flight bound for ft. lauderdale, florida were evacuated a philadelphia international airport. the pilots aborted the takeoff when the airbus a 320 blew a tire and the nose gear collapsed. no one was injured. more on flight 370. we'll see you at 11:00 eastern time tonight for another edition of 360. "piers morgan live" starts now. this is cnn breaking news. >> this is "piers morgan live" tonight breaking news on flight 370. this time it's from the u.s. government. administration officials tell cnn's barbara starr there's quite significant likelihood the plane is on the bottom of the indian ocean. they also say there are indications the plane may have flown for hours longer than we thought. malaysian authorities report they have multiple pings of data that were transmitted from the plane to satellites four hours after the communications went dead. communications on the plane were shut down 14 minutes apart. when it comes to this mystery there are more questions than

answers. how long did flight 370 stay in the air and how come no one noticed it. was the transponder deliberately shut off or mechanical failure? is there possibility a plane could have landed somewhere. a plane full of people, 239 people, doesn't just disappear. so where is flight 370? our big story. it's been a week almost the fate of flight 370 remains unknown. we have new information tonight. barbaraer s starr what do you k? >> reporter: good evening, piers. a senior u.s. official now telling cnn exactly what you said, there is a strong likelihood the flight is at the bottom of the indian ocean. why do they come to this conclusion? the malaysians have now given the u.s. in the last 24 hours some access to key data, essentially pings from the airplane as it flew four to five hours out over the indian ocean to satellites. the u.s. has analyzed all of that and now concludes that it did fly over the indian ocean.

basically these pings match the air frame, the type of engines that was this flight, and there is no correlating transponder information. and as we know now, the transponder for some reason turned off, was turned off, stopped working. so they have a flight out over the indian ocean correlates to this exact type of airplane with no transponder. that's where they believe the flight has come to rest. piers? >> barbara, why are they so convinced it may have gone to the bottom of the ocean when many other people are theorizing from this information about the pings that it could potentially have been hijacked or stolen to order and landed somewhere. why would they believe it has actually crashed into the sea? >> reporter: well, i think there's a couple of questions here. one is, what caused the plane to disappear if you will? was it a deliberate act? was it sabotage? was it espionage?

was it sabotage, was it some kind of hijacking? we do not know the answer to that. nobody at the moment really knows the answer to that. because they have no definitive intelligence or information that leads them to believe it was an act of terrorism, sabotage, a deliberate act, pilot suicide, any of the theories we've all heard for the last several days. what they do have is data, information now, technical, highly technical data that tells them the likely path of the plane. in other words where it is not why and how it exactly got there. there is also a very key radar blip if you will from the malaysians that show the plane turning around. instead of heading to china, it's heading off the west coast of the malai peninsula. that was one of their first indications. now they have the correlating other satellite data. so they're beginning to put the clues together, beginning to put the pieces together. all of this leaving them now to turn their attention to the indian ocean.

>> barbara starr, thank you very much indeed for that report. joining me now on the phone with more on the trail of the plane is "wall street journal" reporter john stroud. thank you for joining me. you just heard barbara starr's report there. clearly what seems to now be indisputable is the fact that these pings were heard suggesting the plane carried on flying for four to five hours after we had been led to believe in the first few days. what is now conjecture or what the u.s. authorities believe is that it landed in the indian ocean. but you have a different theory. tell me what that is. >> well, we were reporting just moments ago the malaysian airlines boeing 777 missing since late last friday actually continued to ping. the satellites that are 22,000 miles above the surface of the earth for at least five hours. so that adds an additional hour onto the last known position of where the aircraft was. these pings in particular

included very detailed information that investigators are now using to triangulate the aircraft's potential position now. those included things like the gps location, the speed and the altitude of the aircraft. after at least five hours of transmitting, the signal stopped. investigators really right now are trying to determine why it stopped. and that's really the central question of this investigation. >> right. but as i say, barbara starr just reported for cnn that the belief of u.s. officials is that it is highly probable that plane is now at the bottom of the indian ocean. does that correlate to anything that you have heard in relation to what they believe happened at the end of the pings? >> well, we don't know. and certainly the data right now suggests that the aircraft was flying -- the data we have and the reporting we've just done indicates the airplane was in a normal cruise altitude when it stopped broadcasting.

so certainly you take that to a few different logical conclusions as you continue the investigation, and you can arrive at one that says, it has crashed. you can say it maybe has landed somewhere. at this point this is the central focus of where the investigation is going. and the u.s. navy has dispatched. >> john ostrower,thank you very much indeed. we've actually kept barbara starr. barbara, i want to get your reaction to the "wall street journal" report. clearly a lot of similarities there. although i guess the conclusion is still up for conjecture depending on who you talk to. what did you make of what he just said? >> reporter: if you want to add to the mystery of all this or the uncertainty, what officials are also telling us is this plane like all planes carried a system, essentially a beacon, that would have gone off if the plane was going to make impact somewhere. in other words, fit was going to hit the water, hit land, this is that kind of emergency beacon

that goes off. and it registers and transmits the data of impact. so far u.s. officials say they don't see any data that that emergency beacon system went off. certainly nothing that the malaysians have shared with them yet. so that adds to the mystery. the plane if that did not go off was certainly for some period of time in some form of relatively stable flight, officials say. but did it land somewhere? we've asked everybody. and i have to tell you, you get the same answer, piers. head scratching. in today's modern world, in today's age, is it actually plausible that a passenger airliner with so many people on board landed somewhere and nobody noticed? >> but at the same time, barbara, clearly everything about this story is highly mysterious. >> reporter: absolutely. >> if not suspicious. i think most viewers will be sharing my utter disbelief that it's taken nearly a week to

discover that they had these ping signals and this data information, presumably they had that pretty immediately and yet we're just hearing about it now. why is it taking so long? >> reporter: well, i think behind the scenes, u.s. officials will tell you that they have some frustration with this entire situation. it is the malaysians who are essentially running the show here, running the search operation. u.s. officials say it was only in the last 24 hours that the malaysian government shared this specific technical data with them. the u.s. has a number of very highly trained imagery and radar and satellite specialists out there looking at every scrap of information. but if the malaysians don't share what they know, they don't share what they have, it becomes very difficult. that's why they say there has been some delay. and really, as richard quest has been saying on cnn all week long, it is just an

unprecedented situation all the way around, piers. >> barbara, stay with us. want to bring in david suse author of why planes crash. aviation expert jim tillman and matthew robinson, air safety investigator. welcome to all of you. let me start with you, jim tillman. we've talked before this week about the various twists and turns quite literally of the fate of this plane. what do you make of these extraordinary new revelations? >> well, they're just about as confusing as everything else i've heard about this event from the very beginning. for example, let's talk about pings. it's my understanding that the devices don't ping until they are hitting water, until they get into water. and the pings went on and all of a sudden stopped over the indian ocean. that's just the opposite of the way that i have always understood them to work. that that should be when they really start going. the other thing is, i got to

tell you that i find it very difficult to believe that this captain and his crew decided to just commit suicide out there in the middle of the indian ocean. they didn't have to go that far in order to commit suicide. and they had to know that's where they were. if they were -- if they had some kind of situation on board the airplane that caused them to be incapacitated and sitting there and riding the airplane until it reached a point where it was out of fuel or out of cg, out of balance, then that would explain a lot of things. i'm afraid i'm still not really convinced that te airplane cras. i haven't seen enough data, enough damage that floated to the top or landed on the ground. i haven't seen any of that. you heard also about the elt, the emergency transmitter. that's if the airplane hits something, an object like the

ground and is on land. well, that didn't go off. and also i wonder where it is. just like everybody else. >> okay. let me turn now to david suse, former faa safety inspector. we don't have the answers here. this is one of the great mysteries in aviation history and gets more mysterious by the day. having said that we have more information than we seem to have had at any stage in this week. if you take the assumption that these pings -- it's interesting i thought what jim tillman just said, the pings themselves, is that correct? do you know when they are supposed to go off? do they go off when a plane is at normal altitude or are they supposed to just work when a plane hits the water? >> i'm out of the acars system which is a data link which provides information from the aircraft continuously if the satellite as available, continuously from that aircraft.

so it's intended to provide all the information that john mentioned before from wall street is the engine information, the speed information, it tells us about vibration information. if there was a bomb or something that happened dramatically on board or a fire even would cause enough vibration that that data would have been sent back. there's 10,000 data points a second that are being sent through that acars system. so i find it difficult to believe that those pings contain data. i do believe that those pings do exist and that the united states satellites have been picking up those pings and maybe the malaysians as well. those pings are simply a phone call that's waiting for an answer. it doesn't mean that there's any data in it at all until the answer comes in that says yeah, we're speaking the same language. now that we are i'm going to upload all the data that i've been storing out of my acars system, the aircraft tracking and reporting system, communication reporting system excuse me which is sending all that information up. so it's designed that when it's

connected to a satellite it's constantly sending that information back to boeing and well send it back to air inc. which is a company that disperses the information. but that information then goes to rolls royce, it goes to boeing, it goes to the manufacturer from there. so to me the pings are very viable. it's what should be happening. what's confusing to me, two things that are confusing to me about that is that those pings that are coming off of there, why then is there not a transponder still on? that was turned off. that's the only explanation i would have. because if the electrical system failed to the extent where there's no communication, there's no satcom, no uhf, vhf, way for that pilot to communicate, why then would just that acars pinging be going on? >> okay. let me just take a break here. matthew robinson, when we come to you after the break i want to get really a sense from you about the mounting theory

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the was a truly amazing day. without angie's list, i don't know if we could have found all the services we needed for our riley. for over 18 years we've helped people take care of the things that matter most. join today at angieslist.com return to our breaking news. malaysian authorities report multiple pings of data transmitted from the plane to

satellites five hours after the transponder went dead. u.s. officials saying there's a significant likelihood the plane is at the bottom of the indian ocean. back with me is my panel and bill nye a former boeing engineer and working on the design of so-called black boxes. and retired senior ntsb investigator. matthew robinson, we were talking before the break there. i want to ask you a more focused question about the terrain. i believe you know the area well. obviously completely baffling to many people watching the story we're only finding out now it could be in the indian ocean. is it possible there is anywhere in that area where a plane this size could have landed without detection? >> well, of course it's possible. but is it likely? probably not. and welcome to my world. if there was a simple explanation for all these questions i would be out of a job at this point. what we have to keep in mind here is first of all a lack of

material evidence. both in electronic form and in material form. that combined with the vast nature of the search area right here presents a real challenge. this is now an old-fashioned accident investigation to where we need to just go out and look for it, old-fashioned. that's point blank how we're going to accomplish this. >> okay, bill nye, you said an interesting thing in the break there which i want to get to the viewers quickly. there are different types of pings. >> well, words include more than they leave out. and words never say all there is to say about everything. the word "ping" started out in sonar. ping ping in a submarine. but there's an expression now, i'll ping you, means i'll send you an e-mail and remind you to do this. so there's two different kinds here. talking about the underwater clicking like a bell that would be a ping from my day. it's also being used in this context to refer to a radar blip which has an echo or just a signal being sent to satellites. so maybe it's being used three ways. but the pings that the pilot was

talking about a few moments ago would be the underwater ones. so i still question if the original search, which i understand was by the vietnamese navy, did they really listen underwater with underwater microphones? or in the right part of the world zble world. >> exactly. >> in terms of a 777 plane, obviously very big, very modern plane, how easy would it be to land a plane like that, given the wide area it could have landed, without any radar detection? >> well, i think if you get low enough you don't worry about radar. you can fly this thing on what we call map of the earth where you're right down on the deck. could this cap have done that? i don't know. but i would love to see the authorities get into his home and download whatever is left on his simulator. because that's a very sophisticated simulator. and he may have done a lot of practice. it would take a lot of skill and

practice to bring that airplane that low in that kind of altitude to skirt around and go where he's going. let me quickly also say something about the pings. yes, absolutely right. i'm glad that somebody mentioned that. the ping is a sound that was designed to give you the indication that you have something underwater. the thing that we've been calling pings here today really are like text messages that come out of the acars system in a completely different kind of thing. i don't know why they call tha ping as a matter of fact. >> let me go to henry hughes, retired ntsb senior accident investigator. you deal in facts, henry hughes. there are pressing few facts that even the few scraps of facts we've been given through the week have been completely contradicted the very next day in most cases. what is your take on where this investigation is right now? >> i think the folks from malaysia are a little bit new at this. fortunately they haven't had

many major accidents. as a result, i don't know that they were prepared. again not being there it's supposition on my part. i can tell you from talking to some of my former colleagues that now that the ntsb and faa teams have arrived we have some senior technical people, one very senior air traffic control specialist in particular, that can help them sort out some of the radar information and basically start to organize a formalized investigation. i think that the safety board's there to serve as technical advisers. we're not in charge nor should we be. under the iko treaty chapter 13, or annex 13 i should say, we're there to provide technical support to the malaysians. and as such we have to acquiesce to their dictates. >> okay. let me bring in barbara starr again. barbara starr, let's work on this theory that the plane --

barbara starr's gone. we've lost contact with barbara. let me go back to jim tillman. you being the pilot here on this plan panel i want to know this. if somebody with ill-gotten designs on this plane had taken charge of it, how far could they have taken it with the fuel that they had and the fact we now know it was flying for fourer of five hours longer than we thought? what is the area? i mean, i heard earlier somebody suggested it could have gone even as far as bangladesh or pakistan. >> well, that's true. it could get pretty close to that. then again it could turn and go the other direction toward north korea. there are so many options that are out there, it kind of defies the mind when you start thinking about where could he go. take that point of last known d depar tur and add to that kprx many of flying time, figure out what the range would be at that point. that's something i would love to

see our authorities do. they could do it very quickly and accurately. >> let me bring in bill nye. you're shaking your head. why? >> i just read these press releases very carefully. let me ask you the hard-hitting investigative journalist. have the two guys, the two people who said that this acars transponders were working all this time have they identified themselveserser hi, i work for boeing and here's what we discovered and here's the chart. has anybody done that? >> sources haven't been revealed by the "wall street journal." >> and then reading them carefully, there's this expression decline comment. and there would be comparable and consistent with. it's very romantic. this is to say, it's an airplane disaster which still gets all of us. and it's a mystery. but i wonder if we're just letting our imaginations run wild. i mean, i am open-minded of course. but i just still wonder if the original search was done thoroughly. because i'm reading this stuff.

it's very carefully worded. and they're drawing conclusions based on by eliminating what are perceived to be likely outcomes. but i'm not sure how well they've been eliminated. >> let me go to david souci. you also are shaking your head. tell me why? >> dr. nye, iko annex 13 when there's an aircraft accident, the manufacturers, the avionics manufacturers, everybody to do with that aircraft they're obligated by annex 13 not to report to the public but to the civil authority in charge of that accident. they cannot release their names, any information we have now is probably being ill-gotten. because of the fact it's not really -- they can't report that information. >> let me ask you, david souci. you're very experienced in this field. but nobody however experienced can really fathom what has gone on here. what do you think is the most likely of all the theories

you've heard? >> well, to talk about prohib probability of likelihood, let's assume that the pings, and i'm referring to the ping as like an internet protocol ping when you are verifying an ip address you send a ping out to see if you have a response. that's what i'm referring to when i say ping from the acars system. because it has to communicate, send that ping out and get the reinformation back. so let's assume there really were pings coming from that location. now assuming that, i find it extremely difficult to think that somehow the system failed, that 777 is the most reliable aircraft in the air in my opinion. and to think that that whole system, the three buses that we have, the three generators, the backup generator which can be driven by air, that can power those avionics and those communication channels as well. so i believe that it was taken off by intent, that that aircraft was intentfully disabled from communication and that it has been flying.

it makes sense to me that the pings are still occurring for one reason. if you're going to -- the average pilot would know how to disconnect all the communications equipment on that airplane except for one thing and that's the acars system. because there's a circuit breaker. when you pull the circuit breaker that says acars on it, it doesn't turn off the transmitter. it's like not turning off the wi-fi but turning off the computer. it stops the data stream from coming. it stops the computer which stores the data. but yet there's another circuit breaker that's much more hidden to turn off the actual -- whoever was trying to mask this aircraft would very likely not have known how to turn off both systems in the acars because they're marked completely differently on the circuit breaker panel. >> so david souci, taking that theory to its conclusion, if somebody had decided to be malicious with this or to commit suicide or whatever it may be. you would assume they would simply crash the plane once

they've taken charge of it. that doesn't appear to have happened from the evidence that we've got. you have to assume that whoever took charge of it if your theory is connect has potentially landed this plane somewhere or at least tried to. >> i hate to put out false hope, but staying on this scenario, making those assumptions, that's where i'm going with this. because i don't think it was a suicide situation for this reason. the last time we had that particular situation was when one of the pilots excused himself from the cockpit and during that time to go to the restroom or have some food. during that time the other pilot locked him out and wouldn't let him return to the cabin. that's at which time he had some mental difficulties and luckily that scenario was resolved without fatalities. in that scenario, in this particular scenario right as you're changing -- jim you could probably or john tillman you could probably address this better than i -- but when you're getting ready to transfer from one country to no, from one control to another, vietnam to another country, at that point it's critical to have two pilots in the cockpit. i doubt that one of them would

elect on their own to say hey we're about ready to transfer control centers. why don't i go to the restroom while we're doing that. i find that highly unlikely. >> okay. so we've got to leave it there for this particular panel. thank you all very much indeed. coming up disappearance of flight 370 has spawned theories that sound crazy but are they? could the truth be even crazier? the worldwide obsession next. ♪ [ male announcer ] how did edward jones become one of the biggest financial services companies in the country? hey. yours? not anymore. come on in. [ male announcer ] by meeting you more than halfway. it's how edward jones makes sense of investing.

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it will be a long time before it happened. >> they're popping up online. did the plane land on a remote island? did a meteor take the plane down? there was actually a known meteor in the area at the time the plane took off. could it have hit the plane? >> when a spectacular event happens i think it's human nature to try and find some sort of cause that explains something mysterious. >> the fate of flight 370 has become a worldwide obsession as the mystery deepens the theories are multiplying. joining me now patrick smith host of pilot.com and cockpit confidential. everything you need to know about travel and professor of statistics at mit. and contributor to "extreme fear" let me come to you first.

i just read your piece before i came on air. fascinating theory. tell me in brief terms what that theory is and why you think it could hold some credence here. >> it sounds a little bit outlandish. but as time goes by and the obvious answers don't pan out you start to have to turn to some of the more unlikely-seeming possibilities. and basically what some pilots are talking about, i'm hearing, is the idea that perhaps the pilot or copilot of this plane took control of the cockpit, either incapacitated or killed the other pilot, locked the door. there's a dead bolt you can lock everyone else out. turn off as much electronics as he could. dive the plane and head out. and now it just so happens, coincidentally, or perhaps not coincidentally, that where this plane vanished was last spotted was a patch of ocean where electronic communication is very

poor. it's sort of a dead area between the ground stations where if you were to suddenly turn off your electronics and make a dash for it that would be the perfect place to do it. it might just be a coincidence. but if it was intentional that would be the place to do it. it would imply a certain level of sophistication on the part of the perpetrator if there was a perpetrator. obviously this is all conjecture. >> what i thought was interesting in your piece you went on to say who would want to do this. there are 37 million pounds and plenty of people in dodgy regimes around the world who would love to get their hands on one. there ace huge potential market for a modern sophisticated plane like this. >> absolutely. who knows what the motive is to do something like that. the point of the piece was to investigate the question could it be done. the answer is no reason that it couldn't be done so far. obvious lit clues are still emerging. there's another element. you've got over 200 souls on board this plane that are worth

something to somebody. >> let me get to arnold barnett, $37 million not pounds i should clarify. forgot where i was for a moment. arnold barnett, in terms of statistics this is your area of expertise at mit. statistics don't always answer stories obviously. but what is the most likely theory or theories based on statistics about all the information we now know? >> well, the statistics don't offer any clear indication of what's happened. partly because we're not even sure of the facts. the event that seems to me most similar to this or might be most similar to this involved ethiopian airlines in 1996 when hijackers stormed the cockpit, demanded to be taken someplace that was unattainable given the fuel on the plane, but wouldn't let the pilots land. what happened was that when the plane was just about to run out of fuel the pilot attempted an

emergency landing in the sea in shallow water. some passengers did survive. but the vast majority on board were killed. it is conceivable that we are in a situation like that where the pilots were ordered to do something that they couldn't do. but again there are other presidenpres precedents. >> i'm sorry. i interrupted you. >> as far as suicide, we have had suicides. but in those cases it seems that as soon as the opportunity arose the pilots plunged the plane into the ground, whereas here there's talk about having been off course for something like four or five hours. so i would agree with those who are skeptical of the theory that the pilots themselves were committing suicide. >> okay. stay with me, panel. when we come back we'll get to patrick smith and get your theory on this. everyone has a theory.

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the story of flight 370 consumes us all but why. last year was the safest year in

airline travel to date. why are we so obsessed with our fear of flying? back with my panel. patrick smith, you're an airline pilot. everyone's got a theory. i've got a theory that changes every hour on this based on the latest reports and so on. what is your best advised, best informed theory? could be no more than that. >> i'm not sure that i have one. mr. weiss's suggestion i think is something that's conceivable. and we're hearing a lot of these conceivable ideas. but although they're conceivable they're not very likely. and meanwhile -- to me i think the most fascinating aspect of this story now is that it's become for lack of a better term transcendent. by that i mean it's no longer a story about an airplane crash. it's a mystery story. and people are watching it the way they watch a celebrity murder trial. and now the verdict so to speak isn't guilty or not guilty, it's going to be where and when did

they find the airplane. and my theory there is once that happens the story loses its mojo and nobody cares anymore. which is unfortunate for a couple of reasons. one being the fact that the questions we really should be asking are what happened on board the airplane. that's the question we should be asking, not where is the airplane. and i'm afraid when we get to that point, assuming we do, people are going to lose interest. >> okay. let me jump in. because i think we're running a banner now saying conspiracy theories. some are conspiracy theories. some of them are perfectly in my view reasonable theories to be airing and debating. everybody is speculating. surely it's better to speculate and perhaps try collectively with all the brain power we can amass to un-earth plausible theories that could be investigated than the current situation, which is even the world's finest aviation experts working at airlines around the world haven't got a clue.

>> well, i think what's happening is the lack of evidence is just inspiring people and pushing people to these more fringe theories because they don't know what else to come up with. and to some extent, that's the age that we live in. this has become kind of human nature for us. the internet is all part of that. >> but patrick, let me jump in again there. i think it's an important point you're making and some people may agree with this. but again i say to you, what else is expected to happen when you have such conflicting reports from the malaysian authorities who are responsible for this investigation who tell us one thing one day, one the next. i had a heart-rending interview with one of the wives of the passengers last night. absolutely tear-jerking interview. i want her to get answers. i want her to be treated better than she's being treated. and i think trying to explore all the theories can possibly be helpful. i don't see it as anything other than a rational response by people given the appalling

behavior of the authorities. >> piers, could i jump in? >> jeff wise, yeah. >> you alluded to the importance of facts getting out. there's been a lot of complaints that i've been following the coverage. a lot of complaints about the malaysian authorities. and look, they're not the united states. we have the most advanced communications in transportation infrastructure in the world. we've got a fantastic ntsb. it's unfair to judge the malaysians on the basis of our own agency. and people who are complaining about the malaysians now, the reason that the malaysians are in charge of the investigation now is that nobody knows where the plane is. and it's a malaysian flag carrier. the instant that that plane turns up somewhere else, it will become the jurisdiction of that country. so if this plane turns up in burma, in pakistan, in afghanistan, or wherever it may turn up, there's a lot of places that will be way worse than malaysia. so i think we should go a lit easy on criticizing the

malaysians. >> i'm not so sure about that. i think having spoken to this poor woman last night, i think we should be going harder on the malaysians actually and tell them to get their act in gear and to start producing some proper evidence. if they have something that is cogent to put it out there quickly. to treat the poor families sitting there waiting for news in a better way than they are currently doing. i don't agree with that. let me go back to arnold barnett. statistically again this is purely based on what has happened in the past. i get that. of all the scenarios, pilot suicide, commandeering, hijacking, mechanical failure, totally bizarre, a meteorite hitting it, who knows? of all these theories, what is statistically from everything that we can see from analysis, the most likely? >> that's a very difficult question to answer. because any numbers i would give you or assessments are themselves after all is said and done opinions.

i would say that the facts that have emerged now seem to me to make it implausible that this was an accident. that it seems more plausible that something deliberate happened, whether it was the pilots or those who forced themselves on the pilots. we can look in the past and see examples of both. i would tend -- if you wanted me to make a guess, and it's really just a guess, i would guess that the pilots were under duress and they were forced into actions that may ultimately have led to the destruction of the plane. >> certainly the theory that u.s. authorities -- asked at the top of the show, barbara starr, cnn correspondent reporting u.s. authorities believe there is a highly likely probability from all that they have assessed that the plane is lying at the bottom of the indian ocean. we just don't know that. that's not been established as a fact but that is the theory of the american administration that's working on certainly.

to my panel thank you all very much. the families of 239 people on board flight 370, these six days have been absolute agony. when we come back i'll talk to a woman who knows exactly what are going through and doing something to help the families of crash victims. [ male announcer ] at his current pace,

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the families of 239 people aboard flight 370 in anguish tonight and sadly my next guess knows all too well what that's like. heidi snow lost her fiance. the author of "surviving sudden loss, stories from those who lived it." you suffered the appalling tragedy of your fiance who died on that infamous twa flight 800 in july 1996. i want to play before i speak to you a clip from a heart rending interview last night from danica weeks and her husband paul is on the missing plane. i want to play what she said. >> that's the toughest part every day waking up and speaking -- looking on the news and seeing that there's nothing and there's no calls from malaysia to say we found something. god, every day it just seems

like -- it's an eternity. >> heidi, you've been in that position. it was five weeks before you really knew what happened to your fiance. what kind of advice can you offer to people like danica weeks who are going through this absolute wrenching torment right now? >> well, after my loss, i founded aircraft casualty emotional services. i found out the most important thing was to be able to talk about it and listen during this process, because at this point, i was doing everything i could to keep him alive. so anyone that would listen and validate some of the thoughts i was having was really critical for me. i was lucky enough to have a woman who lost her fiance on pan am 103 eight years earlier meet with me and she helped validate a lot of the feelings i had. at that point, i really held hope that maybe he didn't board

the plane or that he had somehow survived or somehow got saved. because when there's no remains and no confirmation, you really do hold on to hope. that was very critical in my survival process during that time. but most importantly, having somebody to talk to that had been there before helped me tremendously, which led me to found the organization. what we found since this crash, we've had a lot of calls from other people who are really brought back to day one, who remember that waiting time. we've had calls for help from people from hundreds of different disasters over time. so many of them have this waiting process. one of our board members lost her father in a private plane crash and it took three weeks before they located the aircraft. and for her, she's been through that. and really our organization validates this specific need that with most sudden losses we

usually can figure out what happened. but with air disasters, it can be weeks, months, years and sometimes we never know. we never know what their last moments were like, even after we get confirmation that they were aboard the plane. there are so many questions. and we often don't even know the cause of the crash. >> right. and certainly in this case they don't even know what happened to the plane, which i would imagine is even more agonizing. heidi, stay with me. when we come back, we'll talk about how families of crash victims can get help, help they desperately need. [ female announcer ] most of the time it's easy to know which option is better. other times, not so much. so it's good to know that mazola corn oil has 4 times more cholesterol blocking plant sterols than olive oil. and a recent study found that it can help lower cholesterol 2 times more. take care of those you love and cook deliciously. mazola makes it better.

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back with me now is heidi snow who lost her fiance in the crash of twa 800 in 1996. tell us how victims of family victims can get help? how can these families get the proper support? >> so at access, we have 250 grief mentors who all lost loved ones in air disasters. we have a call line and website where people can request care and will be partnered up with somebody else with experience. we match mothers to mothers, spouses to spouses. for example, in danica's case, we have people who lost spouses who have young children who would benefit from talking to

somebody that's been there. >> great. heidi snow, thank you very much. anything you want to add very quickly? sorry. we've got to leave it there. i lost contact with you. we're going to go now to "chicagoland," which starts right now. cnn's original series "chicagoland" is proudly presented by -- previously on "chicagoland" -- >> chicago is closing 50 schools. >> i am comfortable with what i'm doing. >> we are not going down without a fight! >> just a pounding and pounding and pounding. >> this is the last stop for 98% of the kids here. if we don't get them into something else, there are no other options.