that's it for me this hour. thanks for watching. i will be back at 5:00 p.m. eastern for a special two-hour edition of the situation room. until then thanks for watching. i'm wolf blitzer in washington. newsroom with brooke baldwin starts right now. >> thank you and great to be with you. here we have at this hour two major developments. and the two 39 souls on board. here's a question right now. did volatile lithium batteries bring down this plane? cnn first reported this last week during the search. today we are now hearing officially from the ceo of malaysia airlines confirming that these batteries were in fact in the cargo hold of this plane. the reason this is significant, you ask? if you look back in 2010, a fatal crash was attributed to

lithium ion batteries in a u.p.s. cargo plane. we also know lithium battery components sparked a series of fires on board several boeing 787s. even with this knowledge, the airline is playing this news down. >> and the questions swirl around what was in the cargo hold of the plane. we are learning more about the phone call made by the pilot. authorities are looking into reports he made a call from his cell phone eight minutes before this flight took off. investigators are trying to find

out who might have been on the other end of the call. let's go to cnn's evan perez in washington. let's hone in on the batteries. what more do we know about that? >> they were looking at the situation from the day flight 370 disappeared because they saw on the manifest that was provided by malaysian authorities there was a shipment of lithium batteries. we don't know who the shipper was and where it was going. they don't believe anything nepharious was at issue. anything suspicious in the batteries being there. we know that was one of the first things they were concerned about because as you mentioned in 2010, there was a fire on a

u.p.s. plane they believe was caused by the batteries that are more unstable than other batteries. >> we don't know how many. do we know if there restrictions on carrying the batteries? >> there. because of all these concerns and previous fires on the planes, they do have strict restrictions and international agencies that do this type of thing say you have to ship them and label them in particular ways. you have to wrap them in noncombustible material so that in case something happens, they don't catch fire. there is a lot of concern about that in the u.s. and internationally. the malaysians say they followed those restrictions and they say they were not hazardous, but the officials we talked to says that that is something they are concerned about. it is something they haven't crossed off the list.

these r battery commonly used in cell phones and laptops. this flight had a bunch of those on board. pilot bruce buck rogers. welcome to both of you and kicking it off with you, you heard from malaysian airlines ceo saying the batteries are not regarded as dangerous goods. do you agree with that? >> yeah, it's something on the list. very much just that. very common thing certainly to ship badlies like that. there need to be precautions and there. we don't know the details, but keep in mind even if we determine something more about the batteries, it takes a huge leap to think those batteries caused a fire aboard this plane that kept flying under control for a number of hours six hours later and not trying to get the plane on the ground.

we don't know when the fire start and we don't know a lot of things. what about the cargo hold itself. i have to imagine there was protective shell or casing. in case of a fire explosion. can you tell me about that? >> let's get back to the batteri batteries. because they are hazardous cargo, there should have been manifest list that the airplane tax takes off. we need to know how many batteries were on board and where they are located. they have the batteries. as far as the is you this is an amazingly safe airplane.

if there was a cargo fire detected, they would have been suppressed the. we know lithium ion batteries are very flammable and produce toxic fumes. perhaps while they were extinguishing the fires -- >> there a lot of ifs. >> they have a great fire suppression system and would evacuate the smoke and outside the aircraft if that was the case. >> if there was smoke or fumes and coming out of the area, these things were toxic and the very first thing. >> bells and whistles would be going off.

very toxic fumes that could make you unconscious. incidentally the fires could also cause circuit breakers to pop. the transponder could have been affected by this. fires are bad on airplanes if that's the case. >> i can imagine. we mentioned this phone call that the pilot made reported by the sun newspaper and the malaysian airlines ceo had the pilot made eight minutes before take off. is that unusual for a pilot or a copilot to pick it up before they head up in the air? i don't know what they are in malaysia per se, but and times

during flight that you are supposed to have your phone in airplane mode, pilots at times do things to -- they told me that. is that likely to be the smoking gun? probably not. >> i agree totally. it's common that we would use a cell phone to call somebody on the ground to help us with pushing the airplane back. it happens occasionally and we don't know where the phone call was made. i agree that this is not the smoking gun. >> finally we are bringing up the things we would like to know or you as experts. the last thing is the transcript between the cockpit and air traffic control.

that all right good night happened at 1:19 in the morning. my question would be why young those are not being made public yet? >> i think because this is such a sensitive situation and we don't know what happened. they are holding this is public information. the airwaves are public. if you had a radio you could listen at that point in time. it will be a matter of times until the government decides to do so. >> seth and buck, will you do me a favor and stick around? the questions keep coming not just from myself and my team, but the viewers. we will take the questions about this new equipment. those guys will stick around.

coming up next, there three million ship wrecks at the bottom of the ocean. that from an expert who will join me live in studio. he said finding this plane is looking like a needle in a haystack. the passengers. we will introduce you to many of them. their faces and families and personal stories. their lives. coming up next. ♪ humans -- we are beautifully imperfect creatures, living in an imperfect world. that's why liberty mutual insurance has your back, offering exclusive products like optional better car replacement, where, if your car is totaled, we give you the money to buy one a model year newer. call... and ask an insurance expert about all our benefits today, like our 24/7 support and service,

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. >> malaysia is asking for hydro phones in the effort to find that plane. we will show you right now what a hydro phone is. it is basically a microphone hung from a float.

they lower this microphone into the ocean in hopes of hearing pings from that flight data recorder. the trouble is there not many out there. people say it's like searching for a needle in a haystack. welcome to both of you. you were saying to me earlier, you were trying to find a place on the planet that was more difficult, a worse search area. you couldn't find one. >> it's a tough place to work. you are talking about a very remote location where the surface conditions are really rough. the curns and waves can be very high. on top of that you have approximately 12,000 feet of water underneath.

if you can explore on the bottom, the pressure down there is enough to crush concrete. it is incredibly rough. >> we are talking about this metal plane. i keep seeing this map showing off the coast of perth. you are putting it in better perspective. >> like fining a penny in manhattan. the one penny. not all of them. looking for one. you talked to me on your e-mail about the ooze or muck. how deep is this stuff. can the plane sink down into this muck and keep going? >> it would go down a little bit. we call it ooze. let's the leftovers of all the organisms that live in the surface layers of the ocean and it makes this sticky mud on the bottom. that's where if there were wreckage where it would be found. >> where you lose your flip flop as you walk on the sand and it turns into muck. >> sure, but this part of the world can be from three miles

down to 12 or 13,000 down. just ship wrecks and only a tiny amount have been found. >> there is only a handful of submercibles. those have to be tethered to the ship. that brings in another problem where the ship may be drifting in one direction. it needs to be going in the other direction. staying on station and staying over the top of a search area becomes a challenge with 13,000 feet of cable. >> i keep getting the questions from viewers. where are the submarines. that's right. i'm glad you addressed that. >> no military submarines can go to that depth. >> like squishing a tin can if you put a hollow object down

there other than a deep see submercible. let me show you this. i know you love this graphic. you will get an idea. four hours out, two hours at station and four hours back, it's a ten-hour flight and that's the size of the area that they searched to date. that's all we got. that square. i'm sure they will be crisscrossing, but here's what we know about the bottom of the ocean. one stripe of high rez data, i will take to you california and show you what we know about this part of the ocean. i can almost find a giant clam here. there is so much better resolution. we never thought we would need it here. >> it's a very different environment. very poorly surveyed area off the coast of australia compared to the coast of california where

the folks have been able to cover a lot of that territory. this area off the coast of australia is incredibly remote. >> what about the currents. we keep talking about the possible debris and nothing about that. since this is such an incredibly remote area, the currents and all kinds of directions. >> it's complicate and there is one current that goes all the way around and that rips around and there is a current up the east coast and you can always spin off the eddys like a whirlpool that move them over long distances. that makes the job more difficult. when you go down the road, 98% of the world's oceans are unexplor unexplored. 98%. >> most of the planet has not been explored.

we tend to have the idea that we have surveyed everything there is to survey. it's not true. vast tracks we know nothing about and the challenges of working here are every bit as hard as working on the surface of mars. >> as we were staying a lot more about the surface of mars than the bottom of the ocean. >> could the missing plane have flown for hours and hours without anyone being at the controls. it happened before. it has a term for it called zombie flights. we will explain how that is possible. also just in. we are learning how much the united states is spending as in dollars and cents on the search for the missing plane. that answer as we continue our cnn special live coverage.

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. >> we have information on the jet component of the search. barbara at the pentagon, how much is this costing? >> the pentagon calculated it so far on the search since the plane went down, the u.s. military spent $2.5 million and they budgeted $4 million for it. they think that will carry them through early april in case it laughs that long. this is always a very tough issue. forces are training all the time. it's hard to calculate in terms of what they wouldn't already be doing. -it is a sensitive issue because

what matters is finding the fate of those 239 people on the aircraft. it's part of the coalition. 25, 26 nations doing everything they can to look for flight 370. >> if and when they hit the $4 million ceiling, they will have to readdress as they go? >> that's fair to say. certainly right from president obama down, the u.s. has publicly said they can do everything they can to find whatever it can that is perhaps debris from the plane or the fate of the plane. that's a good point. besides what the u.s. military is doing and other nations are doing to help, the u.s. law enforcement community and the fbi and faa and ntsb, all lending a hand to try to help the malaysians. >> barbara star, thank you so much at the pentagon here. breaking now on cnn, we are now learning more about what the copilot was saying about ground control. these are things he reportedly said before that phrase.

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if your denture moves, it can irritate your gums. try fixodent plus gum care. it helps stop denture movement and prevents gum irritation. fixodent. and forget it. . just about the bottom of the hour, we are following two big headlines on the hunt for flight 370. first off, lithium batteries were in the cargo hold of the plane. this is something cnn has been reporting. we first reported it last week. they are known for being very volatile. case and point, in 2010 a fatal

crash was attributed to lithium ion batteries on a u.p.s. cargo plane and we know lithium bat e batteries sparked and the other big development that reports of the mysterious phone call by the pile eight minutes before the plane took off in kuala lumpur, they are trying to figure out who might have been on the other end of that call. a chilling new theory is emerging here. could deadly fumes or a shortage of oxygen have turned flight 370 into a so-called zombie plane. let's go to martin savage back in the cockpit in canada for a demonstration of this theory. he is back with mitchell and the flight insurance with the so-called zombie flight.

>> let's go back to 370 which was two weeks ago. they have taken off on the way to beijing and they have reached the cruise altitude. this is the time we know as a passenger you will hear this. the distinctive ding of the cockpit. feel free to unfasten your seatbelt. this is the moment of the flight when you feel safe as a pilot. this is the safest time. >> we have a saying called flying relaxed, but not detached. you are a little bit more relaxed, but not detached. >> 7 feeling in the passenger cabin, there is another sound you will hear up here and that would be the fire alarm. suddenly the pilots realize somewhere on the aircraft there is a fire.

they can look at the read out on the screen and it shows this fire is emanating from the front cargo area. could be that the front wheel overheat and there is a fire in the electrical system. so the pilots immediately one of them might go down one level below us into that unit and look at the problem. you could be going to another airport. that is what commences the turn. while that is happening, the transponder shuts off. maybe the fire affected that or the copilot is unplugging the wires to shut it off like a burning toaster. the acars shuts down after that. maybe the same thing.

the pilots before overcome and pass out. because it made this turn, it will fly for how long? >> about hours worth of gas. that would have taken it down to where they are searching. >> the engines just ran out and it descends into the sea. that's the theory of the zombie plane. it's a plane without a brain because the pilots are incapacitated. >> thank you so much for that. i want to get right to this just into cnn. we now know what the pilots on board the plane said to radio control from the moments before take off and until this plane vanished with the final verbal communication from supposedly this copilot, all right, good night. the daily telegraph said it got ahold of the transcript that reveals the final 54 minutes of communication from the cockpit of this plane to ground control.

cnn has not been able to independently confirm that the transcript is genuine. this is what we are getting. joining me now, aviation and government correspondent and miles o'brien, pilot and cnn aviation analyst. i will kick it off with you. me what you have seen. does anything jump out as unusual? >> i haven't seen enough to make a at the same time. they got ahold of the acars transmission. that's the automatic e-mail component. it talks about it being a technical conversation. what you get are the tapes and routine handoffs. we are at flight level 350. they will say that and unless something goes srong.

>> let me come back to you. what have you seen? >> we do know that they will be posting it and we will be getting ahold of it and at this point we have not been able to get our hands on it and to be honest, the newspaper and the telegraph is transparent and saying they have not verified with the government they have not received information for them to say that it is authentic. this is why it's so important here. the only thing that we know of right now that was said is already, good night. that happened as they were changing airspace from the malaysian space and that's when all contact was lot of moments later.

was there anything said prior to that already good night and we are waiting too see if anything was raised that might have had a red flag. >> there was reportedly a call that was made six minutes before the all right, good night message delivered by the cockpit. what was that call? >> it's hard given what we know, but basically it is quite possible that six minutes prior that there was a routine conversation between air traffic control. acknowledging altitude or location. these kinds of things are routine aspects of flying. you have a lot of conversations like this as you go along the way. as you move from the range of one radio transmitter to another, you switch to a new controller. it's ground based.

that's what we would expect to hear. what's interesting is to see if there is any background noise or find out if they are talking. that could be telling. i would love to hear them. >> and we know the telegraph said they will be releasing it in about 20 minutes from now. they will be near the computer through that. let me stay with you. through this whole story, there have been so many questions and mine is about relationships typically between a pilot and copilot. this pilot was a veteran pilot and 18,000 flying miles. copilot was young. 27. are they close or share a lot and are they aware of what one another was doing? >> of course the airlines over the years have experienced a lot of bad mishaps and fatal crashes

because you have a tyranical captain and a junior first officer. the tyranical captain just said it's my way or the highway kind of thing and can fly them into deep trouble. the collisions from 1970s, that was the chief pilot for klm. he wouldn't listen. it was not a good idea to go down the runway. that's one way. we don't know. this could have been a healthy mentor-type relationship which is what they try to encourage. you have a high time captain with a low time first officer. that can go either way. >> miles o'brien, i will let you go and see you in a couple of minutes when the report comes out and when we can see what was said and wasn't said in the transcript prooer to take off. we are answering your questions about the plane live on cnn. everything from what submarines are doing to help in the search to why the plane was not picked up on malaysian radar when it

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. all right. on the plane story, you have a lot of questions. they continue to pour into us at cnn. let's help answer some of them. rejoining me from airline weekly and the commercial airline pilot and aviation expert. welcome back. let's begin with one question. this is from al all sten. they raise this point and you will be at flight 370. lives of loved ones, future of aviation can be uncertain without radioing every 15 minutes.

the equipment will be automatically tracking the airplane every second through satellite communication. this is technology that is on the way. it's now here and not every airliner has it. the older airplanes, this is not such an old airplane. >> it's not. >> unfortunately not equipped with the new technology. >> here's a question from allison. this is her question. why have we not heard anything about submarines in the search? wouldn't that help the efforts? your answer is what? >> good question. first of all, we may not hear if they were being used. a lot of submarines and navies are not going to tell us when they move those assets as they call them out of one place and into another. beyond that, submarines are more

useful when you narrow the field of possibilities. it's like if you picture painting your house and use a roller that paint most of the walls and touch it up with a brush at the end. they don't sweep ocean floors. they go down to fairly specific areas. great question though. >> good analogy with the painting. here's the next from sheila. if the flight took a turn to the left after flying a while and flew back over malaysian airspace, why was it not picked up on their radar? >> sheila, that's a fantastic question. when this is going on, i did talk to my friends in air traffic control and talked to them about radar. just a little back up here.

radar is a system that sends a radio beam out and hits an object and could be a cloud or a bird or obviously an airplane. that signal is returned back. from that the radar controller can see the blip on the screen. with this airplane we don't know what altitude it was at when it made the turn around. we are not sure if it flies back to radio cover annage. in order for them to see the airplane, it would have to fly back. the tron responder was not transmitting. this was an extra packet. they are seeing altitude air speed heading and identified the airplane. it's a specific code. that goes along with the radar blip. you are missing the packets. all you will see if it flies back is just a little blip and how long were they in radar coverage. you need many, many sweeps to be able to identify the airplane.

it is an airplane and where it's going. this is why the information is unknown at this time. we don't know how long it was there and what altitude. i hope that answers your questions. >> thank you for that. for seth and this is something i have seen a bunch. we talked about the possibility of the cabin lot of pressure. for the pressure from cynthia, are the pressure systems in the cabin and cockpit, are they separate systems and can someone in the cockpit disable oxygen in the cabin? seth? >> the pilot controls the airflow. certainly in the cabin. in aircraft you have zones definitely. you can have different temperatures, for example, if different parts of the plane. you have zones. but the idea that they could disable it for the rest of the persons and not for themselves would be difficult. you have ax jen masks so

theoretically possible that somebody was on a mask and others weren't. again, these are -- the idea that there were various people in the cockpit, the most likely scenario remains that there is one person in the cockpit who locked everybody else out of the cockpit. far from the others, the only scenario. when we see the pilot murder suicides over the year, thankfully not many, it almost always involves one pilot with the other. the big difference and the reason why this is an enigma, the crashes with 1999 and the air crash of 1997, the pilot that locked out of the pilot crashed the plane right away. why they would continue flying all those hours is a mystery. >> bringing up the cockpit doors and the looks, as a pilot, do

you think they should be there? >> absolutely. these doors were generated from a result of a tragedy 9/11 that happened here. before the cockpit doors, the new ones were installed, we had a paper thin door with a lock and key. anybody that had a key would be having access to the flight deck. we felt the door that had safety features and if for some reason the pilots were incapacitate and a crew member needed to get in, there were codes they could use. >> there codes. >> there. if they needed to isolate themselves from the back of the airplane, there is a dead bolt to take that door and shut it down and nobody gets through the door. >> i always wondered how it is

locked. interesting answer. thank you so much. >> crew members. >> some of them have codes. thank you so much for answering these great questions and thank you for your questions. keep them coming. coming up, why the search for the plane could have been made a lot easier if malaysia airlines invested a little more into the technology of this jet. so much conversation as we were talking comes back to technology. we are talking next about the $100,000 investment. we will focus on these 239 souls aboard the flight. the families in anguish not knowing what happened to their loved ones. we asked people a question,

how much money do you think you'll need when you retire? then we gave each person a ribbon to show how many years that amount might last. i was trying to, like, pull it a little further. [ woman ] got me to 70 years old. i'm going to have to rethink this thing. it's hard to imagine how much we'll need for a retirement that could last 30 years or more. so maybe we need to approach things differently, if we want to be ready for a longer retirement. ♪ i have a cold with this annoying runny nose. [ sniffles ] i better take something. [ male announcer ] dayquil cold and flu doesn't treat all that. it doesn't? [ male announcer ] alka-seltzer plus fights your worst cold symptoms plus has a fast-acting antihistamine. oh, what a relief it is!

. now to the heart of the story. the reason why you and i care so much. not for all that's unknown or the unprecedented nature of this global search. this is about the 239 people who have not seen, hugged, talked to their kids and soul mates and partners and family and friends in two weeks. here now is a snapshot of some of the lives so tragically interrupted. this wife and mother from india is the executive secretary of the international in support of fish workers in mongolia. her husband allowed cnn to read the note he wrote to his friends and family. this inner circle to thank them

for support. let me quote part of this. i remain focussed on what we have at hand by way of information and stay with the knowledge that she is strong and courageuous and her goodness must count for something are, somewhere. i carry the faith that the forces of life are eternal and immutable and ever present to keep the drama ever moving in the analysis i am neither favored or desserted. no one is he said. like his wife there, others were traveling on business. hollywood stunned man was headed home to deginning to see his two young children and pick up material for a current project. for weeks an energy from perth, australia was on the way to a mining job. the father of two young sons, the oldest was just three. he left his wedding ring and watched behind with his wife in case of the worst.

earlier on, they discussed what they wanted to do and for some reason before he left to go to mongolia, he decided to loaf them both behind and saw that the oldest child would give his wedding ring and the youngest should get his watch if something happened to him. >> others on flight 370 were traveling for pleasure. this man and his wife had been on vacation in vietnam heading home to beijing to their two young sons. she and her husband were taking a honeymoon they promised themselves for a long time. there were the lawsuit ones on the left in the burroughs on the right. two couples, four friends seeing the sights abroad together. americans were on 370. phillip wood from texas and father of two. and the other two with u.s.

passports are children. nicole mang is 4 and young jang is 2. it's unclear who they were traveling with. without favors from the families, there is nothing they can tell us about the children except that they are among the 239 missing. peoi go to angie's listt for all kinds of reasons. to gauge whether or not the projects will be done in a timely fashion and within budget. angie's list members can tell you which provider is the best in town. you'll find reviews on everything from home repair to healthcare. now that we're expecting, i like the fact

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>>. >> we begin with breaking news.

hour two. you are with me as we continue the coverage of the disappearance of flight 370. this is the news just in for two weeks. malaysia has been refusing to hand over the radio communication transcript between the cockpit and the pilots of ground control. we have supports from the british newspaper the daily telegraph they have the transcript. every word spoken from the moment before take off until this plane vanished with the final words, all right, good night. it's important to mention, cnn has not been able to confirm that this transcript is in fact genuine. that said, we are waiting for the news from the telegraph. they are waiting as well. the aviation regulation correspondent. specifically how much do we expect to see in the transcript. we are talking 54 minutes? >> right. 54 minutes from the moment they are pushing back from the gate.

typically pilots are speaking to either the controllers on the ground. they are telling them when to push back and when to taxy and go on the runway and cleared for take off. that's the typical communications that you would hear between the pilot and air traffic control. this british newspaper and the telegraph saying they obtained the 54 minutes up until that last communication that we all know of. all right, good night. that happened as the pilots were moving from malaysian airspace over to the next set of controllers in the vietnamese airspace and that's it. we didn't hear any other communications. we are waiting to see anything out of the ordinary or was it routine? they would be following the instructions of air traffic control and reporting back to air traffic control what their position and altitude is? we don't know yet. we are paying close attention to what it is revealed.

>> watching and waiting for that. let me follow-up for this. there two calls. no the to confusion everyone, but call reportedly made by the pilot before take off. eight minutes before take off from his cell phone. second report, there was a call a patiently made six minutes before all right good night when they were into the air and that happened at 1:19 in the morning. delivered by the cockpit. do we know more about that phone call? >> we don't. within this telegraph article that tells us they will be releasing the full transcript, they mentioned the call that happened six minutes before. it is unclear exactly what they are referring to and we do expect to get more clarity on that. what we know based on the facts is that acars system blasted down the last bit of information at 1:07. all right, good night happened at 1:19 and the tron responder

went off at 1:21 and sometime after that, the plane made the sharp turn. those are the facts we know so far. will we learn something new? thatry mains to be seen and literally within minutes we are hoping to see that transcript trickle down to us. >> we will go in front of the camera and we are waiting for this report of the communications between the copilot and the ground transportation posting online. we are getting more information and bringing two experts on stand by to analyze what we can learn and what we may not. also in a couple of hours, the next search by plane for possible debris from flight 370 will begin earlier. you had the low-lying surveillance planes and they flew about hours round trip from perth to get two hours of searching done in this remote prt of the indian ocean. let's go to perth to the correspondent. at this point in time, how much of the search area itself has

been combed through? >> the first day about 23,000 square kilometers and the second day about that much as well. we are looking at a total of 600,000 square kilometers they have to cover. they only did about 50. there is a lot of air and a lot of sea to cover. it is going to be difficult and arduous. what we did hear from the royal australian air force when they landed is continues are quite good. the weather here is not as great. the conditions there are quite good. they had a successful day at least as far as the conditions. they were not able to find anything. that is frustrating right now. the people who are out there on those planes that you are talking about, they are carried by hope. they are optimistic still, but in the same breath, they say we don't know what the debris is. brooke? >> just to underscore for us, it

is eight hours round trip just to go from where you are in australia to this search location and back. i think that just further hits it home for me how remote this area is. >> it's extremely remote. if you talk to people here in australia about how remote this is, they talk about this as being as far away as you can ever imagine. no one goes there. shipping channels don't go there. many commercial airlines don't go there. it is remote. nothing is around it. that is where they are trying to find this debris if it is indeed connected to the disappearance of this plane. hours round trip, yes. only two hours is what the time frame is. two hours is all they get before they have to turn back around. >> 3:00 in the morning where you are. thank you so much. live in perth, australia. the u.s. navy has sent this

brand-new cutting edge airplane into the search for flight 370. david matingly is standing by live in jacksonville with the p 8 poseidon aircraft. what does the plane do and how does it help? >> brooke, we got an extraordinary look in the plane flying over the ocean outside of jacksonville, florida here. it was really an interesting lesson we got. this is the most high tech piece of equipment they have. it has only been deployed as recently as december overseas. it is a brand-new aircraft and so much is classified. they were not able to take pictures of it. they have infrared capability and radar. they have very sophisticated cameras on there. yet the navy is telling me they are not making any promises in the search in spite of all that high tech equipment and the

sophistication. they have yet to narrow down the search area. because it's so far away, this aircraft is unlike the others and it flies faster and can get to the search area faster and cover more ground, it's out there just a maximum of three hours a day. using that equipment and that is a big remote area of the ocean. everything they are telling us is that this equipment is great, but until they have a smaller area to look at, they are afraid they won't be more productive. >> i don't know if you know the answer, but you talk about the technology on board this plane. how much would this aircraft set you back? >> well, this aircraft is made to search for submarines. it has sophisticated equipment to monitor underneath the waves and above the waves. it has a very wide area that has the ability to look and search. right now the area is so vast,

they really can't deploy and make use of a lot of the technology that they have. they are having to fly out there at a level of 1,000 feet. at that level, you are pretty close to the ocean. that's so they can pick up every object possible around them on this equipment. it's taking a lot of time and they are not able to get up to high altitudes because they really don't know what they are going to be looking for. it could be something as big as a large piece of an airplane or something as small as a floatation device or a cushion in the aircraft. they happen to be very low and that limits what they are able to see. >> i don't mean set you back geographically, but dollars and cents. how much do we spend on the planes? >> i don't have the dollar figures, but i can tell you -- >> not inexpensive. >> that's probably not a secret. what they have on there and it's all very expensive.

>> incredible. can't wait to watch a full report on the navy's search and rescue efforts tonight with erin burnett out front here on cnn. up next, we will look at the radar used to track planes, technology aboard planes like we were discussing and how the missing flight can change the way you travel. we have experts and accident investigator and a former 777 pilot ready to analyze the angles for us and we'll ask them about the communication between the cockpit and ground control. the news we are awaiting. plus analyzing what kind of ships and planes and helicopters are searching the area. are they equipped to handle the mission. what are the hurdles they will be facing? plus we are answering your questions. keep the tweets coming. i have seen greats on my twitter feed. #370 qs here.

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. >> new to cnn, more details on 54 minutes of communications of pilots of malaysia airlines from the time the plane taxied down the runway until the all right, good night. the final verbal communication. here's what we are waiting for. the daily telegraph said they have transcripts of the conversations between air traffic control and the cockpit. we are waiting for that. we have accident investigator rick gilespie and certified airline accident investigator as well.

welcome to you and since we don't know much at this point about the transcript, this is the only thing i will ask about that. that being what will you be looking for when it is released? >> i would like to hear the transcript from the time they pushed back until the last communication on all right, good night. that context ulizes how the flight was progressing. not unusual at all for that amount of communication in the departure phase of the flight. you would be able to make perhaps a sound comparison between the voice on the rest of the tape and the last communication. >> we are just talking about

reading a written transcript that claims they have. we are waiting for that. let me move along to you. little may be discussed about what the plane was carrying and specifically the lithium ion batteries. we heard today say they were in the cargo hold and he qualified them as not dangerous goods. do you agree with that? >> well, if they are properly containerized, yeah. it's an inherently dangerous object, but you don't let it on the airplane if it is not safely packaged. i don't these batteries even if they did start leaking, i don't see them causing the sequential shut down of systems that appears to happen. >> sounds like it was an accident on the u.p.s. cargo plane a couple of years ago that

that happened, but for every accident or issue, i'm sure there many others that don't make news in which a plane carries lithium ion batteries just fine. >> that's correct. one pilot was disagreeing with them. the factories, he was saying to me that there was a sort of protective coating or i don't know if that was the right word, but he was not sure if there was -- we don't know how many batterie batteries. this is to earth of you if that casing within the cargo hold would have held. >> it probably is not -- definitely is not an armored container or cargo hold. there side linings on that hold

for plastic materials. it's not unheard of that there is a fire in the hold and depending on which hold it is on the 777, there is fire suppression in some of the cargo holds on the aircraft. >> what about to you and bill to you, we are hearing reports that the pilot used his cell phone minutes before the plane took off and made a phone call. we don't know the nature of the call, but is the fact that the pilot hops on the cell phone, is that okay or not? >> well, i certainly would want to know who he was calling and what he was saying, but under normal circumstances i don't see anything unusual about it. >> would you do that? >> maybe he wanted to call home?

>> more and more it's becoming a normal usage for pilots getting very near the push back phase if they have to talk to or dispatch department, duty officers, or crew scheduling or even a late night goodbye to a wife or children or whatever. eight minutes is time enough to do something. your preparations are finished by that time and you are waiting for the push back time for everybody else on the airplane to get done with their jobs. that's a downtime for the pilots. we are fully repaired and that would allow you a little time to make a personal call or call inside to the company to clarify some issue. >> to both of you, because you have been reading and have been analyzing for days and days, now that you are armed with a fair amount of information that were lacking quite a bit in the story, rick and then bill, what

is your one piece of the puzzle that you would like to see that would help explain the greater mosaic of the story. >> i would like to know what else is in that cargo hold. i would like to see a complete manifest of not only passenger luggage, but airplanes carry cargo. if there was somebody who managed to take over, hostages don't seem to be the point. nobody knows you have them. is there something aboard the airplane that is of immense value to someone. i want to know what is in the cargo hold. >> what do you want to know? >> i want to hear the rest of the tape from push back to the last communication and i would like to know why several of the air forces in the area didn't respond to the violations.

after the airplane turned. i would like to know who was in possession of the passports that were stolen. those seem to be the individuals that potentially could have come into the cockpit and created a hijack if that's in fact what happened. >> one of the three is the transcript. we are watching and waiting to get that again out of the british newspaper claiming they have the 54-minute transcript between push off and the already, good night. gentlemen, if you are, stay where you are. we have a lot of viewer questions. let me turn to this emotional story. one husband of a passenger said he is not listening to the news. he is not waiting on officials, but he is writing about his grief. his story is next. ♪

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. >> now to the heart of why you care and why i care. so much about this story of the missing plane is not for the unknown or the unprecedented nature of the global search. this is about the 239 people who have not seen, hugged, talked to their kids and soul mates and partners, family and friends in two weeks. for the husband of one of the persons, he gave cnn just this personal glimpse of how his family's life has been now that it is tragically interrupted. his wife is from india and was on the plane heading to mongolia for work. he wrote a note to friends and family to thank them for support and he shared it with us here at cnn.com. he wrote in part, i remain focussed on what we have at hand

by way of information and stay with the knowledge that she is strong and courageous. her goodness must count for something somewhere. we spoke with her husband and she wrote this piece. she called it man's quiet reckoning on flight 370. thank you so much for joining us on your vacation none the less. we appreciate it. when i was reading your piece, what jumped out at me is unlike any of the other families who are holed up in the rooms, he wanted to stay home. he didn't want to hang on every word of the daily press briefings. why? >> that's right. he chose to stay at home in the indian city where he wanted to be surrounded by the people who loved him most. his daughter, his mother, his mother-in-law. he's a very quiet person. what struck me by what he wrote was that quiet strength coming out in his words.

he wasn't crying or publicly showing his grief. he sat down at his home and penned this very, very poignant letter to let his friends know how he has been managing this time. >> you found him and you spoke with him on the phone, that he trusted you to share this very personal note with you and cnn and the world. will you do me a favor and read more of it for us? >> sure. he wrote that for now, i remain open to news that point to clear incontrovertible evidence of what happened and actions taken or afoot that can bring the whole incident to a satisfactory close. what is a priority is information that is a step closer to bringing her back. for us to plan our next steps to redesign our life from here on. his daughter goes to college in delhi and she came home to be with her father. he went on to write that both he

and his daughter are reevaluating how they might rebuild a daily routine and manage their anxiety and longing for she for her mother and he for his wife. >> in the meantime, you write about in terms of him passing the time, how he is trying to stay in the present by meditating. >> yes. he practices a very ancient form of meditation in india and has relied on that meditation to keep his calm. he doesn't really believe in miracles. he wrote that miracles are a way of making sense of what apparently does not make sense. he is very practical about the news that he finally may get one day soon. at the same time he said that practicing the meditation and keeping calm is the way he copes with his anxiety. >> this is just one story and

face of the 239 people on board that plane. thank you so much. please, we urge you to read the full article. go to cnn.com. it's called one man's quiet reckoning on our home page. coming up next, we will answer your questions. you have tweeted me and you are asking about submarines in the search and the cockpit recordings. why we haven't heard more of the transcript yet. we told you about the numerous resources and all these countries including the united states are putting into the search. we will take a closer look at the equipment and the ships and the planes and the helicopters and what challenges they face over the vast ocean seas. i'll just press this, and you'll save on both. ding! ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, llllet's get ready to bundlllllle...

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. >> >> here in the united states and around the world on the disappearance of flight 370. we are getting reports of the daily telegraph that they got ahold of this flight transcript. every word spoken from the moment before this plane took off until it vanished with the final verbal communication from the cockpit, "all right. good night.." just to reiterate to you, we have not been able to emptily confirm that this transcript is yen win, but the telegraph is

reporting that something they say is odd. someone in the cockpit radioed in a message to ground control saying they were cruising at 35 thousand thousand feet. sounds normal. why might it be odd? they had just told ground control that fact six minutes previous. overall the determination here is that nothing seemed suspicious in these communications from ground control to the cockpit. we are waiting for more information on the transcript. two days of searching and there is no sign yet of possible debris picked out by a satellite scanning this remote part of the world, the southern indian ocean. more ships, more planes, they are on the way to the search area about 1500 miles off the west coast of australia from perth. the task at hand is daunting. this part of the world is remote. it is desolate and in a constant state of flux. cnn's tom forman is here in our

virtual room. help us understand what is involved in the search and what makes it so difficult. >> the reason we are hanging on every word is they need something, some clue to narrow this down. they tried to narrow it down to this area right here. they are racing time and frankly racing physics. that was much bigger a couple of days ago. now it's down here. why is it changed? it's changed this way because this is a very volatile part of the world and every hour that goes by the physics of the area are changing the search area and where they need to focus. everything they search changes that. let me talk about that. when you talk about searching on a water environment, you can fly over to look for things. yes you can bring boats out to look for things. even if you spot something in this part of the world, you may have currents that are moving at

two, three, 3 1/2 miles an hour. they go in different directions and tend to go east, but if one did go constantly and in 14 days, it can be hundreds or more than 1,000 miles away just based on the currents. everything they are looking at keeps changing. we want to go below the surface, it gets messier. down there beneath the waves, you have to deal with to two miles deep depending on where you are. you can send in a side scan sonar which is a torpedo-like thing that will paint an image of objects on the bottom of the floor. you can look at it like a big picture. by studying the contours, can you say is that part of a ship? you can't do this over the ocean floor. that takes a lot of time. to tow those through. you have to have a clue to get you close.

right now even that big area we are talking about, way too big for an operation like this. >> so incredibly frustrating and just the vast nature. i was talking to a man who knows the oceans very well and was trying to figure out if there was a part of the world more vast and isolate and not known and he couldn't find it. >> the confluence of the indian and the southern ocean. it's a difficult place to work. >> tom forman, thank you. a lot of questions from you. let's view some of your questions. rick gilespie and accident investigator and bill savage, former 777 pilot and certified airline accident investigator. let's get to it. bill, with you. you want this answer very badly. let's try to answer the why. why have we not heard the actual audio from the air traffic

control. why do you think? >> i'm speculating on that. the malaysian government would have that. air traffic control would have to produce that almost immediately. there would be a reason for propriety in evaluating that and you may not want to divulge everything at this juncture. the thing that troubles me again is the inflections on that tape would be very important to see if an emergency is transpiring and you might hear different inflections in the voice on the radio because of the adrenaline pump going on dealing with the emergency or somebody entering the cockpit or if the other crew member was trying to do something with the airplane, you would hear that in the voice.

your point about calling out the altitudes, every time you make a frequency change, the proper protocol which they are good at is to announce either if you are climbing, what level you are climbing through and have been cleared to and once you reach there if you are in cruise at 350, you announce that to the controller that malaysian 370 is with you at flight level 350. that's not unusual at all. >> you would announce it twice if you are changing frequencies? >> you announce it with every new controller. you verify the controller that gave you that clearance and tell him you understood that by repeating it and when the next controller comes on and you check in with him, you tell him the flight number and altitude you are flying at. that's why the last transmission is so troubling. the check off would include a clearance that was given to them for the next frequency and you would repeat that and sign off

with your call sign, malaysian 370. that didn't happen and it's troubling to me that is more is a vernacular of caucasians than asians. >> they said it's perfectly normal and i don't know if he's younger, we just don't know. >> you are asking westerners. >> right, right, of course. your point is fully taken. let me ask you because bill brings up the point about listening for inflections. erica wants to know in terms of voices, can we run a voice analysis to gauge the pilot's stress level to air traffic controllers. if there other instances of him signing off previous to that we could cross check. is that a possibility? >> it's a possibility if you have a base line to check it

against. you are going to need transmissions from the individual who is at a time when you know he is not under stress. that's why it would be important to get the actual recordings as bill has said of the back and forth between the ground controllers and the aircraft. that last transmission, "all right. good night." raises a couple of questions. what's all right? good night said this is the last i'm going to talk to you. there was an agreement between the controller and the copilot if that was him on the radio that the copilot would not be talking to him again and the copilot was in agreement with something that the ground controller said and you would expect the next communication to be with some other frequency to some other ground station. that's what's implied.

without the transcript, we don't know. >> we have to get the transcript. both to your points, not just the transcript, but you have to listen to hear the voices and points made lout and clear. rick and bill, thank you very much. keep your questions coming. we will continue to answer your questions tonight. make sure you tune in to watch the cnn special report at 10:00 eastern here on cnn. we want to switch the focus back to the lithium ion batteries that were in the cargo hold of this 370. we will go back live to the flight simulator to see what would happen if a fire did start. we will speak about the cockpit. you are watching cnn's special coverage. in my world, wall isn't a street... ...return on investment isn't the only return i'm looking forward to... for some, every dollar is earned with sweat, sacrifice, courage. which is why usaa is honored to help our members with everything from investing for retirement

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. one theory that is being discussed because of malaysian airlines ceo said there were in fact lithium ion batteries in the cargo hold. could there have been a spark or a fire because of the batteries. back to martin savage and mitch. martin, what do you think of this idea? could the fire have spread through the cargo hold to where you would be sitting in the cockpit. >> no question that there was a lot of what that fire could do that sort of makes sense for the scenario we are talking about. it's about the worst thing you could anticipate as a pilot. >> as far as emergencies and fire, that's the worst thing you could have. the way it would happen in the cargo hold if it were batteries or something else that caught fire, the way we will know about it first, you will get the bells and the screen that will light

up and give you indications that you have a fire. this is a test right now. it would show you exactly where this fire is located in the aircraft. if it's on the engines, these light up. the apu light up. if it's the cargo hold, you have an automatic fire suppression system that should kick in. >> we would have that center screen and the discharge button indicating that the fire has exploded so it's being used. >> if it didn't happen, you could make it work manually. if that continues to spread, this is where the pilot comes in. if the smoke gets so dense, you can't open the window. the pilots are overcome and that's how the character goes down. >> okay. martin and mitch, thank you very much in the virtual cockpit for us. coming up next, we will talk about the passengers' families and options if they are talking to lawyers.

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>> reporter: 239 people aboard a giant aircraft that disappears into the night. government officials still piecing together information. family members are understandably outraged. but even if the victims are never found, liability insurance can help their families. though that process likely won't be easy. >> one of the procedures is to ensure that in a disappearance like this, there is a presumption of death. >> reporter: in some countries, the ruling could be difficult to get but it's essential in filing a claim. victims' families have protection under what is known as the 1999 montreal convention. it lays out where liabilities can be brought including the country's airline headquarters and where the ticket was bought,

a passenger's permanent resident. whether the victims are found or not, a basic cause of disappearance will be determined. >> from a legal view, it's not an unprecedented situation where an aircraft has not been recovered and, indeed, legal cases have been made out many times where the aircraft is not recovered and it's done through, you know, what's called really circumstantial evidence. >> reporter: that evidence will point to one of two scenarios, that the disappearance was caused by an intentional act like terrorism, suicide, or sabotage. in that case, the airline would be responsible. or a mechanical or system issue is to blame. boeing could be brought into the claim leading to an even bigger legal process. the claims must be filed on a passenger-by-passenger basis through a complicated payout

process and legal obligations. unfortunately, with the victims' families having gone through so much at the center of it. alison kosik, cnn, new york. >> let's talk about this with dr. rosenberg. arthur, welcome. we know that some insurance payments have been made to these families, even though obviously they are still looking for the plane. what are the payments for? >> sure. the way this works it is this. there essentially is an agreement under the aviation disaster family assistance act. it's also made relevant through international flights through international understanding. what happens is that the government tells the airline to pay for the family's basic economic needs, food, shelter, if they have mortgage payments, car payments, something to get through this horrendous period.

>> okay. >> that comes out of the insurance that the airline has it is required to have under the montreal convention. beyond that, if you'd like me to go with that, i can take you down that road. >> go ahead. finish your thought. >> these families need representation and guidance because they will have to file claims within a two-year period. it's mandatory. now, in order to file the claim, as the segment said, you have to have a finding of death. that's nothing extraordinary. especially in an accident like this, there's a presumption of death that allows you to move on. in the montreal convention, the first is a strict liability. these family members are entitled to essentially 170,000 american dollars, plus or minus. and beyond that, they then have to show that the airline was

somehow negligent and then their damages are unlimited. whatever they can prove, they -- >> let me pause it there. in order to prove this, would it be better for the families to file these lawsuits case-by-case or to all band together and file as a group? >> no. in these kinds of cases, there really is no class action because everyone's damage situation is unique. the cases must get filed individually. but that being said, on the liability side of the equation, the courts will consolidate all of these individual cases together for a uniform discovery, uniform proceedings and then individual damage trials will be held for each family member. >> as the days and, heaven forbid, weeks continue on, we're going to be talking about many more legal angles in the future. we're out of time. thank you so much for your expertise. we'll be calling you again and we'll take a quick break. back after this. [ female announcer ] it's the yoplait greek taste-off. two greek blueberry yogurts, one winner.

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♪ that's what everything should mean. ♪

♪ told ya you could do it. (dad vo) i want her to be safe. so, i taught her what i could and got her a subaru. (girl) piece of cake. ♪ (announcer) love. it's what makes a subaru, a subaru. tomorrow is world water day. one man and his nearly 70,000 volunteers have removed more than 7 million pounds of garbage from rivers. during that work, 2013 cnn's hero of the world has accumulated one of the largest message in the bottles collection. >> this is a message in a bottle collection that we have collected over the years. it's cool to find them because you never know where they came

from or who they came from. this is pretty cool from the '93 flood. it had a flag on it. this is a bunch of lottery tickets. i don't know if they are winners or not. obviously not. this is cool a picture of bill clinton. that's pretty neat. some of them have been found three or four times and passed on and it will keep going down the river and down the river. this one had money in it with positive stage so you could send it back to them. i haven't done that yet. probably should. stamps have gone up since then, though. this is a voodoo one. it had nails in it and a note in it with a string tied on it. it said, you are bound now, you are bound now. there's actually a lot of them that are pretty heavy. they are written to a lost loved one and it's not meant to be kept. it's fun to find them. it's fun for the volunteers.

it's a pretty unique collection. it's pretty cool. >> you know someone like chad. go to cnnheroes.com. "the lead" with jake tapper starts right now. >> every word the pilots of flight 370 said during the time that the investigators believed the plane may have been sabotaged. i'm jake tapper. this is "the lead." a new report claiming to reveal all of the communication from the pilots to air traffic control. does any of it reveal what went wrong aboard that vanished plane. plus, australia's taking the lead following one of the most