minister. >> a helicopter crash killed three people near seattle today. the rolling stones have postponed several concerts in australia and new zealand following the death of mick jagger's long time girlfriend. she was found dead of apparent suicide. the singer said he's struggling to understand how she could have ended her life in this way. >> that does it for us. we'll see you at 10:00 p.m. eastern for another edition of "ac 360." "piers morgan live" starts now. this is "piers morgan live." with your host on holiday i am bill weir filling in for this week. it is the equivalent of trying to find the head of a pin. not a whole pin just the head. hidden somewhere in greater seattle or trying to find one misplaced letter in 600 bibles. those are some of the mathematical analogies on folks today trying to help us understand the sheer size of the flight 370 search area. this is what 3 million square

miles looks like relative to the continental united states. you hide a plane there and go. it would be hard enough to find a jet or pieces of one in a heavily populated chunk of land that size. but we're talking about area that including huge swaths of open ocean. tonight we're talking with people who are very good at finding things in open oceansing like the engineer who helped find the air france flight that went down off the coast of brazil nearly five years ago. just for perspective, they found the debris within about five days of that crash and started with a search area that was 600 times smaller than this one. it still took two years before the black box turned up. but they found it. and you know things are grim when a hijacking and secretive landing is the best case scenario. but somehow that is still a very real point of worry for some governments around the world. we'll hear from israel on their cause for alarm in just a moment. for all the loved ones hoping and praying 12 days later, a hijacking and hostage scenario

is a thread of hope. because when it comes to proof of life, they will take anything they can get. so as flight 370 becomes the big story for a 12th night, we begin at the epi center of the search in malaysia, kuala lumpur. cnn's kyung lah has the very latest. i'm most interested in how these loved ones are holding up there. what's the scene like? is it a vigil? we've heard threats of hunger strikes from the folks in beijing. how are they doing? >> reporter: we'll start with the families here in malaysia. we actually went to the hotel where most of them are gathered. almost all the families have gathered in this hotel. and we didn't see that many of them walking around there. but you can certainly sense that there is a frustration. because the families just don't know what to believe. and bill, you were talk about having hope. well, there's a banner in that hotel. and it says "pray for your safe return." they are clinging to hope because of all of the crazy

theories out there, the lack of what's perceived as lack of transparency from the authorities. families are just hoping that they're going to come home. >> what's the latest on the investigation into the pilot, his copilot? we've ridden this roller coaster of them as suspects and then decent men who may have been heroes trying to save the plane from some catastrophe. what are you hearing tonight? >> reporter: well, the latest that we're hearing from u.s. authorities telling cnn that so far, everything that the authorities here have looked at -- and the police have been telling us they are looking at the background. they've looked at the houses, even looked at the flight simulator inside the pilot's home. they've come up with nothing according to u.s. authorities, that they simply haven't found any shred of evidence that they have specifically planned this, looking at the flight simulator, bill. they haven't found that there's any sort of practice that the pilot had that he was planning

to do something like this. so again, just a frustrating lack of information. >> we're going hear from an expert tonight who says sometimes an erratic flight plan means a heroic pilot, not a nefarious one. we'll get into that. but i know you spoke with a former retired malaysian air pilot who has actually flown this listen to a bit of your interview. >> reporter: so given all this cockpit procedure, is it possible for someone to rush into the cockpit still? >> it's possible but a difficult thing for me to play around with. let me put it it is not impossible for a determined set of people, not one. a determined set of people with proper plans and intimate knowledge of the procedures of the airplane. and this can be easily done by observation, flying in the aircraft a few times. >> did he have a prevailing theory? what does his gut tell him? >> reporter: well, he believes, bill, that there must have been human intervention, that someone

on that plane made it turn and made it make these erratic moves, thought was not catastrophic, mechanical failure. and the reason he believes that, because again he sat at the controls of this plane. he says it's the most solid thing he's ever seen. it's a solid plane. he believes in the 777s that malaysia airlines is flying and that he has flown. he thinks that it had to have been human intervention. whether or not he thinks it's a hijacking, he says that he believes it's a remote possibility because of the tight security surrounding cockpits, bill. >> kyung law from kuala lumpur again tonight. thank you for your reporting. let's pivot to my former abc colleague, current cnn colleague jim sciutto joining us from d.c. jim, let's talk about the american part of this investigation. i know a lot of your sources are probably expressing frustration or have been in recent days. we heard chuck hagel now asking for more transparency? what are they saying? >> reporter: this has been an issue since the beginning.

how much of the malaysians sharing whether it's radar data tax information on the pilots, the flight crew, et cetera. in fact that lack of sharing led to a devastating mistake. because remember in the early days they were searching on the wrong side of the malay peninsula right where it lost contact. yet 25 ships from a dozen countries essentially wasting their type there. a mistake that could have been avoided, i'm told, had the malaysians shared this other radar data earlier or in fact asked for help to help analyze that data. because it's an art. it requires expertise. but my understanding is that that sharing has improved over the last ten days or so. and u.s. officials and other participants in the search are getting better information. they're now refining their search and moving a bit forward in the investigation. as we're seeing as this information dribbles out. i think what you saw from defense secretary chuck hagel as he's speaking to his malaysian counterpart is something of a gentle nudge, bringing up the topic not beating the malaysians over the head with it but saying transparency wouldn't be a bad thing going forward. much more gentle than what we

heard in public from the chinese, for instance, who have been openly critical of the malaysian investigation. in fact threatening to take it over. >> this is the part in the movie where you'd see the tommy lee jones character come in from ntsb and take over. but there's so many diplomatic dance move that is has to be done. but tell me about israel. we saw a story that they're on high alert in tel aviv. >> reporter: what they've done, they have extended the area. for all planes coming into israel, of course israel is a country under threat. so you and i, we've travelled there. that's a country that has the most severe airline security. when they do a search they do a real search. when they don in tear ga a real interrogation. when they're asking planes coming, in they've extended the time before the plane gets to israel that they have to identify themselves or in fact gets close to israel in response to that incident. it's because of that. and they talk -- in fact in an interview one of our colleagues did there, nick robertson today, the head of that air traffic

identification unit, security unit, said maybe this is a vulnerability, right, the flight crews. because he said the flight crews in general have not been considered a threat. but if indeed turns out to be that the flight crew was somehow responsible, the israelis are certainly concerned. i've talked to people on capitol hill members of the house intelligence committee are looking at measures the u.s. might take. so far the impression is the security we have in the u.s. post 9/11 is much better than what you would have overseas. but that's not to say people aren't looking at it. because if someone successfully commandeered a giant airplane, everybody's got to look at their security procedures going forward. >> this dearth of facts. cnn mid east analyst former ambassador to the united states joins us now. why are you on high alert right now? >> israel is a tiny country. it's situated along the coast.

a jet that's been hijacked flying at 600 miles will take about a minute and half to cross the entire country of israel. it's where israel's most populated cities are right along that coast. so israel has close to zero margin for error in encountering and protecting itself against a hijacked airplane. if this malaysian jet has been hijacked, there's a sense among israeli intelligence officials that is a possibility, then israel feels it has to take the necessary precautions. the government met with security officials this week and decided on a number of emergency measures. those remain classified, secret. but one has been published. foreign aircraft approaching israel's shores will have to identify themselves far earlier than has previously been the case. >> so idf thinks it is a possibility that this plane is being weaponized. >> they can't rule out that

possibility. the israeli press today quoted a number of former idm air force officers including former officials of israel's national airline, el al saying they cannot rule out that possibility. they also noted that this could not have happened in israel where security is far tighter. far closer cooperation between military radar and the civilian air traffic control that. didn't exist in the malaysian case. they can't rule out that possibility. and they have to take every possible measure to protect the country in case this airliner has been hijacked and in case it could be aimed at the state of israel. >> so how do you prepare for this? do you have planes identifying themselves farther out? and what happens if one of them doesn't answer to your sufficient satisfaction? >> well, precisely. foreign aircraft are now going to have to identify themselves far earlier than has been the practice. and what would happen if they don't identify themselves if the

plane approaches israel's shores? we have one precedent. it occurred 41 years ago in february 1973. when a libyan aircraft bound for cairo strayed into israeli controlled air space. israeli jets intercepted that libyan airliner, instructed it to land when it ignored the israeli instructions that airliner was shot down. all but five of the 114 people aboard died. israel paid compensation to the families. but that is the precedent. israel again has no margin fo for error for unidentified planes end, its air space. >> your defense minister at the time called that an err in judgment. it turned out it was a sandstorm that had knocked their navigational equipment out. they weren't paying attention to the orders to land. that had to do with tensions there. my question now, is this

heightened state of fair raise the possibility of a tragic accident with another commercial flight? >> well, i think the security and the technology has improved significantly over the last foredecades. and there's far greater communication than existed back in the early 70s and greater ability to identify aircraft. again, we're dealing with an aircraft. we know its make. we know its design. we know its vintage. and if it appears on an israeli radar screen approaching the coast, israel will take again probably all measures necessary to defend its citizens who will be very vulnerable. they are along the coast, the entire country is very tiny. >> and before i let you go, what do you think the chances are that this may have already happened? that this plane wandered into chinese or air space kurzekstan or something and there was a

coverup? >> all cane say is that israel has very extensive intelligence capabilities. it shares those capabilities with the united states, with other allied governments around the world. israel also has satellite observation capabilities. and so whatever israel knows, and begin the has the ability to know a great deal, it is sharing it with the united states and other allies. >> well, anybody who's flown in or out of tel aviv knows that abundance of caution takes on a whole different meaning in that part of the world. it's understandable the steps you're oren, appreciate your being with us. let's dig into that further what israel might know especially about iranian air space. could that flight have made it that far if someone was was so inclined to take it there and this idea about it being used as a weapon. most disturbing of all. we'll dig in with our experts when we come back. stay with us.

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we just heard some concerns from israel they are under heightened alert under the maybe far-fetched idea this plane is somewhere on the ground being weaponized in some way with a dearth of facts this is sometimes where the mind goes. let's explore this further with fran townsend, former homeland security adviser to president george w. bush, general spider marks, military analyst here at cnn, u.s. army former commanding general, and mary schiavo, cnn aviation analyst we've been watching throughout the week, former inspector general of the department of transportation and helped so many families after 9/11 on those flights. let's get into michael oren's idea that maybe that we should all be on heightened alert about this being out there. fran, what are your thoughts on that? >> well, if you look at northern route you would have had to skirt very close to the pakistan-india border. probably the best air defenses in the world. you also would have been very close if not over the united

arab emirates which has incredible air defenses. i'm not sure where that takes you. i can't imagine that it could have actually navigated that far, skirted all those air defenses, and the theory is you landed where? in iran? to load up with some sort of weapon? >> i'm guessing israel has their eye on iran in some way. i don't know. but there's one thing when it comes to satellites watching nuclear development labs, another thing watching commercial aviation though, right? >> that's right. but in fairness to israel, it's a tiny country. they take this air defense system very very seriously because they don't have a lot of time to react. so until you know where the plane is, that is do you know it's in the indian ocean, until you've accounted for it, in some ways given their own security posture it's understandable they would simply go to a heightened state of alert to watch out for >> it that's a constant state of existence in that place. my record six hours being held at tel aviv airport. mary there's new reporting.

nbc is now saying, they came out earlier today in talk about the left turn. that now this change of direction they're reporting was made at least 12 minutes before the copilot said "all right good night." how does that change your thinking if that is true? >> well, it's a troubling 12 minutes. because the clues there that you had time to communicate so you had time to do other things. the old saying first fly the plane and navigate, aviate, navigate, communicate. according to the positively identified his voice. so the captain was flying. so there was time to communicate. with this time they would have had time to put in a hijack code ones transponder, they would have had time to speak the hijack code words, presumably malaysia airline has trained for that and they have them.

they do that in most airlines. but nothing. and then finally they didn't say the emergency words. if you're having an emergency that you don't think you're going to lose the plane imminently you call out what's called a pan pan, pan pan. if you're in danger of losing the plane you declare an emergency. and that didn't happen, either. so i have a lot of theories running around in my mind about what could have happened to the plane's structure, mechanical and fire and electrical problem. and there were all sorts of a.d.s and warnings on this plane. but in that time if you had a problem, you desperately try to communicate it. because you've got to get an alternative airport, have to find a new landing strip, you have to get the plane on the ground. so it's troubling to me. >> spider, wasn't to go back to a question i asked michael oren about from a military perspective if we can eliminate this at all that the plane was shot down say in china. would be hugely embarrassing. obviously for that government to have to admit something like

that. they've covered up past disasters. would the world know about an incident like this this much longer? >> bill, it would. that's what we call an i.r., infrared event. that would be picked up by satellite. it would be able to be immediately discerned if something like that took place. to the point that we've been talking about though, bill, i spent my life as an intel guy. and to better understand a situation you've got to vin tentent to have intent and capabilities. right now as you indicated we've got a dearth of both. it's a big white board and we're trying to fill in the gaps. the capabilities gaps. what went wrong, what do we know, what are the very specifics? how can we linearly progress through this event. but woo don't know jack about intent. we haven't spent time on what i would call the human intelligence aspect. every place in the world i went i generally walked in there with a boat load of technical intelligence, and i had to confirm or deny getting my hands

on guys intimately aware and start the process of doing the human intelligence interrogation. as we've discussed, that's a very very tough process. it should have started i know as fran has indicated from day one, should have started very aggressively and the malaysians again not to malign anybody but the malaysians should have opened up their arms and said we need a lot of help with this. can you fbi please come here. can you intelligence community please lend a hand. we need to get our arms around this thing. >> that has to happen at some point, don't you think? >> it's happening now. what we've seen is the malaysians said they within the to the pilots' homes on march 9th. but they didn't actually search them until the 15th. that's a loss of six days. we're used in this country when we conduct sort of an air -- a tragic event investigation, we start both the investigation and the search operation simultaneously as soon as we're notified of the event. and it doesn't appear, at least by what we're seeing, that that happened by the malaysians. there's been a delay in the

investigation. and that frankly is to the detriment both to the investigation and the families getting information. >> bill, can i jump on there a second? what fran indicated. it's called intelligence latency. it's what we try to crash all the time. the notion of targetable intelligence. in that if you allow is to languish it suddenly morphs into something else. you need to be able to grab this intelligence as quickly as possible, dissect it as quickly as possible and eliminate all the options. right now we are walking through such an array of options, it just boggles the mind. and it is devastating again as fran and mary have indicated to the families. >> absolutely. and insult to injury, the thais just said our radar showed it didn't come north but you didn't think to ask us that specifically. but mary please say. we've got a pilot coming up. i want to ask you more about all of this when we come back. abundance of theories, zero c

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boeing's 777 is the world's largest twin jet airplane and widely considered the most technologically advanced commercial jet. how can it possibly just vanish? the question we have been asking and not answering for a dozen

days now. back with me now mary schiavo and joining us keye walzinger who flies 777s and from an aviation team. keith talk to me about this report from nbc. they're saying now that the turn left to go off track leaving the path to beijing happened about 12 minutes before the "all right good night." that just doesn't add up, does it? >> no, not really. earlier reports had indicated that that could have been done after the last radio transmission. so that sheds a new angle on when this occurred and whether or not it had been preplanned. >> right. now, talk me through the navigation box. we got the report last night that the eight or nine numbers had been typed in to change course. we've seen martin savidge throughout the day show us how easy that is. that happens all the time in a flight, right? due to weather or whatever?

but could that have been preprogrammed as a contingency in some way? say you've got your a route and then in some ways this is the b route if you needed to get out of that? does it work that way? or is it one route at a time? >> there is capability for a second route to be loaded. and it's a simple matter to switch from as you say the a route to the b route. but that would not necessarily occur at the same point during the flight as the radio transmissions. the route could have been programmed on the a route with the turn in it. sometimes that can occur as well. but it seems more likely thought could be either the b route being activated or a change in the a route. >> and would that send -- if you did make a change, and acars was still working, mary, would they know in kuala lumpur that hey,

wait a minute, they're not going to beijing anymore? >> if they entered the change and entered it in and started acting on the change they should know it if acars was still working, sure. >> right. so keith, what is your prevalent theory? the one that everybody came back around to today was some sort of catastrophic smoke in the cockpit. maybe a tire fire so the pilots put on their masks, they're pulling circuit breakers, i guess, to try to isolate where this electrical fire is coming from which then cascades, shuts down the transponder and the radios. go. what do you think of that? >> well, i think that's a little bit far fetched. certainly based on the last radio communication that was received, it didn't seem like they were in any sort of distress. when you put on the oxygen mask and then attempt to talk on the radio, there's a significant change in the audio quality because you're talking through a mask rather than through the air

to the microphone. so while they would normally attempt to communicate with the outside world if that were the case, it doesn't seem like there was any attempt to make a communication that way. >> mary, you disagree? >> well, no, i don't disagree. i think there are so many different scenarios. over the years in different cases i've worked on, probably one of the ones -- some of the ones that are more similar are things that started to go wrong and the pilots don't realize how wrong things are going. it starts spooling down. first it's one thing. if i was to try to make sense of the 11 minutes and the "all right good night" sounding normal is that they have something they think is minor. they're perhaps turning back or going to an alternative airport easier to get to which would explain the turn. the thing they thought was minor and not going to tell air traffic control, they're going to do what they shouldn't do an in-flight troubleshoot which is what they did on alaska 261 and start heading back. and then things go bad in a hurry. like air france, alaska 261.

they think they can handle it and they try and they can't. >> and they can't. and by the time they're reaching for the may day it's too late. >> it's a disaster. >> it's too late. so keith, i don't know. i imagine fly boys like you sitting around with your pilot buddies theorizing and speaking more freely than you might do say on cnn. but is there anything that leads you to a conclusion given your experience with this plane? any hunches that you might have? any confidences you might have in the integrity of that boeing that pushes you in one direction? >> no. i've got full confidence in the airplane and the engines. it doesn't look to me like it was a fire or some sort of issue with the structural integrity of te aircraft. if there was a structural integrity problem with the aircraft there would have been a larger debris field, more easily detected. and we would have some sort of physical evidence somewhere.

emergency locater transmitter possibly would have gone off and satellites would have picked it up. something physical evidence would have been found. it's looking more to me like intervention, human intervention in the cockpit that changed the route. it was purposefully done either by the crew, either by the crew under duress or by another person familiar with airplane operation that is took over the airplane. >> okay. when we come back, mary, keith, if you'll be kind enough to stay with me we'll talk about maybe the significance of a flight simulator in the pilot's home, and if anything has changed since 9/11. what are the lessons we learned? mary is here for that. stick around. (vo) you are a business pro.

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we know so little of course about what happened in the cockpit of flight 370. back with me now two people who can dig into some of the theories. pilot keith wolzinger and mary schiavo. keith, let's ask about this flight simulator in the captain's home. a guy with 15, 18,000 hours of experience. is that common? >> i wouldn't say it's common. but somebody that's that enthusiastic about flying, i could see it, yes. >> i guess they searched this, mary. and from what we understand from

american sources there was nothing on the hard drives to indicate anything nefarious, just maybe practicing new landing patterns at different air strips around the southeast asia. >> and as i understand it, and nothing else, either, e-mails, lifestyle, bank accounts, life insurance, you name it. that would be expected. because on 9/11 one of the things including the messages in training the hijackers, they were supposed to avoid the limelight. they were supposed to be on the down low. this guy had videos on youtube. so it didn't fit sort of a traditional kind of airline terrorist. >> yeah. he seems like just a pure enthusiast, 53 years old, three grown children. how many investigations were you involved in in which the pilot was suspected but exonerated? >> well, many. i've even lost count. but i can think of one where he was blamed and it was a burning ribbon wire in the control column. one where there were problems with the engines. one where the engines had core lock and the instruction manual

was wrong. one where the pilots had to deal with a trim system that was misrigged so if they pulled the nose up the nose went down and the manuals were wrong. so when you dig. but this takes years to figure out. these cases lasted an of an age of 3 1/2 years. but eventually there were mechanical reasons. and some of those cases the ntsb said it was the pilot. >> what that must do to that pilot's family. >> terrible. practically most of those cases the pilot was deceased. but it's the families that were the driving force. many of them found me and said we need to turn this around. we can't believe this. they're so strong. i think the circumstances help to make them strong. but they hang on every piece of information. it's the families often that are the drivers. >> this is the thing. we can compare america to other countries for better or ill these days. but when it comes to this sort of thing, the sheer experience of the ntsb and the fact that it is a law that every day an investigator has to tell the

families whatever scraps of information, right? >> right. the family assistance act this. act came into being because of crash families. they gathered together and didn't appreciate the treatment or lack of information or being shut out of the investigation that may have taken their families from them. and they got together and got this law passed, family assistance act. the ntsb must brief the families whether they have no information or had information. they have to tell them what's going on. the families have access to view the crash site. they are entitled to certain things and information, including things that you might not even think of like designation of the memorial site and assistance from the airline. and that's law in this country. that law needs to be exported to the rest of the world. >> speaking of learning from bad experiences past, keith, op ed, interesting op ed today in the "new york times" about transponders. and at 9/11 they turned them off, we would have known those planes had been hijacked. if the transponders didn't have that capability. i talked to a pilot last night he says he likes to have

control. he wants to be able to turn everything off and on in his cockpit. but should we have transponders with off switches at all? what do you think? >> well, first the transponder is turned on before the flight starts. part of the checklist before you leave the gate is turning on the transponder. transponder stays on the entire flight until you reach the gate at your destination and then you current transponder off. now, in 9/11 they turned the transponder off and of course it was harder to detect them. now, mary might know about this, but i thought that post-9/11 as a result of investigating those incidents that there was supposed to be a system that would leave the transponder on at all times and without the pilots being able to turn it off in flight. mary might be able to comment on that. i thought by now, 13 years

later, that would have been part of the aviation system. >> what happened there? >> right. not only do they have that, but there's still resistance from pilot groups and from the faa. do you know that most aircraft in the united states don't even have to have a transponder. general aviation much of the planes fly, can fly legally without them. and that is another travesty because we all know that osama bin laden bought a general aviation plane before 9/11. and so there are so many disconnects from lessons learned we thought from 9/11, the transponder issue that we don't do in flight downloads from the flight data recorder or change it so that we could do that from the cockpit voice recorder. we don't have video surveillance and video streaming. there's even a congressman in florida who wants to give security back to the airlines. we might learn our lessons sometimes but we also have to remember don't forget the lessons. >> it also speaks to just how safe we are most of the time. >> most of the time. that's right. >> a guy from nit said if you want to commit suicide by commercial jet you'd have to fly every day for 55 thousand years. at times like this all these reforms seem logical.

let's check in with don lemon. he's hosting a cnn special report, the mystery of flight 370 at the top of the hour. huge response, don. cnn has become sort of the global water cooler when it comes to this story. what are you hearing tonight? >> what a mystery it is. we're hearing a lot. last night we were getting maybe 40 tweets per second if not more of people asking questions. questions like this, bill. this one is from amy. amy says, do the sightings of a low-flying jet on the maldives mesh with the timing and location of the last ping on acars? we'll answer that at the top of the hour. here's what lakalex is asking. rule of flying is to navigate, aviate, then communicate. perhaps fire came on quickly, pilot responds course changes and passes out. >> we have the best aviation experts in the united states and in the world to answer all of those questions.

if you want to send them you can send them. make sure you #370qs. and we will try to get your questions on the air tonight. the host of experts and myself will be doing that at the top of the hour. bill? >> all right, don. if you want the very best you got to get mary in your studio. >> mary will be in the studio tonight. she'll help answer some questions. >> we love this woman and her breadth of knowledge and thanks to keith our pilot friend as well. tune into don top of the hour. coming up it's about the size of the continental united states. that is the area of ocean currently being searched for flight 370. seems like an impossible task. we're going to talk to a man who knows more about it than most. he helped find air france flies 447 in the middle of the atlantic and we'll meet him next.

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barring some incredible turn of events where flight 370 actually turns up intact somewhere on land, it will probably be like our next two guys that's going to ultimately answer this mystery. bill waldock is a professor of safety science at embry riddle aeronautical university crash investigator for over 30 years. and mike percell works -- joins me via skype. bill is the haystack guy, mike

is the might needle guy. they start big and go down. bill, something like 200 investigations working for the coast guard for many years. even guest started as yourself on "lost" for fans of that fictional aeronautical mystery there. just try to put the scale of this in perspective. i'm guessing no one like you has seen anything like this. >> that's exactly right. just the size of the search area is one of the major factors we've got to deal with right now. i heard somebody say earlier today that because of the size of the search area, if we employed every aircraft and every ship we have at our disposal we wouldn't be able to search this area and find this airplane. typically that's how you start. we at least have an idea where the airplane was. we just don't here. >> so with every day that goes by, let's say it's a seat cushion, a single piece of

flotsam two weeks after the crash, would you know where to start? and if you don't find >> well, the longer it goes, the further materials that are floating are going to disperse. with the air france situation, they found the floating debris within five to six days. at least you have a general idea of where to start. but the longer it goes on, the sea currents, wind currents are going to move all of that debris. they are going to scatter is and mix it in with all of the other trash that unfortunately happens to be throughout most of the oceans. >> well, mike, you were there. you helped fine this thing i guess two careers after that first wreckage was found. just give us some perspective, how big was your initial search area? >> i think the initial search area are to the underwater vehicles was 5,000 square miles. >> 5,000. which is about 600 times smaller than this one right now. and you had, what, submarines

underwater, robots? what were you using? >> we had three underwater vehicles, basically, unmanned submarines that swim programmed tracks back and forth using acoustic sensors to map the sea floor and we could determine the wreckage site. >> is it true -- i know the black box was in tact two years after the fact. but it wasn't still emitting any signals, was it? >> no. i think the batteries on the black boxes last about -- at least 30 days. >> 30 days. that's what i thought. >> sometimes longer. in this case, at least one of the batteries was damaged so it's not clear if it ever worked after the air france accident. >> right. so bill, when you go out on a search like this one, i imagine

you have em fa three for the families but how do you deal with the monotomous nature of something like this. >> well, we always assume they are alive until we prove positively that they are not. the faster we get to them, the better. the sense of urgency is there and it sometimes gives an incentive to go beyond what we're actually doing. the other side of that, it is boring. the first couple of hours you're running on adrenaline. you're going to find them. by the time you're into the fifth, sixth, seventh day of the search and you've spent most of that time scanning the surface, it's very easy to miss things. you have fatigue start setting

in. >> right. >> you overflow the target when you did something as simple as what i just did. so it's a competing set of factors. >> right. >> that sometimes gets us in trouble. >> i can only imagine. well, i hope that your wisdom and experience helps these families. thank you for your time, gentlemen. when we come back, how about the statisticians? can we call on the bran knee jacks to help find flight 370? we'll meet a man that does the math next. rying about tomorrow, we miss out on the things that matter today. ♪ at axa, we offer advice and help you break down your insurance goals into small, manageable steps. because when you plan for tomorrow, it helps you live for today. can we help you take a small step? for advice, retirement, and life insurance, connect with axa.

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if someone says it's a small world, that certainly does not apply to anybody searching for flight 370 and there's nothing about a jumbo jet when it's missing in the size of about the continental of the united states, 3 million square miles. carl is a writer for 538.com which launched yesterday. congrats on the launch. this is interesting. help us understand what you do could help maybe find this plane. when you look at that vast ocean, what do you see? a grid? and then it becomes, oh, i get

it's there as opposed to there? >> it pretty much comes down to that. if you think that they have the same chance, then you have no chance of finding it any time soon. these statistical tools are not magic but may help make it more efficient and more smarter. >> you would start on, what, the presumed flight path, the last turn, something like that? >> anything you have. information from the satellite. the key things about these tools is you're always questioning your assumptions and incorporating new information. these are tools that help you take some of the error and guesswork out of how to incorporate it. >> what about motives or possible scenarios in which it happened? so if you look at the history of aviation and the history of terrorism or history of accidents s. there a way to extrapolate anything from that or is every flight a different story? >> because there's no situation like this, you have to look at

the ones that are closest to it. that's where judgment comes in. ultimately you're putting a guess on some one's best guess. air france 447 was pretty different but it's close enough that you can get information from it. >> so are you guys going to run these numbers on your own? are you offering to help malaysians? >> we're more writing about this. there are experts including on the 447 search who have done this and this was done back in world war ii to look for missing navy sub in 1968. even though this is a harder problem, a bigger area, there are tools and machinery that can help refine this search and speed it up. >> carl, we appreciate you being here. good luck on this, both with the site and if you can shed some light on that, we thank you for that. so many questions tonight.

great and interesting answers from all of our specialists here. don lemon is coming up in just a second but as we leave the air tonight, let's go back to the loved ones staring at their cell phones. just think of the anticipation and the hope for those folks. we've got to keep the story going if not only for them. here's don lemon. this is a cnn special report, the mystery of flight 370. i'm don lemon. the malaysian airlines flight has been missing for 12 days without a trace. no word from any of the 239 people on board. despite a search that now covers nearly the size of the continental united states and that makes the missing plane a worldwide obsession. you know that. thousands of you have been tweeting your questions for days and tonight we've got the world's top experts in aviation and security standing by to answer those questions for you, like is it r