the theories and all of the latest information coming in on the mystery of malaysia airlines flight 370. a special two-hour edition later today. we will have all the latest information. thanks very much for watching. newsroom with don lemon starts right now. >> thank you very much. we will be watching you today at 4:00 eastern and 5:00 eastern. my goodness. i'm don lemon for brook baldwin. vanished without a trace. we have reports of activity from two different oceans. this as fear grows that something very sinister happened on this plane. was it high jacked? here's what we are hearing. this is the latest. not only did it keep flying for

hours. they reported the plane flew in established air corridors deliberately following so-called way points towards the islands. it could suggest or what's left of it well into the indian ocean to the west of malaysia. this area soon to be searched by a u.s. destroyer. chinese researchers say they recorded a sea floor event, a reading that is consistent with an airplane crash. it happened about an hour to an hour after the plane's last sighting on radar. that would put the jet back on the other side of the malaysian peninsula. let's go to the west now. we are going to dedicate the next two hours to covering every angle of this story, putting all the new reports to the experts. let's start now with the plane that was deliberately flown off course towards the andamani

lands and most are uninhabited. india has a naval there. tom is a former national transportation safety board investigator. to you first. can they hijack a 777 airliner and land without being detected. is that feasible? >> i think it's highly unlikely to be undetected. it's a large aircraft and people on board, you need a large runway. i would be surprised. >> you would be surprised. richard? >> i would be more than surprised. and also we heard from the authorities in the andman isl d islands that of the 36 inhabited islands that have landing strips, few or none would take a 777 and there no reports. as for those that are

uninhabited, according to indian officials, so far there has been nothing reported out of the ordinary. >> there reports that it was traveling over certain way points. >> way points are nothing more than the junctions that connect the flight paths of the world. you fly from one and turn and fly to the next. they are all given the names. here we have the map and headed north and it got to a way point. now at that point it should have carried on further up, but according to the radar pings from the aircraft, it seems to have gone west and made another change. every pilot in the world is familiar with the way point. think of an interstate where you are going from somewhere and you just have to get off at one junction and join the next. then you get off at another.

those junctions in aviation world have names that are called pay points. >> that would indicate that they were using some sort of communication or guidance. maybe they were using the on board compass. i'm going to pour cold water on all of this. we don't know the strength of the story thats says these way points. we know it was plotted and it looks like they followed the way point. nobody official low has come out. >> i understand that. from a layman, you would think that the on board navigation has gone out. what every person i spoke to sat in the same chair and said listen. that is a last resort. it would seem feasible that that's what they would be doing. they try to figure out how to get back to a runway. >> it looks like somebody set a

course to if this is true it appears that somebody set a course that put the plane to change a direction. >> stand by. we want to get to the white house. they are talking about the airplane right now. let's listen in. >> we are working hard in close collaboration with the malaysian government to investigate a number of possible scenarios for what happened to the flight. our hearts of course go out to the families of the passengers who are in this agonizing situation. unfortunately definitive conclusions cannot be drawn at this time. they are tracking the situation closely and we are in communication across agencies and with international partners to provide appropriate assistance in the investigation. we are also continuing to participate in the search efforts. we are consuling with our international partners about the appropriate assets to deploy

including including search areas to the west. you have questions about what happened to that flight, i can assure you i don't have conclusive answers. i don't think anyone does. we are participating with an array of partnering assisting the government in the effort to find and where it is. >> you don't know more than any of us where it is, but is it among the possibilities that the plane may have landed somewhere some. >> i think for specifics about what we know, i would refer you to the faa and ntsb and i wouldn't speculate about the scenarios that have been laid out in the media. i don't think any of us or any of them has been able to reach a conclusion.

>> they have been saying the president doesn't have it within his hour. he said as recently as last week, he stretched his ability pretty far. has the president changed his mind? >> the president met with caucus chairman -- >> you are looking at jay carney giving an update on the airplane, speaking to reporters in the briefing room saying they are participating accurately in the search and tracking it. the white house are tracking and consuling with the partners on which to deploy in relations to the new search area, meaning the indian ocean. and before we went to the white house and jay carney was giving us an update, you are talking about the way points. it appears someone had plotted a course using the way points and we in. >> i give you another scenario.

something could have happened on board and we knew he had to get back to land quickly. he turns a heading back to ground. something else happens. the plane carries on flying a predestined. all sorts of reasons why it will be flying towards the way points. >> when you look at the way points and it appears to be plotted here, the latest information saying the plane went to the way points. does that lend anything to your thinking as to what might have happened? >> i agree. i'm not sure the airplane hit the way points. it may just pass near them. it's all possible that the pilot put in a heading into the heading bug and became incapacitated. i think the biggest thing we have here now is that there is data probably that provided to the searchers saying to look to the west. that's the most important thing right now. we have a lot of speculation how it got there, but based on where

they are moving the assets and the cost, i suspect they have an area they want to search. >> did someone deliberately turn off the plane's communication systems? >> we don't know. it's possible to have a cascading fire melt down of the system that you lose the navigation systems and lose communications and tron respoan. >> we know it's shut down. 1:21 a.m. 14 minutes after the plaen's data reporting system shut down, the communications were shut down manually. that's why i ask you that we. >> not necessarily. failure modes, things happen and it's possible. you can't rule it out. >> i wanted to pick you up on this point. an interesting point. on way points, you are much more experienced and you have flown and you know there is as many way points as you there as you

can imagine. you can pretty much plot any diagram and you hit a way point. that is close by. is that true? >> you are correct. there is lots of stuff and it's easy to find something that looks like you hit a way point. it's random and you don't know. >> i'm sorry. go ahead. talk to me more about this cascading failing system where one thing might fail. for example, the transponder. you are dealing with that, an electrical issue and something else fails. >> it's possible and we have seen this before. it's rare. understandably. you have an electrical event that is taking out rats. whatever sequence it's in. it's possible that you have a situation where you lose the transponder. you lose communications. you lose that. so the thing we have here is a

lack of data. i can put together a scenario to match about anything you want. that's the problem we have. we have to be careful of giving i think the victim's families false hope on what is going on here. right now everything is possible. we need more data to pin it down. >> i agree. everything is possible. the reason we are going-over this is everything is possible. no one knows right now. it seems what you were talking about is a domino effect. one thing gives out and it causes stress. and nothing. >> when the first item failed, unless it was the a class that failed, it should have been that told us that the first thing failed. >> hold that thought. appreciate both of you. we will get back to you. 13 countries looking for the missing plane. the search involves nearly 60 ships and four dozen aircraft. i want to bring in andrew

stevens tracking the new t[mpwhat is the latest on the investigation specifically from the malaysian authorities. >> well listening to conversations, we have been hearing the same sort of theories down here. the same unsourced stories floating around where i am in kuala lumpur. as far as facts and information we are getting from the authorities, it has been a long and frustrating and ultimately a fruitless day. we are no further forward than 24 hours ago. there was a press conference every day. the minster who is leading the investigation was asked about the pings you were talking about and the communications satellites might have picked up. he said we are aware of media reports and not commenting on them. yes, we are in the sea looking and the indian ocean looking. so it's all what we know. it is incredibly frustrating for everybody.

the malaysians will not come out with new information until it's being verified. you name it. a lot of the interest today was on the pilot. was he being investigated. yes he is. has the house been searched. no, it hasn't. it's surprising to many of us here. the house has not been searched. the bottom lines are frustrating and not a lot of movement on facts. >> while i have you here, let's talk about the families of the passengers. they have waited eight days now. no word on what happened to the loved ones. are they doing anything new to help the struggling families while they wait. as you said, the investigation appears to be limited that how has it been searched. what are they doing if anything to help these families? >> specifically they are putting anybody who would like to enter hotels. they are offering counseling

groups and support groups. there is a malaysian airlines desk at these hotels to help people 24 hours a day. they can ask questions. what answers they are getting are frustratingly little, like we are. malaysia airlines is part of this. by no means ledding it. it's led by the defense departments. all the families can do is be together surrounded by people in the similar situation who empathize and understand what they are going through. only they could really understand what is happening. it must be heart breaking for them, don. as you say, they don't know, we don't know, nobody knows. everything is still on the table. so for the family, they can hold on to that tiny shred of hope that this may have been a hijack. we have been talking about the possibility of the plane landing. when relatives hear that information, it gives them hope.

that's what they are holding on to. that is the best hope. a hijack. >> thank you very much. we appreciate it. this is what we are covering with the special coverage. these are the three headlines. a plane headed towards the andman islands hijacked by someone possibly with knowledge of flying. also two instruments that transmit data stopped 14 minutes apart and experts say that means it was probably manually done. china is reporting an event or on the sea floor, a seismic event the day the plane disappeared. those are the developments. our special coverage of the mystery surrounding the flight will continue. straight ahead, we will take a closer look at the new search area in the indian ocean and the chain of small islands that the missing jet may have been heading towards.

transponde transponders. pings. different ways to track the plane. we will explain how the devices work and what happened on this plane. martin savage is live in a 777 flight simulator taking a look at what could have happened in the cockpit. martin? >> we programmed in everything we know about the flight and we are flying it right now. there is a lot to understand about this mystery, still to come. tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 ...you see opportunities. tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 at schwab, we're here to help tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 turn inspiration into action. tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 we have intuitive platforms tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 to help you discover what's trending. tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 and seasoned market experts to help sharpen your instincts. tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 so you can take charge tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 of your trading.

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we plugged it into the flight simulator. we are flying the flight in essence as it were.

we are at an altitude of 35,000 feet. we are not touching the controls because we are on automatic pilot. it was a night sky then. everything replicating down to the roof. you will see that in pink what they were flying leaving from kuala lumpur to beijing and they never made it. they disappeared at a point right here. we are 71 miles away and resz than ten miles of arriving at that point in the flight. after that moment that communication was lot of after the line of all right, good night. that's where we are. let me show you something defiating from the roof. it seems clear that the plane changed course. can it be done? yeah, it can. let me show you when i disengage automatic pilot. there is an automatic alarm.

no one will steer you off course. there is no way to do this without the pilots being aware of the plane changing course. >> if the transponder was shut off, how can it happen. it makes a noise. so why can pilots -- how are they allowed to do that in mid-flight? let me show you that point next to my knees. this small radio. in essence that's what it is. a specific radio. it is sending out a signal and mitchell, the pilot with me on this simulator, it's to identify. >> it's to identify the air so that the folks on the ground and the air traffic controllers can

interget us. and keep us from hitting other karen airplanes. >> you would never turn it off in flight. but if you had to, if you wanted to, here's how you do it. it's three simple clicks of a switch to the left. now it's off. we are not squawking anything. still on radar, but unidentifiable blip. >> so martin, the alarm that you were talking about is where the auto pilot is. the transponder if it's turned off, there is no alarm. >> there is no alarm, however immediately on the ground according to protocol, what would happen if they see a transponder go out? >> if it's taken off, that will send alarm bells down. the air traffic controllers will challenge and call us and ask us what's going on. why is the transponder off? do we have an emergency?

it's unheard of to turn it off in flight. >> we don't know if there was a challenge. if they followed procedure, once the plane went dark, somebody should have been going what's happening? >> that is a very good question. we don't know that it happened. we will check on that. great reporting. appreciate it. still ahead, eight days after going missing, we have yet to find anything connected. no parts or pieces or nothing. now the search moves towards the indian ocean. we will take a closer look at a new search area that could unlock the mystery of the missing plane. the indian ocean could pose unique situations if it is in the water. it's likely not going to be in the same place for very long. we will talk live to an ocean ol rafr abo oceanographer about the strategies used to find the plane.

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. >> welcome back to the continuing coverage of flight 370. the mystery of flight 370. it's one of the biggest mysteries in aviation history. what happened to the airplane and where are the 239 people on board. are they alive? it is day and u.s. intelligence, the federal aviation administration and national transportation safety board, no one knows where the plane is. there a lot of theories. conflicting as they might be, the report citing unnamed sources said it took the plane over the andman islands.

the editor of the newspaper said there was nowhere to land such a big plane there. >> there no chances that such a big aircraft coming towards andman can be missed a pardon from these four airstrips, it cannot land in any other island. >> let's go over the information as best we can. he joins us with a look at the search efforts. >> the geography is so important because we have conflicting bits of information. the plane took off in kuala lumpur and flew for less than an hour and it completely disappeared. since then because of the reports, these search areas have grown and grown. you have the major search area around the wreckage site, but now you have the areas over land and further out west. because of the latest reports,

now you are talking about the apdman islands, a string of islands that go for about 5 helped helped miles. are there places where people could land? let me bring in places that can handle a plane this big, but here's the problem. this is a long runway. here's another one. here's a place called port blair. you can see there is a big substantial runway in here. this facility is largely occupied and used by the indian navy. look at the houses. if you have a plane of this size, it needs about 4,000 feet of runway to land. that is about 11,000 feet long. 6,000 to take off. it could take off from a runway that size. here's the problem though. it's impossible for it to happen

with nobody noticing. you see the houses and the you know the navy is operating there. the air forces operating there. how do you take a plane that is 200 feet long and 200 feet wide even if it made it and put it on the ground with nobody noticing or making a phone call or saying anything? that's one of the reasons that officials are saying look, maybe something headed this way, but if it was this plane, it did not arrive. it has not been seen by anyone. that's one of the reason yes we have to keep looking in that first search area so strongly. that's where we know the plane was. everything else is conjecture. >> i spoke to a pilot who said you do not put a 777 down anywhere without making a lot of noise. >> sure. they are huge. i want to address one other thing. a lot of people have been raising the idea of could they land on the water.

landing a plane like this on the water while not impossible is next to impossible in terms of it being done safely. there is a tremendous amount of kinetic energy coming down and hitting water ha is not smooth. if you think about the miracle on the hudson and captain sullenberger, that is the hudson. that is flat as a pool table compared to the waters out here and even there it was called a miracle for a reason. it's a hard trick to pull off and you don't pull it off with a plane like this in waters like these. that is the tragedy of the story. >> that's what i have been thinking all along. the waves. you could not set a plane down on that. it would be virtually impossible. >> appreciate that, still to come on this special edition, no communication, no transponder. because of this, we really have no clue where malaysia flight 370 is.

how can we track a plane that is not in communication. we will break it down and if the missing plane were to have crashed into the ocean, the part and the pieces could be scattered over a very wight area. how can we find it all? our next guest helped in the search for flight 447 and will join us next. om fashion that fle shelves. and you...rent from national. because only national lets you choose any car in the aisle... and go. and only national is ranked highest in car rental customer satisfaction by j.d. power. (natalie) ooooh, i like your style. (vo) so do we, business pro. so do we. go national. go like a pro.

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. here's the breaking news here and it's coming from u.s. authorities. this is being recorded, we are trying to get our evan perez and both of them in washington. they are saying and talking about the role hereof lithium batteries in this malaysian

airlines investigation. they are saying they are looking into concerns that lithium batteries in the cargo hold which had been blamed in previous crashes could have played a role according to u.s. officials briefed on the latest intelligence and law enforcement in the airline probe. if the batteries being carried on the plane caused a fire, it doesn't explain other anomalies with flight 370 such as why it may have turned west and through towards the indian ocean. officials investigating lithium bat reece in the cargo hold of the plane. coming from u.s. thrds being reported by evan perez and pamela brown. they are reviewing, but no terrorism is connected so far. this information is just coming in. i will read on here. this is information that we are just getting. i'm learning about this with you as i read here.

one official said at this time they have no reason to believe the cargo is illegal or put there in any illegal way. any malicious way. live with the detail, pick it up here. >> there so many mysteries to this thing. we do know that there is increasing concern about the lithium batteries in the cargo hold of the aircraft. what exactly this did with the fire in the cargo hold that incapacitated the plane that caused the pilots to turn west to return to the airport. all of this is unknown. we know that the plane was operational for another five hours. it's very much a mystery, but at this time there concerns with the intelligence and law enforcement that the batteries could have been the cause for

this plane to disappear. >> what's taking so long for a passenger fan fest. should that be standard? >> yes, it is. they are rechecking and checking every person on the passenger manifest. they are checking out any background information on the pilots and the copilots to make sure there is nothing they can find that indicates a link to terrorism which needs to be looked at. they haven't ruled out any terrorism links at all to this crash or to this disappearance of the plane, but it is something they are checking out and as long as they have not found the wreckage, you don't know what you are missing. let's look at the lithium batteries.

why is this such a concern? >> there have been previous incidents that have been traced to the batteries. there was a crash of a u.p.s. plane near dubai in which there was a fire that started in the cargo. the pilots were not able to get back and they turned back and were not able to get back. that has been a big concern around the world. we looked this up and there have been 141 incidents around the world in recent years. they have been traced to batteries of some type and lithium batteries have been a concern for u.s. officials and officials around the world. i'm not sure what the rules are in malaysia as to what you have to do to carry this, but there is no indication that the lithium batteries are being carried in the cargo here. it might have been normal cargo and something went wrong.

>> evan, let's go to you. answer my question. is it standard in that part of the world? we don't know. that's something we need to check on. we will read into the reporting that you and pamela brown have. some u.s. officials believe that the plane's westward turn and continued flight discount the battery theory. a fire would have been catastrophic and rendered the plane unable to continue to fly. >> that's right. the mystery is the plane diverts from the course and ends up crossing the peninsula and towards the indian ocean. various things have been picked up from satellite and radar and the pings sent from ground stations to the aircraft and being returned occurred one every hour. for five hours, there were pings returned that indicated that it was still functional and it was still intact is what the

officials we talked to said. our producers spoke to an aviation industry source who said that it and that is added to the mystery. if there was a fire, it's not clear how the plane then could have continued on for up to five hours. >> the breaking news investigating the role of lithium batteries. the 1e6r7 for the missing plane announced they are expanding the search to the east and the west for the missing plane. why? it could be from new reports suggesting that the plane was deliberately and secretly rerouted. this is citing unnamed sources and importantly is show these so-called way points.

way points that you are looking at right there, tracking the plane after its last contact. traveling towards the indian ocean and the andaman islands. to the west of malaysia and areas soon to be searched by a u.s. destroyer. they are not taking their eyes off the east side of malaysia. researchers say they recorded a sea floor event, a reading they say is consistent with an airplane crash. it happened about an hour after the plane's last sighting on radar. that puts the jet back on the other side of the peninsula to the east. what a mystery we have on our hands with details breaking at every moment. we are working to get more information on the breaking news. officials cold us lithium batteries may have played a role. stay with us. citracal maximum. calcium citrate plus d. highly soluble, easily absorbed.

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. did lithium batteries play a in the disappearance of flight 370? this is coming from the correspondent in washington. from pamela brown as well. investigators are looking into concerns that lithium batteries in the cargo hold which have been blamed could have played a role in this investigation that is according to the u.s. officials briefed on the latest intelligence and law enforcement developments in the airliner probe. that is the latest we are looking at. new information is coming in on other parts of the investigation as well. an aviation engineer and a lawyer. lithium batteries have been problematic and it's a possibility here. >> lithium batteries are an incredible innovation of a

modern age. they provide the most energy that is available, but with that being said, they have a long and sorted past to get into airplanes. they are extremely fragile. >> and volatile. >> extremely volatile depending on the mix and the circumstance. they can explode when they start to burn. they can burn in the thousands of degrees. recently the boeing 787 which say wonderful airplane largely powered by lithium batteries. sitting on the ground, it burned through the outer hole of the fuselage and destroyed an airplane. in this situation taking the latest news that is literally if lithium batteries were in the cargo hold and assuming that they overheated and weren't properly cooled and something happened, they have the capability to wreak havoc and destruction in that airplane and

could singly account for what happened. we don't know. >> that doesn't explain the information that they picked up. they picked up a ping and it went to the points if there was -- if a lithium battery was at fault or a contributing factor, that would be an explosion? >> a lithium battery, they start to overheat. they got hotter and hotter. they start to burn through their casing. >> burn through the electrical system? >> anything that they are near. they have the capability of burning right through the aluminum. they burn composite and cause damage. depending on where the lithium battery was in the cargo bay of that airplane would directly affect certain systems and electrical systems and could tell you what happened. the flight crew and we are

speculating, where the lithium batteries, we don't know how many there were, but if they started to overheat and burn, the crew would start to get alarms. those areas are well-sensored for heat and disturbances and start to see that something is going wrong in the cargo bay. the next thing they may get is a fire alarm. they could start to see electrical anomalies in the cockpit. systems may go off line. it wouldn't account when you correlate that information with the information that we have with the primary and secondary radar and the pings we get from the system. this plane we know was in the air for a long time. >> it would explain though the systems and the communication failures not being able to reach air traffic control. they may not have the

communication burned through the wires. >> it's possible. my gut feeling and we are speculating -- >> i prefer scenarios. what could have happened. >> we know, the facts are voice communication stopped when the pilot essentially said good night to the controller. we know a short time after that the transponder signal was lot of. we know after that that the airplane with the primary paint turned around and started to head in a southwesterly direction. we know that the system at least pinged satellites and we could figure out the position of the airplane at that point in time. so the idea that perhaps a lithium battery burned through was playing in the background, it's a scenario that we should consider on the list of scenarios on the tote um pole, i would put it in the lower realm. >> we are investigating the role

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take this simple test. press your tongue against it, like this. it moves! do you feel it? it can happen with every denture. these movements may irritate your gums. but you don't have to bear with it. you can try fixodent plus gum care. thanks to its formula, your gums become one with your denture. this helps stop movement and helps prevent gum irritation so you can keep enjoying life. [ apple crunches ] fixodent. and forget it. . >> breaking news here is coming from our folks in washington who said that u.s. officials who have been briefed on the latest intelligence on the missing plane are looking into the role if any that lithium batteries may have played into the

disappearance of the plane. u.s. officials who have been briefed on the latest intelligence wonder if lithium batteries may have played a in the disappearance of the plane. we are working and our sources will get you new information as we get it. we want to talk about tracking the plane. we want to bring in ted meyers. authorities believe they have several pings from the airliner's system.nd to viewers what a cars is. >> people are saying i know where my car is and the go, ps knows how fast i'm going, how can we not know where giant jetliner is. there is gps in the airliner, but only for the captain. that location doesn't get pinged back down to the ground for the most part. the other thing is radar. radar is a big thing and always has been a big thing for airlines. the primary radar, you see a

blip. the secondary radar waits for the ping and a squawk from the airplane. the secondary sends a signal and the plane sends it back andys i am malaysia systems, 39,000 feet to the northeast and about 025 was the heading. i'm at 39,000 doing about 450 knots. that's all we know. this is how good we are. that goes back to the air traffic control. we would love to have them take over. it hasn't been implemented yet. here's the rub i will leave that. this is the map of where we are talking about. the plane is trying to go all the way to here. there is so much fuel in the plane. it can go to these islands, but noplace to land. it could have gone to india or asia. there is so much fuel still to go on this plane.

why doesn't the radar work that good. even the local radar it won't go in a straight line. columbus found out that the world was not flat. it doesn't even see it. the other plane doesn't even see it. it's blind because there is not enough radars out there. the radar when you get out here is so much empty land and water. there is not enough to see where we could be going. this here is a black hole in some spots for where there is not enough coverage. we go to this a cars system that seemed to have been turned off and operating on a primary channel somewhere. that's what the pings are coming off. everyone is looking at them, especially the royals royce ping who said the engineers were running. did that happen or not.

these may go if the information is still running. all that means is that this was turned on for four to five hours. so much approximate speculation. i hate it. we have been trying to figure this out for days. >> more on the breaking news after this. not to talk to people like you. you always do what they tell you? no... try it, and see what your good driving can save you. you don't even have to switch. unless you're scared. i'm not scared, it's... you know we can still see you. no, you can't. pretty sure we can... try snapshot today -- no pressure. [ doorbell rings ] the johnsons! stall them. first word... uh...chicken? hi, cascade kitchen counselor. stop stalling and start shining with cascade platinum packs. over time, platinum fights

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. >> don lemon here at the top of the hour. we will start with breaking news. information that could change everything for the search for missing flight 370. did lithium batteries take down this plane? cnn learned they were stored in the cargo hold. why is this significant? they have been blamed as the cause of previous airplane crashes. the piece of the puzzle is being examed by investigators. if the batteries being carried on the plane caused a fire, this does not fully explain other anomalies like why the plane may have changed course. an explosive new report suggested something sinister happened in the cockpit of this plane. not only did it keep flying for hours. they report the plane flew in established corridors and it

could suggest what's left of it well into the indian ocean. west of malaysia. soon to be searched by a u.s. destroyer. >> the malaysian government is in a lead investigation and u.s. air safety officials are in kuala lummupur. we are working hard and close with the malaysian government. we are in communication across agencies and with international partners to provide any appropriate assistance we can in the investigation. >> that was moments ago and there is this. the seismic researchers say they recorded a sea floor event. a reading they say is consistent

with an airplane crash after the plane's last sighting on radar. this happened on the east of malaysia. we want to get straight there and bringing out the pilot and energy, author rosenburg. you know about planes and lithium batteries and they can trigger fires and you talked about the weight. this is someone's blackberry. it powers our phones. this is the best form of energy and the best battery that we can get for the longest amount of time that is lightweight. that's why they use them. >> this miracle of modern technology pound for pound provides the most bang in energy for the weight and the buck. the lithium batteries in the airplanes are huge by comparison. you are talking about something which is probably two feet long

by a foot and a half wide by maybe a foot and a half tall. they are a lithium battery on steroids they have a different chemical composition. the benefit is an incredible source of energy for a long period of time. it's reliable, but with every benefit there is a drawback. the negative side is they are temperamental. when they go bad, they burn at thousands of degrees and can easily burn a hole through an airplane and through alum numb. >> why do we use them? because it's the latest technology? >> we use them mostly in any airplane design, weight is an important consideration. with the amount of electrical energy we need in modern day airplanes, this is the battery of choice. could you design an airplane which would use a lead acid

battery like on our car. it probably would be about ten times as big and weigh more. they are and reliable source of electrical energy. >> until? >> when something bad happens, their destructive forces a quantum greater than a lead acid battery or another form of lithium battery. >> the negative is as big as the positive. >> the positive outweighs the negative, but the negative has such destructive capability, it has to be contended with. >> that's the report out of washington. let's talk about the report suggesting that the plane was flown off course and could possibly have been hijacked. the airliner could have landed in the end of an island? without being detected? >> i have been following the cnn coverage. the short answer to the question is yes, it could have been landed without being detected. i'm not sure what that means.

the andaman islands have airports. at least two that i know of that have over 10,000 footlong airways. a 777 needs about a mile or mile and a half to take off. depending on the gross weight. i think this was an er extended range version. this plane weighs about a half million pounds. the short answer to the question is yes, it could technically land, but some of the coverage is well we didn't see or lawyer anything. this was in the middle of the night. airplanes come into airports all the time. these engines are not loud contrary to some of the reports i have heard. they are ducted engineers and relatively quiet. could the plane get in and land without anybody taking special notice to it? i would say yes. >> explain that. in layman's term, you said huge

ducted engineers meaning there is a tamper on them. >> i'm old enough to remember the day when airliners were carried by turbo jet engines. i live in new york and we live in new york. we have jfk and la guardia. when they came overhead they were loud and screaming. these ducted engineers are not pure turbo jet engines. the center is a turbo jet that around the outside, it's a fan like you had running in your house blowing air over the core. that muscles the sound of the jet engine. bottom line is when we see jets flying over our heads today, that's really quiet. >> if tom forman, if you are listening in washington, can you work up the difference between a ducted engine and a pure turbo jet engine? love to see that. these are much quieter. absolutely. good information. we have to go to break, but i want to talk to you about this.

these a cars. it took off here in kuala lumpur. did someone plot a course or the plane was just pinging off the towers? >> way points are like exits on highways on a road. say you are driving down a road and you see an exit. a way point is just an exit to another air route. they are definitively defined points in space. when we start talking about an airplane that was steered to a way point, that takes an intentional effort on the part of a flight crew. the fact that we have one, two, three, four way points means that bottom line, someone or an auto pilot that was preprogrammed to fly this route was flying this airplane. you do not get what we see in terms of flight paths going from point to point to point to point

unless it's intentional. that bodes well for the proposition that this aircraft was certainly under control and certainly being flown deliberately to the points in space. >> i learned so much from you. i learned about the batteries and the engines that they are quiet enough that they could have landed without causing a lot of notice. it's interesting. the weight points as well. someone had to steer this plane into the way point. best information we have gotten today. please stand by. we will get back to you. there is a big search going on on the ocean. sea conditions are playing a in tracking the missing boeing 777. the positions on the current circulation factor into where the plane could be if it crashed into the water. the special projects at the woods hole institution in massachusetts. so david, what factors need to

be taken into consideration during this search. >> this area is bigger than the entire north atlantic. that's difficult enough above the water, but under the water it's a lifetime undertaking to search that kind of an area. the one thing i think we should be doing now is looking in the gulf of thailand if there is interest in the search. knowing where the plane isn't is important. we can check that off. we don't need to spent more time on the surface if it's not on the floor of the island. the other thing is we need to collect meteor logical data. the waves. if we do find in the water some bits of debris, it has to be back tracked to give us that x marks the spot on the sea surface. >> what are the conditions, explain it to us in the indian ocean. does that affect the search in terms of where the possible

debris would be found? i imagine it would. >> not so much. you have everything from monsoonal winds to the normal every day. the big area. fairly rough seas too. it all depends on where we are talking about. you have everything from the shallowest water and islands to the deepest ocean trenches from zero feet down to two or three miles. from the point of view of my profession that people that looked beneath the sea, if we are getting ready to find the black box fist they are in the water. you have to be ready for just about anything. >> much appreciated. thank you very much. coming up here on cnn, officials announced they are now expanding the search for flight 370. is it too little too late for authorities? we are live in kuala lumpur. it is turning into one of the biggest mysteries in aviation

history and there a lot of theorys about what happened to the plane. we will break them down for you coming up. huh the citi thankyou preferred card. now earn 2x the points on dining out, with no annual fee. go to citi.com/thankyoucards

. >> we are following breaking news. officials say invest gators are looking at whether lithium batteries blamed in previous crashes could have played a in the disappearance of flight 370. multiple reports of coming in about where the plane disappeared. the plane's last confirmed location was between malaysia and vietnam, but efforts have stretched west into the indian ocean. cnn international's andrew

stevens joins us now to help us piece together the latest on the investigation. what do we know at this hour? just talking about the battery issue, he is not commenting at the moment. it's interesting. you talk about this search expanding into the indian ocean. at the press conference, it was a case of expanding out and we searched other areas and haven't found anything at all. we are broadening the reach rather than having specific information to take us out there. all it does is shows how difficult it is to release what information they have. we know about the story which is being quoted that the fact that the plane may have been heading towards the andaman sea. a trained pilot or someone who

could fly a plane was on board because it's using the way points. also the fact that the communications may have been deliberately turned off. the issues have been raised and we get nowhere. we are not going to say anything until we have verification. it may or may not have shown that. we asked just to confirm did they have that information and they couldn't confirm they had it or said they were aware of reports. they were finding out a little bit more about what happened on the ground here in kuala lumpur. we are not much further forward than 24 hours ago. >> andrew stevens reporting from kuala lumpur.

48 aircraft from the refer on friday. it is early saturday morning in malaysia. tom forman has a virtual look at the search efforts. hello. >> it is getting bigger and bigger. we will talk about this a little bit. the search area that we thought would be small has gone bigger and bigger. it took off here and you orient yourself to where you are and it vanished less than an hour in. since then the search area exploded. you would think it would make sense, but then as the other reports came in t started spreading across land to the other areas over here. now the andaman island is a string of islands that stretch for about 500 miles.

about 500 islands too. one of the big questions you have been sdhag is a gosking iss the bits of information come in, even if it were true and the plane went that way, could it do so unnoticed and could it wind up in another part of the sea? this is a satellite image. there two air fields in the andamans that are big enough for a plane like this to land. this is looked after by the indian air force. the other one i want to bring in is from a different air field. from an area called port blair that is supported by the indian navy. 11,000 foot runway. a plane the size of a 777 needs about 4,000 feet to land and 6,000 feet to take off. could it do it from a runway like this?

it could. look at all the planes and the fact that the military is involved. do you get a plane like this 200 feet end to end and side to side into an area like that and land it it safely with nobody noticing? i don't think you do. even if you talk about the turbo fan engines on a plane like this, the turbo jets, they are quieter than engineers were 40 years ago, but that's in the realm of jet engines. they are pretty noisy. not something that sneaks through the neighborhood like a stealth fighter. this is a big commercial jechlt the idea that you fly over an area lo like that and nobody notices, that's not happening. most of the islands are uninhabited and small. could a plane like this passover an area like that and sadly go into the ocean? it could and maybe noib would notice assaulting it got past

malaysia. >> stand by and don't go anywhere. i want to bring in arthur rosenburg. they're still going to make some noise. the engines. >> right. what's interesting is when you look at the runway, as he pointed out there, their homes were on either side of the runway. this was in the middle of the night. these people are used to hearing airplanes land. so what would distinguish this 777 from any other plane that lands there? it's a long jet runway almost two miles long and could handle 777s and they land and take off there. within the realm of scenarios, turbo fan engines are a kwaquan quieter. the people could be sleeping. it is conceivable that this

plane could have landed on that runway and was headed in that direction. whether in fact it did is something that remains to be seen. >> where is it now if it landed on the runway. we would have evidence of it. >> the scenarios that we are discussing, we are discussing because the primary radar points and the acres ping points that were plotted put the plane moving in that direction. within the realm of foreseeable scenarios should be considered. it's a bit like medicine. when you are coming up with a diagnosis, all reasonable diagnosis have to be included in. >> would acres work under water? >> it would not. it's an electrical system. it's a transmitter. you get it wet, it's not working. >> don, when you talk about what's reasonable, i guess that's where i differ here.

i don't know that it's reasonable. even if people didn't notice it, this is a big jet and not flying and leaving with one person. if it is there, there a lot of witnesses to it. way or the other. in my experience for years, if a lot of people know about something, people talk. it always happens. they sure talk after seven days. there is no way in my approximatation this plane could land in a place like this and nobody has said anything about it or noticed it or passed on word or mumbled to a relative or something, that always, always happens and happens with things as small as a stolen car. >> for it landed there, there would be evidence. >> if it landed, where is it? >> right. exactly. >> this is a monster machine. it's ought of its environment. where did it go?

>> thank you. we will get back both of you. new concerns about what was going on inside the cockpit of a missing plane. martin savage inside a boeing 777 simulator with a look at what the pilots may have been facing. take it away. >> don, until 370 is found, we don't know what happened. this could be the next best thing to try to understand what led up to the disappearance. the view from the cockpit coming up. ♪ (announcer) the subaru forester. motor trend's two thousand fourteen sport utility of the year. when you get some recognition, you can't help feeling a little humbled, and a little proud. love. it's what makes a subaru, a subaru.

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. we are following breaking news right now on cnn. are lithium batteries to blame for bringing down flight 370?

cnn learned that they were stored in the cargo hold. why is that significant? they have been blamed as a cause of previous airline crashes. this piece of the puzzle is now being examined by investigators and of course even if the batteries being carried on the plane caused a fire, this doesn't explain other anomalies we have been talking about that have been discussed. why the plane may have changed course. an explosive report suggesting that this plane was deliberately put down. we know that the transponder on the plane stopped sending information 14 minutes after the data transmission stopped. martin savage is live in a simulator. it is fascinating watching you. you are flying the exact route of flight 370 on the simulator, correct? >> right. we took off from kuala lumpur

and scheduled this flight to go to beijing. we are still on that flight path. i will show you something interesting. we are past this little mark here on the navigation map. it was the last known official spot at which this aircraft actually reported in before it disappeared. that was before you got the all right, good night. we are beyond that. take a look at this. see all the blue? those are airports. not just any airports, but airports at which a 777 could land. this is vietnam. i'm pointing out to you is if there was an emergency or a problem, you can see that there a large number of potential airports they could get this plane down on the ground. we know that departmeidn't happ. there was no emergency or distress signal reported by anyone. we know that the transponder was apparently shut down. let me show that to you.

this device looks small in the huge world of the dashboard of the airplane, but it's important. mitchell is the pilot here. this is what keep us us in track with the ground people, right? >> that's right. that's how we let the air traffic controllers know where we are and where we are headed. >> here's how you turn it over and again you would never turn it off in flight. you would mike three clicks of this switch right here. it's off. doesn't mean we are invisible, but means we are no longer identifiable. why do you have an on-off switch? when you are on the ground, you can do it. could you bump it and turn it off? no way. was it deliberate? we don't know. is the some point it was disabled. >> thank you. appreciate that. also mitchell as well. coming up, as this mystery grows, we are following breaking news for you. the possibility that lithium

batteries were in the cargo hold. they could have played a in the plane's disappearance. we are talking to a former agent and a pilot to see how the batteries could have impacted a 777 airplane. but after a day spent in the caribbean exploring mayan ruins and playing pirates with you in secret coves, she won't exactly be short on memories. princess cruises. come back new. [ female announcer ] plan your seven-day cruise from just $549. call your travel agent or 1-800-princess.

>> we are tracking one of the biggest mysteries in aviation history. investigators are looking at whether lithium batteries could have played a role in the

disappearance of malaysia airlines flight 370. i want to bring in evan perez and both are in washington. arthur rosen berg, a pilot and engineer here with me on set in new york. first to evan. tell us about this lithium battery report. they are trying to go through the latest information from malaysia. that indicates lithium batteries in the cargo area of the airplane. whether or not it caused a fire, they don't know. that is one thing being examined at this point. they don't know for sure if this could explain it. it is one of the things they are looking at. there has been a problem previously with the lithium batteries in 2010. there was a u.p.s. plane crash in dubai they believe it was being carried in the cargo.

this was a concern for aviation safety officials around the world for sometime. the faa for instance doesn't allow it in your checked baggage. the lithium batteries for this reason. there has been over 100 of them. this is something that they are looking at. this is one of the many theories they have. as you and i have talked about, there parts of this that are not explained. why did the plane turn west from the course over the gulf of thailand and head towards the indian ocean. that is not explained. w we don't know. it does appear that someone had to pilot the plane and change course to go in that direction. that is not explained by this. here with me, i want to weigh in on the information regarding the lithium batteries.

>> i think really you would have a situation where they detect a fire or smoke, they will look for the first place possible to land and they will be reporting they are battling smoke as did the swiss air pilots when the entertainment systems overheat. secondly you would not be able to fly the plane or have a desire to fly it for four hours if they had fire or smoke on the aircraft. if they went so far as to cause catastrophic failure and cause that plane to come down, that still doesn't explain the blips and pings. it's one thing or the other as far as i'm concerned with the batteries. >> the same thing that powers most of our devices. >> the lithium batteries in this

cargo hold of this airplane were different than these relatively -- >> even those batteries can overheat and do burn. when you put that on steroids and a bunch of these coca-cola crate-size batteries in the cargo hold and if they overheat, they have the capacity to burn that doesn't explain this, right? >> what do we know. the plane was headed in a north easterly direction. the communication stopped and the transponder was cutoff. it seems intentional and purposeful. the plane turned around and headed back in a southwesterly direction. if there were lithium batteries that were smoldering and getting heat warnings and temperature

warnings and anomalies in the airplane, pilots often return to their instinctual behavior. let's turn around and go back to where we came from. >> if so, how is it possible that no air traffic control tower asked them to identify themselves or if it landed somewhere. >> i can't speak to the issue of whether they asked the plane to identify themselves, but when you are talking about transponders and what they see on the ground, it's a simple explanation of why the plane disappeared. when you squawk a transponder, you say this is me to the controller on the ground. there is a highlighted moving airplane on the control radar screen and he lights it up and he knows that's you. without that, there is a lot that can be a bird and you are almost indiscernible. >> he can see you, but you are not unidentifiable.

>> absolutely. >> it's not going to work. >> tom fuentes and evan perez. reports of a seismic event between ma kwlaz that and vietnam at the bottom of the sea@same day and after flight 370 disappeared. could it have something to do with the mystery?

>> we are following breaking news here. investigators are looking into whether lithium batteries could have played a role in the disappearance of malaysia airlines flight 370. they're looking into reports of a sea floor event in the waters not long after the jet's last point of known contact. brian todd joins us live from washington. who recorded this event and does it prove anything?

>> the waters from malaysia and vietnam. that happened about 72 miles northeast of the plane's last confirmed location. they say it occurred about an hour after the plane's last known contact. we have spoken to seismologists and a sea floor event means seismic energy that can be caused by an earthquake or artificial impact. there two seismic stations. the way the chinese laid out the readings, they placed two circles on a map. they intersect in two places of possible seismic activity. one of the places that is near where the plane went missing is an area of low seismic activity. that map is where you see the two places they intersect. it could be two possible places of seismic events. the place is near where the plane lot of contact. if anything happened there, it may well not be an earthquake.

that is low seismic activity right there. i spoke with a seismologist at the university of maryland and asked him whether the missing plane could have hit that water at that point and caused seismic activity on the sea floor there. >> i would suspect this is not in fact due to the impact of a plane on the sea surface. it's more likely to be a seismic event possibly located on this western side from the stations and not in the vicinity of where the plane actually lot of contact. . >> the u.s. geological survey detected a 2.7 event west of the i land of sumatra. that event happened at that time. the usgs said from a naturally occurring earthquake. they believe that's the seismic activity in question here and they believe it's not related to the missing plane. don? >> brian todd, thank you very much. our special coverage of the

mystery how deep is the area investigators are focusing on. we will spotlight the chain of small islands and the missing jet may have been headed towards. when it's donut friday at the office

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take this simple test. press your tongue against it, like this. it moves! do you feel it? it can happen with every denture. these movements may irritate your gums. but you don't have to bear with it. you can try fixodent plus gum care. thanks to its formula, your gums become one with your denture. this helps stop movement and helps prevent gum irritation so you can keep enjoying life. [ apple crunches ] fixodent. and forget it. conditions because they are playing a role if tracking the missing 777. the current and wave circulation all factor to where the plane

could be if it landed in the water. i want to go to cnn chad myers. chad, what factors need to be taken into consideration during this particular search? >> you know, the ocean is a big place. if you've been on a cruise ship ever in the caribbean, and the gulf of mexico is not even near the size of what we're talking about here, don. it's a tremendous amount of square footage. here and now also here. and the difference between where originally the plan was to take a look, that was the original flight plan, so somewhere in here, the gulf of thailand, we're talking about 100 feet, 150-feet deep. that's all we get to here. but now if the plane really did make the left-hand turn out here into this part of the ocean, we're talking about 12,800 feet. that's the average number of how deep this plane, if it's on the ground, if it's somewhere else, it could be landed. this is all speculation. i want you to know how shallow

this is. that's why it's one color. under 200 feet. there are trenches and that's why we see what we see here. and remember, don, the plane had enough fuel on board to reach everywhere you see here. so i know we're focusing on what could have happened to the plane in the water but there's still some potential that this plane was stealthy enough with everything turned off that it could have landed somewhere some place that was preplanned with no one there to see it. >> that is a giant area. not only in the ocean, not only in the waters, but also on land. >> it had so much fuel, because it was going to go to beijing. 2,800 miles worth of fuel. >> let's stick with the water now. >> yeah. >> the conditions in the indian ocean? >> warm. that's good. 90 degrees in some spots. 87 is the average. if people are in the water or in the rafts, it's warm enough that they are not hypo thethermic.

there are currents but they are just pushing things along, not creating turbulent, turbulent water. if people are still alive, they have a chance of being alive a long time if, of course, they have fresh water to drink, don. >> that is crazy. where is this plane? did it just fall off the face of the earth? it's unbelievable that we're sitting here eight days later. two men boarded that flight with stolen passports. that's putting a spotlight on the market for fake passports. is it more popular than you might think? we'll examine that next. [clicks mouse] nice office. how you doing? good.

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a major issue that suffered during this chaotic search for flight 370, two passports. two men boarded the plane using stolen passports and while

there's no evidence that they had anything to do with terrorism, they represent a big, big problem. black market passports. here's cnn's zain asher. >> it can take weeks to make a passport. it can take a few hours depending on the quality of the passport that is being made. >> reporter: he spent 15 years making passports in the uk before spent to prison in 2009. >> just gently picking the edge of a passport and now you can start to peals passport back. >> reporter: here he is changing this name to mine. >> anything can be faint. somebody actually made this passport. that means it can be repeated again. >> you can see how close to the picture we actually are. >> reporter: according to interpol, 40 million passports have been stolen since 2002. some of them sold illegally to that of the original bearer. >> even if you look a little bit

like that person, that's going to be enough. >> reporter: others end up in the hands of counterfeiters. >> there's a huge market for stolen passports. it's absolutely huge. on a daily basis, an average fraudster buys five or six. >> reporter: but forensic expert says it's more likely to raise red flags at airport security than a stolen one because many have implemented security features to prevent alteration. for example, the first page contains an image of a an eagle and watch the light change under ultra vie lot light. >> no matter now good you are, somebody is always going to be trying to beat the system. >> reporter: especially when it comes to theft. not every country regularly checks the interpol's database to see if the passports were

stolen. two men were allowed to board with passports that were reported stolen in 2012 and 2013. one solution, passports like these that contain a microchip designed to prevent them from being used by the wrong person. >> border security officials all over the world can read that data and validate that you are who you say you are. >> reporter: developing countries are still behind in implementing them. >> we've seen a lot of the new electronic passports come in that may definitely forge a passport much more difficult but of course every system has weaknesses. >> zain asher is joining us. where did you find him? >> he's based in london. because of his history with passport forge, and applied for a visa and was denied it. he got out of jail in 2010 and he's sort of since turned over a new leaf. >> do most people use it to get

to a better place, they want to move? trafficking? >> back in the day he would charge to make a top-quality fake passports between 8 and $10,000 and he would basically go into a bank and basically withdraw money. he withdrew half a million pounds. >> unbelievable. unbelievable. zain asher, appreciate it. thank you so much for joining us. we appreciate you joining us. bill weir is sitting in for jake tapper. a full week now since flight 370 vanished without a trace. now investigators are trying to figure out if a stash of batteries on board played a role. i'm bill weir and this is "the lead." the world lead, was is sabotage or was it hijacked? maybe something sinister happened aboard flight 370. also, what did the pilots see? could they have actually lan