a high tech aircraft. an experienced crew. and 227 passengers. what began as a routine flight for malaysian airlines 370 became the total opposite. leaving behind unending grief and unanswered questions. flight 370, the final hours. here in the cockpit of this

malaysian airlines plane, the captain trains this co-pilot to fly the aircraft. calculations, notes, and a rare towering storm to avoid. >> we see it on our radar, yellow and red. >> adjustments made, the trainee touches down moments later. a perfect landing. it's february, 2014. and the trainee is this man. weeks later, hamid would again be in the right hand seat. this time as first officer of malaysian airlines flight 370. march 7, 2014. kuala lumpur, malaysia. in one of the busiest cities in southeast asia, millions of people are on the move.

including phillip wood, a 51-year-old ibm executive. thousands of miles away in beijing, the day begins as usual for his partner, sara bajac. >> i get up early, i drink coffey. we live next to an apple orchard and i do yoga every morning and eat my oatmeal and go to work. >> in the early morning hours, phil will take the red eye home to sara in beijing. the airport at kuala lumpur connects southeast asia to the continent. paul weeks needs to make it thousands of miles inland all the way to mongolia. >> he was doing this for the right reason. >> weeks is an engineer, husband and father of two young boys. >> he would take his kids to the zoo. >> in fact, preparing the boys

was a major issue before paul left for his 28-day assignment abroad. >> we cried when he left. this is a big change for the family. we prepared lincoln, you know, to skype him and a map where daddy was going to be. >> when weeks left home, he told his wife he was leaving a few things behind. >> i'm going to leave my wedding ring and watch and should anything happen, i want the ring to go to the first son that's married and the watch to the second. i said something to him, like don't be stupid, just come back and i'll give it back to you and you can give it to them. >> hours later, the pilots pass through security at the airport. >> they're there early.

>> miles o'brien is an aviation expert for cnn. >> they'll talk about the winds aloft, the route, turbulence. with that all in mind, they'll come to an agreement how much fuel to load on board an airplane. >> hamid and shau load enough fuel to get to beijing, plus 45 minutes to spare. hours later, the passengers arrive for the flight. bags checked, boarding passes printed. among them, a group of chinese painters and calligraphers returning from an exhibit of their work. a family heading back from vacation with their toddler. two iranian men traveling on fake passports. passengers flying for business and pleasure, as well as the flight crew. in the cockpit, the captain and first officer make their final

preparations. >> oxygen, check. instruments, check. >> in a 777 simulator, mitchell casado shows cnn's martin savidge the preflight prep. the pilot loads the route, programming the aircraft to fly to its destination. >> reporter: it's essentially step by step going to make this plane from kuala lumpur all the way to beijing. >> the plane is ready. before taking off, paul weeks sends a message home. >> the last line was, this counts as one day, so that means it's only 27 days till i see you all again. >> around 12:30 a.m., malaysian airlines flight 370 pushes back from the gate and eases toward the runway. the aircraft is cleared for takeoff. >> let's go. so the brakes are off and everything is set. >> the captain boosts the massive engines. the plane roars into the sky.

tracking its climb through 5,000 feet, then 10,000 feet. now airborne, air traffic controllers pick up the flight. >> they're going to see you on their radar because you have a squawk code in your transponder which turns your simple radar return into something that has a lot of information on it. it includes the flight number and the speed and the altitude. >> coming up to 17,000 feet. >> this is malaysia here. this is vietnam here. there's cambodia on the left side. >> as the plane reaches its cruising altitude of 35,000 feet, the pilots can relax a little. so can the passengers like paul weeks and phillip wood. it's 1:19 in the morning and a voice from the cockpit addresses air traffic control, saying simply all right, good night. for flight 370, it's been a routine evening.

coming up, an aircraft with 239 people aboard vanishes completely. >> it's got to be some practical joke. then it staid missing and it stayed missing.

march 8. just before 1:00 a.m. malaysian airlines flight 370 and its 239 passengers and crew are 35,000 feet above the gulf of thailand. cruising comfortably in a boeing 777. >> the 777 was a pivotal aircraft for boeing. and the 777 has a sterling safety record. >> it's extremely safe. it's triple redundant. there's at least three backups for every system. electrical, hydraulic. >> in the cockpit of flight 370,

the pilot with over 18,000 hours in the air, and a stellar reputation. >> he's the kind of guy i want to fly with. the quintessential good airline pilot. he's everything that you would want to have taking you down to the ground on that dark and stormy night. >> seated beside him, 27-year-old first officer fariq hamid. >> an airline pilot in his mid twenlts with the amount of experience he had would never be flying a 777 in the u.s. so this guy was doing well. >> doing so well, that hamid had just finished training on the 777 and flight 370 is his first time flying the plane without a check co-pilot. nearly 30 minutes after takeoff, all seems well according to an

automatic message sent from the aircraft's communication system. >> that's like a little text message that's just checking in. everything about that indicates a plane at cruise, everything's fine and normal. >> 12 minutes later, at 1:19 a.m., a handoff with air traffic control. >> what happens during these handoffs is the controller in the station that is giving an airplane over to another sector gets on a phone to the next sector and says hey, i've got malaysian airlines flight 370 coming your direction, do you see him? they'll acknowledge, i'll give him the handoff. >> someone in the cockpit signs off with "all right, good night." but just two minutes later, signs of trouble. >> everything kind of goes quiet all of a sudden, in a hurry. >> at 1:21 a.m., the plane's

transponder goes silent. >> when you turn that off, it's like lights are out. so there's no more voice communication. >> and no signal to air traffic control with the plane's location, speed and altitude. >> it could have been physically turned off. there could have been a circuit breaker pulled. or there could have been a catastrophic failure on the plane, which caused an electrical disruption. >> then the 777 makes an unexpected left turn, heading quest and way off course. >> what we see is a quick turn, almost 180 degree turn back toward land. >> according to a source close to the investigation, military radar then shows the plane dropping and flying as low as 12,000 feet. >> the controller at the other end is expecting a call from that aircraft. >> but the call never comes.

>> there was repeated attempts to reach the aircraft. not only on the frequency they were assigned but also an emergency frequency. >> there is no answer. >> they're going through their check lilist for a missing aircraft, an aircraft that has fallen off the radar screens and is not communicating. >> at 2:48 a.m., a worried air traffic control alerts malaysian airlines they've lost contact with the plane. flight 370 has disappeared. by 6:30 a.m., the sun is rising over beijing. the same time flight 370 is scheduled the land. but there is no plane and no sign of phillip wood, paul weeks

and the 237 other passengers and crew members on board. coming up, the news no one could prepare for. >> after more than 30 hours without any contact with the aircraft, we believe that the family members should prepare themselves for the worst.

a large 777 jet is missing, and the news quickly makes its way around the world. >> malaysian airlines confirms it's lost contact with a plane. >> families begin to gather at information centers set up by the airline in kuala lumpur and beijing. >> by 12 hours, disbelief started to set in. like this can't be happening. it's surreal. >> it some becomes apparent that it's going to be difficult for families to get clear information. and anxiety turns to anger. this woman is telling families she can't get them an answer until noon the next day.

>> no, answer us now, this man yells. >> we're not getting any information and whether they know anything and they're not telling us, at this stage i'm -- it's just blank. just waiting and praying. >> just north of perth, australia, danica weeks waits for news of her husband, paul, with her 3-year-old lincoln and 11-month-old jack. >> the good news is malaysia hasn't had to deal with this before. the bad news is, malaysia hasn't had to deal with this before. we're in a situation watching them learn how to deal with it and it's up fortunate. >> with a lack of clear communication, speculation and theories abound. >> could it have been mechanical, structural failure

that caused rapid decompression? it's possible. it's looking more like an intentional act. >> but what kind? a rogue crew intent on hijacking or murder-suicide? or maybe a terrorist organization. that theory gets a boost by two passengers traveling with stolen passports. it's later determined those men are seeking asylum, not trouble. but that talk of terrorism surprisingly gives sara bajac hope. >> if i was a terrorist, what would i want to do? i would want to protect those very valuable assets, the people on the plane. >> as they press for answers -- >> china has deployed two ships to search the south china sea. >> investigators are scouring the seas. the problem is, they don't know where to look. first, they concentrate near the

malaysian peninsula. but then they expand east towards vietnam. and west. but there's another problem. >> the way the international investigators have been working together is kind of like a bunch of teenage girls running around a locker room trying not to show each other what they've got. >> the u.s. is there, uk is there, australia is there. but who's in charge? it has to be managed better than it is in order to get those answers. >> the answers begin to come fast and furious with the discovery of several satellite pings sent from the plane, referred to as hand shakes. >> so there is a box on the plane, which gets you the satellite. that box was still alive. to it's not unlike your cell phone. when your cell phone is on, even if you're not making a call, it's checking in with the nearest cell tower. >> and those hand shakes or

satellite pings give the satellite company enough information to reconstruct the plane's likely flight path. surprisingly, the data shows the 777 flies for several more hours after disappearing from radar. and ends in the south indian ocean. the constant changing, conflicting news puts families in a tailspin. >> it's a roller coaster ride. i wish i had some positivity that, you know, he was coming back. ♪ we're right here waiting for you ♪ >> on march 24, that positivity is dashed when malaysian airlines sends families they haven't been able to contact this text.

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 survived. a short time later malaysia's prime minister makes an announcement. >> flight mh-370 ended in the southern indian ocean. >> what was the hurry to make that statement? if the malaysians thought that was going to make people feel better and go home and be happy, it didn't work very well, did it? >> and sara bajac is still trying desperately to cling to hope. >> i'm coping through it. there's just this huge vacuum because, you know, it's not only that phillip is missing and by

any reasonable person's calculations, he's most likely permanently missing. and i can't quite accept that, because, you know, what my head is telling me and what my heart are telling me are two very conflicting things. >> as she hopes, the data is fine tuned. the search area shifts again and the world waits. >> we can't stop thinking about this and wondering, because how could it be in the 21st century that a modern airliner could go missing? how could that be? and here we are with a missing airliner. i think that boggles people's minds and we just need to know what happened, don't we? >> a mystery unsolved, clues scattered. questions unanswered and heart broken families left to pick up

the pieces. i'm don lemon. here are your headlines this hour. the search has begun again. it's sunday morning in western australia. that's where airplanes from china, south korea and the united states have taken off to start scanning for anything, plane wreckage related to those indian ocean search areas. ten airplanes in all and eight ship also be involved in the search on sunday. the only thing pulled from the water so far was some objects found by the chinese navy. we're waiting to hear more about them, whether they're linked to the missing malaysian airlines flight. stay with cnn throughout the evening. we'll break into programming if we get any new information for you. i have a quick update to tell

you. secretary of state john kerry and russian foreign minister serge lavrov will meet sunday in paris. lavrov told a russian interviewer that russia has in his words no intention or interest to cross the border of ukraine. officials tell cnn that russia has as many as 40,000 troops along the border. it's been a week since a massive landslide wiped out two washington state towns. the confirmed death toll is now 18, but they've lowered the people missing from 90 to 30. that's the only good news in all this. at 10:37 saturday morning, people stopped what they were doing for a moment of silence. rainy weather has hampered the search. crews are scouring through chest-high sludge and debris. an earthquake warm in southern california has residents unnerved. it started with a 5.1 quake in orange county friday night. several strong after shocks

followed. the latest a 4.1 in l.a. county. one car was flipped over by a rock slide. there were no injuries reported. i'm don lemon keeping you informed. cnn, the most trusted name in news. ♪ people are lighting up all over the country. they call it the green rush. marijuana has moved out of the back alleys and into the open. >> happy cannabis, y'all. >> in some states it's legal to grow, to sell, to smoke. and marijuana could be legalized in a city near you. so es to get, and many think so harmless. when the smoke