jim, thanks very much. happening now, the mystery of flight 370. an extraordinary declaration from malaysia's prime minister. he says the airliner went down in the southern indian ocean but what went wrong? unbearable grief. [ screaming ] an unretrained fury. many families now accuse malaysian authorities of a coverup. and as the new day is dawning over the indian ocean, the hunt is on for objects in the search area. aircraft are now getting ready to take off. i'm wolf blitzer. you're in "the situation room." we begin with a stunning new twist in the search for missing flight 370.

a grim announcement from malaysia's prime minister declaring that flight 370 ended in the remote area of the southern indian ocean, a conclusion based on an unprecedented analysis of satellite data. grief and agony as relatives are told that all lives are lost. malaysia airlines says it informed most of the family in person or by phone but some got the word through text message. some are accusing malaysian authorities are hiding the truth. aircraft are hunting for debris after planes spotted objects in the indian ocean search zone. an australian vessel is headed towards the sightings. let's begin with our pentagon correspondent barbara starr. she's got the latest. barbara? >> they actually relied on

embarrassingly old maps to make this high-technical cue lags about how this plane was moving and the way it was moving away from their satellite and that let them calculate where the plane went down offering new information that the u.s. and malaysia have suspected for days. for grief stricken families, unbearable news from the prime minister of malaysia. >> it is, therefore, with deep sadness and regret that i must inform you that, according to this new data, flight mh-370 ended in the southern indian ocean. >> based on data analysis from the british company inmar dlsat the potential that it is

anywhere but here seems to have been ruled out. >> our engineers and scientists have continued to work on the data but it's led us to believe that it is the southern route. >> inmarsat satellites continued to receive several pings from the aircraft, including the final ping from somewhere over the indian ocean, according to a u.s. official. based on the assumption that the plane was maintaining a steady altitude at 350 knots, inmarsat said the most likely place that this plane crashed was in this area, 1500 miles off of australia. by this point the plane would have been out of fuel and nowhere to land. they knew for weeks that the southern indian ocean was the most likely place that the plane went down. >> we have teams working on a daily basis. the prime minister's announcement tracks with,

frankly, where we have dedicated our help. >> for the brother of one passenger, the hope is that the search continues. >> and i just want to see some debris off the aircraft and the black box to know what exactly happened because there's too many unanswered questions. >> and now there are two vital pieces of u.s. navy equipment on the way to the region. first, a pinger listening system that will be put into the water if they can determine whether to begin to look for the data recorders. a ship will tow it and it will listen for the pings. if they can find debris, there will be a u.s. navy underwater unmanned remote vehicle, a sort of mini sub, if you will, but it's unmanned and it can map the ocean floor listening with its sonar, also for any indication

of debris on the ocean floor. wolf? >> barbara starr, thank you. malaysia's prime minister may have declared that flight 370 ended in the indian ocean but there's no explanation of why the plane went down there. investigators are chasing every possible lead. pamela brown is joining us with more on this part of the story. pam? >> malaysian authorities have said that there's been full cooperation from everyone that they've interviewed, more than 100 people, they say, as investigators continue to focus on those that the pilots knew them the best, their families. investigators are digging deeper into the background of the pilots zaharie ahmad shah and fariq ab hamid. >> the issues outside the notion of just where is that aircraft?

>> reporter: malaysian authorities have interviewed more than 100 people, including the family members of the passengers and crew. a news agency quotes police as saying all of those questioned cooperated fully. adding that cases like this could take up to a year to fully investigate. sources tell cnn that so far nothing from the interviews and background checks indicate foul play. but with few crews and no mek a wreckage, cnn is learning when flight 370 took off for the very last time, it was the co-pilot's first time at the controls of the boeing 777 without supervision and obama his sixan his sixth time flying the jet. >> i would be more focused on psychological profiles and background checks. people sometimes, do they have massive debts or terrible personal problems.

>> reporter: tonight, back in the u.s., forensic experts and outside consultants working with the fbi continue to retrieve data from both of their hard drives in the weeks before the plane disappeared. and wolf, investigators continue to probe whether the pilots had any psychological issues and they are looking at hijacking, sabotage, and personal problems of the passengers and the rest of the crew. but as one of my sources told me, we have nothing to run on backing up any of those theories as of now. tomorrow we may learn more about where the investigation is heading. >> pamela brown, we'll be anxious to get that report. let's bring in our aviation analyst peter goelz and former fbi assistant director tom fuentes.

why would the prime minister of malaysian airlines say that your loved ones are dead if they don't even have a little bit of wreckage from the plane? they have this analysis from inmarsat and officials even there say most likely. they can't rule it definitively. >> i agree, wolf. but the interview that the person from inmarsat who said most likely may not have said that. they may have been more definitive, not that this is most likely where it went down. >> so you think there's more information that they are not willing to say publicly? >> well, there may be more. >> here's what he said to me, chris mclaughlin, senior vice president for inmarsat. >> i must stress, this is very limited data. we are not saying that we have

definitively where the aircraft came down, only that the direction of travel is almost certainly to the south. >> and another point he said, almost -- they can't say definitively that it didn't go up to the north, this is just their assessment right now. on the basis of that, they have alerted all of the family members that their loved ones were dead. >> yeah, they were pretty heavy into the hedge in that interview with you. it really has not changed anything. >> miles o'brien is here. miles, they obviously have to know more, the british, inmarsat, australians, chinese than they are letting on. for the prime minister to tell all of these loved ones, the passengers, they are dead? >> are they hanging this entirely on the inmarsat information? what about those from the classified world which they

won't be able to tell us about which gives them a much better degree of certainty than they were able to source in the public. >> why couldn't they wait for some actual forensic evidence, wreckage from the plane. if it took a few more days, they seem to be getting closer to that idea. they are probably on top of it. why couldn't they wait a few more days? >> i agree completely. the prime minister said that we're close to picking up whatever was spotted yesterday and when it becomes daylight which is right about now, if it's gone 17 days, what is 18 or 19 to be right or to be really sure? >> see, my analysis is what the prime minister of malaysia should have said is here's the report that we received from inmar s inmarsat. in fact, here's the entire document. they can read every word of this

report. i'm not ready to say that everybody is dead but for transparency, here's the report and we're going to share it with you. why couldn't they just do that? >> because they haven't been transparent from the beginning. i think they felt an enormous and increasing pressure from the deteriorating situation with the families particularly in beijing, that they could not tolerate these photographs and movies that we have seen going on. they needed some hook to start to move these families home. but this is clearly -- they were not being transparent again. >> you saw miles, the chinese government foreign ministry put out a statement saying they want to know how they came up with this conclusion. they are irritated with the way that malaysia is handling this. >> the amount of information that we don't know is tremendous. we haven't heard air traffic control statements back and

forth. we haven't seen the records of the aircraft. there's so much information that would be released in an ntsb investigation, we're seeing how to do these in public and it's painful. >> now, there's a strong possibility that this could have been a catastrophic mechanical failure that we simply don't understand yet, something awful happened and the plane disappeared. now, there are 1100 boeing 777s flying out there right now. has boeing done anything to deal with these other planes just to make sure that transponders don't go dark or anything is going on that maybe they shut be taking some pre-emptive steps even before we definitively know what happened? >> there was significant and air worthiness evidence about the

oxygen system that provides air to a crew when they are in a situation like that. if it wasn't complied with, that's a significant piece of information. so, you know, lay the cards on the take here for a little bit and god forbid we find out in a few days or weeks or whatever the case may be that 777s were flying around unsafe and they were holding back this information. >> peter, shouldn't boeing be telling us what they are doing, if anything? >> i am sure that they handed overall of their data. the question is, what does the malaysian civil authority done with it? this is basic 101. you get the maintenance records the second day. the first day you ask for them, second day you have them, go through them, and see if the work has been done. >> guys, stand by. there's a lot more to assess

here in "the situation room." up next, a gray or green circular object spotted by planes over the search zone. they are hoping to retrieve that debris. and so many relatives are accusing malaysian authorities of a coverup and even possible murder. nascar is about excitement. but tracking all the action and hearing everything from our marketing partners, the media and millions of fans on social media

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just a short while from now, the massive search for flight 370 and objects seen floating in the search zone will resume. aircraft from australia, china, the united states and japan searched the area today. cnn's kyung lah is joining us from perth, australia. what is the latest as far as the search is concerned, kyung? >> reporter: well, in about 40 minutes, the first planes are going to take off at daybreak. there's a renewed drive here. the reason why? the families have their answers now. we all know what happened to this plane. now we need the evidence. bring those pieces of the plane

home. see that's what the air forces are going to do. they are going to mark it via air. yesterday, a good day. there were two different spots were the debris was seen. we don't know yet if the debris is connected to the plane. by air they mark it. the ship that has to go there, pick it up, and bring it home. a tough task. it will be made tougher today, wolf, because the weather is expected to be very bad. wolf? >> that's not encouraging. kyung lah, thank you. outrage as families of the missing passengers were told by malaysia airlines in some cases by text messages that their loved ones did not survive. our senior national correspondent sara sidner was there as some of them got the news. she has more on this part of the story. set the scene. tell us how that went down. >> reporter: so here at the hotel where many of the families, many of them chinese.

and as you know, most of the passengers were from china headed to beijing. when they got this news, they got it before the world got it, of course. they were in a briefing and as soon as they heard from authorities that they believed that their loved ones were no more, one person burst out of the room crying uncontrollably. another had to be wheeled out of the room in a wheelchair. but i want to let you know how some of them were found out. some received a text message that there was going to be a briefing and then there was heartache and anger. here's the messages that i want to share with you that was sent to some of the families. malaysian airlines deeply regrets that we have to assume beyond any reasonable doubt that mh-370 has been lost and that none of those on board sufficient vifed. that is a text that they

received by text. if they weren't aware that there was going to be a briefing in person, that would add insult to injury. in beijing, the reaction was much different than in ckuala lumpur. people screaming why, why, why? where are my family members? a sort of acceptance but they are kept away from the media and shielded just about everyone and surrounded by a lot of security and surrounded by malaysian airlines and counselors. in beijing, a different story. you're seeing it play out differently. a lot less control. family members angry about the misinformation that they've been given, angry about the fact that they still haven't seen proof. i want to read you something that the families have put out from beijing that represents

about 100 of the families. it's a strong and striking statement. it says, "the malaysian government and the malaysian military continue putting off holding back and covering up the truth of the incident as well as trying to deceive the families of passengers and people of the entire world. the malaysian government and the malaysian military are the real murderers that killed them. extremely strong statement coming from the family members in beijing. you can tell the difference in tone there, an extremely angry tone and a suspicious tone. here, more of a tone of acceptance and sadness. wolf? >> yeah. people want to see the evidence. not just based on analysis or assumptions. sara, thank you so much. new details revealed in flight 370's mysterious journey. the new timeline of what happened and when. was there a mechanical

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we're learning more about flight 370s mysterious journey. suzanne malveaux is reconstructing the timeline. >> wolf, for the last 24 hours, we have gotten critical information about the flight's path, the behavior of the pilots and the timing of when that plane changed course. new information is revealed about the final hours of the malaysia flight 370 giving us more insight into what was happening in the cockpit during

the critical moments before the plane went down. saturday, march 8th, 12:41 a.m. local time, flight 370 takes off heading for beijing. the boeing 777 is carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew on board. at 1:07 a.m., acars sends its final transmission. it measures thousands of pieces of information about the plane and pilots' performance and sends it via satellite. we now know the plane remained on course for beijing, contradicting earlier reports that the pilots changed the flight path before sending their final transmission. a transcript reveals there's nothing out of the ordinary in their communications with air

traffic control. at 1:19 a.m., flight 370 please contact ho chi minh city, good night. the pilot responds, all right, good night. at 1:21, the transponder is shut off. then, between 1:21 and 1:28 a.m., it heads straight for the straight of malacca dipping as low as 12,000 feet. the plane then disappeared from all radar. malaysia airlines tries to contact the missing flight. by 3:45, the airline issue as

code red alert declaring a crisis. at 6:30 a.m., it's due to land in beijing. and then at 8:11 a.m., a final ping from the plane. now, a new analysis puts malaysia flight 370 here, far from any landing site in the south indian ocean. >> and while these new details about the timeline might not necessarily bring any comfort to the grieving family members today, they may shed some light on where the plane might be in the ocean so that investigators can find the wreckage and loved ones can recover the victims of this tragedy. wolf? >> suzanne malveaux, thank you very much. joining me is clive irving and former 777 pilot mike weiss.

clif, you've outlined this theory that's been out there for a while, that something happened, a mechanical catastrophe, that everybody on the plane is unconscious or dead. based on the new evidence, the altitude change, going up and down, have you changed your theory? >> we don't have any quality information to support it but it's a viable theory. i think the important thing here is to not get confused by terms. explosion, fire, those two things, decompression, no candidates for what might have overtaken this plane but there's also another one, which is gas, which is the kind of gas that was given off by the lithium ion batteries in the cargo hold at the time and these batteries behave in a very strange way in the case of a boeing 787 lithium

batteries, boeing was very insistent on saying that they were not technically fires. they were not technically combustion. of the options possible here, which could have disabled the plane or at least disabled the pilots and knocked out the passengers, this is a serious one. i would urge us to not look at just the top half of the plane but the bottom half of the plane, the belly, the architecture of the belly, the cargo hold which is next to the forward cargo hold. the architecture in there, what the wiring was. because we have to explain one thing. if this plane, as it now seems, got all the way down into the south pacific, by some means or other, by human hand or flying itself, we have to understand how that was possible after whatever was the emergency. did it compromise the plane in some way? the aircraft was probably

compromised in some way and yet it wasn't made impossible for it to continue and it's pinning down that point that we need to do. >> let me ask mark weiss who is a 777 pilot. what do you think? is that a reasonable assumption that clive irving has made? >> i understand where it's coming from but i don't think it's the reality. number one, because of the suppression systems that would have been in the belly of the aircraft, if you had any gas or anything that would have caused the temperature to increase, you would have gotten a warning, first of all, in the cockpit. but the other thing i question is there's a pressure differential as opposed to the cabin, which is actually built in so that if there's a fire in the cabin, you're not going to allow that to creep into the cockpit. i kind of discount that theory. >> if the plane is, clive, on

autopilot, can it shift up to altitudes of 40,000, down to 15, up to 35, down to 12, back up to 35,000 and fly another six hours? does that make sense? >> i think mark made an important point about this. if it had gone down to 12,000 altitude which your story and reports has said it did at one point at least and if it continued on for the rest of the flight at that altitude, it would have swallowed much more gas than if it was at 30,000 feet which means it wouldn't have gone as far as we think it went. inmarsat people have said that they don't have accurate information on the altitude of the plane. >> can a plane on autopilot shift altitude, mark? >> no. really what you're doing -- if you breakdown the term, autopilot, it's staying where you put it. >> so the point being, if it goes down to 12,000 as it goes

over the malay peninsula or even further, there's no way it could have reached the area of the southern indian ocean that everybody is looking for. it wouldn't have had enough fuel? >> if you're making that assumption that the 12,000 altitude was correct. it's not going to have the same range capability had it been at that altitude. >> you're questioning whether or not it actually went down? >> absolutely. >> clive, is that your assumption as well? >> yeah, that's my assumption, too. because i think the inmarsat people were saying earlier, wolf, these people have more information than they are telling us because the commitment of this search to that one area shall and this normal skmimt of assets to that one area which supports this whole idea that it was there and the northern arc is being dispensed with, there was such a level of assurance that this was the right place to go in a way

that when you question those guys and they were hedging a bit on it. i still think that no one would have committed this to the search, that one area unless they had more certainty than that. >> i assume that he know more than they are letting on. very quickly to you, mark, if in fact there have been fire or gas or something in the cargo hold from the lithium batteries or whatever reason, it would not have taken -- one of the first things you could do is send a message to ground control, we've got an s.o.s., a major problem here. >> the first thing you're going to do is fight the fire. but then the next thing you're going to do, fire is one of the most frightening things you can have on an airplane. you're going to make should that you've declared an emergency. >> you're still working with the assumption that a person was responsible for this? >> i do. >> and clive, you think it was a mechanical failure? >> i think it was a technical

failure, yes. >> clive irving, mark weiss, thank you. how do search teams go about looking for the wreckage? >> and we're going live to the staging area in perth, australia. what does an apron have to do with car insurance? an apron is hard work. an apron is pride in what you do. an apron is not quitting until you've made something a little better. what does an apron have to do with car insurance? for us, everything.

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they use maps and other calculations. we visited one firm that does all of that. since the search began, the u.s. navy aircraft have covered more than 160 u.s. knot call miles. >> we know we're only looking in one haystack rather than several haystacks. >> search maps help locate air france flight had 447 in the atlantic ocean. first, a grid that shows where the plane hit the ocean surface. two calculations for that. how far the plane could have flown and when the transponder failed and where the debris would have fallen if there was a catastrophic failure at cruising altitude. >> when you layer those together, you get a heat map and

this heat masses where it's red, the plane is probably in that location. where it's green, it's a medium chance. >> reporter: but managing the ocean surf zones have obstacles. why is it that aircraft can look at so many areas and then the ship can't find them? >> the item could have sunk, it could have been blown off on a different course or is someplace else and the ship may never find it again. >> reporter: a drift analysis map can help find the rest of the plane. data marker buoys on those maps helped find the wreckage of flight 447. >> they were reporting themselves as they drifted in the ocean currents and so you

see the buoy down here. >> reporter: in the air france 447, they located the plane. could those methods work in searching for flight 370? they would work. but without wreckage found, it's going to be tougher until more tangible information is found. they cannot come up with data as clean or as pinpointed of a location as the air france maps did. wolf? >> brian, thank you. let's talk to colleen keller, a special analyst, a defense contract or who helped search for flight had 47 in the atlantic. we know the australians have said that they spotted a gray or green circular object in this general vicinity. also, an orange rectangular object. how tough should it be for the ships to find these objects and

determine whether or not they are wreckage from the plane? >> it's -- it's hard to imagine but i've seen pictures of the seas. they are seeing some pretty high seas there, wolf, with wind-whipped waves and low visibility. it can be pretty difficult. anyone who has been on the ocean can attest to that. would you think that the colors would help and i heard that they dropped some flares so there's smoke or fire marking these objects. so it shouldn't be too difficult but then again, with the heavy seas, they might have their work made out for them. >> how quickly could these objects float in a different direction given the ocean currents? >> i would hope that they have the drift buoys in the water. the coast guard routinely drops these kinds of buoys when they have a man overboard situation so they don't have to rely on models of the ocean surface that

can be erroneous and if there are buoys in the water, they would know what the currents are doing. that would help them in determining where to position the ship. >> this is a flight data recorder that i have here on the desk. i want to play for you and our viewers right now the audio sound, the pinger that it emits for 30 days after it goes into the water. listen to this. all right. that could be picked up for a couple of miles? >> yes. it's really distinct underwater and you can recognize it easily. >> let's say it's down 13 or 14,000 feet down. that's a couple miles right there. if you're on top of the indian

ocean and if you have the right equipment and going right over it, you'd be able to hear it? >> actually, they float the fish or the submersible that can actually hear this thing, they float it and skim it along the bottom. knowing the topography on the bottom is very important. you don't want it getting tangled in terrain or anything like that. they want to get it as low as it can so they don't have to worry about the vertical distance above the mile. one to two miles is what we saw in the atlantic for air france. >> colleen, we're going to continue to invite you back as the search continues for wreckage from this airliner. just ahead at the top of the hour, we'll have more news. the search area is about to resume only moments from now. we're live in perth, australia. plus, outraged families.

accusing them of murder after being told that their loved ones did not survive. ♪

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much more on our special coverage of the missing flight 370. right now, another breaking story we're following, the escalating crisis in ukraine. president obama had a meeting with the world leaders and just dealt russia a major blow. jim acosta is traveling with the president and he's joining us for details. tell the viewers what happened. >> reporter: wolf, president obama is raising the stakes in

the conflict with vladimir putin and effectively kicks russia out of the g-8 after an emergency meeting that lasted nearly two hours. they blasted moscow for its annexation of crimea but the other big headline of the day, wolf, is that the g-8 summit will not be in sochi, russia. i stead, the g-7 summit will help in brussels, belgian. here's what he had to say. >> europe and america are united in our support of the ukrainian government and the ukraine people. we are united in imposing a cost on russia for its actions so far. >> now, as for those 20,000 troops, those russian troops gathered on the ukrainian

border. a senior official said that the g-7 nations have also agreed to further sanctions moscow if vladimir putin decides to invade eastern and southern ukraine. the sanctions, wolf, would affect russia's very effective banking industries. >> we know that sergey lavrov is there in hague, not putin. any progress at all? >> reporter: well, he met with secretary state john kerry earlier today. he also talked to the ukrainian foreign minister. but he was asked about the prospect of being booted out of the g-8 earlier and said that there is no membership card for the g-8 and doesn't see russia as being kicked out of it but that's not, of course, how the united states or industrialized nations view it at this point. there were diplomatic situations happening on the sidelines and

they have had these before and putin took crimea. >> jim acosta, thank you. dawn is about to break over the indian ocean and the hunt is about to begin over the search area. overcome by grief and anger. family are accusing the malaysian government of a cover-up and even possibly murder. america's favorite lasagna. topped with a mouth-watering blend of fresh cheese

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happening now, breaking news in flight 370 mystery. grieving families lash out at the malaysian government after the announce in the that everyone on the plane is lost. one group claims delays and possible coverups by authorities may amount to murder. search crews find a scrap of debris. we're live from the search zone. and will we ever know what happened inside the cockpit?

in you details of the pilots and interviews with their families. we want to welcome the viewers in the united states and around the world. i'm wolf blitzer. you're in "the situation room." let's get to the breaking news. a new more targeted search for flight 370 as daybreaks over the indian ocean. authorities now sound more sure that the plane crashed into that area and severarch crews are re to zero in after the malaysian government's gut-wrenching announcement that all 239 people on board are presumed dead. our correspondents are covering the story all around the world as only cnn can. let's go to jim sciutto for the latest. jim? >> malaysian airlines said in a simple text message that, quote,

none of those on board survived. they say that the flight ended over the indian ocean. the grushing grief after they got an answer but certainly not the one that they were hoping to hear. at a last-minute press conference, a grim-faced prime minister of malaysia confirmed. >> according to this new data, flight mh-370 ended in the southern indian ocean. >> reporter: for loved ones, the news was simply too much to bear. >> translator: my son, my daughter-in-law, and granddaughter are all on board, all three family members are gone. i am desperate. >> reporter: malaysia airlines sent them a simple text message with this stark conclusion. none of those on board survived. >> for them, the past few weeks

have been heartbreaking. i know this news must be harder still. >> reporter: 17 days after the 777 jet vanished, the conclusion came from not new evidence but deeper examination of the clues that experts have been pouring over for days. after an exhaustive and unprecedented study, inmarsat concluded that pings received from the plane in the final hours placed it, without question, over the southern indian ocean, ruling out the northern arc that had at one point been considered a path for the plane. >> if you look at the plots that we have, we can say that the most likely route is the south and the most likely ending is in roughly the area that they are looking now. >> reporter: the new data comes as search aircraft spotted possible debris in the southern corridor area, including one

item that appears orange. satellite over the weekend from france and australia captured much larger pieces of wreckage. an australian ship sent to recover them, however, has so far found nothing. now that the search is concentrated in the southern indian ocean and the area is getting smaller and smaller, china will likely send more ships as the mission moves from rescue to recovery. the u.s. navy is sending a locator as well as an underwater vehicle. there will be other news conferences tomorrow with hopefully more news. wolf? >> jim sciutto, thank you very much. new details about the investigation on the ground. malaysian authorities have interviewed more than 100 people as they struggle to try to figure out what went wrong on board flight 370. pamela brown has got new information. what are you learning, pam? >> it could take a year before

the investigation is complete and so far there have been full cooperation from the 100 people they've interviewed, including family members of the passengers and crew. they continue to dig deeper into the background of the pilots, zaharie shah and fariq hamid. forensic experts and outside consultants are looking at files deleted from shah's home-flight simulator in the weeks before the plane disappeared. so far, nothing indicates foul play. when flight 370 took off for the very last time, it was the co-pilot's first time at the controls of the boeing 777 without supervision and only his sixth time flying that jumbo set. but the fact that he was right out of training may have been a good thing because he had all of those check lists fresh on his

mind. investigators are continuing to look at hijacking, sabotage, personal problems of the passengers and the rest of the crew and tomorrow we may learn more about where the investigation is heading as the inspector general in kuala lumpur is expected to speak. we'lli we'll be following that lead. wolf? our aviation correspondent rene marsh is here with this part of the story. what are we learning about the final path of this airliner? >> wolf, the satellite analysis and data has never been used for an investigation like this before but today it is shedding new light on where malaysia airlines flight 370 is and it's also helping us to rule out certain theories about what

happened on board. >> reporter: it's one of the most remote places on earth and new calculations indicate this is where flight 370 went down. the plane went south before crashing into the middle of the indian ocean. this new information is helping plot the flight path. >> if this is indeed the crash site, it does sound like the flight path is directly from the original turn after the last broadcast and it stayed pretty much on a straight line. >> reporter: if the analysis is accurate, after flight 307 turned left, it flew for six hours. by the time it reached the southern indian ocean, it was running out of fuel. a former ntsb board member said certain theories are now more likely. >> it sounds to me like there was an inkpas tags in the aircraft and that possibly they just flew it out on autopilot until it ran out of fuel.

>> reporter: with the new data off the table, the possibility the plane went north or any chance it landed somewhere safely. a fire on board is less likely, too. >> i think if you had a fire that was that severe that it took the plane out, it would have burned the airplane to a point that it couldn't fly long before running out of fuel. >> reporter: experts also say reports the plane was flying at 12,000 feet are hard to accept. if it was at that altitude for a long time. flying low and changing altitude burns fuel faster and would make it difficult to get to the south indian ocean. so how did inmarsat, the satellite company behind the data, conclude where flight 370 crashed? they measured pings from similar planes and compared them to the missing aircraft but that required assumptions like speeds at 400 miles an hour, like an

autopilot speed. >> the pings indicate the southern ocean. >> well, at this point we are still only talking about probabilities and cannot draw any conclusions until we find a piece of this plane. we still have no clue what happened on board. of course, the data recorders would paint a picture as to what went wrong. >> yeah, like one of these. this is a flight data recorder that emits that pinging noise. china says it is sending more ships to the southern indian ocean. a new search is about to get under way. kyung lah is joining us from perth, australia. i take it planes are getting ready to take off, kyung? >> reporter: if they are not in the air already. you can see that the skies are lightening up behind me and we've generally gotten notification from the australian government after they have taken to the skies. the first planes take to the air

just about now. they are followed and staggered throughout the day so they can cover as much of the sea as possible. we've seen every single day more and more planes taking to the air. this becomes now today trying to bring the evidence home. yesterday a. good day. the australian plane as well as the chinese plane did spot in two different locations suspicious debris. now, that debris has not been brought on to any sort of sea vessel. it's not got to be able to bring it back to perth, australia. >> kyung lah, thank you. rene marsh is still with us, as well as miles o'brien, michael schmidt, and van gurley.

i want to play for you an earlier interview with chris mclaughlin of inmarsat. the malaysian prime minister says the airliner is in the indian ocean. they say that everyone on board, 239 people are dead. here's the exchange that i had with mclaughlin. do you know for sure, without any doubt whatever ever, that the plane went into the indian ocean and that there are no survivors? >> no. there are a number of jumps there. as an operator of the distressed service for 34 years, we have a lot of experience. we feel the sadness of the families and we do feel for them at this point. but if you look at the plots that we have using our recent adjusted techniques, we can say that the most likely route is

the south and the most likely ending is in roughly in the area that they are looking now but, of course, nothing is final. we're not operation satellites, we're data satellites. it will require a lot of different skills and a lot of different people not least the naked high to help confirm what happened to 370. >> for the malaysian government and malaysia airlines to inform the family members that their loved ones are dead, that is a jump from what inmarsat, your company, has told them, based on what i'm hearing you say now. >> we have originally on the 11th put forward to the investigation a possible north/south route. our engineers and scientists compared that data with other similar flights and led us to conclude that it was simply the southern route. the malaysians are obviously

staging that the 777 have 7 hours of fuel and it most likely went into the indian ocean. i'm not an expert. i'm simply saying that that does look the inevitable experience. >> miles o'brien, most likely for these families is not good enough. >> no, it's not. most likely is not good enough. i suppose he's correct to say most likely but, you know, these loved ones need a more definitive answer. >> i'm not blaming inmarsat. i'm just wondering why the prime minister of malaysia would send out a text message to the families saying, they are dead. >> this has been mishandled on so many levels and the way the families have been treated is really scandalous. it's just a horrible situation for them to be in. the other question that i have is the range. if it was down at 12,000 feet, the range would have been

reduced by on the order of 50%. maybe it didn't get as far as that but i'm still wondering if they are severaliarching in the place. >> let me ask van. why is it so difficult to find these pieces of debris, whatever it is that the chinese, australian, french have seen images of something, why is it so hard to find it so you can determine once and for all that this is wreckage from the airline? >> well, everybody is focused on the number of days. the real metric to watch is the number of hours of search time. these aircraft take four hours to get out, four hours to get back with only one to two hours on station to actually search. we think of a 24-hour period and why haven't they covered more when in fact three hours is the limit of the endurance and then it's a matter of when the aircraft think they see something, getting a ship there. there's only one ship in the area because of the remoteness

of the area and that's slowing things down. i would say, though, given the fact that the australian p-3 saw several clumps of objects that were sus shish shous yesterday, my assumption is that they marked buoys so the australian ship can get to that location. >> because it is daylight now. the sun is coming up. so my assumption is, michael, is that the malaysian government must know more than simply this inmarsat analysis which you heard the vice president basically saying they believe that's where it is, most likely, blah, blah, blah. but they can't say 100%. but they probably have more information from the u.s. government, from the australians, chinese, or whomever. >> i don't know if that's true. they didn't say anything in the first week and said we think

it's foul play and then kind of went back and tried to correct the record or whatever and now they come out with this and i think people are really skeptical of it and say, why should we believe it? why should we go along with that? the prime minister did not explain why we should believe it. yes, there's information but now the media had to go to that company to get the explanation from them and it didn't come directly from the prime minister. it makes you wonder, did they just want to sort of book end this? i'm not really sure. >> it sounded to me -- and i hope i'm wrong -- that the malaysian government wants to throw this under the rug and move on. they are under enormous pressure so they've come to this conclusion, the plane is in the indian ocean and no one survived. >> wolf, it doesn't make it any easier that the data that they are analyzing has never been used for this purpose before. everyone has a right to be skeptical about how accurate it is. that being said, i spoke to many

people who said, look, it does allow us to narrow the search so we're not wasting resources in the north, if that's not where the plane is. however, not really game-changer until we start to find this debris and then we can answer some more questions about what potentially may have gone wrong on this plane because from that debris you're going to be able to pull out a lot of other information. so narrows the search a bit but not quite a game-changer. >> miles, let's say the prime minister of malaysia is right, the plane is in the indian ocean, we don't know why the plane is in the indian ocean, whether it was a mechanical problem or a human being forced it to go there. >> there are so many aspects about this that are just opaque to us and right from starters, i'd love to see what this magical doppler shift technology s. that inmarsat has come up with. we're talking about a basic simple handshake between a device that was turned off.

they are doing a good job of trying to defend an arc. this goes along with everything else in the investigation. we haven't heard conversations between the controllers and the crew. >> i don't know why they are not releasing that audio. we're hearing more about the co-pilot. what are you hearing about the co-pilot? i know the fbi is involved in looking at the hard drives of the pilot and co-pilot and everybody else. >> they want to talk to the family members as well. >> haven't they done that already? >> yeah, but the fbi wants them to go back and do it again. you know, they are still looking at this hard drive and what we do know is they haven't said anything back to the malaysians saying we found anything. that tells you they haven't really found anything yet. here we are two weeks out and we don't know much more about anything on that. >> why couldn't they wait, malaysia airlines, for tank blg evidence to show the plane was

in the water before making this analysis? you heard from inmarsat, they can't say it's perfect. >> well, that's a central question that i can't answer. why the decision was made today to make this public announcement indicates to me that someone has a lot of confidence in the method. i would be very interesting in understanding how inmarsat came to their conclusion in being open and as we can get the scientific community peer reviewed. >> the plane went up to 45,000, down to 23, up to 30,000 and then down to 12,000. you can't do that on autopilot. someone is going to be either under force or willingly has to do that. what are you hearing on the altitude shifts? >> well, the thing that the americans thought is we are kind of skeptical at this. we're relying on malaysian

military radar. >> was that the -- they said, hey, this doesn't make any sense. to them i said, look, if it was doing all of these things and then they continued on, i've believed that from the beginning. >> if it's on autopilot, it's going to go steady at 35,000 or whatever. >> once you set it, that's what the autopilot does. but the malaysian military radar is not very accurate. it's designed to find bad guys and give the air force on where to find them. it's not as accurate. now, at 45,000 feet down to 12,000 feet, that's quite a wide spectrum that he would imply that somebody is changing altitudes. >> or there was a struggle in the cockpit. >> forced to do it or want to do it. >> that's a mystery that hasn't been zsh do you want to add?

>> while we don't know how accurate this satellite data is because it's so new, it's right in line with the area that ntsb says we should be searching this area and they are really good at figuring out where we need to zero in on and that falls in line with that. we're now focused in the southern corridor. >> guys, thanks very much. still ahead -- [ screaming ] >> -- anger and disbelief. family members are demanding proof, proof of the prime minister's announcement that their loved ones are lost. what kind of legal charges might be leveled against malaysia airlines or the malaysian government? one group is throwing out words like cover-up, even murder. peace of mind is important when you're running a successful business.

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to my north american viewers, "crossfire" will not be shown tonight. many family members are having a very, very hard time accepting information from malaysian government that everyone on board flight 370 is dead. one group is accusing them of a cover up and even worse murderers. two-thirds of the passengers are chinese. dave, it's a very serious accusations being leveled by the chinese against the malaysians. tell us what they are saying. >> reporter: well, these families are angry. they have been frustrated for

days, wolf. some of them getting news via text message from the malaysian authorities that the plane went down. they are reacting with anger and also pointing fingers. one group of families say through their statement that, in fact, the malaysia government and the malaysian authorities are murderers, that they and feek tifl killed the people on board because of the mishandling of this whole incident. that doesn't necessarily represent all of the families but it shows the anger and ate tread almost in this process. through this evening, there were terrible scenes here in beijing. >> translator: they made this announcement today. first of all, is it true? they have not been able to confirm any floating objects.

telling us no one survived, everyone sank into the ocean, what's your proof? >> translator: our relatives were on that flight. this wasn't an accident. instead, it was caused by the malaysian government. they are covering up something. >> translator: it's been 17 days. they simply just give us this result. how can people bear this? the chinese government of ours should come forward and clarify and tell us. my mother, this happened on the 8th. she died on the 9th. tell us, how do i live? [ speaking in foreign language ] >> reporter: wolf, some of the people there reacting to this were taken away on stretchers and to ambulances in the area. just really horrifying scenes of anguish in this time and the people there, some of them not all reacting this