>> it's an honor to meet you, sir. thank you for your service. >> all right. >> thanks to my new friends at the cnn digital studio. the latest on flight 370 with don lemon starts now. >> good evening, everyone. this is a cnn special report. the mystery of flight 370. i'm don lemon. we have breaking news for you tonight. planes are in the air right now, searching the southern indian ocean for traces of flight 370. britain's telegraph is reporting it has a transcript of 54 minutes of communication between the cockpit and air traffic control. and u.s. investigators say so far, they see absolutely no sign of a terror plot. their leading theory is the whole thing was a tragic accident. but they can rule nothing out. there are still more questions than answers. you have been tweeting your questions by the thousands.

we've got top aviation and security experts standing by to answer them throughout this hour. like this one. if the zombie plane theory is true, what would the condition of passengers be? would they be overcome by fumes, as well? why is there no satellite footage showing this plane from the time it disappeared just like there is of alleged debris? and what is the next step if no wreckage is found? is it piracy? let's go wright to pamela brown and richard quest. it is morning in the search area. what is the very latest now? >> reporter: from what we understand, the planes are in the air. right about now is when we should be getting the very first planes approaching the critical

area. it's about four hours for the plane -- for the first plane to fly down there. it is 10:00 a.m. local and they're just about now starting to scour what they are calling a 37,000 square foot area that they hope to clear out by today. it's a very big area. they're using a combination of military planes, as well as civilian planes. so they're trying to do a two-prong approach. good old fashioned eyeballs, spotters on the planes, radar on the military planes. >> pam, i want to ask you about the significance of two pieces of information today. one is a cockpit cell phone call made by the pilot. we got a tweet, this one is from jeanetta. she says if the pilot made a cell call, why haven't they found out to who? because if police can get a record from a cell company within hours. what do you know about this

call? >> we can tell you that malaysian officials acknowledged in a press conference this morning that they were looking into reports of a call that was made from the cockpit just moments before takeoff. they wouldn't elaborate anymore than that. but what we can tell you, don, is that investigators have put together a complete profile of both of the pilots. they have been interviewing family members, neighbors, looking at phone records, and at this point, speaking to sources, my colleagues have been speaking to sources. at this point they say there is nothing to indicate or link these pilots to the disappearance of the plane. so important to keep that in mind. >> pam, that other piece of information was about the pilot's flight simulator. what do you know? >> right now we know that there were some deleted files. in fact, there were more deleted files more recently than previously thought. malaysian officials had said those files were deleted on

february 3rd. but sources are saying now that simply they were deleted more recently than originally disclosed. so forensics experts are working to find out not only what is in those deleted files but of course, how they were deleted, if they were strategically deleted or scrubbed clean in a more sophisticated way. >> i have to ask you, why did the malaysians tell us nothing had been deleted since february 3rd? >> we simply don't know. we've been asking our sources that, we don't have an explanation. we don't know what kind of technology they were using. i want to make it clear that sources are saying that at this point there hasn't been a smoking gun found in the hard drive. this could have been just very innocent routine deletions that we all do on our computers and phones. >> richard quest now, transcript of the communication between the pilot has been released from the daily telegraph.

i believe it was 54 minutes. anything stand out to you? >> no. the bit that everybody is picking up is that there was a repeat of a message that the flight was maintaining altitude at 35,000 feet. that could just be he was requesting or annoyed that he wasn't getting a higher altitude. and then you've got the final part where he says, all right, good night, which at best, that's the one they're looking at right now. >> cnn hasn't independently went over these, but you did go over them. >> i've been over them. they went from english to mandarin, back to english. from my look at it so far, there is nothing untoward about that transcript. >> all right. thank you very much. richard, stick around with me throughout the hour. i want to check in with cnn's

martin savidge. he is in a 777 flight simulator. martin, every night we've asked you to take a look at a scenario in this flight simulator and answer a couple of questions for us. tonight, we would like to look at this theory about a zombie plane flying on after the flew and passengers were unconscious or dead. this says, if the theory is true, what would the condition of the passengers be? would they have been overcome -- be overcome by fumes as well? martin, can you take a look at that for us and report back a little bit in the show? >> reporter: we absolutely will. we've been planning it out in the simulator. the zombie plane is an aircraft where everybody is out, there's no human intervention. it is a plane flying without a brain, zombie. yeah, we'll show you in a bit. >> martin savidge, thank you very much. richard quest is back with me.

he's looking for updates every single moment. >> we've got the hash tag, so you will forgive me, i hope. i'm looking down because we want to bring you the very latest. >> the questions are really good, so we want to get all of the questions and we'll have our lightning round. >> i'm not being disrespectful, i'm looking at the new questions coming in. >> i'm glad to have you here. we also have jeff wise, author of "extreme fear." arthur rosenberg is a pilot and mary schiavo now represents victims of transportation accidents. and jeff beatty is a former cia and fbi and former delta force officer. arthur, looking at these transcripts from the cockpit, i have a question for you and richard from barbara, okay? here is what barbara says.

barbara says, isn't co-pilot's "all right, good night" consistent with his lax attitude towards regs such as having ladies in the cockpit? >> first off, i guess i'm the guest that's going to disagree with richard. i think this transcript is very significant, and i'm looking down only because i'm looking at the transcript. the bottom line here is, at the time of the firsthandoff when they took off from the tower to the kuala lumpur radar atc, the co-pilot repeated the frequency, 132.6. as you move down the line, we get into what i believe to be the accident sequence. at 1:07, acars did the last report. we have the navigation change. >> what are you saying there? >> i'm saying at the time of the next handoff, it was all right, good night without a repeat of the frequency. in other words, at that moment,

this accident sequence was in process. it seems to me that the co-pilot was returned, that he had other things on his mind. he had repeated all the instructions previously and he did not at the critical moment. >> you don't necessarily agree there's anything significant in that. do you think there's credence to anything arthur just said? >> yes. one of the important things that arthur does make is because the co-pilot or the pilot not flying doesn't say that there's a mechanical or there's a fire, he doesn't give any warning in this crucial 1:07 to 1:19 period, it makes it look more difficult that something was happening. where i take issue with arthur is his leap into assuming that something was going on nefarious at that time. >> jim tillman, we learned today that the pilot made a call from his cell phone before the plane departed. is there anything unusual about that? did you as a pilot, i don't know

if it was cell phones, but would people call. anything unusual about what he was doing? >> i've seen it done. recently i've seen it done, and no one thought any differently about it. it was a pilot who may be letting his family know something that he felt was important for them to know. >> jim tillman, richard quest is about to jump out of his seat over here. why? >> because of all the flight attendants and pilot friends i've own. unlike you and me that have a phone that we can use at the drop of a hat. they are trapped in a metal tube and they always make calls. >> i have a friend who is a pilot and he texted me saying i'm about to take off, bla, bla, bla. jeff wise, question. this is from sue mason.

it says, why is there no satellite footage showing this plane from the time it disappeared just like there is alleged debris? would the plane show up on satellite images during the time it was in the air? >> that's a great question. i wanted to divert the question a little bit. we've been reporting some very significant news, which is a lot of the people on the panel here with me have been pining all week for some particularly significant piece of data, which we finally got. and it's got a lot of value. if you would allow me to explain it a little bit, it might be worth your while. >> okay. you're here. >> i'm hot under the collar. >> go ahead, jeff. >> we all remember last saturday, a significant development in the story is when the prime minister of malaysia got in front of a press conference and said they had, with the cooperation and assistance of the united states investigators, decoded the significance of a ping that was

sent from the aircraft to satellite over the indian ocean. a satellite overhead. they were able to determine these arcs that you've seen. this one ping has given us these two big arcs that have really been the underpinning of everything we've been talking about all week. very significant. so significant that many of us said wait, there were seven pings. what about the other six? what can we learn from them? finally today, we got some information straight from the horse's mouth. straight from a company based in great britain. what they said was this -- each ping that wass received every hour from 2:10, 3:10, the last one at 8:10, each one was at a location more remote than the previous one.

>> what does it mean? it was not on its scheduled path? >> we of course know it wasn't on its scheduled path because it didn't wind up in beijing at 6:00 in the morning. >> what does it mean then? >> this greatly narrows down the corridor that this plane must have traveled, either to the north or to the south. this is geometry, and it's sym efrgs trical. why does this path go? it no longer goes over the open ocean where there's no radar. one of the leading theorys is maybe this plane, as it was working to the northwest was heading for the open ocean so it could remove itself from military radar, fly in street out of sight and do whatever it

wanted to do. that's no longer possible. so where did it go? it went over indonesia if it went south. two days ago, the indonesian government said it did not go over our air space. they were looking at their military radar sons. >> i want to discuss the significance of this when we get back. but this is from my friend who is a pilot. what does he say, richard? >> he says, we're always on our phone. crew schedules, calls at the last moment, and lots of planes are equipped with wi-fi. the point is, even without being in flight, they are trapped on the plane for hours. and they make calls to friends and loved ones. >> what he talks about the satellites and pinging, that's very important. we'll discuss that when we get back.

and we'll answer more of your questions. when we come back, searching for any trace of flight 370 in the middle of the most remote region on earth, as planes and ships crisscross the area. we'll bring you the latest on that. keep tweeting your questions to us tonight. we'll be right back. for retirement. but when we start worrying about tomorrow, we miss out on what matters today. ♪ at axa, we offer advice and help you break down your retirement goals into small, manageable steps.

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welcome back to cnn special report, the mystery of flight 370. our breaking news tonight, an international force of planes

searching the southern indian ocean for any trace of flight 370. but so far the world's most advanced technology is no match for the vastness of the ocean. with so much advanced technology, why can't a 777 be located? well, tonight, we are taking a closer look at one of the most remote locations on earth. just how challenging is the search for flight 370? here's cnn's alexandra field. >> reporter: on the horizon a small window of opportunity opening in one of the world's most remote regions. >> the weather is clear, they have good visuals from the aircraft. the waves will die down a little. >> reporter: 20-foot waves forecast to subside this weekend as searchers scour a daunting swath of the south indian ocean for any kind of malaysian flight 370 and its 239 passengers.

>> so that's the most inaccessible spot as you can imagine on the face of the earth. >> reporter: 1400 miles off the coast of australia, the aerial search can last just a few hours at a time before pilots have to head back to refuel. >> that is in the middle of nowhere, so they're working with weather patterns that can really hamper any operation, any sea operation. >> reporter: a nasa simulation shows currents and turbulence if the two floating objects spotted by satellite are part of the missing plane, these water conditions could push them further east and likely further apart. some estimate those objects could be anywhere in a 15,000 square mile area. that's roughly the size of belgium. below the water surface, an even murkier picture. the sea floor is more than 9,000 feet down, deeper than most

submarines can go. >> the depth is a factor here. the terrain is a factor. describe what it would look like down there. >> like the rocky mountains. >> it's so challenging and for so many people, it's hard to wrap your mind around what they're doing and how difficult this is. >> reporter: if the objects and the satellite images can be found, if they're from flight 370, if researchers can use the ocean's currents to zero in on the plane's data recorder, finding it among those peaks and valleys could be each harder still. >> if it's in one of the deeper channels, that's going to be more of a challenge. >> a monumental challenge for searchers back under way tonight. richard quest is here with me. joining me now is captain tim taylor, an ocean explorer. also cnn's chad myers is in the weather center with us for a look at the very latest

conditions on this search area. so chad, to you first. you've been monitoring the conditions in the search area. there's a storm forecast there tomorrow. what is the impact on the search as they search for the debris? >> this is a visual search. i know there are planes with instruments and the kind of things that they can look through the debris and into the water. but when you have guys with eyes and ladies with eyes looking down for a white airplane and all you see is white caps, you've got no visibility whatsoever. you're just seeing too much white stuff. today was a great day. today was absolutely flat, in relative terms. another storm comes tomorrow where we have 10, 20-foot waves. that was the last five days that have been really brutal. so i don't think it gets better from here, it gets worse tonight, worse tomorrow and we have a window tomorrow, but monday and tuesday, not so good.

at least we're not further south. further south, we're talking about the roaring 40s here, we're talking the screaming 50s down to the south, winds down there 60 miles per hour. >> thank you, chad. i'm going to get tim. tim, so glad you're here. i wanted to get you on earlier to talk about this, because conditions really are very tough. you are an ocean explorer. i have a question about what happens to debris in the waters. this is from bradley who says, how could the 79-foot object be a wing? wouldn't thousands of pounds of solid steel sink? isn't that true, wouldn't it sink? >> there are ships made of concrete. so one would think concrete would sink, as well. but they have buoyancy characteristics. there is a formula that will basically tell you if the object displaces enough water that

weighs more than itself, it will float. if it's less than itself, it will sink. the best way to explain that is if you're a scuba diver and you add air to your bc and you rise up, it's not the air that makes you rise, you're just displacing more water with something that weighs a lot less and you rise up. >> tim, another question to you. this is about searching for possible wreckage. this is from anthony. he says how long will it take to find the actual wreck if these satellite photos check out? from the very beginning when we were reporting this breaking news the other night, we said this is 100% they may never find this. >> that's correct. and if this is the site, it's still going to take a long time. it's 14 days. every day that ticks by, the possible location widens out. this is the same thing going the

other way. once you find the debris, you've got to track it back. unless it's going around in a circle, it could be thousands of miles away and they have to narrow that down with basically computer programs and as much data as you can, and then getting probabilities and starting a search, and it's going to be a massive search after that. >> can you summit up to our viewers. there are many areas of the ocean, much of this is unexplored. we seep saying needle in a hay stack, but you would have better odds with a needle in a hay stack. >> everybody with the technology thinks that everything is mapped and that's just not true. as an explorer, the oceans are not mapped. we have pictures of them in the '60s. you look on your maps and you see mountain ridges, but that's like taking pictures of the moon. we know they're up there, but you don't have a picture close up. it takes money and you have to

send the cameras to the place. so to send cameras to the bottom of the ocean, they have to be 30 meters off the bottom to get close up, and you have to send the cameras down there. >> chad, i want to talk to you about this. i don't know if you've ever seen the bbc, the blue planet. it's just fascinating. chad, i want to get to you because you've been working on something. this is a tweet from joe graham. you took a look at joe's claim. what did you find? >> the latitude was good, the longitude is completely off. we're at 1300 miles away on the longitude here. if he's implying that maybe we

got something wrong with east and west, north and south, it would have to be right here just to the south of perth, and i don't think there are any coincidences. i would believe the singapore airlines 68 shadow theory before i would think about this. >> chad, thank you. when we come right back, we'll answer more of your questions, including one very popular one. could submarines find the plane? keep tweeting us. ameriprise asked people a simple question: can you keep your lifestyle in retirement? i don't want to think about the alternative. i don't even know how to answer that. i mean, no one knows how long their money is going to last. i try not to worry, but you worry. what happens when your paychecks stop? because everyone has retirement questions. ameriprise created the exclusive confident retirement approach. to get the real answers you need.

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