dollars, if you keep having accidents, even if it's one so often how do you put a price on life? you really can't. thank you. brent larson, see you throughout the evening on cnn. we'll be live for you until 9:00 p.m. eastern. then back after that from 10:00 to midnight as well. the next hour of the "cnn the next hour of the "cnn newsroom" starts right now. -- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com you are in the "cnn newsroom." it's the top of the hour. i'm don lemon. all this hour we're fast forwarding to the week ahead tackling the unanswered questions about malaysia airlines flight 370. our questions in just a moment. first i want to get you caught up on the very latest on this story. it's a dawn of a new day. we are now at 17 straight days of nothing. 17 straight days of nothing. no emergency pings. no radio contact. lots of hopeful sightings and fruitless searches. we are no closer to knowing where this airplane is than we

were 17 days ago. hold on. something new, though, spotted in the water. french officials say one of their satellites picked up what might be debris in the southern indian ocean. airborne search crews are heading to that area to check that out. the malaysian government today cast doubt on the theory that someone punched new flight directions into the airplane in mid-flight. they say the last communication from the flight deck showed a normal programmed route to beijing. flight 370's intended destination. that brings us to the question. question number one in your week ahead. how does malaysia's update affect the ever evolving timeline from malaysia airline flight 370. i want to bring in cnn aviation analyst, miles o'brien. also a pilot. miles, break this down for us if you will. the update of the acars data, does that have any significant meaning to you? >> it's a big deal for us on the outside of the investigation. we've been operating under the assumption for quite some time based on obviously some bad information that there was this

other path that was programmed into the flight management system. and it had several waypoints that would send it off into the direction generally where the search is occurring right now. now we're told that was not the case at all. this plane was, in fact, headed to beijing. that was like the prime piece o think somehow that the crew might have been involved or maybe they were -- maybe they were hijackers who were forcing this. most likely the crew. take that away and we really don't have any evidence the crew was doing anything nefarious. there might have been something catastrophic that occurred that might have put them in a scenario, excuse me, where they were trying to keep the plane flying. trying to get it to a lower altitude. and a decompression situation. and perhaps in the confusion of all that, either lost or unable to get a radio call out or transponder. i realize that's a lot of what ifs. you have to consider it.

>> miles o'brien, see you throughout the evening on cnn. thank you, sir. >> looking for any sign of flight 370. here's question number two. will the u.s. send more resources? lieutenant david levy joins us now. he's on the phone to answer those questions. he's onboard the u.s. blue ridge in the south china sea. more resources? >> there are plans in the works to have some more resources available in case some of the aircraft debris is located. you know -- we have new information or new -- this is simply just a prudent effort to preposition the equipment and train personnel so that we're able to respond more quickly if debris is actually found. lieutenant can you tell us or would you know how long the navy would stay committed to the

search? >> we will stay on the search as long as we're needed. right now we're focused on -- on the mission itself, the crews from the p-8 and the p-3. these are long days for these pilots and air crews. these are dedicated professionals that will continue looking as long as we're needed. >> are all u.s. assets directed to the search near the australian coast or are there more places along? >> the p-8 flight out of perth is directed to the -- the identified search area by the australian authorities. the other aircraft, the p-3 that's flying out of malaysia is still searching another portion of the indian ocean. but we're directing our efforts wherever they're needed. >> all right. lieutenant david levy, thank you very much. we appreciate you joining us. you know, this week nasa is rolling out a new plan to help -- to help look for missing malaysia flight 370. will space agency technology be able to boost a search for

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the search to find the missing malaysia jet grinds on. the result so far, the same. pretty much nothing. question three. now that nasa is helping with the search will their satellite pictures present a clearer picture of potential debris? joining me you, cnn meteorologist chad myers. also aviation analyst mile o'brien. how effective are nasa's images? >> certainly better thatten the images here, my noaa satellite that can see clouds. the problem is the focusing and location of the satellite. people have been tweeting you can read my license plate but how come you can't find a plane. we can read a license plate, or they say they can, if they focus the lens in one spot. thence you won't get coverage because you're only looking at a

license plate. miles, you have to move things to the right places. a lot of our satellites are geosynchronous. >> the earth rotates beneath them. we only have a couple of -- windows are minimal on the location as the earth spins beneath them. there aren't a lot of -- because there's not much there, there's not a lot of stuff that is permanently trained on the southern ocean. so that's part of the problem here. commercially available satellites, stuff you see from digital globe, are one meter resolution or sometimes less. that means an object three feet long or sometimes less can be resolved by even commercially available satellites. you know, nasa is not in the business of identifying pieces of debris on the surface of the ocean. they have a lot of scientific satellites which analyze ocean currents and so forth. i'm not exactly sure how much

resolution they have. as you point out, chad, very correctly, if you're using too much of a telephoto here you're defeating the purpose. you need a little more of a wide angle or at least the standard lens, if you will, can 50 mill miter to sort of find something to look at. then you zoom in. >> that leads me to my next question, then. if either of you can answer this. so if they do find debris, right, let's just say are they able to zero in on it a little more with the satellites, right? they do find debris, the smallest of it, can they identify from small debris? what will they glean from that? obviously if it's a big piece of the plane with the logo on it, you can tell. if it's just small debris, what can they do? >> after 17 days, miles, this is pretty broken up. >> yeah. this is the problem. how much of this really would be floating at this point? seat cushions, maybe. you could come up with a scenario where if the plane hit the water in a certain way, there might not be much that even surfaces. so, you know, this is the tricky

part. is what would float, how big would it be, you know, in the case of the air france crash you had a big composite vertical stabilizer which broke off. because it's composite it has this honeycomb inside it. it's filled with air. and it floated. and that was a big -- that was very helpful to the search, obviously. in this case you've got a virtually all aluminum airplane. there's not a lot that floats except for seat cushions and bags. and that is obviously what they're looking for. >> don, i'm getting all kinds of questions, don, about why are we just finding this debris in the ocean now? why didn't we find this years ago? because we never looked. there was no reason to focus down there and spend all this eye time, people time and satellite time looking down there. that's why we're just finding it now. >> yeah. why spend that money for a cargo container, right? you just replace it and just let it go. as we have been -- it's obvious

the ocean is a vast, vast place. well, 17 days now. people are asking as well about salt water and erosion of evidence. this would be pretty quick to start eroding, wouldn't it? >> yeah. the salt water. the depth. certainly if it's down at 9,000 or 10,000 feet with the pressure. bear in mind the real evidence is in those black boxeses. and they are designed to withstand this. let's stay focused on that. they -- it's highly likely they survive the impact. they're designed to do that and they're designed to go down at least 20,000 feet of depth in the ocean. >> but miles? >> uh-huh. >> absent of that, the thing that a satellite is going to find, the ocean is so deep. let's say they don't hear the pinging. the chances -- their chances may be better to find a bigger piece of debris, and that's why they're looking? the satellite obviously would not pick up, you know, the black boxes or the flight -- the data recorders because they're so sma small. >> right, right. no. they're not going to see that. i see what you're saying.

as far as stuff that's floating, it's turbulent seas. we have established that fact. it's very likely there's not a lot on the surface. we still can't say with any certainty that they are searching in the right place. >> if we get a better focus, don, a smaller area, not 1 million square miles, where we still are at this point in time, there will be sonar ships out there looking for something metal on the surface of the ocean. no matter how deep it is, it will ping differently than the muck that's down there. >> all right. see you guys in a bit. thank you. move on now. remember these pictures from five years ago? air france flight 447. another plane that was on radar when it suddenly -- when suddenly it wasn't. so after another flight vanishes, will anything change? that's our question, next. weekdays are for rising to the challenge.

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cnn breaking news. remember when we told you about this plane, when it all the sudden going towards beijing and then it makes a sudden turn to the left, to the strait of malaka. there's new information about the altitude of that plane or we should say the change of altitude. in kwal uala lumpur right now, what do you have? >> reporter: we just got this. we really wanted to share it with you. we understand from a source close to the investigation that says the military radar that

detected this aircraft just as it made that turn had dropped to 12,000 feet. now, this is significant because it raises so many more questions as to why it dropped shortly after making that turn. what we know now just adds more information to our timeline. we know already malaysian authorities believe that at 1:07 when it made that last acars transmission identifying itself at mh370 it was still bound for beijing. let's not forget that. then when it made the turn after 1:19, it then dropped altitude. now, so many questions raised, don. >> yeah. absolutely. saima, you can bring that in for me, please. new information. i think it -- it adds so many more questions. as you say. but i think it might explain a little bit. saima don't go anywhere. we want to keep you here on this breaking news. i want to go to cnn miles o'brien, our aviation expert here as well.

miles, you hear what saima is reporting. she's saying military radar tracked the flight between 1:19 and 2:40 showed that the aircraft did change altitude after making a sharp turn over the south china sea as it headed toward the strait of malaka. down to 12,000 feet. 77 pilot said if that did happen, he's saying there was some sort of crisis in the cockpit. probably a fire in the cockpit. and they were trying to get down to a lower altitude so that they could get the bad air out or the smoke out of the cabin. and they became overwhelmed. does that -- are you gleaning that? >> totally jives. absolutely. that's exactly where i am on this, don. first of all, just a word of caution here. this is a primary target at this point. that means the transponder is turned off. thans the difference between something in two dimensions, actually really one dimension as opposed to something that has three dimensions, really.

the transponder provides information on the speed of the aircraft and the altitude. for obvious reasons the military wants to know if any intruder is coming in what the altitude might be. but it's not as accurate as what you would get if that transponder is on. 12,000 give or take. if you're in a situation where you have rapid decompression, 10,000 feet is a magic number. you want to get down to 10,000 feet because that is when you don't have to worry about pressurization. you have enough air in the atmosphere naturally to keep everybody alive. part of the procedure for a rapid decompression, for a cabin altitude problem as they call it, it's called a high dive. and you go as quickly as you can down to that altitude. so this supports what i've been talking about, about a possible catastrophic situation and they're trying to get down to a safer altitude. >> all right. is saima still there? saima, this explains -- it explains what happened. it doesn't explain why it happened, that new information.

correct? >> reporter: yeah. that's right. the source we've been speaking to said, you know, that's what they're trying to work out, don. what exactly went on onboard in that cockpit that made the pilot or whoever was in the cockpit, let's remember, we still don't know who made that turn. we now know that it wasn't preprogrammed. so this lends itself to the notion that perhaps this was because of some kind of catastrophic failure onboard. the pilot, co-pilot trying to safe the event. or someone entering the cockpit and doing this deliberately. either way, there was a deliberate turn. it dropped to 12,000 feet. and there are a range of possibilities here, of course, don. a fire onboard. were they trying to go low down to -- because of rapid decompression as we've discussed? what happened onboard that made the pilot go so low? a lot of people are raising also questions about -- and we've heard this over the last few weeks, would the plane have been able to go below a radar.

well, actually, no. 12,000 feet simply isn't low enough, don, to avoid any kind of military radar for sure. and commercial radar, we understand. so kruscrucially all we know ri now, and this is a crucial piece of information, of course, as we're trying to piece this jigsaw puzzle together, don, that the plane made a deliberate turn that was not preplanned or preprogrammed. and at that point, shortly afterwards, because of this military radar, the source that has spoken to cnn has told us that it dropped down to 12,000 feet. what went wrong onboard flight mh370 to make whoever was onboard do that? don? >> stand by. saima moshin. military radar that tracked flight 370 between 1:19 a.m. and 2:40 a.m. showed the aircraft did change altitude after making a sharp turn over the shoouth

china sea and as it headed toward the straight of malaka. and that it was flying as low as 12,000 feet at some point before it disappeared from radar. that's a source close to the investigation into this missing flight. that's what they're telling cnn. the official not authorized to speak to the media told cnn that the area mh370 flew in after the turn is a heavily trafficked air corridor. and that flying at 12,000 feet would have kept the jet well out of the way of that traffic. sources have said that the sharp turn seemed to be intentional because it would have taken the boeing 777 two minutes to execute it. a noticeable time period for anyone onboard to notice. also had there been a fire on the flight, the pilot or co-pilot would have triggered an emergency signal, which didn't happen. that's what the source says. we have les avent here who is a 777 pilot.

you have been saying all along there was something catastrophic that happened in the cockpit. ie, a fire. they were trying to get low enough to get the toxic air out of the cabin and out of the cockpit. correct? >> that may have been part of the procedure. it was obviously an urgent situation. if that's indeed the case. once again, we've got military radar we've kind of ben skeptical on whether it's accurate. 12,000. this kind of feeds into my scenario a little bit. i'm not doing an i told you so thing. the investigation process is ongoing. >> your scenario is? >> my scenario is the fact that they were dealing with a potential fire situation. >> let me put this -- we're saying the scenario is, les is a 777 pilot. if something -- this is what you would do. >> correct. >> as a pilot. what would you do in in situation? exactly what happened here? >> what happened there, once i've established i've got smoke in the cockpit first thing we're trained to do is put on that oxygen mask. in the 777 it has integral goggles to it. now smoke in the cockpit. it's a very high stress situation. i would say that i have the

airplane. i would have put in that diversion airport which is what apparently occurred. i would have started the airplane down once i realized that we've got to get to that airport and get down to get to that airport. whether it is a result of a checklist and the smoke, it's anybody's guess on that. if that, indeed, is the scenario. co-pilot would be working with a checklist. maybe the smoke removal checklist. very confusing in that cockpit. as far as communication, which seems to be the point of contention, the communication part of it would be tough to get out. maybe the radios were no longer operative because of the fire. maybe there's a possibility that in addition to the radio -- if the radios weren't knocked out, that area is not in vhf contact where they were in ho chi minh center. vietnam air space. they may have not have been able to get it out. there are other confusing things and other priorities to establish during that emergency. >> inspector general, department of transportation, mary schiavo

joins us. what do you make of this, the turn and rapidly going to a lower altitude, 12,000 feet? >> i think it points very clearly to some kind of a very large, catastrophic mechanical event on the plane or possibly an explosion. that depleted the cabin of the pressurization. the standard operating procedure for a depressurization is a turn and a drop in altitude. and i think the drop in the altitude had to do with getting oxygen. and certainly not to avoiding radar. you're still visible on radar at 5,000 feet much less 12,000 feet. so this points to a catastrophic mechanical event and the pilot's response to that to turn back towards the airport on that heading was a very long runway. unobstructed. and the dive was to get down to an area, down to an altitude where they didn't have to have pressurization. that's what i think. >> mary, why no emergency call? so far there's no evidence of

it? >> because they are incredibly busy. at 35,000 feet, if they had 30 seconds they were lucky to get the mask on. that would also explain if the timing is right, now, we've had such terrible time with information from the authorities on timing. but if the timing's right, there was also an attempt by another plane to contact them. and they said all they heard was some of the garbled, stackicky message. that would explain that. you have an oxygen mask on. you have probably something else going in the cockpit. but i think this point's clearly to a catastrophic event on the plane such as a decompression, explosion or a fire like les said. les knows his planes. >> yeah. all right. stand by, everyone. i want to update our viewers if you're just tuning in. cnn has breaking news now. this is according to a source close to this investigation. military radar, they're saying that tracked flight 370 between 1:19 a.m., 2:40 a.m. showed the aircraft did change altitude after making a sharp turn over the south china sea and was

headed toward the strait of malaka. as it was flying as low as 12,000 feet at some point before it disappeared from the radar. a source close to the investigation is telling that -- cnn that. do we have steve wallace on? investigator steve wallace? steve wallace is on now. steve, you've investigated with -- you know, actions like this. crashes, disappearances of airplanes. what do you make of this new information? >> not much. mine, i understand everything captain abend said. that to me is one scenario that remains on the table. but, you know, among the -- there's been a pattern here, unfortunately, of evidence changing. like suddenly the 12 minutes in advance programming of the fms is suddenly today in the last sentence of the beautifully scripted report from the defense minister says that's not true. now i have to say this primary military radar, which is designed to detect intruders, may be out near the end of its

range. these altitude -- sudden altitude changes, i have no idea of the accuracy of that. i would hope that that data is presented to the best radar experts. and i know we sent them over there to assist with this investigation. one more thing, don. one piece of evidence that i -- i think most of us put a lot of stock in were those continuous ping handshakes from the inmarsat satellite. that resulted in those two arcs. this would seem to send that out the window. >> miles o'brien, you've heard just about all the information. i read it a little bit earlier. your assessment? >> three things to think about here. first of all, a two-minute turn is probably more than 90 degrees. it's probably closer to 180-degree turn. the plane could have been turning right back to land in kuala lumpur. second thing here is we still

have not seen the maintenance records of this particular aircraft. there were some significant airworthiness directives that actually related to the oxygen system that the crew would be using. there's a wire bundle that had to be changed out. we don't know that that got done. that's an important question. and number three, with this information, it seems to me that authorities should revisit the idea of searching that particular area. wherever this plane went down to 12,000 feet might be a good place to look. >> here's my question, though. so the plane goes down to 12,000 feet in this particular scenario, right? and so, you noknow, miles, you just mentioned maybe they should search that particular area. that's where my question is going. what about this southern indian ocean? would the autopilot, once if everyone on board is not conscious including the pilots,

hypoxia, would the autopilot revert back to the original destination? >> it could be anybody's guess. you go with my fire scenario or mile's scenario with hypoxia, it depends upon how degraded the autopilot system was. if it managed to maintain altitude and course, whatever was put into the plane management computer, whether it's kuala lumpur or some other alternate airport, the fmc is programmed to go to that destination. if it has nothing else to go to, it'll maintain a heading. and continue on that heading. >> that's the question. so if they were -- so were they not on autopilot at that point? so at this point, if something like this happened, which this -- which the information we're gleaning from this, as if that something happened in the cockpit. they were trying to get lower in order to take care of it. to find another airport or to get to air where -- to a spot

where they could clear the air, so to speak, in the airplane. so then the question is, they're not on autopilot at that point. correct? >> no. >> they are? >> i'm sorry. i didn't make that clear. they are on autopilot. my contention is that they began the decent. the captain prior to beginning descent had put in the diversionary alternate. whether it's kuala lumpur or another alternate airport. the airplane is still on a lateral turn by the autopilot. and they are directing a descent that they may have put in the motor control panel select at 12,000 feet, if that's accurate, of course. and then they would have desc d descended to 12,000 feet in the auto pay lot and headed toward that waypoint being an airport. >> i would love to see what this looks like in the simulator with martin savidge. whether, indeed, this would work. my question is, if you, again, who's steering the plane at this point? even if the autopilot is on and

he has put it in the autopilot. can the pilot still override that just by steering the plane? >> any crew member can. any pilot can disconnect the autopilot from the control wheel, certainly. >> so if he disconnects, right, and then he passes out. >> he passes out. >> what happens? >> then it's anybody's guess. then that airplane is going to seek its own level of stability. and it depends -- if the airplane is in a turn, an electronically guided airplane, it may just keep continuing the turn. >> the autopilot doesn't kick back on, danger, if something is happening, we're going into dangerous territory here. that would mean the autopilot, if it did, it continued to go and did not go into the ocean, at that point where they were, it would mean that the ato pilot was on? >> if they disconnected it and became incapacitated it's anybody's guess. >> okay. mary schiavo, do you get the gist of my question? i'm trying to figure out whost steering the airplane at this point. again, we're just gleani ining

information from the latest information we have gotten here from sources who are close to the investigation about this military radar, saying that the plane dropped to an altitude of 12,000 feet. so if there is, indeed, something catastrophic that happened onboard, i'm trying to figure out who, indeed, would be in control of the airplane and whether or not this airplane would end up over -- why it would end up over the indian ocean where we're looking or would it be in the strait of malaka. do you understand what i'm saying? >> right. and in some previous ones, for example, in helios, they had entered a holding pattern and the plane continued to do the holding pattern. the plane just continued to do that. and go around in the holding pattern. payne stewart it kept the last known heading. in both cases autopilot. in both cases the plane looked for its last instructions and followed them. >> that's the question. did it look for the last instructions? that's what -- she's just kind of -- >> well, in a way, it's looking for its last known instruction. if it heads to a waypoint and it says, hey, i've got nothing else in front of me, i'm just going

to maintain the heading. i think the last point that was in there, assuming it's a diversionary airport that was put in or some other waypoint that brought you closer, whatever that last waypoint was and it sees nothing in front of it or another waypoint, it just will hold that heading. assuming the autopilot is on. >> in the autopilot, the original heading would be beijing? >> no. i'm saying the original heading to the diversionary airport. >> before the diversion what would be -- because they would put in the autopilot, right? >> they would have put in a four letter identifier to a particular airport. let's say it's kuala lumpur. okay. it would head to kuala lumpur. once it got over kuala lumpur, whatever that heading was, whether it's south -- >> no. if it's taking off from kuala lumpur and it's headed to beijing, what goes into the autopilot. >> an entire route all the way to beijing. >> okay. >> but once you enter a new waypoint, chances are the captain just entered a -- if the scenario, once again, is correct, the captain -- >> what i'm saying is if he has entered beijing, right, and this

happens, he clicks off the autopilot. >> correct. >> and then starts to steer himself to get it to where he wants it to go. does that happen or no? does it go through the autopilot? >> procedurally, we would do it through the autopilot. >> that's my question. >> okay. >> breaking news here on cnn. this is what we're learning. the newest information is that military radar tracked flight 370 between 1:19 and 2:40 a.m., 2:40 in the morning, as it took off from kuala lumpur and showed that the aircraft did change altitude after making a sharp turn over the south china sea headed toward the strait of malaka. was flying as low as 12,000 feet we're told at some point before it disappeared. again, this is a source close to the investigation. the source said that it flew on after that turn in a heavily trafficked air corridor and that flying 12,000 feet would have kept the jet well out of the way of that traffic. mary schiavo, former inspector

general of the department of transportation, is saying even flying at 12,000 feet, even 5,000 feet, it would still be available to radar in that area. mary? >> that's right. you'd still be seen on radar. so i was dispelling the notion that they dropped -- that they turned and dropped low to disappear from radar. that's nonsense. that isn't the purpose of the decrease in altitude. because it wouldn't work. >> shawn perniki, aviation safety professor, joins us here as well. so, mr. perniki, you heard the latest information about it dropping to a lower altitude of 12,000 feet. what do you make? >> i certainly agree with what everyone has said so far. that that would support the idea that -- that there could have been something catastrophic onboard. i think here's what's really important about that, don. the fact that if the radar is accurate, there's data points we're now finding out about, i agree with the gentleman earlier

about how information has changed one from being accurate to not accurate. but if that is accurate, the idea is that it looks like it could have been a controlled descent. i think that's important as opposed to the aircraft just descending as if it's crashing. or intentionally dropped to 12,000 feet by the pilots. >> okay. stand by. les? >> well, it's -- it's a great point. i think that if there was some compelling reason to get down lower, albeit loss of pressurization or a fire, you know, to evacuate the smoke, there was a very compelling reason to do it, it probably still would have been done on the autopilot using the mode control panel that's in the glare shield. they would have dialed down the altitude and hit a button called flight level change. which would have rapidly brought the airplane down. still under automation. >> mary mentioned the time. mary schiavo mentioned the time. at that point, why no distress

calls. she says at that point they are working to feverishly, frantically trying to correct the situation they may not have time. how much time do they have here? >> well, you know, it depends upon whether their situation was uncontrolled. if it was dire, there's only two people in that airplane that are going to be able to save everybody. those are the two guys up front. >> steve wallace? steve wallace, are you there? apparently we don't have investigator -- we do? investigator steve wallace, you're hearing what les said and you hear from mr. pruchnicki said, it appeared to be a controlled turn, controlled descent? do you agree with that? >> we're really off on speculation here a bit. every scenario is possible. it's on the table. captain abend describes perhaps, you know, it could be a massive fire in the aifonic space. except apparently the flight management system was still working. and so, you know, i might

suggest that if the pilot were in an emergency -- had enough time to program a diversion waypoint, he might have time to program an emergency squawk in the transponder which, you know, the timing of the loss of that transponder signal is -- is somewhat suspicious. again, i think everything remains on the table here. >> yeah. absolutely. steve wallace, you know, that's a good point. mary schiavo, steve wallace's point is that there's been so much misinformation coming from the malaysian authorities. we hear one scenario. we hear one thing. we get, you know, evidence and clues to one thing. all of a sudden they contradict themselves, mary. that's a problem. >> well, that's a problem. but, you know, i guess they're contradicting themselves. at least they're fessing up and they're putting out new information. what i would really hate to have happen is they got their ways set in one way and then they tried to make the data fit what they assumed would happen. that's actually a common phenomena in an investigation. the investigators get one thing

in mind and that's it. everything has to fit that data. they originally said they thought it was nefarious activity. this is different. so i give them credit that they aren't falling into some traps in investigation where they try to make the evidence fit the theories. here they're apparently saying, well, that was wrong. let's try this. that's actually encouraging. >> new evidence coming in on missing flight 370. more right after this break. the day we rescued riley was a truly amazing day. he was a matted mess in a small cage. so that was our first task, was getting him to wellness. without angie's list, i don't know if we could have found all the services we needed for our riley. from contractors and doctors to dog sitters and landscapers, you can find it all on angie's list. we found riley at the shelter, and found everything he needed at angie's list. join today at angieslist.com ameriprise asked people a simple question: can you keep your lifestyle in retirement?

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this is breaking news into cnn. coming from a source close to the investigation that says military radar that tracked that missing flight 370 between 1:19 and 2:40, it showed the aircraft did change altitude after making a sharp turn over the south china sea as it headed toward the strait of malacca. as low as 12,000 feet. which is leading our 777 pilot here to believe that there was possibly a catastrophic event inside the cockpit. les abend joins us. steve wallace is an investigate going to join us in just a second. also shawn puchnicki. mary schiavo. as we're sitting here, we have our wits about it. we can look at armchair quarterback chest list. this is a checklist. this is what we should be doing. does it happen that way in real life? >> it doesn't happen when i go to recurrent training in the simulator. sometimes we have a good idea

what the scenario may be among many others. very often i forget the entire thing. when it comes to changing the transponder code to emergency, i don't know what good that would have done anybody. i would rather stay on a discreet code that's already been assigned to me because other controllers will be able to pick me up. that being said, it's a very easy item to forget because i'm so busy following a checklist in addition to the confusion of the oxygen mask being on with -- you know, with the goggles. smoke in the cockpit. if that's a scenario. even if it was a hypoxic situation where it was explosive depressurization, that's even more confusing. stuff coming out of that cockpit that you haven't seen since the airplane has been built. and it goes everywhere. so it's a very -- that scenario, as well built as that boeing 777 is, i'm not big on it, but it's possible. window could have cracked. >> you said things coming out since it was built. you mean debris, dust. >> debris, dust, yeah. anything that's dropped in that

airplane that's never been picked up or vacuumed in the normal manner. >> the reason we're saying this about this particular scenario that we're talking about now with the plane dropping to 12,000 feet is because, according to our pilots and all of our safety people here, all of our investigators are saying this points to some sort of catastrophic emergency failure of the airplane. the pilot, co-pilot trying to get the plane to a new runway that's long enough to support a landing. and also trying to get to an altitude where they could clear the cockpit of whatever air or gas or whatever it is that's filling up the cockpit or smoke at that particular point. steve wallace, you heard what les abend had to say. what's your response to him? >> well, i don't disagree. dialing in that emergency 7700 squawk might be a low priority. but what troubles me is that the transponder was simply apparently, and there are two of them on the airplane, turned off. so that's what makes it a little harder for me to reconcile.

and, again, the -- we all got pretty locked on to these inmarsat pings. and i can't reconcile this -- this notion that it went down and west with those inmarsat pings. unless it did something else afterwards. >> yeah. cnn's miles o'brien also standing by has been listening to this breaking news. miles, we're talking about the altitude change here. and the sharp turn. according to les abend, who is, you know, our 777 pilot here, still flies, he's saying, listen, when you're in a particular situation, the possibility that something catastrophic happened on board the plane, you have all these checklists, what have you, doesn't necessarily happen in real life. we have emergencies. we have certain things we're supposed to do during breaking news that are checklists. sources, say all that. when it sometimes happens it just doesn't work out that way. >> yeah. crews train these so-called red box items. les can tell you all about this. this is a red box item.

meaning you shouldn't have to pull out a checklist. this is something you should do from memory. they drill it like crazy. there's no question this is something that you get in simulator sessions all the time. i would like to throw out one important question. i'm not sure we have the answer. but i'd like to get it out there to see if we can get somebody on the ground to get the answer. a really key question, les, bear me out on this. captain john rigas, a friend of mine who has a lot of experience flying various aircraft, said a standard descent from 35,000 feet to 12,000 would take about 69 miles. he did the math on that. so a key question here is, how -- what was the distance between the last transponder hit and this primary hit we're talking about at 12,000 that the military got? that distance will tell you how fast it was dropping. and that will tell us an awful lot what was going on onboard that aircraft. if it was a gentle descent, what we're talking about isn't true. if it was -- if it took 69

miles, in other words. i'd love to get that information. i don't know if somebody on the ground in kuala lumpur can help us with that. >> i'm sure our folks are listening and will try to get it for you. les, do you agree with that? >> i do. that rough calculation. a sharp left turn, then a rapid descent down to 12,000 feet. what happened? we are trying to figure it out. we're working on more information on this missing flight, flight 370, right after this break. 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. so you can manage your business expenses and access them online instantly with the game changing app from ink. we didn't get into business to spend time managing receipts, that's why we have ink. we like being in business because we like being creative, we like interacting with people. so you have time to focus on the things you love.

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i'm don lemon. the breaking news here on cnn is that military radar, according to to a source close to the investigation, tracked missing flight 370, malaysia flight 370 between 1:19 and 2:40 showing that the aircraft did a change in altitude after making a sharp turn over the south china sea, as we have been reporting,

except for this rapid change in altitude as it headed toward the strait of malacca, flying as low as 12,000 feet. joining me now is mary schiavo. former inspector general of the department of transportation. steve wallace. les abend a 777 pilot. shawn puchnicki. and miles o'brien, aviation expert here on cnn. you heard what miles said. it takes about 69 miles? >> it's a rough calculation that we use to do a normal descent rate at a 3:1 ratio. with a power back. we just calculated it in our head. however, if this was an emergency situation, that would go out the window. and we would be pulling back speed breaks which destroys the lift on the airplane and getting the airplane -- the airplane would come down somewhere between 5,000 and 6,000 feet a minute. it would be a very noticeable descent. >> so it would be a very quick descent. obviously the passengers would notice. how quickly does that take you down from 35,000 feet to --

>> well, you're asking me to do math at a pilot. but if you assume 5,000 feet a minute, okay, and you have to lose 23,000 feet, you know, that's -- that's about five minutes. a little less than five minutes. >> a little less than five min urt uts to get down to that. in this particular situation you would think -- you said the speed brakes? >> you pull the speed brake lever by the center console. that activates panels that come out of the wing and destroy the lift on the wing for the right purposes. and the airplane just sinks. just sinks after that. >> miles o'brien, you want to continue on? you were talking about -- particularly you said you wanted someone on the ground to know how long does it take to do that turn. it's usually about, you said, 69 miles to make a turn to the left like that or just to turn the aircraft? >> for the standard descent, the back of the envelope that we did, as you would if you were flying a typical flight, would be about 69 miles. so if we can find the distance between those two points, the

last transponder we had and where the military radar put it at 12,000 feet we're going to learn a lot about what was going on with that airplane. we should be able to get that information. >> miles? >> yeah. go ahead. >> you heard what he said. he said, listen, if something is happening, they're going to hit that speed brake. he said -- >> oh, yeah. >> -- the plane is going to descend much quicker than that. >> a lot less than 69 miles. like les i don't like to do math in public. i will tell you it will be a lot less than this. and that would tell us -- we could do the math on what the deced desced deced descent rate was. it would tell us if there was an emergency situation going on right away. >> continue your thought. sorry to interrupt you. >> the one thought i'd like to bring out here. okay. there is -- i'm going to take the stance here that the captain was flying this plane manually. but he still -- he still could have had it -- first of all, he could have set the altitude at 10,000 which would be procedure.

that would be in the box. he still could have it on heading mode. that sets up a scenario where if the crew did, in fact, become incapacitated the plane would hold that heading and hold that altitude until the tanks were dry. that puts us right back where we were. deep into the indian ocean. but suddenly as mary was saying earlier, i feel like the pieces are coming together a little better. we've been really stretching before. and this, you know, the old idea, go for the simplest scenario, this is starting to fit. >> you bring up a very good point here, miles. i'm going to go to mary next. mary, we've been talking about different scenarios. but that's what investigators do as you're trying to figure out what happened. you're trying to piece it together. investigators put in certain scenario. many people call it speculating. whatever you want to do. but you have to set up certain scenarios to try to come down, to try to figure out exactly what happened. >> exactly. and i was at an air crash investigators conference this weekend weekend. that's one of the first things

we discussed. if you don't have hypothesis and theories, some people call it speculation. we call it theories. you never solve the mystery. here's another one. did this plane have an emergency descent mode? some very advanced aircraft you don't even have to do that. they have an emergency descent mode in their computerized program. the pilot would have been -- it would have been faster for him to program the plane. the pilot would do whatever he can to get you down as fast as possible to try to save everyone's lives. this plane is a good one. >> in response to mary, the boeing 777 does not have an emergency descent mode. it gives us a lot of options to make an emergency descent. but it doesn't have a specific descent mode. >> mary, that would say, then, if it doesn't have a specific -- emergency descent mode would be what? press of a button? that means that the pilot and the co-pilot are working feverishly to try to do things manually. >> could be manual. they could have done it with automation through the mode control panel also. >> mary?

>> that's right. they would have had to work -- since they don't have this edm, they would have had to do it either entered in the computer or take several steps. so they'd be very, very busy. >> mary, you said you were at a conference this weekend. is this -- what we're talking about now with this new information, as the new information comes in about this turn and about rapidly descending to 12,000 feet, is that what you discussed at this conference? >> no. this conference was on air crash investigators. >> do people talk about it? what i'm wondering is if people were talking about this particular situation if you're at an air investigators conference. >> oh, yes. i mean, you can't help but try to want to help people solve the mystery. since there were a lot of pilots and air people there, they were more on the mechanical side but, yes, everyone wants to help solve it. the whole world wants to help solve it. >> yeah. go ahead, quickly. >> let's just remember every accident has multiple causes to it. there's never just one. let's not -- i don't want to get

us all going in the direction where there's only one cause. something -- if, indeed, this happened mechanical, there's got to be more reasons than just one that this all happened. >> simple deduction. thank you very much. we appreciate it. stand by, everyone. stand by, everyone. it's the top of the hour. -- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com this is cnn breaking news. i'm don lemon in new york. new information now. this is breaking news here. brand-new information about the malaysia airlines flight 370's path and altitude. a cnn source tells us malaysian military radar tracking the plane shows it flew as low as 12,000 feet after making a sharp left turn and flying back over malaysian -- the malaysian peninsula. the source says after the turn, the plane flew in a heavily trafficked air corridor and our source notes that flying at 12,000 feet would have kept the jet well out of the way of that