of hours it all unraveled. earlier that morning, the flag was up. we came because their commander had been kidnapped a day before at a checkpoint. his deputy here says the pro-russian unity party were behind it. the commander's called his wife to say he's okay. >> translator: if they try blackmail us into giving up the base, it won't happen and we'll call his abductors terrorists and won't negotiate with him. >> reporter: we meet vladimir's wife yulia who hasn't slept with worry. her husband called her from a new number to say he was held in the military headquarters now in

pro-russian hands. we couldn't confirm that, but she calls back and says she's vladimir's wife, but nobody wants to talk to her. "they want, i think, him to you are ender "she says, but i believe in my husband and his convictions. back at the base things have moved fast. the deputy tells us so-called self-defense forces have burst in. they're not happy to be filmed. he tells me he's ukrainian resident but not much else that's polite. this is part of the answer what happens to the thousands of ukrainian soldiers still on their base, still loyal to the new government in kiev. pro-russian militia muscling in. a deputy explains to me there are about 15 gunmen inside and they want to take ten vehicles from the base. he adds that they came back with vladimir, the commander kidnapped earlier. this is how power changes hands

here. bloodless, but in the shadow of kidnapping and at the end of an ak-47. wolf, now the question remains under what capacity did that base's commander go back in the company of those masked men. it's been suggested by those close to the new government in kiev that perhaps he defected, perhaps he went back to try and persuade his troops to do something similar. he's categorically denied that and, of course, you have to ask why bother kidnapping somebody if they're going to voluntarily move to your side anyway. questions remain, but what's totally clear here is the tactics being used to pressure these outstanding ukrainian troops holding out for the increasing pro-russian forces here are getting increasingly nasty themselves. >> nick paton walsh joining us. thank you. here's a look at some of the other stories we're following now. the father of the sandy hook shooter adam lanza speaking publicly about his son for first time. peter lanza tells "new yorker" magazine that adam would have

killed him in a heartbeat. he also says he wishes his son had never been born. he fatally shot 20 children, 6 staff members and himself back in december 2012. olympic blade runner oscar pistorius broke down and threw up in court today during graphic testimony about his girlfriend's testimony after he shot her dead. the pathologist told the court that any of model reeva steenkamp's three injuries could have been fatal. pistorius admits to shooting her on valentine's day 2013 but said he mistook her as an an truder coming into his home. edward snowden directly addressed americans for the first time since fleeing the country with thousands of secret documents. speaking at the south by southwest festival, he usualed the audience to fix the government's surveillance system. he also said he had no regrets about leaking nsa documents.

he was granted temporary asylum in russia last year. a look at the possible terror connection to that missing airliner. we're learning new details from u.s. intelligence officials plus a cockpit interview with the co-pilot of the plane. cnn's richard quest talked to him just weeks ago. o grow by ov0 million people, and almost all that growth is going to be in cities. what's the healthiest and best way for them to grow so that they really become cauldrons of prosperity and cities of opportunity? what we have found is that if that family is moved into safe, clean affordable housing, places that have access to great school systems, access to jobs and multiple transportation modes then the neighborhood begins to thrive and really really take off. the oxygen of community redevelopment is financing. and all this rebuilding that happened could not have happened without organizations like citi. and citi has formed a partnership with our company so that we can take all the lessons from the revitalization of urban america to other cities

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you're in "the situation room." 6:00 a.m. tuesday malaysia and another day of desperate searching begins for that missing jumbo jet with 239 people on board. it's been about 72 hours since it vanished after takeoff from kuala lumpur without a distress signal or any hint about what happened. no smoke, no debris, no ping from the flight's data recorder or so-called black box. let's check some of the new developments this hour. thai police now say two tickets for flight 370 that were linked to stolen passports were bought by an iranian man or someone acting on his behalf. authorities are scrambling to see if there's any connection. air and sea crews searching for the missing jet have been told to comb a larger portion of the guchl of thailand between malaysia and vietnam. they're also focusing in on the

andaman sea on thailand's border after radar data indicates the plane may have turned around and headed back to kuala lumpur. now we have more on the stolen passports and whether there's any reason to believe there's a terrorist connection. let's bring in our chief national security correspondent jim sciutto. he's got the very latest. >> reporter: wolf, we have new information coming in just in the last few minutes. that's that the fbi here in the u.s. has now received specifically the thumbprints of those passengers who boarded that malaysian airlines flight with stolen passports. they're now going to take those thumbprints as well as images that have been shared of them to check against u.s. terror data bases that would have lists of people with suspected ties to terrorism or known ties to terrorism. that's what they're doing right now. i continue to be told by multiple intelligence officials that at this point there's nothing to indicate that this was an act of terrorism. however, they continue to check out every lead and checking these thumbprints and these other materials, photos,

biometrics against that terror list can fall under that category. we also got new information about how those tickets were bought by this iranian middleman. and that's something else that may be checked out, although i was just told by another official it's too early to say whether that is an indication of terrorism either. still, as we everything with this flight, there are many, many questions and as of yet, no hard answers. with the loss of malaysia airlines flight 370 still a mystery, investigators are now trying to determine who was on it when it disappeared. attention is focusing on two men traveling on stolen passports from italy and austria. today malaysian authorities described them as non-asian in appearance. cnn has learned that both tickets were purchased as seen here on this receipt by an iranian middleman named kazem ali. he bought them last minute with cash and asked for only one-way

tickets, all potential red flags. >> does that add to the concerns about terror or take away? >> it adds to my concern because a terrorist group would go for that. they piggyback on drug smugglers, immigration smugglers as well. so absolutely, they could go to this guy. he may know nothing about it. just given a sum of money and said get these people on the airplane and get them passports. >> reporter: the passports the mystery men use have been reported stolen to interpol in 2012 and 2013, but it appears the airline never checked the passports against interpol's database. multiple u.s. intelligence officials tell cnn nothing so far indicates this was an act of terrorism. some terror analysts however see echoes of past terror plots in asia. >> people forget something called the bojenka plot. it was to take out jet liners over the pacific ocean, and they did a trial run. and they did a trial run on a philippine jetliner and they

used fake passports. >> reporter: the flight's disappearance comes only weeks after u.s. authorities warn in the run-up to the sochi olympics that terrorists might try to hide explosives in toothpaste or cosmetic tubes. soon after officials warned airlines terror groups were working on advance designs of shoe bombs. intended to avoid detection. now, there has been at least one claim of responsibility by a group calling itself the china martyrs brigade. regarding that claim, a u.s. intelligence official told me, quote, no group by that name has previously been identified and it wasn't clear who was behind that claim, wolf. so undermining that detail, there's so many details out there, some have meaning, some do not have meaning. that's what intelligence agencies are sifting through right now. but as they sift through, they don't have anything substantial at this point to point to terrorism. >> and no one has claimed responsibility, any serious organization or individual, and as you point out, that raises some questions as well.

but the u.s. has dispatched all of the real lead investigators from the fbi and the national transportation safety board, they dispatched all these experts to the region to try to come up with some answers. >> no question. i think what we're realizing here is, whether this was an act of terrorism or a mechanical failure, it doesn't look like we're going to know for certain for some time. and there's precedent for this. you remember the air france flight over the atlantic in 2009. it was a long time before we knew that twa 800 -- remember that theory about short circuit in the fuel tank, you know, certainty appears in this case is going to take a long time. >> jim sciutto with that, thanks very much. the families of the 239 people on board the missing plane have been told to prepare for the worst. most are from china, but three of the passengers are u.s. citizens, two of them young children. 4-year-old nicole mang and 2-year-old yan zhang. phillip wood is an ibm executive working in china was about to

relocate to malaysia. back home in tks t, wood's brother says he and the family want answers, whether the plane crashed, or was it an act of terror or even a hijacking. >> that would be a whole lot better than what we've been thinking. so i'm crossing my fingers that, you know, maybe there's a happy ending to this. you know, this is pretty fresh, and we're processing it and we've just had a little bit of time to be together as a family. we're pretty calm, we're pretty strong. and, you know, we're hanging in there. >> the families of many other passengers have been waiting anxiously at the airport in beijing where flight 370 was headed. cnn's david mckenzie is in beijing. >> reporter: wolf, first of all, shock, then anger and frustration by the family members here in beijing who are wanting to know some clarity about where their loved ones are

on that missing flight mh-370 that vanished over the skies of vietnam early saturday. >> translator: i'm not going home until i know what happened. we've lost loved ones. and they need to answer our questions. when are you going to tell us? and what are you going to do? we still don't know if they are alive or dead. >> translator: still no information and still waiting. i am not happy with the airline's arrangements so far. >> i think first and foremost is a quick resolution because this not knowing is probably the most agonizing. >> reporter: tonight relatives burst out of beijing to kuala lumpur, the staging ground of this extraordinary search and rescue effort despite the many hour, they say there still might be hope for people to find their loved one, but that hope is fading fast.

authorities telling people here that they should expect the worst. they should expect bad news. it's been an extremely difficult time for these families. more than 150 people on board this ill-fated flight were chinese nationals. and this country is reeling from this disaster. wolf? >> what a disaster it is. david mckenzie in beijing. still ahead, we're getting information on the pilot of flight 370. our own richard quest actually flew with him in the cockpit. richard standing by. he'll join us live as we go deeper into this mystery and discuss what investigators should do next. lessons from the past. we'll search for an answer. we'll take a look at some of the searches for other planes that vanished and how the puzzle was finally solved.

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nearly three dozen aircraft and 40 ships from ten countries have been searching for the malaysia airlines jet that vanished three days ago. so far they failed to find any trace of the boeing 777. let's bring in cnn's richard quest and michael goldfarb. richard, you actually interviewed the co-pilot only what, about a week or so ago? tell us about that. >> yes, i was flying from hong kong to kuala lumpur for a story on malaysian airlines and how the company is being turned around by the chief executive and the changes they're making. we were granted permission to film in cockpit, which is quite rare but it was fully supervised and approved. the co-pilot or the first officer was fareek hamid. he was in the process of

transitioning from the narrow-bodied fleet to the 777. he was thoroughly looking forward to this. he had been training for weeks and months in the simulator and this was one of his first handful of flights at controls of the mettle himself. he had an extremely senior captain with him, a training captain of many years and many hours experience. fareek had about 2,700 hours. so in an experienced first officer but inexperienced on the 777. it's one of those coincidences. >> tell us about this boeing 777. how safe of a plane it is, what kind of a track record does it have? >> it's extremely safe. has a very, very good track record. the airs love it. it's had a couple of things i think we've reported on. it's had a problem with some of the fasteners. the faa fined it $2.7 million for quality control problems in the production of the 777, but

that was 2008. this plane was 11 or 12 years old and presumably those problems had been fixed. a problem with frozen fuel injection into the rolls royce engine in heathrow and reported that the wing tip had been repaired. from a physical structure position, this plane is as solid as it gets. >> rich, what do we know about the actually pilot, the lead pilot of the plane? i take it that this pilot posted videos of a flight simulator he actually had in his home? >> yes, captain shah is again very experienced captain, training captain, senior captain at malaysia airlines. he absolutely loved flying. he actually had a flight simulator in his home. not a full motion one, but as you can see there. in which he would give lessons and he would instruct and he would perfect his own technique. now, because first officer hamid was relatively inexperienced on the 777, it was a senior captain

that had to be in the left-hand seat. and from everything that i've read and everything i've heard about captain shah, he absolutely adored and loved flying. in fact, they both did because hamid made it quite clear this was doing something he'd always wanted to do. >> given the fact that this plane seems to have disappeared, isn't there a better way these major, huge airliners could be tracked so that they can't simply disappear? what needs to be done? >> wolf, let's step back a bit. we have speculation run amok because we have no facts. as you know speculation on the cause is always wrong because it's a unique accident. it rarely happens. i do believe they'll find the so-called black boxes. the gulf of thailand is only 260 feet deep at its deepest point as opposed to air france we're talking about 12,000 feet. they'll find where the plane is. the problem is simply that over the oceans we don't have satellite communications. it's considered expensive.

the airlines haven't really adopted it yet and the authorities haven't either. we can have simultaneous information being distributed on these planes as opposed to having to have the black boxes, but it's really kind of a cost issue since we don't have, thankfully, a lot of crashes. but take two or three of the leading theories. one corrosion. malaysia air flies over oceans. highly salt water can corrode and cause a fatigue stress fracture in the hull. as we saw with hawaiian air in the 1990s or 199 -- 1980s, i believe. but they have good anti-aging programs at malaysia air. point two, some report the plane had turned around. air france we saw pilot lost control of the aircraft, the plane was wavering. in this plane had turned around, one would think the pilot would have radioed ground control or radioed his own air station.

we really have a mystery. i think that we'll find out the cause. if it was catastrophic failure, i think you remember payne stewart, the golfer, who all of them had a catastrophic depressurization within high altitude and within seconds they were incapacitated. we have tons of rumors. we've got to, unfortunately, let the investigators take the lead and we'll definitely figure it out. last point, we have to figure it out, wolf, because all of the 777s around the world need to understand if there's something systemic in this crash that needs their attention in their maintenance or operations of their own planes. >> and you have pointed out, richard, that this plane was flying about 35s ins th s th35,u said that's really the safest point for a major jetliner like this, right? >> in the so-called phases of flight, and there are up to 18 different phases of flight from taxi to rollout to takeoff to climb, it being in the cruise is

by far the safest. the engines aren't producing 100% and the aircraft is on auto pilot, it's on a predestined path. you do have to guard against what's known as the startle effect. when something goes wrong. the pilots can often be very much -- because they are lulled into a sort of -- serenity by nothing happening. but besides that, the big question here -- and where michael -- what he was talking about and the information we've got is that the aircraft stopped or didn't send any of the automatic data that you would have expected. in air france 447, there were 24 messages sent automatically from the aircraft to air france maintenance and to the company. now, we don't have any of that in this case. not only do you have the ending of the radar, but you don't actually have any clues or early

clues. so i agree completely with michael. it is a case of just waiting until this wreckage is found, which it will be. >> richard quest, thanks so much. michael goldfarb, thanks to you as well. the mystery continues. so are there any similarities between this mystery and other plane disasters? we're looking at the controversial crash that stunned investigators and sparked conspiracy theories. mine was earned in korea in 1953.

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we're following the desperate search for flight 370 three days after it vanished

without a trace while heading from malaysia to china. it's not the first time something like this has happened. cnn's martin savidge has been looking at other plane disasters shrouded in mystery. >> reporter: even in our world of satellites and cell phone, giant airliners can disappear. at least for a while. the last was air france flight 447 in 2009. the air bus 330 with 228 people aboard vanished beyond radar on a flight from rio de janeiro from paris. >> translator: people who go on the planes want to know what happened. >> reporter: it took search crews five days to find any debris and two years to locate the plane and its flight recorders on the ocean floor. eventually they determined mechanical failure and pilot error were to plane. then there was egypt air flight 990 that went down mysteriously on a flight from new york to cairo killing 217 people. like the malaysia airliner it

was less than an hour into its flight. cruising at altitude when it suddenly nose dived into the atlantic with no distress call. eventually u.s. and egyptian investigators came to two different conclusions. the ntsb said a co-pilot intentionally crashed the plane. the egyptians cited mechanical failure. even when there are witnesses to a plane crash, there can be mystery and controversy. and twa 800 is proof of that. upwards of 1500 people say they saw some kind of fire trail in the sky july 17th, 1996 leading to speculation it was a missile and terrorism that brought down the 747, killing 237 people. former abc correspondent pierre salinger fed the flames of conspiracy in correctly claiming it was a u.s. navy ship that shot the plane down. it was pain staking work by investigators who concluded an explosion to the plane's center fuel tank was the real culprit. in some airline mysteries, it's

not how the plane went down that grips the public but how passengers survive. such was the case of flight 571. in 1972 it crashed in the andes mountains. of the 45 passengers on board, only 16 would live to tell about it. the tragedy was made famous in the 1993 film "alive" depicting survivors eating the dead to stay alive the 72 days it took for rescue. in all these examples and more, airline disasters that began as mysteries in most cases eventually were found and solved. experts believe that will be the case with this latest one. malaysia airline flight 370. wolf? >> martin savidge reporting for us. thank you very much. that's it for me. thanks very much for watching. i'm wolf blitzer in "the situation room." now let's step into the "crossfire." >> wolf, rick santorum and bernie sanders disagree on just about everything. >> yeah, but the fun p