that's it for me. thanks very much for watching. i'm wolf blitzer in washington. remember you can always follow what's going on behind the scene, tweet me @wolflittle bit zero, tweet the show @cnnit isroom. erin burnett "outfront" right now. >> next breaking news chinese government has released new satellite images of what could be missing flight 370. is this really the downed plane? what happened in the cockpit moments before that plane went down. a look at how safe the boeing 777 could be? could something like this happen again? let's go "outfront". good evening everyone i'm erin burnett. we begin "outfront" with breaking news. we have satellite images from china. three images, these are the

three images that were captured at 11:00 a.m. on sunday. now, this is a day after the plane went missing. still the head of the malaysian government agency involved in the search from the malaysian side said they haven't received or seen these images from china. took several days to release them. we'll talk more about that in a moment. take a look at these images. what you're looking at, three floating objects. the size of each of these three is between 43 and 79 feet wide. and 59 and 72 feet long. those are very big pieces and to put it in perspective the length of a boeing 777 of the model of the missing jet that's missing, extended range is 209 feet long. the coordinates where these images were taken is not far where the plane made its last known communication. according to our weather team analysis based on water currents and speed at which that current is moving it's possible this is in fact the debris site.

if the plane went down where the transponder which cause its location stopped working. hundreds of miles away, though, is where the malaysian government was looking, where they indicated the plane had last been spotted on radar after they said it made a u turn. obviously this is a highly confusing story but a huge development. we begin with our coverage with david mckenzie in beijing. how sure are they these images they are release cigarette debris from flight 370? >> reporter: well, they are saying this is a quote possible crash site and i have to say, unlike the malaysians, the chinese in general do not release information unless they are very careful about knowing that this is significant. a question i have is why so many days after they took this image are they releasing it now and why don't the malaysians know when this was released a little time ago.

you would think they would be scrambling planes and boats to that area. but it is significant, the location is significant. they say this is an area, according to experts where it could be shallow enough for these objects to float. we're not sure this is the debris of the plane. we had many false starts. many people saying something it turns out not to be significant. this given it's the chinese, official state agency showing hd, high-definition satellite images of these major pieces of debris or of something, we have to take this very seriously. >> thank you very much. appreciate it. our chief national correspondent jim sciutto is in washington. i know you were listening to david's reporting there. you just returned from living in beijing. you have experience living with the chinese government. let me out if the questions that he was asking which we all have, where did it take the chinese government four days to release these images and would they have

released them even though they are not saying for sure this is the plane would they have released them if they weren't sure. >> reporter: on the second question first i agree with david, they would have to have some confidence. they would study these photos and believe there's something to them for them to release them. there's a political force there, saving face april loss of face to put these out and create the impression they were and then later another red herring. most of the people killed on that flight are chinese, more than 150. this is enormously emotional topic in china. great frustration among the families of the presumed victims of this crash against the malaysian government, against really anyone involved. the chinese government wouldn't want to add fuel to fire by confusing them or misleading them. now why wouldn't the chinese government have shared with the malaysian government. this is a mystery. but you've had to go in two directions because you have this radar data that we've been

looking at the last 24, 48 hours that shows the alternate path. malaysians had that data for a few days and weren't sharing it widely. one force, there's a force at work here. there's a lot of tensions in this part of the south china sea, territorial disputes. we're talking about a territory dispute in europe and ukraine and one over here over a lot of different island chains between china and japan and china and southeast asian countries. this is a sensitive area of defense and the chinese may not want to show its competitors in that part of the world or us, the u.s. the extent of its satellite capability so anthony very careful before they release these and maybe i heard experts say these satellite photos are not high resolution, maybe they were higher resolution and they dumbed them down before they released them so as to not show their full capability. that's a sensitivity there in china, in the chinese government showing their full military capability. >> pretty fascinating point that

you make there. we'll have much more on that in a moment. former cia operative this is a crucial part of the story. thanks very much to jim. i want to bring in the former director of the office of aviation safety for the ntsb. i appreciate you taking the time tom. interesting in the context of what jim said some are saying this may have been dumbed down or made to look more blurry than the china satellite images were. you looked at them. does this look to you like the plane? >> no. just by the size. any aircraft structure that size will sink. 70 by 70 feet, 70 by 40 feet is too big. it would sink. >> you're saying you don't believe these are pieces of the plane? >> i don't believe so. you got to trace down everything. you have to look at everything that couples. certainly you need to find and verify what this is but i would be surprised if it's a piece of the airplane. >> you just heard what our reporters said, china for

reasons of saving face wouldn't put this out if they weren't sure. what you're saying is a pretty significant thing. is there any way -- what's your view, then, i guess of what you think might have happened? >> there's not enough data to say what happened. certainly, i imagine malaysiaians are looking at every piece of data they can have. they won't release data until they can verify it. >> what's next for the investigation? we can imagine right now, i had written it down, 43 ships, 39 planes from 20 countries have been looking for this ship. they looked first and foremost in this location where the three debris were found. what happens they will come in now, all looking, these three pieces we'll know you would assume pretty quickly because daylight is starting in that part of the world. what happens next in the investigation? >> well, in terms of the investigation what you do is keep collecting information. certainly there's a lot of radar

data, get all the data together, the data has to be timed together. piece everything you have. it takes time unfortunately. >> do you think we'll get answers on this pretty quickly? obviously if you happen to be wrong and this is the plane and we'll know that very quickly, but if you're right and this is not the plane, are we at the beginning of a very long investigation given there's currents and this plane could be anywhere? >> well, exactly. right now we don't know where to look. obviously they have been looking, they have been looking through their searches. they didn't find these three pieces several days ago. so you need to go back and look again. the other problem we have is whatever is float on the surface is moving with the currents. it's several hundred miles from where it was five days ago. it's a real problem. >> tom, thank you very much. we appreciate you taking the time. interesting already there is a skeptical voice. we'll get that answer very soon

because it is now light in that part of the world and still to come those satellite images taken a day after the flight went missing. here's the question, why are we only seeing them now? we'll be talking about that as we said former cia operative among our guests and what may have happened in the cockpit of flight 370 just before it vanished. we're joined by multiple pilots to talk about that. and the families of the passengers have been waiting for days for news. their reaction to these new images. we'll be live in malaysia this morning. ods' first day of work. and his new boss told him two things -- cook what you love, and save your money. joe doesn't know it yet, but he'll work his way up from busser to waiter to chef before opening a restaurant specializing in fish and game from the great northwest. he'll start investing early, he'll find some good people to help guide him, and he'll set money aside from his first day of work to his last, which isn't rocket science. it's just common sense. from td ameritrade.

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we're back with our breaking news tonight. newspaper satellite images from china may show debris from malaysia flight 370. images captured on sunday morning one day after the plane carrying 239 people disappeared. it's unclear exactly at this moment but we're talking about a full day and that can end up being very crucial in terms of whether that debris would be float or not at that point. the images here on the chinese satellite were taken exactly this spot, the plane should have been when it disappeared from radar. joining me now cnn intelligence and security analyst and the fbi co-case agent for twa flight 800. i appreciate you both being with us. let's start off with this question because the former director of aviation safety for the ntsb said this did not look like a even if him because he said he didn't think the debris pieces of this size would have been floating.

what do you all think about that, bob? >> i can't comment on that what would float but it doesn't surprise me that we're having a hard time identifying the pieces. satellite photography, chinese is very good but it takes days to analyze this stuff. even what you see from the air is completely different when you actually get to it, and they had to go through this stuff for three or four days and i think the chinese are doing the best they can. it may not be debris. but we'll have to wait and see. >> chris, what do you think? >> well, it's really hard to predict how a plane will break apart and what it will look like if that's in fact what happened to the plane. if there was some sort of catastrophic explosion while in the air, broke apart while in the air, combined with the ess being scattered around and what happens to them when they think it water. it's hard to say definitively one way or another from a satellite image what it is until somebody gets there.

i would be reluctant to make a call saying it is or isn't part of the plane. >> what about the point you made the chinese doing the best they can. this question of look they took this image, this picture on sunday and now here we are in local time in asia thursday morning, right? that's days and days, the whole world has been looking for this. why did it take them so long to release it? >> well, i don't think the satellite is geostationary. it's not sitting over that area and these satellite pictures are filed in a hard drive and you have to go through them manually. i would expect the chinese would assume this plane would have been found a lot faster by aviation and it wasn't and they probably went through the files. identify looked for stuff in satellite photography when i was in the cia and it took days even weeks to find something that should have been obvious. it's hard to pick out. there's a lot of wreckage in that sea, wrecks, ship wrecks

and the rest of it. i'm not surprised. i don't think there's anything underhanded going on here. >> chris, what about the united states? we were talking about this area, the plane now found where the buffalo of thailand meets the south china sea, south china sea one of the most disputed militarized areas in the world as china is seeking to expand its sphere of influence, the united states is obviously, very active because of that. is it possible china is the only one who saw this or did the united states see this as well and not let anyone know they are spying on this area so they didn't release it. how much can you read into it. >> on flights 800 it tooks us a long time to get the information. these things take time. people don't have an agenda. it takes a while they have it and they have to understand who they can tell and how they can release the information to follow all the protocols.

so, unfortunately, these things are painstakingly slow. >> chris, what about when you look at the twa flight 800 when you were the lead agent on that people had theories there of it being shot down. people still have those theories. you obviously came to the conclusion that it was, that there was a problem, malfunction on the plane, mechanical, electrical malfunction. in this case, a pretty shallow area as you point out, a very busy area. it would seem likely if this is the plane that they would be able to get that black box. when are they going to be able to get answers as to what happened? >> definitive answer will be hard to come to, even if you have what you believe are witnesses to find the smoke gun piece of evidence could take a really long time because you're going to get a lot of contradictory information off the plane and you have to sort all that out. actually it's going take quite a while for it to come what they believe is a cause what happened to the plane. >> what about this being a militarized zone.

bob, does that play into what happened? >> chinese are reluctant to give up satellite photography. that's not something in their nature to do. the fact that they got surveillance of this by their own satellite they didn't want to admit that. you're seeing a lot of political pressure on beijing to find out what happened to this airplane. that probably took time to get a decision to release it. >> all right. chris and bob, thank you both very much. appreciate you taking the time. still to come, we're still trying to figure out whether those images are the down flight 370. the malaysian government botch the investigation forcing china to say we have satellite pictures. why investigators called another crash a suicide mission. we have a special report and be talking to pilots about what happened in that cockpit coming up. d,

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more on our top breaking news story tonight a possible new lead in the mystery of malaysia airlines flight 370. chinese satellite detected what officials are calling a suspected crash area at sea. now here's what you need to know about this. these are three images. captured a day after the plane vanished so within that first 24 hour window. these objects are floating at that time. they may not still be floating but they were when this image was taken on sunday.

andrew stevens is in kuala lumpur. there's so much criticism how the malaysian government has handled this investigation. first they were looking where these pieces of debris were. then they said the plane may have gone hundreds of miles in the opposite direction. sparking rumors of hijacking. now malaysian officials haven't seen these images. how could they have missed something like this? >> reporter: well, at this stage we only got communications via text confirming they haven't got them. we can only assume they haven't been given them by the chinese which is rather ironic because the chinese foreign ministry is being quoted describing the search as pretty chaotic and the fact they don't know what's actual and what is not in the search with information coming out of malaysia now we're hearing the chinese have these satellite pictures but they

perhaps haven't passed them on to malaysia. this is just another sort of level in the amount of confusion that has been going on in this investigation. we've been told the focus has been switched pretty firmly into the western side of this country where the straits are because i've been following this unidentified track of a radar which corresponds to last known position of flight 370 going off into the straits. that's where they have been focusing. again the information we're getting here, it was first -- it came up and then they denied it, the prime minister denied they were looking at that and then confirmed yesterday by the air force. so it really is difficult to get a clear handle on what's going on here. >> incredibly difficult but as you point out they had been looking, you know, completely in another place than where the satellite images from china now show there to be debris l-it's

of the plane or not we of course do not know although obviously it's light where you are. we might be getting answers very soon. what about the passengers' family members? what has their reaction been to this development? they have been waiting in anguish and clinging on to a hope of a miracle for days. >> reporter: yeah. and it would be a miracle, let's be honor northeast about that, if anyone is found alive. we're going into the sixth day now and the families of those passengers will be waking up with this news that there are sightings of debris which could be linked to the jet. we don't know that yet for sure. but the levels of frustration, the levels of anger have just been mounting by the day because they are not getting information they say they should be getting about exactly, just a clear line of communication. where are we? what's the latest? what your looking at now? what are the leads? we've seen the frustration boiling over in china where more than two third of the passengers are chinese nationals.

we've seen videos of water bottles being thrown at malaysian officials. my colleague spoke and said they are waiting and hoping and hoping to get some information. if this turns out to be truitt would be tragic but perhaps they can draw a line to what happened to their relatives. >> the beginning of closure of knowing maybe what happened. thank you very much, andrew live in kuala lumpur in the morning. still to come more of our breaking news coverage as it is daylight now in asia. china releases those satellite images that could show the flight. we'll show you what analysts are looking for, a forensic analysis of what someone does for a living. what are we looking at with this blurred three prong shape. we'll go into the cockpit of a boeing 777. we'll talk to pilots what may have gone wrong at that moment. [ female announcer ] starting with the cocoa bean,

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we have more on our breaking news tonight. chinese satellites have identified a possible debris field from malaysia airlines flight 370. the images are blurry. we're not sure if this was the resolution of the satellite china had or whether they purposely blurred it for security reasons. they were taken on sunday morning right after the passenger jet did you say appeared within a 24 hour window, maybe a few hours more.

they show what may be three large pieces of a missing boeing 777 extended range in the water. the coordinates of the satellite photos are in line with the jet's original flight path and pretty much spot on to the location where investigators say the plane's transponder which is what broadcasts its location stopped operating. investigators are scrambling to try to analyze these photos and determine if this is the crash site. it's now daylight in asia and we'll have ships going right in there to look for those pieces if they are still in the water, if they sunk, do sonar. i want to go to tom foreman out with the latest before we bring in a couple of pilots who has some opinions on whether this is the jet. this is the location. the location authorities were searching for days on the original flight path. is it possible that with all the searching in shallow body of water, where there's a whole lot of traffic with what was it, 42 ships and 39 planes from 12 countries looking did they miss

it? >> reporter: they can miss it because i've seen it. let me read the map. listen looking for things in water, looking for plane crashes in my experience, erin is always hit or miss. identify seen huge teams sweep over an area, another one comes by and find something. it left kuala lumpur. flew for about an hour. got missing. getting missed signals on precisely where it was because that's where it seemed to have gone missing. where we pinpointed where the chinese took these pictures actually about 140 miles away, so not exactly on-the-spot, but there can be a lot of variances and uncertainties and we've had a lot of that in this story and question of currents. if we bring in an image from nasa of all the competing currents and this isn't counting what the winds can do or whether or not the plane fell directly down. there's a lot of things that could move this around still that question remains. if you look at the image

themselves it is blurry, you can't tell much about it. so is this what matters? is this part of the plane or it is just something else, erin? >> that is the big question, is it something else. as you know, former director of safety for ntsb was on this program at the top of the hour and was the first to say, he said he doesn't think this is the plane and his reason as former member of the ntsb, look, the pieces would have sunk. there's no way these pieces would have been floating at that time. what's your view on that theory? >> well it's kind of tricky because could something float for a while? maybe these pictures were taken the first day or so. maybe. then they wouldn't be so far away. these are big pieces. big pieces. a lot of weight no matter how you slice it. in general they average out to each be half as big a basketball court. so can you get pieces that big from a plane like the 777? well this is a big airplane.

i'll tell you that. if you were standing on one wing of this plane and walked right through the fuselage to the other side you would cover 36 feet. from one wing tip to the other wing tip that's about 200 feet. very big plane. but, remember the size we just described here, you have to put this together in a very certain way to get pieces that big out of this plane and then to have them float, that's a different matter all together. >> all right. tom, thank you very much. that is one of the biggest questions tonight which is are we now talking about the debris field for this plane, and what happened in the cockpit of malaysia airlines flight 370. i want to bring out front rob mark, anthony roman both pilots in to this conversation. anthony, you're on the set with me. tom and i were just talking about these pieces. here's what we know. they are big, 39 to 75 feet wide and eent 59 to 72 feet. they are huge. only three of them which would

obviously mean the other pieces were -- there's a lot of things here you have to buy into. do you think this is the plane? >> i don't. i've examined the satellite image carefully and when you are examining a satellite image you are concerned about certain factors. shape. size. texture. and light refraction. things can look different. the only thing big in an ocean even though this is a huge airplane, the only thing big in the ocean is the ocean. everything else is small. when we zoomed into the image that's within the center of that satellite coverage, what we found was that there is the appearance of having the nose cone of a fuselage and two windows that would appear to be the cockpit. but the pattern and shape of the actual wreckage or whatever we have there wouldn't strike me as being the pattern of an accident scene in the ocean.

it just would have been much more dispersed and not so concentrated in one such dense area. >> you've looked at the analysis. you said if it were this is what i would see as the cone and those two windows but you don't think it is. rob, what's your point of view? >> well, i was thinking as i was listening to the explanation of the satellite image, one thing that bothers me is that i find it hard to believe that the chinese were not able to come up with a resolution that was considerably higher and examined this before they released these photos. i'm sure they have technology as good as ours. but, again, you know, why would we have just these huge pieces? there's so much confusing information flying around about this right now. >> so, anthony, let me ask you about what happened in that cockpit and obviously at this point we don't know. even if this is the site where it went down we don't know what happened whether it was an accident or whether it wasn't an

accident. this transponder issue, it went off at this point i want seems if this is the debris field at about the time that the plane would have gone down. all right. now, again, this may not be the debris field. this transponder issue is central. what would have caused it to turn off if it wasn't deliberate? >> there's a number of things that could cause it to turn off. 777 has had an excellent safety record. however, in the last six to eight months there have been several incidents of smoke in the cockpit. and back in 2011 there was an actual incident of a fire in the cockpit. a similar airplane went down over the atlantic with a fire in the cockpit. so, an electrical fire in the cockpit can spread very quickly and can knock out multiple redundant systems in a very short period of time. >> and redundant sis on the transponder and on this issue of

a may day or your ability to send a stress call. fire could have knocked that all out? night could have knocked most of it out or all of it very rapid sequence. it spread incredibly fast. >> rob, what do you think about that? at this point i know there's an assumption in this question that's the debris field but some sort of horrific mechanical malfunction. we believe once your plane is at cruising altitude that's safe. that's what we're all told. >> well, there is the issue that i'm sure anthony has heard of this, there was an air worthiness directive that came out from the faa just last week about corrosion on the upper cabin area of the 777. while that's a rare and unusual situation they had a great deal of thought behind the air

worthiness directive before they released it. could that have peeled away a piece of skin at some point and depressurized the airplane? that's a possibility. of course that doesn't explain the electrical issues. but it might explain the loss of control. >> tom foreman is with us. tom you're covering some of these. let's talk about the black box and what information would be on it. would we be able to get answers on this from that? >> reporter: there's no question this is the holy grail. if you can get the cockpit voice recorder, those devices will tell you more than anything else can possibly tell you about what happened on this plane. they will have a treasure trove of information about everything, every system on the plane, what it was doing at the moment the plane headed down if in fact this plane crashed. it will tell you about what was happening to the plane. was it hitting turbulence at the time. as they go through the recording in the cockpit, second by second by second and these committees that look at this actually will

spend hours scrutinizing five or six seconds listening to background noise and everything else to figure out what went on there. that's why these things are so important. if they can find those more than anything else they will tell us what happened on this flight. >> anthony what happened on this flight, the theories out there there was a hijacking, a terrorist incident, there was some sort of massive electrical malfunction a pilot suicide. a lot of these were driven by the belief this plane was driven off hundreds of miles off course. are we starting to narrow this down to some sort of mechanical malfunction or do you feel you just don't have enough information? >> there's insufficient information. the mystery gets more complex and deepens with almost every hour that passes. co-pilot, there are current allegations that the co-pi lot allowed unauthorized personnel to enter the cockpit for extended periods of time on a previous flight. >> right. there were a couple of young

australian woman that said he let them in in 2011. >> which is an absolute no-no. that cockpit should remain protected. we have information from interpol that reflects that the passport issue was of major, major concern. so security isn't what it should have been. >> rob, what were you about to say? >> i was going to say to anthony's point about the young ladies in the cockpit in the malaysian airplanes, however as you know, security standards that we have here in the united states and in much of western europe does not necessarily follow true or follow through in other parts of the world. they don't apparently think it's quite as critical. is that a part of the role? we don't have enough information. >> i was on a plane in europe i won't say what airline last summer and they were allowing children and people into the

cockpit and letting them sit in the seat. i remember being terrified by that. this is a call out to everyone. we appreciate your time as we try to piece together the pieces of this mystery. still to come some eerie similarities to another flight that crashed not long after takeoff. while investigators called that crash a suicide mission. how safe is the 777? you heard our pilots talk about this safety directive that came out about fires. could something like this happen again? i always say be the man with the plan but with less energy, moodiness, and a low sex drive,

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. more on our top breaking news story tonight following the new satellite images from china they say may show debris from malaysia airlines flight 370. many are drawing parallels from this flight and silkair. it headed from indonesia to singapore. it dove into a river and killed everyone on board. the national transportation safety board concluded the pilot committed suicide. >> reporter: december 1997. the mysterious plane crash of silkair flight 185. the boeing 737 with 104 people aboard suddenly nose dived into

this murky river. the entire drop happened in about one minute breaking the speed of sound. nearly all the bodies were torn to pieces. adding to the grief of the families the national transportation safety board would conclude all this was the act of one man. a pilot who wanted to commit suicide. >> it ended up crashing here in the river. >> reporter: thomas anthony remembers silkair 185 clearly because he was the faa civil air and a pilot intentionally downing a plane is hard for him to think about. >> how horrifying is that? as someone who is investigating this? >> it's something most of us should never consider because it is so extremely rare it's beyond, almost beyond imagination. >> reporter: still disputed anthony points out, indonesian investigators said the cause remains inconclusive and in civil trial at that los angeles jury decided the crash was

caused by a failed part of the plane's rudder. the victims families never got a clear answer just like another crash egypt air flight 990. the ntsb ruled the pilot intentionally caused the 1990 crash. egyptian authorities say it was caused by mechanical failure. >> it's like a jigsaw puzzle. a jigsaw puzzle in which there are thousands of pieces and not all those pieces are at the bottom of the ocean. >> reporter: could someone in the cockpit have done something to malaysia airlines flight 370? these two young women say the co-pilot of the missing plane invited them to ride in the cockpit on a previous flight and did. retired american airlines pilot mark weiss believes based on prior history someone with the crew intentionally cause this plane to vanish. >> whether it was one of the pilots that maybe had a meltdown or wanted to do something

nefarious to the airplane or uninvited visitor or perhaps an invited visitor or another crew member that was bent on perhaps committing suicide or doing some destruction on the aircraft. >> now there's an intense focus on the wreckage. obviously that's not where all the answers lie. >> reporter: you're right about that. there's a focus on the wreckage. that's where the answer will be. look what happened with silkair. you have one piece of wreckage, about 75% of the wreckage was found and you have three different entities. the civil court here in los angeles, the u.s. authorities and the indonesian authorities, three different responses to the same piece of evidence. >> all right. thank you very much. horrific when you see these stories. joining me now is a former ntsb board member. john thank you for taking the time. you just heard the reporting on

the silkair story the suicide as ruled by the ntsb. look, it's hard at this point to speculate. everybody is speak late. we have this debris field that could change the view of what happened here because it was essentially on the flight path although not exactly. do you think the case we're looking at now could possibly have been a pilot >> every accident we approach and look at all the factors. and if this airplane suddenly came down and that piece of debris tells us thought came down in that area, we're going to look at all kind of actions. defects in the airplane, pressurization problems. and i'd like to add to the pressurization, after the aloha accident in hawaii in 1988 and 1989 -- >> just remind people is that when a window was blown out affecting the pressure? or am i thinking of the wrong one? >> that's the wrong one. it's when the whole top of the

airplane blew off. about 30 feet. it was a big piece. we started building our airplanes differently. and we now have what we call damage-tolerant air frames. you could see the result of that work on the part of boeing and airbus as well with the southwest airlines pressure administration blowout that occurred just a couple of years ago in arizona. the panel, the blowout only proceeded so far and it stopped because the structure has been designed to stop those kinds of blowouts. the same thing we just mentioned the corrosion with the ad note. that same kind of structure, reinforced structure exists in the airplane so it would prevent the massive blowout of the airplane but it will still blow out in small pieces. >> what about the issue of the fires that our pilots were just talking about? there have been this directive of warning coming out about the 777 which we'll have more on in just a moment. but has been known as one of the safest planes in all of aviation. >> it is an unbelievable

reliable program or airplane, platform. there is issues with fire. fire is a very scary event on an airplane. so they have to make sure that you protect. and when you have incidents like they had over in egypt on that 77 th 777 that had the fire you need to make sure the conditions that existed on that airplane in egypt do not exist on any of the other fleet. so there's a lot of people that have looked at that. but the ntsb in this investigation, and i assume malaysian authorities will follow the iko rules, will look at all of those. we're not going to close our eyes to anything. so if this event really did happen and the airplane came down about the point where the radar ended, there is a whole protocol in which all the investigators will follow to go through every step of the way. >> does it shock you, though -- >> on the suicide -- >> go ahead on the suicide. that's what i wanted to ask you about. >> on the suicide point, i would assume that the malaysian

authorities are looking into the background of all the crew members on that airplane to see if they had any kind of problems. the silkair that you mentioned a little while ago, that particular crew member had amassed a huge amount of financial debt and problems for himself that he couldn't face anymore. so there's always reasons behind those actions that are usually have a trail, a paper trail, that will be discovered if the security forces do their job. >> john, thank you very much. i do want to say our reporting at cnn today is that malaysian authorities today just five days after the crash are now visiting the homes and searching the homes of the pilot and copilot. that's the latest we have on that. still to come, just how safe is the 777? that report next. pace, bob will retire when he's 153, which would be fine if bob were a vampire. but he's not. ♪ he's an architect with two kids and a mortgage.

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8 breaking news coverage continues. potential breakthrough in the search for malaysian airlines flight 370. chinese government releasing satellite images very blurry but may show debris floating in the area where the airline vanished from the radar. could be three very large pieces of the plane. now many on this program tonight have expressed skepticism about that. but obviously we do not yet know. one thing we do know, the plane that vanished was a boeing 777. it is the world's work horse of a plane. it's incredibly popular and one

of the safest jets on the planet that. doesn't mean the 777 doesn't have problems. renee marsh is out front. >> reporter: with more than 1100 boeing 777s worldwide having flown roughly 5 million flights, capable of carrying more than 1 billion people, it's considered one of the safest in the sky. but now with the disappearance of malaysia airline flight 370, the plane is under the microscope. the first 777 rolled off the assembly line in the early 90s. now it's flown by almost every major airline. american has 57, delta 18 and united 74. in its 19-year history only one fatal crash. the asiana airlines flight in san francisco last july. early indicators point to pilot error. the faa's web site lists more than 100 air-worthiness directives for the 777. they alert airlines to potential issues with the plane so they can expect or repair it. last september, a warning that

777s could have cracks in the top of the plane near an antenna. the faa called for frequent inspections and warned it could lead to rapid decompression and loss of structural integrity of the plane. >> the general public read every air worthiness directive no one would fly. because it's frightening. but it's not. air worthiness directives are li recalls on cars. >> reporter: michael goldfarb is the former faa chief of staff. he says if they thought the crack was significant enough they would have grounded the fleet. >> does that mean this air directive and history of this directive or warning is irrelevant? >> it's very relevant. what we don't know is whether malaysian air had completed that repair. >> reporter: wednesday malaysia airline ceo couldn't answer if flight 370 was checked for that issue. >> let's just say that malaysian airlines did not do the required

inspection. does that change things at all? >> it only adds another piece of the puzzle. it only tells investigators that going in theory there may be a structural problem needs to be run to ground. >> reporter: rene marsh, cnn, washington. >> and thanks so much to all for watching our breaking news coverage continues with anderson cooper. good evening, everyone. we begin tonight with break news. a potential new development in the search for malaysia airlines flight 370. it comes from china which has an especially strong interest in locating the airliner which was carrying so many chinese nationals on board. late today, chinese authorities released satellite photos of what they call a suspected crash site. they were taken on a high definition camera on the morning of march 9th, a day and a night after the the boeing 777 vanished on route from kuala lumpur to beijing. three images in the open ocean, each showing floating objects. what precisely they are, that remains to be seen. we should point out there h