still in the predawn hours this morning, on the pilot and the information that we're getting. that the pilots effectively cleared their communications equipment and that similar later you were talking about has turned up nothing to suggest that some suspicious activities may have been taking place. and it does tie in to be honest with what we have been hearing about the pilot and what we have been hearing about the copilot. the pilot is an aviation geek. he has a similar later in his home. his friends continue to defend him saying he is the guy you want in the cockpit if something does happen. they're also hearing that the chinese has cleared their passengers from the plots. the chinese telling the malaysians here yesterday that that was the case. so still moving along, as far as the transparency goes, that's a key issue here because obviously there's an enormous amount of frustration about the level of information that's being made

public. and the information that is being made public, sometimes it's been misleading or sometimes has been retracked. not only the world's media or the world, but certainly the families of the passengers would appreciate that. i don't want to lead people down the wrong direction. but this vacuum of information is very, very painful for the passengers' families. >> there were 239 people on that aircraft. andrew stephens, thanks very much. the families of those on board, the flight 370, they're growing increasingly desperate for information about their loved ones and they're taking that frustration out on malaysian officials who are providing at least as far as they're concerned, too few answers. listen to one mother's cries at a news conference earlier today. >> translator: we only have one child. we are respectful chinese people. it's hard to control your emotions when you might have lost your loved ones.

we just need to truth. don't use them as political pawns. >> cnn's david ma kinsey is in beijing and he's been talking to the families of those on board the aircraft. david, what else are they saying to you today? >> reporter: they're saying that they are angry and frustrated as we've been talking about. but every information that comes out they're looking at very closely but there are huge consequences for them on that information. so, for example, when we talked about the plane rising to an extreme altitude and then dipping down to very low erratic flight behavior, they're asking the officials, well, could my loved one have remained conscious? does this mean that they are dead, to put it blubtly? does this mean they could still be alive? all of these theories have really grated on these families. as they expanded the search area to 2.2 million square miles it

leaves these people desperate. >> why is this missing plane all of the sudden so worry system to the communist party in china? >>. >> reporter: well you've got this great group, this large group of people with a strong moral voice stuck in a hotel in beijing pointing the finger largely at the malaysian government. i've also heard people complaining about the chinese government, saying they're not getting enough support from chinese. obviously they're sending their assets to look for the plane, but it doesn't have nearly the level of capabilities of the u.s. in terms of investigation and in terms of at light reach to figure out where the plane is in the south pacific, in the pacific to the west of australia. so the chinese government faces the issue that it needs to look like it's protecting its citizens and if that anger shifts at all towards the chinese government, it's a very

problematic thing indeed for them. >> certainly would be. david mckinsey in beijing. while the passengers' families await any kind of definite word about what happened, we're hearing from pilots who say one of the most logical explanations for the plane's disappearance is being completely overlacked. athena jones is here looking at this part of the story. >> it seems like every day we hear about a new theory to explain just what happened to this airplane. one of the experts i spoke with today stressed that it takes more thuan one problem to bring down a jet. what's intriguing about this particular theory is that it's so simple. theories about what caused flight 370 to vanish abound. >> the aircraft's movements with consistent with deliberate action we someone on the plane. >> could hijack or sabotage explain what was the deliberate

action to take the plane off 0 course? >> i see a professional flight crew that tried to handle a situation. >> there's a simpler explanation that could account for what happened. a fire, perhaps caused by an electrical problem leaves the cockpit to fill up in smoke. under this situation, the pilots put on their oxygen masks, turning the plane toward the closest airport to land receively. >> the objective really is to get yourself on the ground as quick and as safely as possibility. >> the plane turns west but smoke soon fills the cockpit, overwhelms the captain and copilot and shottens out the communication systems. with the pilot incapacitated or worse and no one awake to fly the plane, it keeps flying past

any airports open eventually runs out of fuel and crashing into in the indian ocean. >> we have smoke in the cockpit. >> fire has caused fatal accidents before, like the 1988 crash of swiss air flight 111 of nova scotia. >> i think it's a plausible idea. >> there are problem with that theory. if there was such a big fire, how would the plane continue to fly for another sen to eight hours. and if there was a fire or smoke, why didn't the cockpit crew sound the alarm. so there's still a lot more questions than answers, here, wolf. >> yeah, i think a lot of people are looking closer at that now as well. we'll so where it goes. thanks very much. just ahead, we'll take you into a cockpit similar later to show you what it takes to change course by reprogramming the computer. and we're also exploring one of

the more controversial theories about what could have caused the jet to change course. could the plane's electronics, the computer in the cockpit. could it have been hacked? i reckon a storm's a brewin'. reckon so. reckon you gotta hotel? reckon, no. reckon priceline express deals will get you a great deal. wherever you...mosey. you reckon? we reckon. vamonos the spring hotel sale is on at priceline.com. save up to 60% on any express deal hotel, when you use code: spring '14. i reckon this is one deal you won't want to miss. ♪ [ male announcer ] a car that is able to see, to calculate, to think -- and can respond to what it encounters. ♪ even if that means completely stopping itself.

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let's go back to today's new developments in the mystery of flight 370. a law enforcement official telling us that the plane's turn the wests almost certainly was programmed by somebody in the cockpit. our own martin savidge is in a cockpit similar later right now outside of toronto to show us

how this would be done. how would bit done if someone was actually going to make that move? >> reporter: let's start explaining to you the flight management system, which is this device that's located right here. essentially it does a number of things that assist the pilot and copilot in flight. it's really a gps, a very good gps and it would be programmed before the plane took off with the specific navigation aides to take it to kuala lumpur to beijing which was the flight plan of 370. once in the air, though, it is possible that you could deviate from the course and change it somewhat. mitchell i think you can demonstrate exactly how it's done and how simply it's done. >> very simple. this line is the line we're following to the destination. that's our flight. if you want to change the direction to have aircraft it's very simple. obviously you have to know where you're going to go. for example i'm going to pick a way point here at another airport and then i'm going to use the keypad here to type it

in. once i type it in i put it into the flight plan and it show mess a white line and it's asking me am i sure i want to deviate and if i am, i press execute and the airplane starts his left-hand turn and we start dooef yath off of our flight path. >> we are definitely turning. but i should point out, wolf, that even though we're turning, it's not dramatic. if you were a passenger, i don't think you would be alarmed at this kind of a turn even though we're dooef yath away from what was the original course to beijing. >> all right. stand by, martin savidge. i'm going to come back to you. i'm going to bring in our panel of experts right now were the former ntsb managering director pete, or cnn analyst mark weis, a former pilot and in new york, mat desh is joining us. he's the ceo of ariddian

communications. thanks very much. let me start with you, math. it's pretty significant. if this system -- the whole management system was readjusted before -- at some point to go west as opposed to continuing to go towards beijing. if that was done, how do you know it was -- how do you get that snfgs? how did the investigatings art chully learn that somebody reprogrammed that system inside the cockpit? >> well, ofl, i'm not really sure to be honest with you. the only way you really could know that outside of the airplane is to have a data link of some sort. acars, flight management system, communicates across to data link when you're near the ground. unnorth natalie when you go over the ocean, those lings fall away and you use the at light system.

in this case there's two brands you can use. it happened to be turned off or at least the acar system was turned off so there was only handshaking going across. frankly, i don't really know -- >> would the acar system have been able to transmit that information? >> it would if it were turned on. but if you turn the system off, then really there isn't anything to be sent through the data link. so at that point i don't know how they would know that it was preprogrammed somehow into the a contraction ar system unless they know the data link was still active and there was information going back and forth. >> a quick question. could that computer in the cockpit which adjusts the autopilot, if you will, could that be hacked from the ground? >> it's not very likely. i've certainly talked to many experts who don't think that's likely. there's a lot of precautions against that. if you're going to hack a

system, you really need a connection into the aircraft which comes through a satellite system if you're over the ocean. since the at light system didn't see anything going across, i don't know how you could speculate that could be hacked. there isn't a connection to do that through. >> i want to play a clip for you. this is a clip from a friend of the captain of the malaysian airliner talking about his friend. listen to this. >> i know for sure, i flew this plane. >> you flew the missing airplane? >> many times. >> what do you think happened? >> very strange because the lack of communication is the one that's really puzzling. pilot communicate if there was an emergency. and i think from the second or third day i've already come to my own private conclusion that there must be some form of unlawful human interference. it could be anyone on the airplane. >> if you're convinced that's

not the pilot, does your attention turn to the copilot? >> like i said, u unlawful human interference, a human is involved. >> erin burnett is going to have more at the top of the hour. how significant are the interviews of the friends of those inside the cockpit and the cabin? >> you have to take them into account. you have to get a picture of who was in the cockpit. is this someone who could have acted irrationally. we've got a great picture so far growing on the captain and a little lesser on the copilot and they look like decent reasonable people without any strikes against them. so the mystery is deepening. >> if cabin was depressurized and everybody is out, could that explain what happened? >> you know, again, this is something that pilots practice, an emergency decompression and

we call it a high dive in the simulators. and the first thing you do is put on your oxygen mask. so they would be able to now get the airplane off its intended course, get it down and turn it, if wanted, to an airport suitable for its landing. but they also would have communicated an emergency to air traffic control either via radio or via acars or via the transponder. >> it looks like this, the depressure nob, if you will. and do you buy the notion that there could have been a fire in cabin? >> i don't. because again, i think the pilots, a fire is a slow growing thing. they would have had the ability to communicate. >> do you agree? >> absolutely. >> so you both think there was a human being responsible for this a 0 positived to -- >> that's my opinion.

>> do you agree with that? >> what we need to do is find the black box. that's what the to fo kus has got to be on. i think a lot of people have prized right now that aircraft going over the oceans aren't being tracked by radar or being even tracked by satellites and can be turned off. that's got to get fixed. >> we're going to leave it there. peter and mark, guys, thanks very much. just ahead, we'll have much more in "the situation room" on the mystery of the flight of 370. we're going to the virtual studio to map out a search area as large as the continental united states. tom foreman is standing by live. ♪

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malaysia airlines flight 370 now encompasses 3 million square miles, an area almost as large

as the continental united states. tom foreman has a closer look at the northern arc of this search area. what are you seeing? >> wolf, it really is a spread out pattern here if you bring in the map. it's not all in one place. that's also complicating it. what if this led to some sort of northern path for this plane? we know about it disappearing and we know from these satellite readings that there's this is idea that there could be an arc to the south in the ocean which we talked about last time and this arc to the north. how could it go up this way? it would be very difficult. look at all the places it would have to fly through with radar systems that are still there, people there, people taking a look. even if the radar were not a problem, there is this. there are a lot of people living in some of these areas that almost have to pass over on the way. beyond that, they have to pass over the himalayas. this is the biggest mountain

range on the planet, hard to pass by day. nearly impossible question stil remains. how does get on the ground. 200 by 200 and vin nobody spot it. that is the enduring mystery here, wolf. and one of the reasons why investigators are looking less seriously in many.ways up the northern route. >> good explanation. tom, thank you.

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we'll get back to our coverage of the mystery of flight 370 in just a moment. first, there's another urgent story we're monitoring right now here in "the situation room." russia is annexing crimea from ukraine. the russian president vladimir putin met with officials this morning to sign the paperwork defying president obama's stern warnings of sanctions. nick paton walsh is in crimea watching all of this unfold. what is the latest? >> wolf, troubling today. we've seen the first death of a ukrainian soldier here in the crimea at a base not far from where i'm standing in the capital here. apparently masked men said to be russians stormed the base and an exchange of gunfire, one chief warrant officer on the base was

shot. dead in the heart. the other wounded shot in the neck. that's got people deeply troubled because across the peninsula, there are lots of bases where ukrainian troops still loyal to kiev still holding out. i was at one today today pressured by russian troops who moved in around it, the men on the base talking to local protesters perhaps about the possibility of surrending over defecting over to crimean authorities. you heard in putin in a speech he gave in moscow just ahead of signing the papers that usher crimea into the russian federation a tone not about crimeaal at all more discussing the last 25 years, almost trying to re-establish russia's soviet glory in many ways in the ways he talked about how this country needed to have a broader vision about its role in eastern europe. many deeply troubled. we may be seeing some moves perhaps in eastern ukraine, particularly given the signals

coming out of moscow imminently right now. >> nick paton walsh watching this important story. that's it for me. thanks for watching. you can always tweet me @wolf blitzer, tweet the show @cnn sit ro. "erin burnett outfront" starts right now. >> next, breaking news in the investigation of missing it malaysian airlines flight 370. the united states asking the malaysian government for more transparency. we also have late details how the flight did go off course. plus, we'll talk to a retired pilot who flew the same triple 777 now missing for 12 days. he knows the pilots and the crew and thinks he knows who did i verted the plane. a new theory the plane was trying to land on a military base used by the united states. what the white house is saying about that tonight. about that tonight. let's go "outfront." -- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com