tv CNN Special Report CNN April 3, 2014 11:00pm-12:01am PDT
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>> i love this job. >> if you're someone who's done well, you're expected to give back. >> relax, let me do what i got to do. >> what's the cost of a human life? >> we got to take up the sleeping giant that's not doing what they need to do. >> this is a cnn special report, the mystery of flight 370. we have breaking news on the hunt for the missing plane. in a news conference just a short time ago, the head of the joint agency coordination center said this about the search. >> we looked at how the aircraft might have performed, the likely flight path, the speed at which it might have been flown at the altitude at which it might have been flown, and all of that has been fused to try and determine where the aircraft might have
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entered the water. >> he also said they are now looking under water using pinger locaters and acoustic gear. the search area is being adjusted on a semi- regular basis. but vowed it will keep going as long as there's hope in finding the missing plane. nick robertson is in kuala lumpur. ripley out on a boat in freemantle, australia. will, teams will be out there searching. tell us about the conditions right now. >> reporter: you know, you heard angus houston mention the white caps that can really pose problems when you're trying to do a visible search. if you look at the ocean behind me, these conditions are similar to what are being described in the search zone. you're not seeing those white caps. that's the good news. the not good news is that the clouds are lower right now, about a thousand feet above sea level. these planes can fly as low as 300 feet when they're doing the
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visual, but obviously the less cloud cover the better. visibility right now about six miles, so the conditions are fair for the search today. >> nick, you know you have been with the families. you've reacted with them. you've been telling their stories. how did families react, how do you think they'll react from hearing angus houston? will this news conference on this sub sea search honing in a smaller search area, will that give them hope? >> reporter: it will. what they've been looking for is professionals, professional effort on all of this. they're encouraged that there is such a strong international effort in australia, off the coast of australia. and to hear a briefing like this, it will encourage them. but they want one very fundamental, very simple thing. they want to know what happened to that aircraft. they want to have that first piece of wreckage identified. that's the information they're not getting right now. they're incredibly frustrated. the head of civil aviation, had
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a briefing to families last night, wasn't able to tell them even if the plane had crashed. it's very painful for them. this sort of press conference will give them hope, they've heard this and we have to say it, they've heard this sort of thing many times before, but it may get their hopes up briefly. we'll see in the coming days for them. >> thank you very much. i want to bring in the editor in chief of the airlines ratings.com and david souci. angus houston said they had some data that arrived only recently. did it sound like they had new analysis on this old data? >> yes, it does, don. like the other experts on the panel, we have great competence in the address that we had. it was very measured. it was upbeat. and from what i'm hearing, they
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are getting new data. it is being refined. and there seems to be an air of confidence, that, sure, it's a big ocean, but we're getting closer and closer to where this airplane might be. >> i'm very interested, david, souci, you keep saying you think it's a real milestone in the investigation, and specifically what angus houston said to make you have that -- to be so optimistic? >> you talk about the planning and everything that was going into this and we've been suffering through that and the families have been suffering through that. but i want people ton when you're in an investigation, it's the planning that is so painful. now we have everything in place. it's a breath of fresh air at this point. at this point everything is in place, all the tools and equipment could there be more there? sure, there could be more there. but the fact that everything is there, and the teams are working very closely together, we've heard that as rhetoric before. this wasn't rhetoric. you could see it in his eyes. he's believing this is
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happening. you can never underestimate the power of synchronicity. when this is all put together, if there's a hope of finding it, i think we're there now. i think this is moving to a place where the possibilities are there and i'm very hopeful about it. >> geoffrey, he talked about a lot of apparatus out there. the echo, the ocean shield is out, a malaysian frigate out there, the apparatus from the chinese, where the helicopter docks, couple of helicopter docks. he said the ship and the pinger locator will be searching on two tracks converging on each other. it appears to be a more targeted search. and as david said, more refined and perhaps will give the families and the searchers and everyone around the world watching more optimism about this. geoffrey? >> yes, indeed. they should be far more optimistic about this.
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and it does really appear as though all the best resources in the world, if you like, are now focused on this search. the assets are out there, the location is closer to the coast, therefore there's far more time to be spent out there by the increasing number of airplanes. so the time over the search area is dramatically increased and this has all got to be positive for a good outcome hopefully sooner than later. >> all right, guys. jeff wise, author of "extreme fear" the science of your mind in danger. mary skafo is an attorney. les is a 777 captain. tim tillman, retired airline -- american airlines pilot. and aviation attorney steven marks, he represented families
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of the passengers on the air france flight. it is clear angus houston wants to stop people from saying they're not being transparent in this investigation. >> yeah, i feel like i was seeing a completely different presentation from some of the other panelists here tonight. [ inaudible ] >> go ahead, keep going. >> okay, so i feel like he didn't break, there was no news, nothing new was said. the thing that he made clear, i am going to come at you regularly. i am going to download this kind of information on you on a regular basis. >> jeff, i would have to disagree with you, there was some new information there. there are different apparatus going in the water and what was out there, he clarified that. and he also said, listen, we had concerns, we were saying, maybe they don't know what they're doing, because they keep shifting the search area. and he said that's what happens
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in these kinds of searches. you refine the data and then you refine the search area. >> i think what you could also interpret him to say, we've squeezed the lemon, got all the information out of this tiny data set we've got, now we're moving the search box. but there's no new information you can get out of it. you can have the best analysts in the world working on the data set, but if the data set has nothing left in it, then you're just searching blindly. the pingers, towing them around, it smacks of desperation. they don't have a debris field. they don't really know what they're looking for under the water. they're just searching. >> les, your reaction? >> my reaction is like david's i'm one of the rose-colored glass guys. i was very energized by this from the standpoint -- from an organizational standpoint, it looks as though they are organizing as though it's an
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ntsb investigation with a party system, with getting all the people, all the experts from power plants, from everywhere they can, putting them together. that's a great, great thing to happen. i don't know how many people listened to that whole process. but it's wonderful to see. and i was also encouraged by the fact that they're utilizing every aspect of the data making their assumption. lower altitudes, higher altitudes. they're looking at every aspect. and i was very encouraged by it. >> and i'm sure this makes mike happy they talked so much about data and information they're getting because he likes to crunch the numbers. just quickly, mike, because i have a question for jeff. were you optimistic about the data in this press conference? >> optimistic, but guarded. this is the first time we've talked about two converging 240-kilometer tracks. no one's mentioned that before. so this means that the ping
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locators, they have a 240 box to go to with a line in it to tow the ping locator down. guarded, because again, coming from the air is the most likely scenario where you're going to pick up anything that willing it to mh370, but 240 kilometers is new data. >> jim tillman, you have been pessimistic. you said, hey, listen -- you've been leery. i'm not sure if they're even searching in the right place. did that help you at all, to think they're searching the right area? >> the thing i got out of the press conference was the impressive array of talent that had been lined up to work on this. it's a world-class approach and a team that i'm getting more confidence in every time i hear about it. i'm impressed with that. however, i'm with jeff. i didn't get the feeling. this thing has been teased all day as a big announcement. well, we knew they were going to do under-water searching and we
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knew they were going to do this, and move this. it wasn't brand new, fascinating information so far as i'm concerned. i'm just hoping that it does mean more than it appears to be. >> mary, i don't know if it would be fair to say, this is the new beginning to the investigation, this is phase 2, where the coordination kicks in and people should really start paying even more attention? >> well, not just in coordination. i guess the feeling i got out of it was comfort, comfort with this gentleman leading the investigation, comfort that we really were going to be given a pull picture of what was going on. comfort that they are throwing everything they know, with the data points they have, and that when this is said and done, obviously we hope they find the answers, the black boxes, they find everything. but i had comfort in knowing that when the day is done, and if they find it or not, we know that this joint task force will have done everything that they can. so if that's a new beginning, i
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guess it is. but it's a feeling i haven't had before, and for that, it certainly gives me some reassurance that we won't have as many regrets as we would have had had the investigation been run like it was in the beginning. >> let's hope it gives the families some comfort as well. when we come back, the deep sea search for flight 370. i'll ask an expert just how challenging this could be. and what they've been through lately. polar vortexes, road construction, and gaping potholes. so with all that behind you, you might want to make sure you're safe and in control. ford technicians are ready to find the right tires for your vehicle. get up to $120 in mail-in rebates on four select tires when you use the ford service credit card at the big tire event. see what the ford experts think about your tires. at your ford dealer.
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our breaking news tonight, the sub surface search for flight 370 has begun. joining me now to explain is eric vance, an oceanographer at the university of new south wales and he joins us now via skype, along with david souci, a vn safety analyst. eric, this is your area of expertise. what does it mean to you that they have been able to narrow an under-sea search area to 240 kilometers? >> for sure it's a good thing if they think the plane is really down there. but even 240 kilometers or 150 miles is a vast area of ocean to cover. and the thing about working in the ocean and i've been out on
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ships doing experiments for almost ten years now, is that it's painstakingly slow. it's very difficult to work in the ocean. ships don't go that fast. there's always these waves and wind. it's not easy to work down there. so even at 240 kilometers, that's an undertaking. >> and david, he said it's very difficult especially in that environment, but really, this is a race against time to find those black boxes and we don't know if the pings are even still going. what happens when the pings stop? what search tools are left to use? >> at that point, there's a lot that can be done visually. but as painstaking as this part is, it's exponentially more painstaking to get down there and find the black boxes. but remember, we're not just looking for just two black boxes, we're looking for any kind of debris which could be spread for miles. so if you think of the visual
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aspect or the sonar, i'm optimistic about that because these are large debris fields. we're working 24/7, these machines that underwater, the submarines and the pinger locators, although it is rough. but we saw the seas weren't too bad tonight. hopefully they'll get real good progress tonight. it's not fantastic, but what would you have them do? sit and wait until something else happens? no. i'm encouraged with the fact that the wheels are on the ground and they're moving forward, for the first time, i felt that they're moving forward, they're working together. this converging track is important to note, converging track means they've got pretty good information about where they're going to focus this investigation. could they be wrong? sure, they could be wrong. but they got the wheels on the ground, they're looking for something. >> and again, what would you have them do, sit around and do nothing, that's a good point.
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patricia says, why hasn't any debris washed up anywhere, it's been a month. so the question is, the deep water currents, do they work differently than the surface currents? might the fuselage and other things be pushed under in a way that they won't surface? >> no, no. so probably if the fuselage is somewhere down on the bottom of the ocean, it will stay there and the currents won't be strong enough deep down to move everything. but it's a completely different story at the surface of the ocean. if there would have been a debris field, a few hundred meters from the plane crashing in, then by now, almost four weeks in, that debris field would have increased in size enormously. the currents in the ocean are not a highway that move from a to b, but instead they mix everything up. so there's all these eddies, mini versions of hurricanes
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mixing everything up. so if you start with something that's relatively confined, it just spreads over and over. and i do think if the plane crashed somewhere where they're searching now, that within a few weeks to a few months, we will start seeing debris turn up on beaches, but it will be very limited. might only be a few hundred pieces or so, and it will actually be hard to identify them as being part of the plane. among all the other debris that washes on beach every day. >> i want to get to my panel of experts, but can you answer this one thing for me, erik and david as well. the southern indian ocean, the weather is going to get worse. how long can these ships operate out there? >> well, where they're searching now, is actually not anymore what we call the southern ocean. it's the sub tropical gyre. and in essence, the climate is very similar to the climate of
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the bahamas, or of bermuda. >> so it's warm? >> it gets colder in winter, but it's not that bad. i don't think that is really a problem. where they're searching now is actually a relatively easy place to search. >> thank you. thank you, both, gentlemen. my panel of experts are back with me now. steven marks, you heard what he said, this is a fairly easier, not easy, easier place to search. and on flight 447, which you know about, those data recorders took two years to find. if we don't find it soon, are we in for a years' long haul here? >> we could be. there's no guarantee it will believe found quickly. it's encouraging that we do have better assets, more assets and seem to have a team in place. so that's all encouraging. the difference here between 447 and this particular crash, or accident, is the fact that we don't have some of the
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information we had with 447. the acars messages were sent in realtime. we knew the general location, we knew the emergency the pilots were facing, the inconsistent information they were getting. so there was a great deal of information that was readily available at that time. unfortunately here, we don't about whether the information was unavailable because it was disabled or turned off or due to some other cause. we don't have that kind of information and that will make it more difficult. >> let's talk about the assets out there. right now, it's incredible state of the art technology being used in the search. the british ship echo is searching for sonic transmissions and the australian ship, the ocean shield, has a giant underwater microphone that will listen for the pings. and the blue fin 21, under water robot, will scour the ocean bed. obviously, it's a lot of equipment. you said they could use more,
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but still it's a glass half full, i would imagine? >> no, you're absolutely right. this is the most equipment that we've actually seen employed any one time. hmstylas is a nuclear submarine, it carries missiles, tomahawk attack missiles and it's used for reconnaissance to gather information through signal intelligence. but the great thing about tireless, it can loiter for as long as it needs to. potentially for a hundred days. now, let's rewind and look at some of the constraints on the search, the first one being, everything belrelies on the gps battery turning off. then we have to go back to the
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air search. that's a big constraint. the other constraint is the weather. we need impeccable weather over the next five days. and the weather isn't looking great on those two 240-kilometer tracks. so there are potential hurdles that will impinge the search over the next couple days. weather being one and also the gps batteries being the other. >> when we come right back, we have learned the navy's pinger locator is searching now for the black boxes, but what happens, if and when they're found?
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emissions from the missing plane's black boxes. what happens if and when they're located? >> crash-protected and shock-mounted. >> this is what investigators will see once the black boxes for mh370 are found and data from the memory downloaded for analysis. >> we'll see the data in a tabular format and graph cal format. >> black boxes contain hundreds of data points or parameters about the flight's movement, floot maneuvers, speed and altitude, all displayed with a series of graphs. >> it records the data in binary values, a series of ones and zeros. in order for humans to understand that, we need to convert it into engineer units. that simply means feet for altitude, air speed is recorded in knots. >> it's through graphs like these, that we'll learn if someone on board deliberately
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nose dived the aircraft, if there was a mechanical problem. >> there would be all kinds of indications. they'd be able to tell which engine turned off first. if it was because of fuel starvation, or intentionally cut off. >> this line represents the plane's altitude. if it dropped to a lower altitude, here is where we'd see a change. if someone on board deliberately altered the flight path, we'll see this line dip or rise depending on the direction. >> i think one of the important things that people will be looking at is who was in control of the aircraft. so when we look at the data from the flight data recorder, you can see if the inputs were coming from the auto pilot or the left seat or the right seat, the pilot or co-pilot. >> they can use latitude and longitude positions to pinpoint where the plane was located at any point during flight. although the memory chips are rarely ever damaged, airlines still need to perform regular flight data recorder maintenance
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and preflight testing to ensure the black boxes are up to par. the biggest challenge now is locate them before the batteries die. >> those pingers that are out there, could be already dead. to find that pinger in those trenches. or to find it after the pinger has stopped in those trenches is going to be extremely difficult. >> i want to thank my experts who are here to weigh in all of this. mary, we're assuming a lot about the black boxes. if and when they do find them, will the data still be able to be extracted? we're assuming that everything is intact. >> the data will be able to be extracted. there's very few crashes, very few cases where it hasn't been. most notably, the two planes that went into the world trade center on september 11th. those boxes were destroyed
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because of the intense heat. in the water, it's very different. and i know of virtually no aircraft accident in the water where they haven't been able to get the data off. even once the pinger stops, like silk air, once they find it, they'll be able to find the black boxes. so if they get them, they'll have data. >> okay, we can be assured of that. >> why aren't black boxes modernized, probably can't be the same or maybe it can be, like find my iphone app? >> why, so you should be able to remotely trigger it like an iphone? i think there's lots of ways you could conceivably improve the technology of a black box. but it becomes sort of a risk-benefit calculation. for the vast majority of air crash accidents, they serve just fine. only in very rare cases like this one, and air france 447, you know, we don't know that
quote
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this plane is in the water, bear in mind. so that the pinger might be not relevant piece anyway. >> but the black boxes are always relevant, if it's in the water or not, the black boxes will tell us what's going on or not. >> yes, that's correct. and i'm very impressed with the attitude that people are taking tonight, listening just to our panel and all, it's very encouraging to hear the assembly they've come up with now is impressing people that much. i'm going to have to get on that side of the issue. right now that's sort of an uncomfortable thing for me, because i still haven't got excited about this. >> can you be won over? or are you just being sarcastic there? >> no, i'm not being sarcastic. and i can be won over. i don't want it to be that way. i don't want you to feel like i have to be satisfied. but i have to be honest with myself and with you. you ask me a question, i'm going to tell you the truth about how i feel. >> les, we have a tweet from
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george. at what point will the search be terminated? all the searches are eventually terminated without having found their goal? >> it sounded to me like they'll increase this indefinitely until the money runs out, but that's not my expertise. i think one of the things that was mentioned with reference to the video clip that we saw about the data that was on the cockpit -- or the digital flate data recorder. that goes into a whole program so you can see what the airplane was doing. it's pretty exciting technology. i think mary will attest to that also, in addition to david soucie, that this is indeed a great process. you can visualize what was going on with that airplane, not just the line that was drawn in that clip. >> we have a tweet from dale. does criminal act change airline liability? >> no, it would not change the airline liability at all. in fact, in this case, montreal
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treaty governs most of the passengers' claims, at least as to the carrier. so if there was intentional misconduct by a flight crew member, or somebody who got into the cockpit, like lockerbie, we were able to establish liability beyond the limitations of the treaty. i think the same thing would occur here. regardless of whether it's intentional or not, the treaty is going to provide a mechanism for the family to get compensati compensation. at this stage, they want answers and they're entitled to it. >> when we come back, let's talk about that. can lawsuits help them? so far every bit of debris we thought from from flight 370 has turned out to be trash. who knew the ocean was so full of garbage? how much will that complicate the search? r up to 30 nights of continuous wear. ask your doctor about safety information
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coming to terms with what is beginning to seem inevitable. >> we must now accept the painful reality that the aircraft is now lost. >> but there is also another group on site waiting anxiously. the lawyers, ready to scoop up clients and begin the long battle for financial compensation. >> right now in malaysia, in china, the families are being misled by some very unethical u.s. lawyers. >> justin green has tried aviation cases for 17 years. green says he's aware of multiple u.s. law firms who are in asia right now soliciting families from flight mh370, earlier than united states law and ethical rules would permit. >> these lawyers launch within days, maybe even hours of a crash. ambulance chasers, in essence, but they're ambulance chasers on a global scale. >> how high are the stakes? >> a possibly limitless windfall
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of millions, perhaps even billions of dollars in cases that could potentially be brought against malaysia airlines and boeing among others. but a legal victory is by no means guaranteed. >> and there are many legal challenges that grieving family members may not understand. they can recover some money, 100 to 160,000 with a death certificate. but to really be compensated, they have to show airline responsibility for the disaster. where's that evidence? and for the manufacturer boeing, same thing, what evidence those their wrong-doing. >> one firm all right initiated a suit in illinois. the judge threw it out as improper and warned attorneys not to do it again. closure. families don't have >> psychiatrist gale salt says the lack of answers make grieving relatives especially vulnerable. >> when someone comes in, and says, we have someone to hold
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accountable. we're going to hold the airline accountable, or this country accountable, and we're going to sue them and punish them for what happens, that, unfortunately is very appealing to anyone who is struggling with, you know, i want someone to be responsible for this, i want to blame them and i want them to pay. >> jean casarez, cnn. >> back now with my team of experts to steven marks first. these families are confused, they're heart-broken, overwhelmed. should they be worried about finding an attorney right now? >> well, they may need an attorney to guide them through this. i wouldn't encourage anyone to hire an attorney without doing research. as justin mentioned, the people there pushing these families aren't the people who handle these cases on a routine basis who know what they're doing. it's a shame. they shouldn't have been filing those lawsuits in chicago. there was no reason for it. of course it was dismissed.
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unfortunately unless something is done, it may happen again. i think that's a tragedy for the families. some families may need counsel, what they really want are answers. if the answers aren't forth coming from the authorities, very often as in other cases, we've had to bring lawsuits in order to get information and get answers. now, you don't do that right away. and hopefully you do so responsibly. after the information there's enough information to suggest what really happened. but i think the attorneys who are pushing these families at this stage, really shouldn't be doing so and certainly they couldn't do it in the united states. >> mary, he brings up a very good point. both of you have mentioned silk air, by the way. does having a lawyer, though, give families leverage to deal with the authorities now and possibly demand the information they're so desperate for? >> well, eventually they will. but they'll do it through the legal system. what the families need to be told and what they have to
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realize, the average aviation litigation and i crunched the numbers once for my book, takes about 3.5 years. the 9/11 litigation, which our firm led with some others, took 11 years. so you will get your answers, but it will come through the reasonable court system. it will come through interrogatories, depositions, discovery. and good-old gum shoeing work by the law firm. not in the first 45 days from somebody filing a frivolous lawsuit in chicago. >> and you don't want to -- not that your mind won't be clouded in the future, but you may have more of your wits about you after you get some time behind you from this tragedy. >> exactly. >> michael, we've heard in jean's story there, there are already lawyers lining up to take advantage of those families, preying on their vulnerability.
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aside from the disgust that we all feel for that, what can be done in this particular situation? >> yeah, it's absolutely disgusting. i'd like to sort of just draw attention that there are three key phases that this investigation will embrace. the first one that we're looking at at the moment is the location of the actual aircraft, the where bit. and i think that's absolutely priority number one. it's key. it's key to give closure to the families. but that's just phase one. phase two will be what, when we find the black boxes and hopefully we will, what actually happened to the airplane and going back to the previous report, looking through all that myriad of data. but i think the really hard bit is going to be phase three, which is going to be the why. why what happened to the airplane, why that happened and then that opens up all the other theories such as sabotage, hijack, mechanical failure. so we're just at the beginning of the investigation. >> so before anyone can file any type of lawsuit, they're going
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to need to know all of these things, have all the evidence. >> les, what about the families of the pilots and crew? would it be the airlines, do they need to hire private lawyers? >> that's a great question. i go back, i support the good colonel on this whole thing. this whole investigation process has been completed. we can't go anywhere, whether it's the crew members, the passengers, until we get a probable cause or at least get toward a probably cause. we don't even have an airplane yet. >> i've got to -- this is for you, steven marks. remember, i asked you about dale who was online and he said, does a criminal act change airline liability, steven marks? >> well, i answered that to the extent that i don't think it will really change much in this case. because if it was criminal liability, that was able to interfere with the cockpit or the flight crew allowed them into the cockpit, assuming we
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get to the recordings which would indicate what transpired. i still have a hard time believing it was a criminal act. i know people are assuming that at a fact at this point. but there hasn't been any public support to justify jumping to that conclusion. from the treaty standpoint, a legal standpoint, it shouldn't interfere with our ability. and i did want to make, i don't know if we have time. i want to make a comment about whether or not we have to wait for probable cause. i've handled a lot of aircraft litigation, you do not need to wait that long, because it can take forever. >> when we come back, is the search like looking for a needle in a garbage bag? they think salmon and energy. but the energy bp produces up here creates something else as well: jobs all over america. thousands of people here in alaska are working
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>> i'm don lemon. breaking news tonight, the search for flight 370 being narrowed to the area of highest probability, about 150 miles. but how much garbage will they find in that area? and how much will it complicate this search? joining me now is anna cummings and marcus ericson. they're experts on plastic pollution in the world's ocean. and there appears to be a lot of
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it. they're searching underwater now. and before we talked about all the trash on this program that finds its way to the surface. but what about searching underwater? do they face challenges with trash and garbage there as well? >> well, lots of the debris is mostly at the surface. what happens in the water, you might find some things. for example, if the plane crashed intact, you might have some things coming to the surface as it breaks up. those things might be found as they're going from the bottom to the surface. but i would estimate most of the debris is on the surface, moving away from the original crash site. >> why would you estimate that? >> well, because the currents are moving in the sub tropical gyre, a counter clock wise rotation between two and four knots. so it's moving away as time progresses. >> we hear about the false alarms, or false pings. the british ship echo conducting
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a specific search today. they heard a false ping, could that be trash or debris other than the plane? >> it could be. but as for how deep that trash might be, that's the big unknown. most of the plastic floats. 50% floats. the other 50% will sink. so it's possible some of those items might be throughout the water column. it's a huge unknown. >> how much trash is out there? i understand you brought some things that we can expect to find. can you show us? >> so we brought a few things to show you what we have found around the world in all five of the sub tropical jirs, fishing gear, fishing nets. we traveled through the site where they're searching now. we sailed from perth to maricious about four years ago, found derelict fishing gear, any kind of object you might see. that's background debris that's confusing the search for debris
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from the aircraft. >> and we searched at the exact same time of year. we went through a psycyclone wh further complicates the search. >> what do you have there? >> common household items, detergent bottles, a series of lighters. much of what we find are everyday consumer items. single-use disposables and a fair amount of derelict fishing gear. >> people think these objects -- i saw one on the other night, what happens when you flush a toilet, it goes to a waste facility before it goes to the ocean. these items end up off shore on boats. are these people just dumping these in the ocean on purpose? >> roughly 80% of the trash that we found out in these gyres, comes from land-based sources. litter in the streets, debris that you see inland. 20% comes from the maritime industry, from fishing boats,
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from cruise ships. >> interesting. >> but really, the ultimate source here is that it's a design flaw, that the plastic pollution that we find in the oceans was designed without a recovery in mind. >> the good news, there are solutions. >> there are design sdutions, with more public awareness and policy change. >> you mean for the actual material itself, so that it decomposes? >> no. designing objects that are recyclable and recoverable. >> for example, i'll show you, we found these. >> go ahead. what are they? >> these are umbrella handles from disposable umbrellas in japan. these are the disposable lighters. it's a disposable culture that's creating these garbage patches in the world's oceans. >> thank you. up next, i'll bring back my experts for one final thought. s. love this guy. so sorry.
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before you convict thompson too, see what one investigator found. my experts are back with me now. we've got time for your final thoughts. i always love talking to you guys about it when we try to answer the next day if you have questions about it. this got mary schiavo and mine as well. the data we got is the data we've got. any final thoughts on that? >> final thoughts are i'm glad the australians are heading it.
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they're adding transparency and hope for some answers. but rerewe really have to have black box. >> i'd like to see the data. i'd like independent experts. not just inmarsat. i'd like the raw data available to everybody. >> tim tilman. >> we've got a world class team, incredible tools for them to use. i'm hoping for the best, but i'm not betting, not yet. >> until it's open and free, then the world can judge whether it's accurate analysis yet. >> it's have still not got that information from the authorities. and indonesia is the only country that hasn't provided where the radar traces were. why? >> i knew he was going to say
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that, too. the bottom line is, this is an accident investigation. we're not going to get all the data. i think we were encouraged by their press briefing. >> make sure you stay with us for the very latest on this plane. goodnight. the area of highest probability as to where the aircraft might have entered the water is the area where the underwater search will commence. >> focusing before the water. the search for flight 370 enters a new phase. we're live in perth for the latest. we're finding out more about the ft. hood shooter and the woman who confronted him. >> we were stepping back and waiting for backup, and she stepped forward. and why america's top
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