finding flight records that remain a part of the airplane. thank you for watching. we'll see you next saturday. i hope saturday morning has been good to you so far. thank you for sharing your time was here. i'm christi paul. >> i'm victor blackwell. you're in the "cnn newsroom." >> the breaking news we've been following for you already this morning, the search for flight 370. >> china has new is a light images and they're showing a large object. here it is. floating in the southern indian ocean. this object is 74 feet by 43 feet. about 77 miles from where previous satellite images spotted two large pieces of debris, maybe, but we're calling them objects floating there.

china plans to send out ships to try to find this new object. >> in the meantime, the search for those other two pieces of -- or these other objects, i should say, goes on. we're talking about six planes scouring the area for a third day today. no traces were found, however. they came back, at least a kouchl couple of the planes, and found nothing significant. weather is deteriorating though in the search area. australian official says the operation going to continue despite that. >> also multinational flotilla forming a search. a norwegian cargo ship is already there. diverted from its onlial end point. austral australia, malaysia is spending planes to the planet's most remote areas. >> the revelation of the satellite images came as flight cruise wrapped up, as i said, this third day of searches as they look for the other two pieces that we were talking about. those spotted by an australian satellite but we're in a whole

new phase of this now because, as you said, we're 75 miles away looking at something different. >> yeah. and is it still in that position. this was four days ago when that picture was taken by the chinese officials. cnn andrew stevens is at the royal australian air force base in perth where the search flights have been taken off and landing. andrew, what did searchers have to report after they came in after a day of looking in those waters? >> thank you. we just got an update. it's an interesting update, too. the search coordinators are saying that one of the commercial flights involved now in this search spotted what it described as small bits of debris on the sea. they identified one as a wooden pallet but that's all. so the search team diverted one of the new zealand long-range surveillance planes to that area to take a look for himself. it reported seeing nothing unfortunately. said all they could see were clumps of see weed down there but they did drop a market in

there and one of the commercial ships of the two commercial ships that are now in that zone is going to investigate further tomorrow. so we should perhaps by this time tomorrow have a better idea of what those small bits of debris are. as far as the chinese satellite picture, this new news coming out. it looks like that satellite picture came about two days after the australians we leased theirs. so this piece of debris can't be the same as australian satellite images because it could not have floated that far in just two days. so that is another interesting lead, which will be pursued tomorrow. it's not that far away from where the australians reported their two large objects. so it is in the search zone. perhaps a little surprising it's being picked up by the flights around the region so far. all flights will be back out tomorrow. in fact, the whole operation is

ramping up. we've now got two chinese military on the runway here just outside of perth. they bring additional operating -- plus good old-fashioned spotting through human intelligence, if you like. actually using the eyes. at which the australians are saying becoming more crucial here. it's okay to identify these objects from a satellite but you've got to get very close up to see whether they are, in fact, linked to mh-370. we may get more news on that in the next 24 hour or so. >> all righty. >> andrew stevens there for us in perth. andrew, thank you. >> thanks. the u.s. is combing through its satellite data to try to find fresh images itself. satellites all over the place, from all countries looking at this. >> that's true. the navy is also looking at how military undersea technology might help find the plane. let's go to cnn pentagon correspondent barbara starr.

barbara, tell us more about how and what will be done to try to locate this suspected object that was tracked by china satellites. >> well, andrew really pinpointed the problem here. when the satellite image shows something basically passing underneath the satellite's field of view it's very hard to go back then and figure out where that object may be several days later. the seas are very rough down there, the current, the wind, the movement of the water. so a satellite image several times now only gives you really a basic area to start in. that's why they're sending aircraft out and why, as today, when they spotted something else, they drop a marker in the water. and it has a gps system on it that allows for that very precision tracking while the aircraft has to go away. they have to follow it somehow, a ship can come back, find the gps location and hopefully find what they're looking for. it's the eyeballs that are going

to do the trick here, many people believe. because they have to get up close. they have to see exactly what it is and whether there's even some remote chance that it's part of the airplane or just some debris floating through the ocean. >> barbara, we know there's been a lot of shared resources here and u.s. military undersea technology is, as i understand it, possibly the next step to try to find something? >> yeah, you know, you're right. defense secretary chuck hagel at the malaysian minister of defense and transport spoke yesterday on the phone. and the malaysian minister asked secretary hagel for help with undersea surveillance technology. hagel now has ordered some of this top commanders to look into what is feasible, what the real need is, what equipment the u.s. has. it's going to be a little bit tough. undersea surveillance technology is some of the most classified u.s. military technology. it simply cannot be handed over

to another nation. and they probably, in all candor, wouldn't have the ability to use it because it's so classified and so particular to u.s. military systems. so the question is, what are the malaysians really need in undersea surveillance once they find the wreckage, if they do, hopefully, to conduct a salvage operation and bring it up and even before that, an undersea acoustic technology. so when debris is found and then they can start from that point looking for the data recorders, they want the technology to be able to help go look for the data recorders. but that's a long way off right now. >> all righty. barbara starr, we thank you so much for the report. good to see you this morning. >> thank you, barbara. u.s. just one of 26 countries assisting in the search and the investigation and even with so many teams from around the world, searching this area is still incredibly difficult. >> yeah. we're talking at one of the most dangerous, treacherous parts of

the ocean in the world that has been described by many experts this week. cnn's alexander field gives us a better idea here. >> reporter: on the horizon a small window of opportunity opening in one of the world's most remote and punishing regions. 1 20-foot waves forecast to subside this weekend as searchers scour a daunting swath of the south indian ocean for any sign of malaysia airlines flight 370 and its 239 passengers. >> it's about the most inaccessible spot that you can imagine on the face of the earth. >> reporter: 1400 miles off the coast of australia, the ariel search can last just a few hours at a time before pilots have to head back to refuel. >> that is really in the middle of nowhere. and so they're working with weather patterns that can really hamper any operation, any sea operation. >> reporter: a nasa simulation

show s currents and turbulence f the two floating objects spotted by satellite are part of the missing plane the water conditions could push them farther east and likely farther apart. some oceanographers estimates the objects, some of the strongest leads in the case, could be anywhere from a 15,000 square-mile area. that's roughly the size of belgium. below the water surface and even merckier picture. the seafloor sits more than 9,000 feet down, deeper than most submarines can go. the mid ocean ridge, rising from it, making the search even more difficult. >> 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 so hard to get, wrap your mind around what they are doing and how difficult this is. >> reporter: if the objects in 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 even harder still. >> if it's in one of the deeper channels, that's going to be more of a challenge. >> right now the focus though is on finding nose floating ones and a lot of that really depends on the weather. all the waves were forecast to die down a bit as the search party headed out in australia on saturday morning, searchers now el us they were met with dense fog when they did head out. we know now the conditions are expect to deteriorate by the time they head out tomorrow. they will be dealing with wind and some rain. christi, victor? >> alexander field, hopefully this weather clears soon to continue this search. thank you. we're going to continue obviously this conversation as we wait, too, today for -- to hear from chinese officials about the satellite image. they said we were going to get an update. but also, watching what's happening with russia. they've sent thousands of troops to the southeast ukrainian

border now. why u.s. officials are concerned that they might be planning further incursions into that country. plus, tracking the breaking news in the search of missing flight 370. as you heard, a suspicious floating object spotted by chinese satellites. up next, what search crews are up against. ♪ ♪ so you can have a getaway from what you know. so you can be surprised by what you don't. get two times the points on travel and dining at restaurants from chase sapphire preferred. so you can taste something that wakes up your soul. chase sapphire preferred. so you can.

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time is working against these search crews in the hunt for flight 370. the beacon's on the plane ice flight data reporter has 15 days of battery life left. >> twuns juice runs out the devices that rung the ping to locate the faith plane, they're going to fade. that compromises the search.

>> let's talk about two elements here, the investigation and the search. let's bring in former fbi agent. aviation lawyer and veteran pil pilot arthur rosenberg. hello. >> thank you. >> how are you? >> doing well. let's talk about this suspicious object detected by chinese s satellites. how difficult is it going to be top find this in these rough seas? i want to come to you first, considering that we just got this report of a sighting of some small objects with the naked eye. when someone went back they found a wooden pallet. there's a lot of stuff there in this south indian ocean. >> right. >> victor, as a former investigator, you know, the families and finding the plane is the number one priority. after that you look at airport security matters and look at what can investigators can doing back on malaysia's mainland and looking at the passengers closely. this may be something that is

nontraditional. it may be a nontraditional form of terrorism. it might be a form of suicide terrorism. all of these things will eventually need to be looked at. finding the plane, very important. the families need to be, you know, at peace about what happened here. you got to also keep in mind it took over two years for the air france black box to be found. so this is not something that i think is going to happen fast. in the meantime, the investigators should be working extremely hard talking to the families of every single pilot and passenger on that plane, looking at that computer hard drive that we talked about earlier, that's where there's going to be evidence if any of these individuals on that plane were planning to do something and if they were, what were they planning to do and for what purpose. >> all right. so, i want to ask you, arthur, you know, i mean, as a aviation attorney, as a veteran pilot, when you look at where we're looking in the middle of the

indian ocean, what do you believe might have happened to get that plane all of the way down there? we've looked at everything from zombie planes this morning. there are so many theories out there. that in your gut, what do you believe, especially when we see these new satellite images coming in and more objects. we want to call them suspected objects. we don't want to call them debris because we don't know that. as you see more of this information come in, what does your gut tell you? >> well, that question is probably going to require 15 or 20 minutes for me to answer. be that as it may, let me just focus on the debris first. the report is this thing was 45 feet long by 43 feet wide. so i went back. i looked at the 777. the wings are about 200 feet, 100 feet on each side. the wing root where the wing kind of joins into the fuselage that we all see that to me looks like it's about 40 feet. so this piece doesn't fit into

that. the horizontal and vertical stabilizer t in the back of the plane, they're about 35 feet long, and that piece doesn't jive with that. the fuselage i think is about 20 feet wide. so what we're looking a really doesn't matchup to any section, wing stabilizer of the airplane. so i'm not really sure what it is. >> can i ask you something quickly? we did get somebody on twitter who said that aircraft skins are built to flex when pressurized. this could be the fuselage folded out flat. is that a possible or no, are you saying no? >> i say no. >> okay. >> first off, fuselages expand but you're talking about it's a composite metal structure. there's a skin on the outside and on the inside they have metal ribs. so, yes, sections of them could float. sections of the wing could float. some of them made of composite with honeycomb in between.

they're airtight. but the dimensions of what this thing is really doesn't matchup. and i just want to say one other thing. this satellite imagery released by the chinese is, again, information that's really too little too late. this is four days old. what were they doing? i mean, we're playing catch up throughout this entire investigation. and just to get back to the original sense of your question, this recovery effort is in one of the most treacherous waters on the planet. it's two to three miles deep. we're out there with all of these assets and resources, with radar, with sonar equipment looking for these pings. the pings from the cockpit voice recorder, digital flight data recorder, only go for about two miles. so if this thing is laying at the bottom of the ocean two to three miles dourn s down, it's be almost near possible to find it in my view.

>> when the acting transportation minister from malaysia this morning read out this note just handed to him, of course reporters had follow-up questions and he said this is all i've had, i've been accused of holding back information so i'm reading what i have. with good cause. we learned during the investigation that the malaysians had information on day one or two that wasn't released until day five or six. foria, my question to you. are we at the point or is there a point soon in which you see that maybe china, maybe the u.s., maybe france, countries with experience conducting these types of investigations can go to the malaysians and say, it's time for us to take over? >> yeah, victor, that's a great question. i mean, you know, just like americans we're very proud about who we are. the malaysians you can presume are almost very proud people. and for the government, you know, not to be producing the information at the rate that we expect them to, we may have put them in a defensive position. now, malaysia airlines, the

leaders of the malaysian government, maybe they are now very defensive. what we should do at this point is give them all the assistance they need. later on, if somebody else needs to take over this investigation, that's something that they can look at. one thing we need to keep in mind as americans and sometimes we look at all of the road in terms of our own eyes. malaysia hasn't had any big disasters so they may not be as up to date on reacting to a critical incident such as this. they do work with the americans. we do offer training. we do a class on critical incident management. and clearly it doesn't seem like they might have missed out on some opportunities to do a better job at this earlier stages. at this point i think we should offer them the assistance that they need. and i know they have asked for technical assistance related to sonar and underwater searches. and i'm sure that our embassy and our fbi office in kuala lumpur is working very closely

with the malaysian government. it does appear that they are on the defensive in terms of some of these issues now. >> we know that u.s. resources including the fbi, we spoke with our barbara starr about military resources going there to help in the search and investigation. foria, arthur, thank you both. >> thank you, victor. >> thank you for having me. >> christi. >> thank you. still to come, cnn's martin savidge is in that flight simulator. >> he's tackling one of the really most frightening theories that are out there about what happened to flight 370. hi, martin. >> the beauty of the simulator question try over and over different theories. the theories we're going to show for you now is the one where the pilots are the heroes and how all of that could have happened with a fire on board. coming up. with at&t's new pricing for families you get 4 lines on at&t's network... including unlimited talk unlimited text ...and 10 gigs of data to share. 10 gigs? 10 gigs. all for $160 dollars a month.

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25 minutes after the hour. and as we continue to monitor this morning's breaking news of this floating object spotted by chinese satellite in the search for flight 370, of course, we also want to look at some of the theories about what happened to this jet 15 days ago. >> everywhere you go somebody's got an opinion, somebody's got a theory. cnn's martin savidge is live in a flight simulator in ontario right now. martin, i know that you are going to walk us through one of the theorys that some people just think could it be possible because it sounds so far fetched. >> right. right. and that's, you know, the great thing about this simulator is that we can take every one of those theories, and there are many, and put them all to the test to literally see if they will fly. i've got a lot of people who think, martin, must be sick of it by now. trust me, i'm not. this is a fascinating room to

sit and experiment. let's give you one of the those experiments. essentially what we've done, set this flight up just as 370 was now 15 days ago. taken off from kul la lup pualam beijing. reached 35,000 feet. so as the pilot, i would do this. you get that familiar sound which is that you can now get up and move about and there would probably be an announcement. this simulator has everything. and this essentially telling the passengers we reached cruising altitude and you can move about and relax. however, up in the cockpit this simulator and this theory goes that there could be something like this. this is the fire alarm. instantly the pilots would know we've got a problem. our computer screen would read out and identify where that fire was. in this particular place, it would be listed as the cargo

hold. so knowing that, we would quickly look up here to the fire panel and discharge the fire bottles back there. essentially the fire extinguishers. you have fire retardant dumping down there and you are hoping this is enough to extinguish the blaze. in the meantime mitchell would already be starting to turn us back either to where we came from or to the nearest airport. we want to get down low and we definitely want to start talking on the radios to get us into an emergency landing because fire is about the worst scenario. however, it's possible that the co-pilot could now be down below in the electrics bay trying to unplug whatever it is that is causing this fire. that's why the transponder went out at one point and that's why the acar system goes out at one point. they work and try to bring this plane under control, and under

this theory, they do. they eventually are able to get the plane level and to get it back on autopilot. but the blaze continues to burn. the spomoke bellows into the cockpit. remember, you can't open the window when you're up in altitude. oxygen lasts only 15 minutes. they pass out. but the plane now on automatic pilot will fly itself and it's got six hours left of fuel. and remember, it was turned south to go back and it just kept on going. so that's the scenario. some call it the zombie plane but also the heroes in that these pile t lots did everything they could until their very last and even after that the plane flew on until it ran out of fuel. interesting theory. >> and good to point out if it was a case like that they are heroes, not a zombie plane.

martin savidge. what we're talking about this morning, that has everybody abuzz is this new satellite image from china because it may be the strongest clue yet in the search for flight 370. >> yes. but if it is not it means that 370 is still out there somewhere and will crews be able to find it before the beacons go silent? we'll look into that next. ...return on investment wall isn't a street... 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 to saving for college. our commitment to current and former military members and their families is without equal.

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so grateful to have your company this saturday morning. i'm christi paul. >> i'm victor blackwell. we're calling it breaking news this morning from china. chinas has released satellite photographs showing a large object floating -- here it is -- floating if the southern indian ocean. >> this is 74 feet by 43 feet we're being told. seen about 75 miles from where previous satellite i'm mamgs spotted two other large objects in the ocean there. china is planning, we should point out, to send out ships to try to find this new object. but it is nighttime there now. >> yeah. and this search will have to resume at least from the air tomorrow. meantime, the search for those two pieces of whatever they are, these two items, go on. six planes scour the area for a third day today but no traces

were found. and the weather there, it's deteriorating in this search area. australian officials say this operation will continue. >> a multi-national flotilla is forming to search the southern corridor there where really we've been focusing here now, especially after the satellite images came out. norwegian cargo ship is already there having been diverted. australia, malaysia, china, all sending ships to what some people are calling the most remote areas on the planet. >> the fbi is examining the flight simulator taken from the home of the plane's captain along with the hard drives from the pilots and copilots' computers. >> we want to bring in tom fuentes from washington, former fbi says about director. >> and lucas of the scripps institution of oceanography joins us now from california. first, let's talk about these new satellite images being released. they were taken on tuesday. i want to ask you, luca, how far

could whatever was spotted by the satellites have drifted by now? >> probably a few miles to hundreds of miles. at this point whoever is coordinating the search operation will have a critical idea of what the possible trajectory would be. >> let me follow-up on this quickly. you said that it's possible that in four days it could have drifted hundreds of miles. is it possible that considering there were some objects seen on the 16th by australian satellites that on the 18th this could be the same, whatever it is, the same object 75 miles away? >> it depends really on what the ocean currents and the wind were doing. concentrated debris which would disburse over time.

and the ocean currents and the wind, they can change considerably over distances of tens of miles. so it may move a little bit and another object which was nearby may move much more. and that's why we put all the information together to understand how the debris can disburse. >> okay. so, tom, let me ask you because we're also hearing this morning that some pilots spotted other debris out there like a wooden pallet, some smaller debris is how they characterized it. that was not, as we understand it, what was seen on that satellite image, but it was in that general search area, even though they didn't see it. does that -- does that tell you that perhaps this could be debris from one thing like a plane or, as, you know, a lot of people on twitter have been asking, how much stuff is just floating around out there?

>> good morning rs cyst the p from what we've heard a ton of stuff has been floating around. turbulent waters in that part of the world. and cruise ships and cargo ships frequently jump trash overboard and dump tanks and do things they shouldn't be doing to the environment, much less accidentally hamper a search to try and find an airliner. there's a lot of things floating in that area out there. and you know, the pileots that were following up on the satellite imagery put up by australia, they had perfect weather for three days and couldn't find anything. now you have cyclonic weather, really bad weather happening. and i think it won't makes it less that they're even going to find this object or the other objects. >> tom, i want to get you thoughts on what we learned from u.s. officials about their search of this hard drive from the pilot and the captain, also the flight simulator. officials tell cnn more deleted files were found on the captain's hard drive after

february 3rd as the malaysian site or they that was the last time files were deleted. first, is it too soon to know if that valuable and, second, what would you be looking for? >> first, it is too soon to know if it's valuable. secondly, i would actually -- the flight simulator information of where he practiced going, you know, he could have practiced going to the north pole just for the fun of the it, recreational purposes. he could have checked out other landing areas all over the indian ocean for professional purposes. they fly the flights of malaysia air take it to every major city in china and throughout the region. therefore, when they go to a destination that they know, they have to pick alternates in case of a fire emergency or others where they have to land immediately. so just looking at the sites that he practiced going to would not be enough. i would be more interested in an investigator is what were the websites that both pilots looked

at, what did they t get from them, what did they download. that may reveal more about their person personalities, their interests, let's say, than just knowing where he flew to as a practice. >> luca, we've seen searches drop pthese bouys into the wate there. this is such treacherous territory and tom talked about and the weather there is not going to be very helpful to them. is that the best we can do right now with those bouys? >> it's not the best. it's yet another tool that you want to use. at this point because of the complications connected with this search, you really want to deploy all the bouys to nail down what may happen to the debris in the best possible way. so it's another tool. everything is important,

anything you can put down to find some answers at this point. that's what they need to do. >> with those bouys, is that realtime information they're getting from them? >> that's true. all the items they deploy, they all send positions and other information in realtime. >> all right. well, luca from the scripps institute of oceanography and cnn journalist tom fuentes, thank you. u.s./russia ties, they are growing cold. and washington is worried about whether russia is planning any more sudden moves in ukraine or in the wider region. we'll talk about that next. [ male announcer ] this is the cat that drank the milk... [ meows ]

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crisis in ukraine is still simmering. this weekend international monitors sent by europe security authority, they're on their way to ukraine. >> and this a day after president putin officially made crimea a part of russia. they are going to keep an eye on the human rights situation in the region for at least six months. they will do this though without physically entering crimea. >> yeah. erin mcpike is at the white house. president obama will meet with leaders of the g-7 next week to

discuss ukraine. what's on the agenda? >> well, victor, president obama has said that he wants to discuss with european leaders taking more severe actions against russia. and that's because there are new signals that russia is building up bigger troop move ms that could move into ukraine through its southern and eastern border. now, a senior administration official told cnn's jay tapper just yesterday that, quote, we're very concerned but it's by no means certain. but the reason for that concern is that u.s. sbel jenintelligen suggests there are 20,000 russian forces mobilizing that could move into ukraine without detection by other countries and do that very quickly. russia so far has said that all of its military moves are merely military exercises and u.s. officials suggest that russia would justify some of the movements by saying that they're trying to protect transportation lines and energy lines and russians in crimea. but national security adviser

susan rice cast some doubt on all of that just yesterday in a briefing. >> it's not clear what that signals. the russians have stated that they are intending military exercises. obviously given their past practice and the gap between what they have said and what they have done, we are watching it with skepticism. >> now, susan rice also said yesterday that she believes sanctions are having an affect and major rating eight sis have downgraded russia's credit worthiness in the last 24 hours. and also on friday, moscow's stock indexes were down sharply. now, that affect, however, has not had the affect yet of changing russia's response to all of this. and we're waiting to see what might happen in the next coming week, christi and victor. >> all right, erin mcpike, at the white house. thank you.

quick break and we'll be back.

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searching for flight 370 in this south indian ocean, that space, it's difficult enough. but add rough wave, high winds, and a cyclone warning. those are really the harrowing conditions that search crews are up against as they scour this area for flight 370. >> you've seen the pictures. there's nothing there. there's no land mass close to where they're searching that would give them a buffer to the winds and everything that's creeping up there. jennifer grey, our meteorologist here joining us from the cnn severe weather center, what does it look like, i guess, as we get these new satellite images, what are they in store for as they try to get out to that area? >> it's definitely not pretty. it is a very, very tough part of the world. you're right, there's no buffer. it's very, very deep. and so you get these monster waves, high seas.

you get very windy conditions. and so that's what we're going to be dealing with over the next 48 hours. this is our cnn exclusive high resolution model. we are tracking a cold front that is going to sweep through the area where they are searching. this is sunday, 8:30 eastern time. so as we get close to nightfall on sunday, near australia, we are going to see that cold front move through. it is going to bring showers to the area but not only that, it's also going to increase the winds. that just adds insult to injury. you can see close to 50 moo 50-mile-per-hour winds as we go through the day tomorrow. so they will be increasing as we get later in the day, which is bad news and then they will start to weaken a little bit as they get into monday. the other area -- the other part i want to mention, though, are these currents because we're searching these objects in the ocean and while they are in areas with not much current right now, anything can move them into these areas with much stronger current, anything like

strong winds, a storm to roll on through. so it looks like it's going to be extremely hard to find these objects, even if we get out there in the near future. this is the west australian current. of course, this moves at one foot per second. so this could also make for trouble conditions out there as well. i want to show you this as well. this is also looking at those currents. this little dot right here is where they're searching. and this is not in the west australian current. it's more of an area where there aren't many currents at all. you can see the darker shades mean weaker currents. the brighter colors mean stronger currents. if you look closely there are little swirls out here all around. these are eddies. these are basically currents within the area. smaller currents. so any of these factors can draw the objects from one place to another. it can cause it to drift faster, farther to the south, farther to the knnorth. when you find out they spotted

an object and three or four days have passed you can imagine these objects can be probably nowhere near where they were originally spotted. that's why time is of the essence here when you're looking for things out in the indian ocean, especially. >> it's a starting point without a starting point. >> yeah. >> jennifer gray, thank you so much. >> we're going to be right back. i've quit for 75 days. 15 days, but not in a row. for the first time, you can use nicorette even if you slip up, so you can reach your goal. now, quit on your own terms with nicorette or nicoderm cq.

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did you know that today is world water day? and chad and his nearly 70,000 volunteers have removed more than 7 million pounds of garbage from rivers? >> 7 million. while doing that work, of course, 2013 cnn hero of the year accumulated what he believes is one of the world's largest message in a bottle collections. >> this is the message in a bottle collection. we have collected over the years. it's pretty cool to find them because you never know how far they came, where they came from, who they came from. each one tells its own story. this one is pretty cool. from the '93 flood. had a flag on it. lottery tickets, i don't know if they're winners or not. obviously not. here's one. this one is cool. picture of bill clinton.

pretty neat. some of them had been found three or four times and passed on and it will keep going down the river, down the river, people will sign them and date them. this one had money in it with postage so you could send it back to them. kind of cool. i haven't done that yet. probably should. stamps went up since this was sent. this is a voo-doo one. better not be for me, but has like nails in it and it had a note in it with a string tied on it and said, you are bound now, you are bound now. actually a lot of them that are pretty heavy that are written to a lost loved one. i didn't want to keep it because it was meant not to be kept. it's just fun to find them. it's fun for the volunteers. but it's a pretty unique collection because i don't know b who else finds this many messages in a bottle. so it's pretty cool. >> and doing such good work in the process. >> absolutely. >> if you know someone who deserves to be a cnn hero we want to hear about them.

go to cnnheroes.com. we're glad to have had your company today. happy saturday to you. we're going to turn it over now. >> turn it over to randi kaye in new york in today for fredericka whitfield. >> thanks, guys. i'm randi kaye. the 11:00 hour of "newsroom" starts right now. there is a major new development in the hunt for flight 370. a new object has been spotted in the southern indian ocean. a chinese satellite captured images of it just four days ago. it's about 74 feet by 43 feet. right now china is sending ships to try to locate it and determine if its wreckage from the plane. the object was found about 75 miles from two other floating octobers spotted by a commercial satellite a week ago. malaysia's transportation minister got word of a discovery right in the middle of his morning news conference. he acknowledged the emotional

toll each new development, each sighting of potential debris is taking on the families. and he issued this promise. >> we will continue to engage with the families. we are working hard with chinese authorities and the chinese working group to create a more conducive environment for the briefings. i've instructed my team to do a review of both findings so that we can improve them. we appeal to all parties to be understanding during the extraordinary and difficult times. my pledge to all the families, wherever they are, is the same. we will do everything in our power to keep you informed. >> crews have been looking for the first two mystery objects for three days now. but haven't been able to find them. defense secretary chuck hagel is ordering the navy and policy experts to investigate whether u.s. military undersea technology could help find potential wreckage. malaysian officials are asking the pentagon to contribute to equipment to that search

operation. so a lot of moving pieces today. we're going to get you through it all. andrew stevens is live in perth, australia, where the search operation is based. andrew, hello to you. are resources now being diverted to find this new object? >> they will be when the search starts tomorrow, no doubt. the search has ended for the day here. it's now 11:00 in the evening. all of the six aircraft that went out came back empty handed as it were, but that was well before we got this news about the chinese picking up this object of interest. not that far from where the satellite pictures were taken by the australians of those two other objects. now, remember, that it's been six or seven days now since the pictures were taken of those objects still no news on that which does suggest that this still could be a long haul. certainly the crews will be out early tomorrow. interestingly, randi, there are two chinese aircraft, military

aircraft, right here at this australian air force base just outside perth. they're going to be joining the search tomorrow. their cape bls is optical equipment so if they can establish where this large object is, they may well be able to identify, as well. there's a lot of observers on board these flights. the australians are saying it's so important now for observers to actually get sort of vision, getting actual line of sight on these objects, to get an idea of what they might be. so that is going to be a focus. i should tell you that one of the last planes that came back today got a report earlier that there was some debris, some small bits of debris in the field that the search is centered on. the new zealand military plane went out to investigate and couldn't buy this debris but they dropped a marker in and a commercial ship is headed

towards that area. we may get news on that as well in the next 24 hours on whether the small bits of debris are of interest as well. yes, there are things, there are specific targets to look for tomorrow. it's going to be a busy day as this whole operation continues to ramp up. >> and, andrew, are you getting any sense of time and in terms of how long these teams, how many days these teams are committed to going out there and searching? >> we got a very clear indication from the acting prime minister of australia today, warren truss. he said this search will go on indefinitely. his words, not mine. he says that the australian government owes it to the families of the people on board that flight, as all governments do, to any national who is on that flight. no sense at all that they're going to be stepping back, reeling it back in any shape or form in the foreseeable future. >> andrew stevens, thank you very much for the update from perth. new satellite image from china was taken four days ago. and there's a concern that

strong ocean currents could have pulled the debris pretty far from now. january fer gray is live in the weather center with more on that and the conditions in that search region. good morning. >> good morning. that's right. we're looking at conditions to begin to deteriorate as we go through the next 24 to 48 hours. this red box is where the search area is. you can see throughout most of the day they had clear skies but conditions will start to deteriorate just as i mentioned. we are going to see a front very close to the area. and you can see a small band of rain. and this is sunday 8:30 eastern time. so that would be 8:30 p.m. along with this rain comes very strong winds. and so it just adds insult to injury. we're going to see the winds increase possibly 40 to 50 miles per hour. you can expect the seas will begin to get very, very rough as we go through the latter part of sunday. also the main concern are these currents. we've been talking about these for the past couple of days. the ocean currents in these

areas are very, very strong. that west australian current can move one foot per second. so you can imagine if any of these -- any of these objects start to drift to the south, to the west, they can get caught up in one of these currents. right now it's in an area that's very low current. the satellite image that spotted the object right there. darker shades are weaker currents. brighter shades are stronger kurns. you can see these little swirls all around that object, these are small eddies in these can definitely carry the objects as well. and so there's a lot of factors that play into this. if it does get caught in one of those stronger currents it can move very, very fast. we're getting this information four days out sometimes and so no telling how far it can drift. >> right. they just have to follow the line there in the water. jennifer, thank you very much. earlier today australian's acting prime minister said the satellite images are the best they have to go on right now but

nothing is clear cut. >> we can't be sure at this stage whether the debris that's been sighted in the satellite imagery is related to the loss of the aircraft. it is the most promising lead that's available internationally, but there are any number of other explanations about what might have been sited as a result of this satellite imagery. >> i'm joined by cnn law enforcement analyst tom fuentes in washington. andrew thomas, editor in chief of the trfgs security live in cleveland, and bobbie skoalland is here with us. bobbie, let me start with you. if the images picked up on the satellite are t not pieces of the plane, what might they be? >> well, if those images are not pieces of the airplane they could be any possible thing. they could be the floating

freighter containers. they could be masses of garbage that's just drifted together. they could be anything. and then we're just back to zero again. >> and i understand there is some difficulty obviously where this part of the ocean is in terms of the search efforts. earlier this week i was looking at underwater robots that may be used in this search. is that something that you think could be deployed here? could that help? >> those underwater search systems can be deployed but not at this point. until we actually have a higher probability of where the aircraft might be, we would not bring the systems in to the search at this time because they are designed to be used in a much smaller search area. so these systems are not going to be used at this point until we have a probability of where the aircraft would be.

>> and, andrew, british newspaper, "the daily telegraph" reported yesterday it had the transcript from the cockpit communications. listen to what officials in malaysia said today in their believing. all right. we don't have the sound bite. i guess basically they're saying there's nothing suspicious in the transcript. what do you make of that, andrew? >> this speaks to the bigger context that we should frame here and that is the first 24-48-72 hours after this plane went maissing the malaysian government and chinese government who both assumed responsibility for the investigation and recovery ef fors were not transparent with themselves, were not transparent with each other or the rest of the world and we lost critical time. now here we are over two weeks later, this is cascaded to the point where we're still guessing. this speaks to something i think that we need to know going forward and that is when these

kinds of incidents happen and they will again when planes go missing or there's accidents or catastrophes, the government has got to stand up and take accountability and respond in a way that enables all of the resources to be brought to bear and to ease the suffering of the people who probably have lost loved ones. >> and, tom, the more this search continues with no sign of the plane, do you think it's getting more or less likely that this might be related to terrorism or anything suspicious? >> good morning, randi. i don't think it makes enough of an indication one way or the other. i think that's the problem with this whole thing, is that you really have two track investigation going on simultaneously. all the technical research to try to look at what arc that plane took and whether it turned around or went up or down or was on fire or you have zombie pilot and crew. all of that is one thing. but that's the technical side. the law enforcement side of this began the very night it went

missing. and the fbi agents assigned full time in kuala lumpur were invited in the very night it went missing and have been in the command post ever since and have been part of this investigation on the law enforcement side, on the police and intelligence side of that. so those aspects go on con currently. it's not like one thing gets done and that didn't work out and now we're going to try something else. you know, that -- the police and malaysian police have 100,000 sworn officers and they've had all of the countries affected by this offer additional resources if they need it. but they really can't use them in malaysia right now until we have a crash site. >> all right. thank you, tom fuentes, andrew thomas, and bobbie scholey. as the search for flight 370 focuses on a new location we'll take you inside a flight simulator to show you what could have happened to that airplane.

we had really good opportunity, i think, to do anything like this and the conditions were outstanding. unfortunately the conditions that keep us from staying on station as long as as we would have liked, however, there are a few other aircraft out there as well as the united states navy still out there searching and with any luck we'll find something shortly. we've got a lot of hope and the conditions remain as they are, hopefully we'll find something soon. >> that's flight lieutenant russell adams of the royal australian air force talking about the search for the plane today. chinese ships are now headed to a spot in the southern indian ocean. we want to keep looking at the more talked about theories out there as to what happened to the missing jet 15 days ago. cnn's martin savidge joining us live from a flight simulator

just outside of toronto. i want to ask you about this one theory that's out there about the possibility that lithium batteries may have sparked in the cargo and spread to the cockpit. what do we know about that? >> well, you know, it was over a week ago, actually friday, that cnn first reported there was a cargo of some sort of lithium batteries on board this aircraft. and lithium batteries in the past have triggered fire or at least hazardous situations. there's one case where it triggered a fire so severe it brought down a cargo plane in dubai. it's a great concern. malaysian officials said they do not believe that was part of what caused this plane to disappear. they say that whatever amount they had on there, they wouldn't say, randi, how many batteries there were, but they said there w wasn't a large amount and they were all packed tightly. mitchell, why don't you put us in a turn and steep dive. the incredible thing about this

simulator is it seems so real. and it is set up, of course, a 777-200, the same as malaysian airline 370. and we've loaded it with all the information we know about flight 370. and i was just asking mitchell to take us down so we can show you what, say, if this plane had to make some sort of approach to water if it was trying to make an emergency landing, but you get the feel of this plane. you get all the alarms that come on, you get all the indicators as far as everything that is reflected right here. and even the reflection of the sunlight on the water is designed to make it look and feel exactly as it was. and so this allows us to test all kinds of theories. and one of them is that, of course, after flying for six hours, the plane simply ran out of fuel and then what happens? it was on autopilot, assumed. so the autopilot would stop but it's not going to be a plane

that just tips over and does like a roller coaster hill. instead, this plane, mitchell, the way i designed, is to actually fly slowly, steadily, even with no one at the controls descending to the oegsz. >> yes. like most aircraft, actually. they're designed to glide. if the engines were going to cut out you're not going to just cut out, it will glide down. >> we tested that with the simulator. you can go for maybe up to 100 miles beyond where the engines quit. the problem is, randi, when it does get to the water level, the aircraft, without anybody flying it at the controls, is not going to do a miracle on the hudson. the impact would be quite severe. so so many things we can test, randi. >> yeah, that's what i was going to ask you. could it glide down to the water and rest gently there but you answered that question already. one more question for you though. if something happened to the pilots and they were inco incapacitat incapacitated. once that door is locked, no one else can get in, right?

>> right. and, you know, of course, those were part of the new security measures implemented on all aircraft around the world after 9/11. the idea that you didn't want somebody breaking into the cockpit. so you made it re-enforced very strong door. one of the problems to that is, of course, if somebody were to get in, breach somehow, and get inside and lock it again, it would be very difficult for now anyone on the outside to try to interrupt them, stop them from whatever they were doing. it's kind of a double-edged sword. there is an automatic locking system here. there is a way to unlock it if the pilots wanted to but if it's somebody in the cockpit with ill intent they're probably trying to keep people out. could they have kept them out for seven hours? that's another matter. i mean, people would have become quite concerned and doing all they could to get inside. >> certainly. martin savidge, as always, thank you very much. we may not want to think about it, but the missing plane may be found deep on the ocean floor. and i'll show you some deep sea

technology that could be key to a recovery mission.

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. the latest on the search for flight 370, an object has been spotted in the southern indian ocean. a chinese satellite captured an

image of the object four days ago. ships are headed to the area to continue the search. if we find ourselves in a worse case scenario and investigators need to find a plane at the bottom toft ocean, technology could play a key part in the search and recovery. this robot submarine may hold the key to finding malaysia airlines 370. it's called the remis 6,000 and developed by the oceanographic institution. it ways almost a 1rton and cost almost $2.5 million. >> they can go up and down mountains that are up to 40 degrees in slope. they are very stable, so you get really good data almost all the time. >> why would this underwater robot find something even the u.s. navy and search teams for more than two dozen different countries haven't been able to find?

first of all, it can reach depps up of 6,000 meters or more than 3 1/2 miles below the surface. and it can survey wide swaths of the ocean floor using what's called side scan sonar. >> they send a sound pulse with a fan beam out to the side and it will travel out almost half a mile from the vehicle. and it bounces off the seafloor and we get a reflection back to the vehicle. >> they call the process mowing the lawn because it works its assigned grid back and forth before returning to the surface with images captured on a high resolution camera. it's all done at the touch of a laptop on dry land. >> how do you tell the difference? how do you know if it's a fish or a rock or a plane? >> you can just tell from the return. manmade objects, metal down there on the seafloor responds very strongly. >> the team here hasn't been asked yet to help search for the plane in the ocean but if they are it won't be the first time. the remus 6,000 was called on to

help find air france flight 447 after it kracrashed in june 200. two years later, a search team from woods hole located the wreckage of the jet about 2 1/2 miles beneath the surface. after months of searching. something only possible because of this underwater robot. this is the initial shot of the air france debris field captured by the remus 6,000. >> there were obvious signs that this was from the plane. >> one team member first in theed a backpack on the ocean floor belonging tos a passenger. closer images revealed the plane's engine. one of the wings, even the landing gear. before you put one of these vehicles in the water you have to narrow down the search area. the team from here searched 5,000 square miles for the air france flight and it still took them more than 100 attempts to find the debris, and that is just a fraction of the area that they're looking at for flight 370. and while the team here with their underwater robots is ready

for the call if it comes, what they had hoped to discover more than anything are survivors. this technology is so good it was actually used to help try and find amelia earhart's airplane. after the titanic was found it helped map that field and help people understand what happened to that ship. i'm joined by cnn law enforcement analyst tom fuentes in washington, andrew thomas, editor in chief, live in cleveland, and bob b bee scholey is in washington. tom, let me start with you. i want to ask you about this phone call that was reportedly made, a call from the cockpit by the pilot before takeoff. does that raise any red flags for you? >> not necessarily. you know, the authorities would know pretty quickly what number was called, who was the subscriber of that phone, go to that person, what was the call

about. could be a family member, we're running late, it could be anything. it could be somebody in china who is going to be meeting the plane when they land and have dinner together or breakfast together or something. so the pilot's report that they often make these last-minute calls because once that door shuts and they're airborne they're going to be in there oh, the cockpit, for six, seven, eight hours and unable to talk to other friends or family on the ground. >> bobbie, what would you say are some of the challenges in this part of the ocean in terms of searching? we've seen the planes go out, they're coming back, as far as we know so far pretty empty handed. >> well, the big challenge that we have in that part of the ocean is the depth of water. we're looking at approximately 16,000 feet of water, which is going to make it very difficult. we're going to have to use the equipment that you showed previously. the equipment that is rated at 20,000 feet of water.

once we actually get some confirmation that -- that we have an aircraft on the bottom, and then it's so far away from australia, so our logistics port is going to be quite a ways away. the ships are going to have to transit all that distance out from australia. the ships that operate off of -- for the salvage operation are not necessarily large ships. and so the same problems that the aircraft are having going back and forth to australia are going to be some of the problems that the ships would experience. and then the environmental factors. the high winds, the heavy seas, the currents are all going to make any recovery operations very, very difficult, very time consuming. so the amount of time that will be spent doing a recovery operation, if we ever get to

that point, if this does turn out to be aircraft we debris, will just extend the operation, make it much more difficult. but every operation of this type that i've seen, the people involved are so dedicated, so well trained, and so determined that they just go at it until they are successful. so hopefully this turns out to be debris and we can move forward in that direction. but we'll just have to wait and see. >> and knowing what you know about a situation like this, i mean, is it possible that someone could still be alive? what would they be going through right now? >> in my opinion, if that aircraft impacted the water, no. once the aircraft impacts the water in these situations, the aircraft breaks apart. so there's -- >> yeah. >> just not a chance of that

happening. >> we have seen that before, certainly, with the swiss air flight many years ago. andrew, what about the protocols in this case? i mean, do you get the sense that this whole operation, is i don't know, being put together by piecemeal? were there protocol in place with how to deal want emergency like this? >> well, there are, but we need to remember the scope of the system as well. in the two weeks since that flight went missing, there's been 650,000 commercial flights that have taken off and landed and delivered 50 million passengers around the world to their final destination. and these are anomalies. the fact that this plane itself has gone missing and we're talking about it at great length speaks, i think, to the fact that the system operates 24/7/365 with near perfection. and, therefore, we can train, we can prepare, we can deploy people in the event of an incident but these are still very, very rare.

and the confluence of events in this particular case, i think, exacerbated that anomaly event and made it even more difficult to try to locate this. but in the end, you know, we're still talking about a system that safely moves well over a billion passengers a year and has about 50,000 successful takeoff and landings every day. it's hard to prepare for the inevitable, in particular when the inevitable is something that doesn't occur that often, thankfully. >> thank you very much, tom fuentes, andrew thomas, and bobbie scolley. i head, more coverage on the search. and next, several ukrainian troops in crimea are under pressure to surrender. we'll have the latest on that crisis. i'm beth... and i'm michelle. and we own the paper cottage. it's a stationery and gifts store. anything we purchase for the paper cottage goes on our ink card.

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search for flight 370 in a few minutes but first, the crisis in ukraine. another ukrainian military base in crimea has fallen to pro-russian forces. the air base's commander says he will be taken away by russians for talks. there were reports of shots fired and at least one ukrainian is said to be injured. let's go to ukraine's capital for the latest. cnn's ivan watson is in kiev keeping an eye on the developments there. ivan, how worried is ukraine about the russian troops? >> very much worried because there's been a pattern now of russian military units as well as these kind of pro-russian militias taken over ukrainian military installations in crimea one by one. in this case, we talked to the ukrainian commander of this air base just about two hours ago by phone. he said that his base was surrounded by these pro-russian militias, by the russian military. he said he was going to try to

hold back these forces using fire hoses. and he told us, quote, we're going to keep our oath of service to the ukraine and to the ukrainian people. a live security camera stream within the last half hour show what's clearly seems to be an armored personnel carrier most likely from the russian military breaking through the gates of that air base and then moving in. and now we're getting reports the commander has been taken into russian custody. this is part of how russia is using force to rest this peace of ukrainian territory away from ukraine, away from its military and give it back -- give it to russia. over the course of this, a couple days ago, one ukrainian officer was shot to death while on guard duty in a guard tower. the russian military insists that in many of these cases the ukrainian military are simply defecting over to the russian side. but what we're hearing from the ukrainians is a very different story, as you can see. randi? >> ivan, the bases there are

clearly vulnerablnerablvulnerab. any plans at all to move the soldiers out? >> you know, the ukrainian government has announced that it's authorized its forces to fire their weapons in self-defense but we've seen very little evidence that they're willing to use lethal force against the advancing russian forces. instead they've done things like used fire hoses or in one other base today, the ukrainians used smoke bombs to try to keep the pro-russian militias back. the ukrainian government says it has set all shelter, residences for 25,000 people off the crimean peninsula in the event of an evacuation. but we have not heard of a concrete plan to evacuate the ukrainian military forces. it sounds like it's piecemeal on the ground depending on the commander and the russian military forces, what happens as each one of these bases. and that's part of why this situation is so tense and why there are fears that there could

be some kind of conflict, more loss of life. in the last 24 hours the only submarine in the ukrainian navy was also taken over by the russian military after the ukrainian commander was basically forced to surrender that. you can imagine how humiliating this is for people wearing ukrainian uniforms. >> certainly still a very dangerous situation there. eye v ivan watson, thank you very much. what if someone else got into the cockpit of flight 370. we don't know that happened. next, the widow of a 9/11 pilot will join me with her plan to keep pilots and passengers safe. my dad has aor afib.brillation, he has the most common kind... ...it's not caused by a heart valve problem. dad, it says your afib puts you at 5 times greater risk of a stroke. that's why i take my warfarin every day. but it looks like maybe we should ask your doctor about pradaxa. in a clinical trial, pradaxa® (dabigatran etexilate mesylate)...

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a new potential clue in the search for flight 370. here's what we know right now. a third object has been spotted in the southern indian ocean. a chinese satellite captured images of it four days ago. it's about 74 feet by 43 feet. the object was found about 75 miles from two other floating objects spotted bay commercial satellite a week ago. but search planes didn't spot anything today other than a wooden pallet. crews have been looking for the first two mystery objects for three days now with no luck. but they will soon get re-enforcements. two chinese patrol planes are joining the search tomorrow and japanese surveillance plane is expected to arrive a day or two

later. more ships are headed to that area. crews also continue searching in the northern corridor and seven countries in that area have told investigators they did not pick up any signals from the plane on their radars after it lost contact with ground control. see the on-going search for flight 370 is heartbreaking for families who have lost loved ones and for some the idea that terrorism might be involved in any way is especially tough. we want to be clear, we still don't know what happened here but right now it seems like just about anything is possible and nothing the really off the table. i'm joined now by ellen, her husband victor was killed on 9/11. he was the pilot of the united airlines flight that crashed into the world trade center south tower. she has pushed for better security for cockpits to prevent hijackings ever since. ellen, nice to see you. i'm certainly sorry it's under these circumstances but i know you're trying to do some important work here. before we talk a little bit more

about this, i want to show this video that you helped create to show how quickly someone can actually get into the cockpit. watch this with me. so tell me what we were see ing there and why that is so important to you. >> it's so important because the faa commissioned a study group to put together the knowledge of the we are vulnerable when the door opens up during flight and the results were pretty astounding. all the stakeholders were involved with this study and the results, this is a re-enactment, but the results are the cockpit can be breached in under two seconds using the most robust form of protection that the airlines can offer today.

>> two seconds. given what happened on 9/11, that is just remarkable. have you gotten any reaction to this video or has there been any word that maybe there will be better re-enforcement? >> not so far. that's why we're starting with legislation. we have a senate and a house bill to make sure this is mandated because the airlines are not moving in that direction. you know, the 9/11 commission stated a failure of imagination contributed to september 11th and today we are failing to imagine worse. >> when we're talking about this i want to be clear, we're not talking about the cockpit door. we're talking about this second re-enforcement that not all the airlines did, right? >> correct. united airlines installed them on their 47s, 57s, and 77s. it's a secondary barrier. it's a lightweight gate that gets locked into place. and then the cockpit door will open. and once the cockpit door closes they remove the gate. so it creates a sterile area outside of the cockpit for the pilot door to be open and shut without any problems with an

intrusion. we're using flight attendants now as our forefront of the security measures with the cart. and we can't be thinking that a flight attendant with minimal training and the cart can be protecting, especially when in the study they knew the attack was going to happen and they still were not able to stop the attack and an intrusion and a breach of the cockpit in less than two seconds. >> is this about money, do you think? is this why they're taking the re-enforcements down? >> i went to safety and security head at united airline and said, ellen, this is not cost, this is not weight. we're a $40 billion company. it simply has not been mandated and we're following tsa's rules which are focused on bombs on the aircraft and not a breach of the cockpit. you can compare that. the airlines pay a million dollars for their inflight entertainment system on each plane. these doors were already installed. and united airlines paid $3500 per airplane for these secondary barriers to be put on.

they work. in the analysis over the years, secondary barriers are the only thing that can stop an intruder 100% of the time and they can be on 100% of the airplanes. all the other tsa layers that have to do with airplanes are not something that is a viable means to protect. you know, like one of their -- one of their things as passengers. i'm sure everyone when they buy a ticket they don't realize that tsa is counting on them to be in the forefront of airline security as well. >> it's always so odd to see the flight attendants there with the cart, you know, the beverage cart and you think that's going to make a big difference. but they are trained. i will give them that. let me ask you about the families. here we have all of these families who have no idea where their loved ones are. what are they going through? >> well, initially it was shock. and so you can handle just sitting there and waiting for people to come and tell you something because you don't know where to go. you don't know what to do. but time has passed and too much time for these poor families.

my heart goes out to them. they're sitting there now in limbo. they can't give up hope that their loved ones are alive but they have to face realities and it's a difficult decision to make. you can't give up on anyone who is still alive because we have no proof that they aren't. continuing on this many days is just -- there's just so much anxiety i'm sure for them, so much fear, and just really a turmoil that they can't get out of. you know, they're kind of stuck in groundhog day because every day is the same day for them. it's just sheer terror. >> you can see the terror and the pain on their faces. it's just so hard, i'm sure. ellen saracini, thank you for your insight and your time. more of our coverage on the search for flight 370 right after this. you really love, what would you do?" ♪ [ woman ] i'd be a writer. [ man ] i'd be a baker. [ woman ] i wanna be a pie maker. [ man ] i wanna be a pilot.

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at a company that's bringing media and technology together. next is every second of nbcuniversal's coverage 0f the 2014 olympic winter games.

it's connecting over one million low-income americans to broadband internet at home. it's a place named one america's most veteran friendly employers. next is information and entertainment in ways you never thought possible. welcome to what's next. comcastnbcuniversal. welcome back. the disappearance of malaysia airlines flight 370 is one of the biggest aviation mysteries of our time and for 15 days now the world has been captivated by head lines offering new clues or theories. cnn's nick valencia joins me from atlanta with more on the world's fascination with this story. hi there, nick. >> randi, good to see you. the story has captured the

attention of millions worldwide. the interest is high in the united states but also in countries like france and china that had many passengers on the still missing plane. from the human drama. >> on our broadcast tonight -- >> reporter: to the incredible mystery. >> a frightening new conspiracy theory emerging about the plane that vanished into thin air. >> reporter: to the intense speculations that has fueled theory after theory, the story of missing malaysia airlines flight 307 which vanished more than two weeks ago. brian steltzer says the story is unprecedented. >> this story is one of a kind because it gets bigger every day, by virtue of the fact the plane still hasn't been found. it becomes a bigger mystery as it goes.

>> translator: mysteries of the disappearance are no mind boggle nothing matter your nationality everybody is interested in what happened to the plane. >> reporter: with four missing french passengers it has been front page news. undoubtedly fueled by the parallels of the disappearance of flight 447 that crashed off the coast of brazil on its way to paris some years ago. it took almost two years to recover the voice and flight data recorders. >> obviously for any news organization it's a big problem to talk about the story with so little information. >> we begin with the latest on the search for the missing malaysian airlines flight -- >> reporter: with 153 chinese nationals on board the lack of information has been especially difficult for cnn china affiliate cctv. >> the chinese media has been intensely focused on the story

and especially on the feelings and struggle of the family members. >> reporter: there's been no shortage of criticism about the coverage either. some said the overcoverage is merely a side show to boost ratings. others say there's too much out there with too few weeks. one thing is clear we don't know what happened and that has captured the attention of so many worldwide. randi? >> it certainly has. nick valencia, thank you very much. we'll have ongoing coverage of the search for flight 370 and the latest details of the investigation in the next hour of "cnn newsroom." -- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com two pretzels. put in on my capital one venture card. i earn unlimited double miles. not bad. can i get your autograph mr. barkley? sure kid. man my fans they love me. that's the price you pay for being world famous. he meant sign the receipt, fool. greg anthony. haha. hey man, could you sign my hat? he wants my autograph.

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at a company that's bringing media and technology together. next is every second of nbcuniversal's coverage 0f the 2014 olympic winter games. it's connecting over one million low-income americans to broadband internet at home. it's a place named one america's most veteran friendly employers. next is information and entertainment in ways you never thought possible. welcome to what's next. comcastnbcuniversal. hello everyone. i'm randi kaye in for fredricka whitfield. we are keeping a very close eye on the new developments on flight 370 so let's get you

caught up. a new object has been spotted in the southern indian ocean, a chinese satellite captured images of it four days ago, about 74 feet by 43 feet. you so he it right there. china is sending ships to try to locate it and determine if it's wreckage from the plane. the object was found 75 miles from two other floating objects spotted by a commercial satellite a week ago. crews have been looking for the first two mystery objects for three days now but haven't been able to find them. today a few small items of debris were spotted including a wooden pallet. more ships and countries are headed to the search area. australia says the help is appreciated. >> we welcome these additional assets including the chinese aircraft. they have a capability that will be important also to the search. i'm told that they're a good platform for visual observations, and as i mentioned

earlier, it is more likely that a pair of eyes are going to again identify something floating in the ocean and much of the detection equipment on board the aircraft. >> let me bring our panel back in, joined by cnn law enforcement analyst tom fuentes in washington and nick castaldo, spent 20 years at the if, aa and retired navy captain and diver bobbie scoley. bobbie, i'll start with you, if you were in charge of finding this airplane, what would you be doing right now? >> i'd be doing pretty much what they're doing, get as many resources as possible trying to look for surface debris, get resources in that might possibly be looking for that pinger, although that's a long shot right now because there's so

much ocean to be looking for the pinger, and right now that's a very hard item to be looking for. so the satellite imagery, as many platforms, that includes ships and aircraft, looking for that debris, continue to look for the satellite imagery of anything floating on the surface, and then try to go backwards from that if they can find that debris, you have to work backwards from that to see if you can locate the aircraft point of entry into the ocean. but they have to verify that that is, in fact, aircraft debris. >> right, and rick, what do you make of the new satellite image? >> well, frankly, i'm a little dismayed that it's taken china that long to release it. i'm not certain that's the best satellite image they have, as you may know, many organizations in different states in that part

of the world do not want to reveal what their capabilities are, where they can see with what clarity. looks like a bit of pixelization in the picture, difficult to tell with what it is. the real important question is the lack of real surveillance data from some of the modern technologies that exist that would have provided a more accurate depiction of where the plane ended up. there's certainly no guarantee it's in the water. there's been hypothesis that it is from somewhere else and the fact is there's not any really available real time surveillance data and tracking information from any of the countries around there that i believe is substantiated as accurate. >> and you're saying that's something that we need to make sure that this doesn't happen again. it's hard to believe we can't find an airplane. >> well, as you stated previously, it's a rather large ocean. it's many hundreds of thousands of square miles. airplanes are fairly small.

even though it is a 777. but the availability of satellite technology and space-based surveillance that can track planes very accurately within a few meters with one second updates, far superior to these legacy radars that exist for both air defense and military uses for looking at hostile aircraft. i think one should recall that air traffic control is designed to look for airplanes that want to be seen, and in the event of an accident or some thnefarious plan by someone else, if you disable all the electronics, you are pretty much left with search rad radar. search radar at some of the ranges isn't historically accurate and may or may not provide altitude information and true speeds and velocities that allows a reasonable engineer to project where the plane would go. >> let me bring tom in, because we were talking about the new satellite image and of course as

we mentioned it took four days for the chinese authorities to release this image. help us understand, tom, if you can, what's going on behind the scenes. obviously a lot can happen in the four days where this was spotted, given the ocean current so what's going on? >> randi, as even our technicians experts and satellite technology have said, the satellites take thousands of pictures and it takes time on the ground downloading the pictures to look at every frame and try to analyze the thousands of frames to see if there is debris in one of them. the picture by the american company that was provided to the australianss have al s was also old. i don't criticize china for the picture being four days old. china in this case with so many anguished family members attending press conferences in beijing and screaming at government officials that you're not doing enough, they're going

to put out every picture they can as soon as they can put it out. they've already, so they're saying we have satellites over the possible crash area, we're downloading the pictures and providing them to the authorities as soon as possible, so the search can go on. we have surface ships on the way. we have airplanes on the way, so china has a definite reason to try to convince their own people, particularly the family members in that airport in beijing, that they're doing everything they can possibly do. >> and bobbie, let me get back to you. they're searching without the radar, with their own eyes. what do you make of that and why would they do that? >> well, the conditions there are very poor right now, the environmental conditions, so they're using what they have, which is the best sensor possible which is your eyeball, and they're getting out there and looking with their eyes to see if they can find this

debris. it's not going to be a fast search because you can only see so far but that's the best way to verify that that is a piece of aircraft debris. if that's going to make it very long and tedious to find it. >> certainly so. certainly very difficult for the families as well as they wait for some answers. thank you all, tom, rick and bobbie. spotting a piece of deprix on a satellite image seems like a big step in the ongoing search for flight 370 but with the currents moving so fast, can crews ever really find those objects? why the search in this area of the ocean is so hard, next. [ male announcer ] this is the cat that drank the milk... [ meows ] ...and let in the dog that woke the man who drove to the control room [ woman ] driverless mode engaged. find parking space. [ woman ] parking space found. [ male announcer ] ...that secured the data that directed the turbines that powered the farm that made the milk that went to the store

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the big development on the missing plane story today is an image from a chinese satellite showing a piece of debris floating in had the water but this image was taken four days

ago. an australian official said today they searched the area where that picture was taken and they didn't find anything, but the object could have moved. i'm joined by meteorologist jennifer gray in the weather center. nice to see you again. how likely is it that the object has moved and how far might it have moved? >> yes, well it's definitely a possibility. right now it's in an area where the currents aren't very strong but it only has to drift a short distance for it to get caught in one of these stronger currents and we're talking about anything can cause these objects to drift, we're talking about wind, you're talking about a storm that moved through, high seas, anything like that can make something move out in the ocean, and so here is the search area where you see that red dot and then just below it to the south, that's a very strong current, we're talking about anywhere from one foot per second possible is what we're talking about here. let me show you on google earth, it's not only the currents that we're talking about, we're also

dealing with these very small eddys within the area that we're watching and you see these arrows, these red arrows going down, these green and orange arrows going up, and then this circular motion right here, these are all eddys that can also drive objects out in the ocean at different locations as well. so even though it's not caught in one of those stronger currents or if it's not caught in one of those stronger currents, some of these smaller eddys out in the ocean can definitely cause it to move, maybe not as fast of a pace as it would if it were in the south a little bit but still cause it omove nonetheless. >> so say they spotted it and say this object or debris or whatever it might be sunk. how hard would it be to find something like that? n that area? >> you're talking about, it depends on how far it has traveled. say it has been caught in that west australian current. we're talking about areas that could move miles. we're talking about weeks after

the fact. and so this could have moved several miles, could have moved 100 miles or more out of the way, and so when you look at this search area, and then you look at all these different currents going around, and then not to mention all the smaller little eddys and then you take on top of that the storms that have possibly been in the area over the past couple of days, then you're talking about some major movement with these pieces and so that's why time is of the essence. we're talking about you need to get there as fast as you can, because these objects are moving. >> what about the next few days? obviously these teams are going to keep going out. what can they expect? >> the next couple of days, if you can advance my graphic the next couple of days possibly some rain pushing on in. this is an area that is known for very, very strong winds. it's not uncommon to get 40-mile-an-hour winds, 50-mile-an-hour winds in these areas. roaring 40s, furious 50s, this is a spot where they're searching and considering what could be the forecast, these are

really prime conditions. we're seeing winds at 15 to 25, maybe 30, at times we'll see winds of 40 miles per hour but considering this is an area that is very nasty, the indian ocean is not a calm ocean. so we're going to see conditions that are going to be the worst topping out at the end of the day tomorrow. so that's when conditions will be the worst. it's going to continue to expensify. the winds are going to continue to strengthen throughout the day tomorrow and so we're talking about anywhere from 40 to 50 mill peer her winds at the worst of it tomorrow. like i said, randi, the indian ocean is not forgiving. it's a very, very rough body of watt sore that's why these search crews are having such a hard time. >> they're certainly learning that firsthand. jennifer gray, thank you very much for that. with the plane missing for 15 days now, the battery life on the flight recorder is dwindling. that could spell trouble in this

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we are 15 days into the hunt for malaysia airlines flight 370 and that means the battery that runs the pinging beacon device on the flight recorder has about half way run out now. when the battery life runs out completely it will get significantly harder for searchers to find that airplane. fredricka whitfield spoke with a man whose company designs and makes underwater locator beacons to get more insight on these devices. >> we make them under the duquesne seawater line. i have them right here, they are rated to last for 30 days. that is used when the product was certified. there is some latitude in the design tolerance and when we

spoke to the ntsb yesterday in regards to that latitude we think we can get an additional three to five days of life before the battery starts to diminish to the point where the output signal will be below the minimums required. >> how durable are these batteries? we don't know how this plane went down but if it crashed into an object or if it is in water. how durable, how can it withstand certain hits or submergss? >> sure. i brought another unit, this one actually was in the swiss air 111 accident from 1998. as you can see the unit did take some damage, but it was used to locate the black boxes successfully in that incident. so the units are designed to withstand shock, impact, heat, and severe conditions such as an accident, and perform their duties when called upon. >> and if it is in the depths of

miles deep water, does it have a chance of living up to those kind of conditions? >> it is certified, the devices are certified down to 20,000 feet of vertical water depth. that's equivalent to about 8,700 psi. as i understand it, they're in very deep water. they are looking in very deep water but the units are qualified and certified to those depths. >> what are the conditions in which to hear the pings, to be able to detect whether that box recorder that, data box recorder is anywhere near where the searchers might be? >> sure. you need to be within two nautical miles, maybe plus or minus a half a mile, depending on sea state, meaning what's the water conditions, is there a lot of ambient noise in the water, is there debris in the water,

vegetation, other types of things, cliffs, other topology features underwater that could mask that signal, but in ideal conditions, two nautical miles, maybe 2.5 nautical miles. >> what are the tools being used to locate it? >> there are several different types of locators mainly around the microphone or hydrophone tuned to the specific frequency, which is 37.5 kill herohertz an listening for the one ping every second to identify and locate the devices. >> if the battery is to go out, is there any other way in which to retrieve a flight data recorder? >> you'd have to visually spot them in the debris field. that's why they're painted that bright orange color. i know we call them black boxes but they're actually a bright flooruorescent orange. >> are we talking about the battery when we say they are

automatically activated over water? >> that's correct. when you look at these devices, they have a water switch, so when they are immersed in water, whether it's freshwater or saltwater, they will automatically begin to emit that ping. >> and then generally what kind of information do we get from these flight data recorders? >> well, the recorders are designed to just capture just a host of different data and different operating parameters from the aircraft. the specific data recorder manufacturers would be able to give you better information on that. >> if the battery dies, that doesn't necessarily mean that all the information on the flight data recorder dies with it, correct? >> that's correct. the battery running out will not preclude the authorities from being able to extract that data. it is embedded into the system. >> aneesh patel, thank you so much. >> thank you. >> very interesting conversation

there. more on today's developing news out of beijing that a chinese satellite spotted debris in the search for flight 370. (vo) you are a business pro. maestro of project management. baron of the build-out. you need a permit... to be this awesome. and you...rent from national. because only national lets you choose any car in the aisle... and go. and only national is ranked highest in car rental customer satisfaction by j.d. power. (aaron) purrrfect. (vo) meee-ow, business pro. meee-ow. go national. go like a pro.

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a new potential clue in the search for flight 370, here's what we know right now. third object has been spotted in the southern indian ocean. chinese satellite captured images of it four days ago. it's about 74 feet by 43 feet. the object was found about 75 miles from two other floating objects spotted by a commercial satellite a week ago but search planes didn't spot anything today other than a wooden pallet. crews have been looking for the first two mystery objects to are three days now no luck but they'll soon get reinforcements. two chinese planes are joining the search tomorrow and a japanese surveillance plane is expected to arrive a day or two later.

more ships are headed to the area. crews continue searching in the northern corridor and seven countries in that area have told investigators they did not pick up any signals from the plane on their radars after it lost contact with ground control. cnn's tom foreman has more now on the stretch, that specific stretch of the indian ocean that has drown an international search effort. >> reporter: it is a measure of how seriously the whole search team is taking this particular area that at least half if not more of the assets have now been redirected down to this area to take a look at this. they are all trying to find what's in those satellite images, to get a closer look at it. it might not look like it much here but we're led to lead by circumstances these would be degraded images.

the searchers have much higher quality and much more reason to be confident. if you think. the equation here, what you're looking for first is whether or not there is some reason here to think this has credibility. the fact the prime minister of australia got on board, other officials are on board and moving the assets suggests there is. secondly the question of size gives this credibility. think about this. the piece we're talking about is somewhere around 24 meters in length, plane like this is around 61, 62 meters end to end, 61, 62 side to side so can you get a piece out of this that about ig? y big? the puzzle could it float that long? that's one of the scent sichlz about the issue of size and the matter of location. this is the right location to find pieces. that's why when they found the pictures they became so excited.

it's the right location based on the mathematics and probabilities of the search patterns. that said it's a difficult location to reach and once you get there on the water, big challenges. any glare on the water, any white caps, any storms that come along make it harder for anyone to see beneath that surface, even a little bit, where this debris is supposed to be and if you're talking about it being much beneath the surface it gets a lot more complicated. if we fly down into this area you're talking about a depth here that may be anywhere from 3,000 to 4,000 meters to the bottom, and the bottom itself may be very filled with ridges and mountains and things that can interfere with this pinger on the data recorders down there. so even if they can find this debris on the surface, that would still mean just the beginning of a very arduous task of rescuing the rest of it.

>> tom foreman in the virtual room for us today. families of those on the missing plane are desperate for any information, they're still holding out hope but some may also be thinking about legal action. look at their options coming up next. [ ambient street noise ] ♪ ♪ ♪ abe! get in! punch it! [ male announcer ] let quicken loans help you save your money with a mortgage that's engineered to amaze. thanks, "g." and better is so easy withrning you cabenefiber.o something. better for yourself. fiber that's taste-free, grit-free and dissolves completely. so you can feel free to add it to anything. and feel better about doing it. better it with benefiber.

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chinese ships are headed to the area. as the mystery deepens over what happened to the plane, some are asking the difficult question, who pays for a missing plane? alison kosik explains how insurance works in this type of case. >> the airline industry spends wells of dollars on planes, fuel and on insurance. 777 like the malaysia airlines jet that disappeared likely carries about a $2 billion policy that, ensures the plane itself also includes liability for passengers in case something happens. 239 people aboard a giant aircraft that disappears into the night. government officials still piecing together information. family members are understandably outraged. even if the victims are never found liability insurance can help the families though that process won't be easy. >> one is so ensure that in the

event of a disappearance like this, there is a presumption of death, which is ruled by a court. >> reporter: in some countries, that ruling could be difficult to get, but it's essential for the next step of filing a claim victims have protection under the montreal convention. malaysia signed on to the treaty and outlines where liability claims can be brought including the airlines' country of operation, the location of its corporate headquarters, where the ticket was bought, a passenger's final destination, a passenger's permanent residenc . >> it is not an unprecedented situation where an aircraft has not been recovered and indeed legal cases have been made up many times where the aircraft is

not recovered and done through circumstantial evidence. >> the disappearance was caused by an intentional act, terrorism or suicide or sabotage, experts say in that case malaysia airlines would likely be liable or that a mechanical or systems issue was to blame. if that happens boeing and other manufacturers could be brought into the insurance claims, leading to an even bigger legal process. lawyers say the claims must be filed on a passenger by passenger basis through a complex web of payouts, policies, possible lawsuits and legal obligations. unfortunately, with the victim's families having already gone through so much at the center of it. as far as lawsuits go, the amount a family can claim depends on the age of the deceased to what the person earned to what country the case is filed in and no maximum amount a family can ask for in a

lawsuit but there is a time limitation. families have up to two years starting from the date from when the aircraft should have arrived. families of the passenger and crew aren't giving up hope that their loved ones will be found. few can understand the anguish they're experiencing. they're desperate for word of any information no matter how small. our legal guys, avery friedman is here in new york and richard herman, criminal defense attorney and law professor joins us from las vegas. all right guys we're going to talk about legal options these families have and as we heard in alis alison's report even though the plane hasn't been found some insurance claims have already been paid out. avery, let me start with you. who is paying and exactly how does this work? >> allianz has made some preliminary payments to the families, that's probably how much of it is being underwritten and under the initial part of

this montreal convention that was mentioned, in alison's report that provides the basis for requiring some money initially, up to about $176,000. while much more remains to be done we have no idea where the plane is, we know nothing about the cause, at least there is strict liability meaning that these families are preliminarily being taken care of. >> do they have to proof liability? >> they do not. the burden actually is on the airline, so the individuals file the claim and as we learned more, that will impact and what kind of recovery these individuals will be able to could be tain. >> if if family members want to bring a claim to court what do they have to do? how do they go about this? >> randi, you have the montreal convention brought up in alison's story before this, and there they have a certain period of time to bring the claim but they're capped like avery said

176,000. that's the maximum they can recover and they have to sign releases for everybody and it's over and out at that point in time. that's whether there's terrorism involved, or whether the plane isser in found. court will make an initial determination there's a presumption of death and then they will get their claim. and it won't take that long to recover that. however, if we can get any information about this and if big, i-f, there can be proven negligence on behalf of malaysian airlines, rolls-royce who made the engines or beau, that is the motherlode, as they say, because then per person, based on the criteria, the age of the person, their earning potential, who they're supporting, their lifespan, that can generate millions and millions of dollars in a wrongful death award. >> so avery, as he's saying, terrorism doesn't change this at all? >> terrorism may -- >> if it turned out to be that.

>> terrorism may and again we have no evidence, but if there is, believe it or not, there is separate insurance provided by lloyd's to cover those kind of damages and again randi, that's literally millions and millions of dollars here. so we're going to have to see what happens. we don't have the facts. >> richard? >> under the montreal convention, randi, if it was terrorism or the plane is never found, you can still recover. that's not a block to recovery. it's strict liability as avery said. however, if you want to try to bring a separate action for negligence, then a terrorist action here would probably preclude you unless malaysian air was so reckless in their procedures. >> how do you show negligent terrorism? >> no, negligent security. negligent security by malaysian air. they'd have to try to find that. >> which brings up the idea, avery, you and i were talking about earlier about the two passengers who had their passports stolen.

>> holy smokes, i mean, from my perspective, what is the like -- what is the obligation, on the part of the airline, to investigate in-depth the validity of a passport. that's stretching the theory of liability. i understand it. i just don't accept it. doesn't make any sense. >> richard, what do you think on the flipside of that, what is the airline doing right now? they have to know that this could be coming, that lawsuits could be coming. what are they doing at this point? >> you know, randi, at this point in time, i think they're doing what everybody's doing, trying to find this plane or trying to determine whether or not it crashed or it's landed somewhere, and we've had a myriad of secenarios on cnn the last few days, everywhere from it's in pakistan to -- i'm concerned that the transponders were physically turned ayou have. to me that is bell answer whistles going off. i don't know how they do that and i don't know how there's no form of -- we can land people on the moon, but we can't find this

plane? it's unbelievable to me. it's incomprehensible. >> so how much money are we talking about, avery? >> i think in a sense it's limitless. i think you're going to have an aviational expert coming up that will talk about possible caps on that coverage, but it seems to me that between montreal conventi convention, between allianz and lloyds if there's terrorism involved it is a staggering amount of money. >> attorneys are projecting $500 to $750 million in damages. >> some are, right. >> do you see a case like this going to court, richard? >> you know, randi t goes all the time. there are great aviation attorneys who bring these cases and defend them. >> that's right. >> it's a mess. it's massive litigation and they go to court all the time. >> most important thing here, though, i think you both would agree, the families get some

answers. >> got to mention very quickly. wolf blitzer's birthday today, very important day. >> you want to sing? >> i don't know if it we should sing. >> i don't think we should sing. kidding, we're not singing. not singing. thank you. >> feel better, fred. thanks again. the legal guys are here as you know every saturday at this time to give us their take on the most intriguing legal cases of the day. still ahead more on the latest on the search for flight 370 and next ukraine's bases in crimea are slipping from its control and why the pentagon is worried crimea is just the start for russia. mine was earned in korea in 1953. afghanistan, in 2009. orbiting the moon in 1971. [ male announcer ] once it's earned, usaa auto insurance is often handed down from generation to generation. because it offers a superior level of protection. and because usaa's commitment to serve current and former military members and their families is without equal. begin your legacy.

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welcome back everyone. we'll have more on the search for flight 370 in just a few minutes. first important new developments on the crisis in ukraine. [ gunfire ] two ukrainian military bases in crimea have fallen to pro-russian forces. at the same time the white house is keeping a close eye on russian troops massing at the ukrainian border supposedly a part of training exercises, according to moscow. we're joined by cnn's barbara starr at the pentagon and ivan watson in the capital of kiev. barbara, i want to sta are the

with you. does the u.s. think those troops on the border are part of another invasion? >> well, nobody is certain yet what the russians are up to but i can tell you, randi, here at the pentagon, top officials starting with defense secretary hagel are just a little bit skeptical of what future russian intentions might be. hagel talking to the russian defense minister earlier this week and asking him point blank what the russian intentions are on that border. 20,000 russian troops now motorized, ready to move across the border if and when they get orders, the russians told hagel it was exercises, but across the highest levels of the obama administration, concern really is growing, that the russians are about to potentially, potentially make their next move, and they are so close to the border right now. there would be no advanced warning. they would just drive across and u.s. intelligence would likely see it as it's happening. >> ivan, what is your take?

will ukraine move to evacuate all the remaining troops from crime that? aren't they in some pretty serious danger? >> they are. these troops are surrounded and the ukrainian government hasn't really publicized a formal plan for what these soldiers should do. aside from saying they are authorized to fire their weapons in self-defense, which doesn't seem to have been the case, so what we've had instead is one by one russian forces and pro-russian amilitia surrounded the military installations and basically overrun them. what we've seen today at one of the bases is what clearly seemed to be russian armored personnel carriers actually ramming through the gates of the belbek military airbase and within some rather tense hours some warning shots were fired and the

humiliating scene we hear from the ukrainian ministry of defense that the local ukrainian officers and soldiers are then escorted out of the base with their belongings, while still in uniform. you can imagine for a member of the military how humiliating and embarrassing this is, and it's due to two things. number one, russia annexed crimea, but the major problem of thousands of ukrainian troops deployed stationed living there and on the other hand the ukrainian government not coming up with any plan for how to move its troops out of a territory that it still claims is still ukrainian. randi? >> and let me share this statement just coming in from the white house regarding this situation. russia should immediately begin discussions with the ukrainian government to ensure the safety of ukrainian forces in the crimean region of the ukraine. barbara, what does that tell you and what would be the pentagon's next steps at this point? >> well the language i'm not

hearing there, maybe it is there, randi, no u.s. call at this point for russia to withdraw from crimea. the u.s. military is not going to respond to this militarily, neither are the members of nato, but the stakes could not be higher and more meaningful and it starts right in moscow. the united states wants russian cooperation on syria, on iran, all of that. that is not likely to happen now any time soon, because of these tensions there is political instability that could erupt in eastern europe if this situation is not stabilized, and that leads to economic and investment uncertainty. of course, the major black sea port of sebastopol a major area of commerce in and out of ukraine. this is cascading effects. if it doesn't become resolved in some fashion could have some

widespread long range implications across the board. >> barbara starr, ivan watson, thank you both very much. well we could have known days ago what happened to flight 370 if it had a device already used in some airplanes. we'll show you that equipment coming up next. geico motorcycle. see how much you could save. maestro of project management. baron of the build-out.

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the mystery of what happened to malaysia flight 370 might have been solved days ago if the plane had been equipped with a high-tech data recorder. laurie segall looks at the technology many airlines don't even use. >> right now if a plane sinks to the bottom of the ocean the flight data recorder goes with it.

we spoke with one company that could vo gotten more answers. when the flight disappeared the story of what went wrong vanished with it. the answers might be stuck in the flight data recorder, the so-called black box. what if we had those answers all along? >> we would know where the aircraft has gone, where it is, and we would have information on what happened in the meantime. >> canadian company flhyt makes data recorders, part of a satellite based system that monitors a plane's condition, engine conditions and more. >> the system transmits every ten minutes. >> if something goes wrong like the plane deviating from its route the system will start streaming live second by second data. >> that kind of information is not only life saving but it adds a tremendous measure of security for our country. >> reporter: there are several mechanisms that transmit a plane's data, but hayden says the technology behind flhyt is

more extensive, sharing a tremendous amount of information. so much information critics say it could be difficult to analyze if widely adoopted. right now the technology is only fitted to 350 planes run by 40 operators. can be installed for about $100,000. normal data transmission costs carriers between a few dollars to $15 per flight hour and goes up for continuous streaming in a rare emergency. >> they're cost sensitive and will not add additional safety measures unless mandated by the federal government. >> reporter: as vettors look for clues in the search for flight 370 the high tech data recorder is getting a second look. >> the technology exists. it's in service. it's economical and the question now is how to get more widespread use of it. >> it's important to note this technology might have been helpful if it had been in use but like the transponder on flight 370 it would have been

possible for someone to turn it off. laurie segall, cnn, new york. -- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com hello i'm randi kaye in for fredricka whitfield. thanks for joining us. in a few hours planes will continue to search for flight 370 looking for three objects, captured four days ago and released to the public today. the object is about 74 feet by 43 feet. right now china is sending ships to try to locate it and determine if it's wreckage from the airplane or something else. the object was found about 75 miles from two other floating objects spotted by a commercial satellite a week ago. the search for all three could be complicated by bad weather on top of it. conditions earlier today were good though and crews managed to see several small items in the ocean including a wooden pa le .

>> we had outstanding conditions but unfortunately the conditions back here precluded us from staying out as long as we've liked. there are a few other aircraft out there, the united states navy and they're out there still searching and with any luck we'll find something shortly. we have a lot of hope and the conditions remain as they are, hopefully we'll find something soon. >> defense secretary chuck hagel is ordering the navy and policy experts to investigate whether u.s. military undersea technology could help find potential wreckage. malaysian officials asked the pentagon to contribute the equipment to that search operation. there is a lot to talk about here of course, we've gathered a great panel of experts so they're going to be staying with us for the hour. joining me, clive irving, written extensively about flight 370, arthur rosenberg, pilot and

aviation attorney and christine dennison, oceans explore and logistics expert. and tom fuentes, senior law enforcement analyst. clive, let's begin with you. you have written extensively about the debris and we've talked what it might be. take us through if you can what might float and ma wwhat might float. >> the plane is not designed to float so what happens to it is very dependent on the dynamics of the angle at which it hits the ocean and the speed at which it hits the only. the only thing we have to go on that's any guide is what happened to air france 447. when it sank into the south atlantic, and in that case what it happened was that the plane hit the water almost as though it was landing at an airport, relatively stable latitude so the rear of the aircraft hit the water first and the nose sank

and there was a huge what's called a vertical impact and the impact was so huge it went up through the cargohold into the cabin, compressed the seats in the cabin and compressed the spinal cords of the passengers on that flight. we know this from the examinations done afterwards so the dynamics are very complic e complicat complicated, how the airframe itself breaks up. most likely thing is the wings, the engines hang onto the wings as we know and they're designed to separate if there's any kind of stress so they would go first and they would fall like bombs through the ocean to the ocean floor because they're very intensely heavy. on the other hand, the wings that they have just left are potential floatation devices and if this happened at the end of the flight, there are gas tanks in the wing and they would be empty, so they would be like buoyancy things inside the wings so the wings would tend to float. this is why there should be an accurate correlation between what the satellites are picking up and the dimensions of the plane itself.

in the case of 447 the first thing we saw was the vertical stabilizer which had clear air france markings on it. it was a relatively easy thing to spot. in that wreckage spotted after three days, the first piece of wreckage. in this case it's going to be much, much tougher. >> christine, talk to me about that ocean in particular, because i did a story on the swiss air flight which went down, swiss air flight 111 went down some 15 years ago and that plane i was told by the investigator, they recovered 2 million different pieces. in terms of how this ocean works and where all of these pieces, if it's in the ocean, can travel to, what should we know about that? >> first of all the area that they're searching at the moment and supposedly will be continuing working is very, very hostile. it's what i would refer to as no man's land. you're looking at an area 1,500 miles from perth, australia, and about 3,500 miles from

antarctica, so you're in this center of nothing else, an open, exposed area for search operations to go on and at this time it's not the best time, they're going into the fall. you have a couple of days now that they've had some good weather so there's some hope there but they're still working against very difficult environment in this particular area of the south indian ocean. >> if i could jump in, i took a look when i saw the dimension of what the debris was recorded by the chinese. first off this information is four days old already. we've been playing catch up from day one. when you look at the size of this debris as it was reported, 74 feet long by 43 feet wide, you look at the dimensions of this aircraft, the wing span is 200 feet. that means each wing is 100 feet. if you look at the horizontal

and vertical stabilizer they're each about 35 feet. so what i tried to do is match up what the satellite photograph showed dimensionally with what we know to be the dimensions of the aircraft. it doesn't look like it's a section of the wing because the root cord where the wing attaches to the fuselage that point looks about 40 feet long which doesn't match up to anything here. the horizontal versical stabilizers being 35 feet they're smaller than this. could it be a section of the fuselage? the fuselage is about 20 feet across. if you took half a radius you're going to get about 30 feet. i don't know that even if that matches up. so as clive pointed out when the airplane hits, it's structural chaos, compressive forces, tensile forces, torsional forces compress but dimensionally i don't see this as matching up with what this is.

>> i agree. this raises another mystery. you assume the people who analyzed this satellite information are basically military people who are used to looking, finding a very small object and seeing that it's a missile launch or something like that, that's what they do for most of their time. i can't understand why, having gone through that intense process of scrutiny, that they would release the images which as you've just said anyone with any basic understanding of the proportions of the aircraft, the first step you would do would be to match what you see on the image to the proportions on the aircraft. this happened with the first chinese satellite pictures. >> why are they and let me bring tom fuentes in here. why do you think there's such a delay in releasing these images? they were taken four days ago. >> well, randi, i think the delay has already been established that even our satellite photos were four days late. it just takes a long time to go through thousands of photos and look at them individually and find the piece and then get that to the authorities.

so i don't have trouble with the delay. it seems that's typical. i have a greater trouble with if they're putting out information that they could clearly determine as probably not the aircraft, but putting it out with the idea that it might be. on the other hand, they have hundreds of people in beijing attending the meetings with the authorities screaming at their government that the government is not doing enough, that the governments of the world are not doing enough and i think that encourages china to just go ahead and put these pictures out there and say look, we are doing something. we are sending ships. we are sending airplanes. maybe it doesn't look like it could be the object of an airplane, but doesn't matter. we're going to put this out and show you that we're doing something. >> i guess what i'm curious about, are there limits to this search? if it moves, we've watched it swing wide range. can they keep searching everywhere? >> from the get-go we had the malaysian government release

inaccurate information, they had everybody looking in the south china sea. i think they were embarrassed by the fact that this plane flew from kuala lumpur en route to beijing, east across the malay peninsula and flew back west across the malay peninsula, went through three military radar zones with primary hits on the airplane. whether it took them time to figure out what was going on which i had a hard time digesting or were embarrassed, didn't know how to handle it, at some point i think certainly for the life of the pingers on the digital flight data recorder, cockpit voice recorder i think you'll see a massive continuous effort, some point 30 days those pingz can actually go for about five additional days. after that happens we'll start

to see it scale back. maybe later on question talk about what's going on in the northern group. >> you're fascinated by the northern route. and there's so much more to talk about with all of you. stick around. we'll get back to you at about the half hour or so. much more when we come back, ahead we'll have an inside view of the exhaustive search for flight 370. what you wear to bed is your business. so, if you're sleeping in your contact lenses, ask about the air optix® contacts so breathable they're approved for up to 30 nights of continuous wear. ask your doctor about safety information as serious eye problems may occur. visit airoptix.com for a free one-month trial.

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they are trying to assist in the search for flight 370, long hours out over the ocean scanning looking for any evidence and so far crews have been coming up empty. space is limited on that plane so i'm going to take a camera with me and try to give you perspective what it's like looking out the window scanning the ocean searching for clues. maybe today is the day we find something. >> will ripley is back from that flight and joins us live in kuala lumpur. what was the mood of the search crews after all these days and gruelling hours? >> reporter: we didn't find anything. these cruise were tired. they were told when they left ok gn

okinawa they'd spend 14 days here. there were other areas that need to be searched as well within the southern corridor and that's where we were flying over the indian ocean. we have some video to show you took from the airplane. there were some weather problems. that's one wig factor in this part of the world this time of year. we had to fly around a tropical cyclone, we flew through lightning on the way home so that's one challenge that's facing rescuers. the way this works, i was surprised, they're using radar in these p3 orions but most is by sight. crew members lining the windows with biknack dollars looking over the water to see what they can see. sometimes your eyes play tricks on you. you might think you're seeing debris, in fact it's a cap on the wave. in your mind you're hoping that you're going to see something. it's disappointing when you don't see anything. >> certainly. will ripley, fascinating, thank you so much. we want to bring back our guests here, clive irving contributor for "the daily beast," arthur

rosenberg, pilot, aviation and engineer and aviation attorney and christine dennison, oceans explore and expeditions expert. will was talking about the southern corridor where he was. i know all of you are fascinated with the southern corridor so clive, let me hand it to you first. what is it about the northern corridor and the search in that area? >> it puzzles me that they were thinking of it. if you take that course it flies into 1:30 or 2:00 in the morning on the early hours of the saturday morning. major traffic corer do between asia, the middle east and europe and also covered as we expect by a lot of military radar, the military defense systems of china, pakistan there. so it's about last place you would steer a plane if you're trying to evade detection. >> arthur? >> well, let me put a different perspective on it, okay?

i've been advocating not to abandon the thought that the plane took a northern route for the following reasons. first of all, after the transponder got turned off, for all practical purposes, this plane became invisible. even though the plane was on the east side of the inlay peninsula, it flew west across through three malaysian military zones with impunity. they saw it, what they were doing, if they were sleeping at the scope or doing something else they missed it. the thai radar at 2:15 also saw a hit, they missed it. so this plane could have taken a northern route. one of the big points for not believing the plane took the northern route was because of the indian and the pakistanian radar which is considered very effective. hang with me on this. >> okay. >> the inmar satellite gave us a

southern corridor and southern corridor. the one ping we got at 8:11, the last contact with this plane, this aircraft was someplace on an arc defined by its distance from this satellite. now we kept saying, well, what if the inmar satellite had given us the other ping data? there was six other points. slate published an article yesterday where that information was actually revealed, so what does it all mean? i'm just going to put this together and say it as simply as i can. when you put it together if you think as the corridor now as a rim on a wheel, the last radar hit being the inner rim of the wheel, and the 8:11 hit being the outer rim of the wheel, between 2:15 a.m. and 8:11 a.m., this plane was traversing in between those two points someplace on the rim.

>> right. >> but the significance of that is that this corridor, this path again just following the northern route takes you away from india and pakistanian radar and puts you over myanmar and banglade bangladesh, areas which from what i've been told do not have the best radar facilities, and we already know the plane evaded radar with reasonably good radar facilities so this plane could very well have made it through the northern corridor in between the inner and outer rim of this radar, this satellite wheel undetected. >> right. >> i'll just finish by saying there are lots of airports in that neck of the woods where this plane could have landed. that's as far as i'm going to go. >> i know you want to weigh in and you weigh in, too. we need to take a break and come back and talk more about it, searching the indian ocean to are any signs of the plane poses a daunting challenge. we'll have a virtual look at that for you next. [ telephone rings ] [ shirley ] edward jones.

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we're following new developments in the search for malaysia airlines flight 370. chinese satellite captured images of an object in the southern indian ocean and that poses a daunting challenge for searchers trying desperately to find this plane. tom foreman has a virtual look.

>> knock tells you how important this area remains to the search more than the hardware that is there. that includes a strong presence from china with many citizens on board the plane has a lot to be concerned about there. its a some of the robust assets they have in the entire area to search. it's a very big job. think about this. when you get to an area like this, you're still searching on the surface of water and that's incredibly hard. every glare of sunshine, any white caps, any storms that come along make it harder for anyone to see beneath that surface, and this is a gargantuan task

and if if you go below the water, it's tougher. everybody keeps saying why aren't they listening for the pinging of the flight data recorders. because it's really hard to hear those. this is an ultrasonic sound that only goes two miles in the best of circumstances and if it's being interfered with by some kind of underwater mountains or valleys, if in fact this plane has tragically gone down, then it goes a whole lot shorter distance, it's much harder to hear. what they need is the surface clue and again the biggest sign that they think they might be able to find it is the continued presence of all those people and all that hardware in the zone. >> i twoobt bring back christine dennison, expeditions logistics expert. we were talking about one of the most dangerous and treacherous parts of the ocean. if the plane is there, will it be found? >> it's all speculation and just

to go back to something and i'm going to go against arthur on this one a bit because we are talking about the northern arc as a possibility as well. that was two weeks ago, you still have the possibility and it's likely that debris that would be the point of impact up in the north, you would still have debris making its way down over the course of two weeks, which is what they could be picking up on satellite. >> we're looking at some of the possible objects 15 miles apart. this debris would float you think? >> this would float and going to keep moving. they've been tracking aentrying to get a visual. it's all visual and they'll have good days and bad days and still trying to make eye contact. >> they are actually using their eyes. >> they have to. >> why do they have to go with the eyes instead of the radar? >> the radar isn't giving you the details they need.

they need to see this, capture it. >> we have clive and arthur chiming in here. >> they do but really a set of eyes that are close to the object that can really tell you, this is what i see. this is how, it's very hard to grasp what is floating on the ocean and how far under the water that would be until you can see it and get close enough to it and that's going to open up a whole different area of this operation. time is of the essence, we're 15 days into it, we have 15 days left looking for the black boxes if we'll find them. i wleefd it was in the northern arc and could be on land but i am following everything we're discovering day by day it's changing so i'm keeping an open mind and hopeful, too, like all of us. >> we'll take a quick break and bring you back after the break and talk some more. crews certainly now focusing on that third object that's been spotted in the southern indian

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the search for malaysia airlines flight 370 now entering its 16th day and there is a new potential clue. here is what we know at this hour. third object has been spotted in the southern indian ocean, a chinese satellite captured images of it four days ago. it's about 74 feet by 43 feet. the object was found about 75 miles from two other floating objects spotted by a commercial satellite a week ago, but search planes didn't spot anything today other than a wooden pallet. crews have been looking for the first two mystery objects for three days with no luck. andrew stevens has the latest from perth, australia.

>> reporter: day three for missing flight 370 and another blank for australian search and rescue. saturday's first search aircraft an australian at long range orion returning from a gruelling 12-hour flight, not only empty handed but with worrying new information about weather conditions. >> weather conditions were less than ideal again today as we've seen on the last few days as part of the search. we did achieve, managed to achieve 100% area coverage, however, we weren't able to find any evidence of any wreckage or survival equipment from the missing malaysian aircraft. >> reporter: it was the same story as the other flights returned. still, the search continues to ramp up, two chinese il-76 military transport planes arriving at perth airport early saturday morning. they then flew the short hop to pierce air force base for the search. australia's acting prime

minister welcoming the new additions. >> we welcome these additional assets, including the chinese aircraft. they have a capability that will be important also to the search. i'm told that they're a good platform for visual observations. it is more likely that a pair of eyes are going to again identify something floating in the ocean and much of the detection equipment on board the aircraft. >> reporter: orions continue to be the backbone of the search operation. corporate jets like these are being drafted in, giving added range and critically important, more time over the target zone, find hours, twice as long as these military aircraft. as daily faded the talk here in perth was the next big obstacle the crews will face. wad weather is forecast for the target zone making a tough job a whole lot tougher. andrew stevens, pierce air force

base, perth, australia. >> we want to bring back our panel now to pick up the conversation, here in new york i'm joined by clive irving, contributor for the daily beast who has written extensively about flight 370, arthur rosenberg, and christine dennison, ocean explorer and expeditions logistics expert. in washington, tom fuentes a cnn law enforcement analyst and rick castaldo engineer. clive i want to start with you. one of the things you've written about is this idea of a zombie plane. explain your theory there. >> it only works if you assume what these search assume that it ended up that distance away from where it left. it's assuming that it ran out of gas because it would run out of gas if it was in that part of the ocean. you have to work back to what conditions on the flight deck could have created circumstances in which this plane would be flying itself basically on autopilot, and there are precedents for this of pilots

being disabled by a lack of oxygen because of decompression or by some toxic fumes. so this leaves a very fascinating gap between when it last made contact, and sinister motives being given to the crew because they tapped into this new course, which i don't find sinister at all. if they had an apprehension that something was wrong technically but not urgently wrong, but they needed, which a prudent pilot would do, change course and direct themselves toward where the nearest airfields were, that would be part of that process. given that scenario, they could in the few minutes be overtaken by what it was that they suspected was going along technically and there are so many different ways in which that could happen. for example we keep saying the transponder was switched off but doesn't mean they could have failed. they could have failed for loss

of electrical power could have done that, so there's nothing necessarily sinister about that. what i'm saying is really between whatever event happened on that flight deck and it ending up this far away, it's capable, the plane is capable of flying itself until, as long as it has the power of maintains. >> even all those hours. right. >> it's on autopilot and most of the planes are on autopilot. >> i want to ask tom why it's so important to try and find the transcripts from the air traffic controllers? as you know, there was some of the transfers that were being discussed and officials are saying there's nothing sinister, nothing suspicion there and how do we know that and do you buy that? >> the transcript we've been given is an english transcript that was transcribed or translated into chinese and translated when it back into english so we don't know if it's

accurate or authentic. the only thing we will be able to tell is where we hear the voice conversation from the time they were on the ground until the time they stopped communicating. i think that to me is more important, will be able to tell if they are using the right, accurate term, there's stress in their voices, how they communicate back to the tower, these transcripts don't give us that and we don't know if they're accurate or authentic. >> we're going to leave it here for a minute. we have some news as we've been watching today out of ukraine. we'll come back to you in a moment. just ahead more coverage on the search for flight 370. next two more bases in crimea fall to pro-russian forces and the white house gives moscow a warning about these attacks. we'll have it all for you coming up. gunderman group is a go. yes! not just a start up. an upstart.

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welcome back. we'll have more on the search for flight 370 in a few minutes. first, important new developments on the crisis in ukraine. the white house is warning russia it will be held responsible for any ukrainian troops hurt in crimea. this is what the white house is worried about. two more bases fell to pro-russian forces today in

crimea. we're joined by eivan watson in eyourself and erin mcpike at the white house. erin, what else does the white house have to say about what they're seeing there now? >> reporter: randi i was just e-mailing with the spokeswoman for the national security council at the white house and what she said to me "as we have said the russian military is directly responsible for any casualties its forces whether they be regular uniformed troops or regulars without insignia inflict on ukrainian military members. reports of continued attacks against military personnel and facilities highlight the dangerous situation created by rush why and belie president putin's claim that the intervention in crimea has brought security to ukraine. russia should immediately begin discussions with the ukrainian government to ensure the safety of ukrainian forces in the crimean kreenlgian of ukraine." in the last few days we've seen

increasing concern from the white house over this. >> ivan, you heard there, they're demanding that discussions begin. what do you think the chances of that are there and also, what hasn't ukraine evacuated these troops yet? >> that's a really good question one one ukrainians are asking, why aren't there some evacuation pran? part of the problem could be the government doesn't officially recognize any government in ukraine to negotiate with. the government's official position that crimea was, is and will continue to be ukrainian territory. but that doesn't really answer the problem that thousands of ukrainian troops in uniform are facing at a number of different bases spread out across the crimean peninsula, they've been left one by one to fall under pressure and in some case under the use of force from the

russian military on the ground that have encircled the location as well as pro-russian militia in the case of one airbase today an armored personnel carrier was filmed bashing down the gate of that airbase, after the ukrainian commander vowed to stay at his post, and then the very humiliating images of ukrainian military personnel basically forced to walk out of their own base under the watch of russian military personnel, ukrainian troops moving out, humiliated, carrying out possessions from their own barracks, installations, their own homes in effect. that is how it unfolded on the ground where there has not been any formal policy set by the crimean national government on what the forces should do from base to base, and today a ukrainian submarine, the only submarine in the ukrainian fleet, it was also handed over after ukrainian military commander refused to defect to the russian military side.

randi? >> so erin, as we see what's going on there, there are reports now of the russian troops massed on the ukrainian border. is the white house worried about this? are they talking about doing anything? are you getting it at all set? >> yes, the white house is very concerned, senior administration official did say they are concerned about that very thing, about additional troop movements to jake tapper just yesterday but president obama plans to meet with european leaders in the coming week and he said he wants to discuss more severe actions against russia. i would point out that the national security adviser did brief the press yesterday and she said the sanctions that are already in place are at least having an effect on russia's economy. she said of course that major ratings agencies have towngraded russia's credit worthiness in the last 24 hours, so there's an obvious impact there. also on friday, moscow's stock indexes were sharply down, so

there is an effect. not the white house wants to see just yet. >> erin and ivan, thank you very much. search teams are doing everything they can to find 370. ahead the very latest on the search effort. fiber that's taste-free, grit-free and dissolves completely. so you can feel free to add it to anything. and feel better about doing it. better it with benefiber.

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might help find it. barbara starr is joining me now. tell us more about what's being done to locate this object that was tracked by china satellite, i guess picked up four days ago. >> that may be the big problem. four days ago from a satellite, going to be very hard to find it. we see the image. we know the longitude and latitude four days ago. the ocean current, the winds, all very rough weather out there. it will have moved some distance and that's the challenge. they have to send the aircraft out to look for it. ships might take awhile to get to this spot and they have to look in several places. if aircraft can spot something, they will try to determine if it's actually from the plane. but, we talked to an aviation expert who says this satellite image, it might be something, it might be nothing. it may be several pieces of debris, objects, some from the

plane, all wrapped together in the ocean current. have a listen to what he had to say. >> anything from the interior cabin should be floating. most of the cabin furnishings are made out of a variety of plastics, thermoplastics. things like the overhead bins, the seat cushions, the cosmetic bulkheads, all of those should be floating. in a lot of cases, they are going to be inner mingled with wire and debris. you may have smaller pieces mixed in with a larger piece from a satellite in the air. >> so, we don't know if it's from the airplane, but a hint of what this satellite image might, might be representing. when you look at it, it's very low resolution, at least publicly released by the chinese. hard to tell what it really

shows. >> what about undersea technology? the u.s. has it. do they need to narrow down the area more before they put it into use to find the plane? >> experts in the u.s. military and the navy say that's exactly right. you can't just send it out over several thousand square miles. they have to find debris, first, verify it's from the airplane, verify it's from this flight, then mark it. they will throw markers into the water, essentially with gps co-ordinates on them to track the debris as it moves around the ocean, then they will have to try to use undersea salvage technology and undersea sonar, if they can narrow down where the data recorders might be. >> it is a complicated process, no doubt. barbara starr, thank you for that. before we go, we want to check in with our panel, clyde from

the daily beast, ocean explorer, christine dennison and tom and rick. here is a challenge for all of you. in one sentence, i would like you to try to tell me where you think the plane is and where it happened. clyde, you first. >> after two weeks, nobody knows where it is. >> northeaster do you? >> nope, i don't know where it is. >> arthur? >> look at the concentration of assets today for the best chance of finding the plane. do not abandon the northern route. >> still stuck on that north route. the corridor. >> we have to keep looking in the ocean. i'm not sure, obviously, but i suspect we are looking at the bottom of the ocean floor. >> and rick? >> i agree, look at the northern route and perhaps use unmanned aerial surveillance to look.

>> tom, what about you? >> i agree with all of them. could have went this way, could have went that way. >> that's about what the maps look like, too. if it wasn't such a sad situation, it would be sort of comical, but it's certainly not. thanks to all of you here in new york with me. to tom and rick as well. thank you everybody for watching. cnns coverage for the search continues in just a minute. john berman picks up from new york with the latest on the investigation and a look at how tough the weather conditions could hamper efforts to locate the missing plane. be sure to stay with us. [ male announcer ] nyquil cold and flu liquid gels don't unstuff your nose. they don't? alka seltzer plus night fights your worst cold symptoms, plus has a decongestant. [ inhales deeply ] oh. what a relief it is.

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hello, i'm john berman in for fredricka whitfield. we begin were new hope for crews searching the seas. a third object has been spotted in the southern indian ocean. this was picked up by a chinese satellite. it captured this image four days ago. that piece, that piece of possible debris you are looking at, they say it's 74 feet by 34 feet. china is sending ships to try to locate it to determine if it is

wreckage from flight 370. this object was spotted about 75 miles from two other floating objects spotted by a commercial satellite now nearly one week ago. crews have been looking for the first two mystery objects for three days but have not been able to find them. today, they did spot a few items of debris from the sky, including a small, wooden palette. they say no reason for that to raise too many hopes. more ships and planes from several countries are headed to the search area. australias acting prime minister talked about the significance of the satellite images. >> we can't be sure at this stage, whether the debris that's been sighted is related to the loss of the aircraft. it is the most promising lead that's in the national aid. there are a number of other explanations about what might

have been sighted as a result of this satellite imagery. >> crews continue searching in the northern corridor. seven countries in that area told investigators they did not pick up signals from the plane on their radars after it lost contact with ground control. there was a lot to talk about with the new developments. we have gathered together a great panel of experts to stay with us for the hour. in new york, i'm joined by daniel rose and arthur rosenberg, an aviation lawyer and pilot. in washington, rick is an aviation surveillance and tom is a cnn law enforcement analyst. shoun o'connor for the air force joins us from indianapolis. from denver, david is a cnn safety analyst author of "why planes crash." thank you all for joining us. sean, i want to start with you. as part of