9:00, regular time. our whole new show will be ready to go. a special report with don lemon starts right now. this is cnn breaking news. >> this is a cnn special report. the mystery of flight 370. i'm don lemon. we have breaking news. at this moment the australian ship ocean shield is towing the u.s. navy's pinger that can detect picks from the plane's data recorders in water as deep as 20,000 feet. the ship will have a travel -- have to travel very slowly at a speed of 1 to 5 knots. but it can search around the box. pas soon as monday.ld go silent 13 planes and 11 ships are out there. but there are still more questions than answers. you've been tweeting your questions by the thousands. we have top experts standing by to answer them.

liz says maybe 370 goes down in the ocean in one piece. this explains the absence of the debris. and, where will debris begin to wash up on shore? i want to get right to cnn's reporters in perth. richard quest is here with me in new york. good evening to all of you. matthew, i'll start with you. yesterday, there was a lot of excitement about the targeted search area of about 150 miles. what progress has been made searching there? >> reporter: well, it's progress in the sense that that search has been continuing for the 24-hour period. it's the first time that they've managed to go all night because they've been wholly dependent on visual searches. now they're on the surface, trawling through that 150-mile corridor. the problem is, it's a very slow process.

it's going to take about three days. they've completed the first day of that. so far they've turned up nothing. so still start of what's been a very frustrating process. >> is there any indication that we're closer to finding flight 370, matthew? >> reporter: that's a difficult one to answer. certainly what the authorities say here and the search teams here say is that they're confident that if the plane is out there, they've estimated the most likely place it's going to be. what we're talking about, this search area, this 80,000 or so square miles of south indian ocean, it's their best estimate as to where this plane may have ended up. but we're not dealing in any kind of absolutes on this. it's just essentially a guess. they're hopeful they can turn up something. but so far after nearly 29 days now, they've not even found a trace. >> let's go to kuala lumpur and talk about the families with nic robertson.

the families feel like they're not getting the information they need. what is a primary complaint on the part of the families with this investigation? >> reporter: that they're not getting enough data from the investigators. they would like to know the exact routing of the aircraft took when it turned back, did it turn left or right, what was in the cargo hold, they want to be able to listen to the air traffic controller's conversation with the cockpit, with the first officer, with the captain. they want to hear that. all of those things they've been told, that's subject to investigation. that won't be disclosed by the investigators. they've been told a route that the plane took. that doesn't satisfy them. they don't believe or they're up sure whether the investigators believe or can trust the data which led to this south indian ocean off the coast of australia. of course, that is leading to conspiracy theories. one theory is did the plane get hijacked, did it land in diego garcia. was it shot down by the military

base in diego garcia in the indian ocean. with the lack of answers come those conspiracy theories. as wild as they sound, families are latching on to that. >> more on that later. but my question to you now is, why are malaysian officials keeping secret the recordings between the cockpit and the ground controllers? the families aren't allowed to listen to it. why is that? >> reporter: they say because it would prejudice the investigation. the chief inspector said to prejudice the investigation could damage a prosecution. he hasn't said who would be prosecuted in the end. officials say they don't know who made that last communication, the good night malaysian 370, with the last communication. one would reasonably expect whoever made that last communication to be a big clue about who was last in control of the cockpit in the aircraft,

which is key to the investigation. we're told on the ground, the first officer makes all the radio communication, that after that it could be the pilot or the captain or the first officer. on the radio, it should be readily clear to investigators by now who was on the radio at that key moment, that last transmission. so that's a vital piece of the investigation. most expect the investigators should know that by now. why are they not releasing this when it's apparent they perhaps know it? they clearly, if they have it, don't want to hand over the whole picture. again, that reticence for the investigation, to protect the investigation, but that reticence feeds all the wild conspiracy theories, feeds the angst, the anger and many pain here. >> richard quest? >> almost never, almost never is the actual audiotape released.

you're talking about men and women in some cases who are dead. they never release the tape. they release transcripts of it. and sometimes it's recorded by third parties. but the authorities almost never release the actual tape. >> lots more to talk about here. so thank you, nic robertson and matthew chance. a lot of attention on the navy's pinger locater. i want to bring in chris johnson. good evening to you, chris. we're now a full four weeks into the disappearance of flight 370. it's really unbelievable we're still here and nothing has been found. and only now, for the first time the search is finally diving underwater. chris, would they have started the underwater search any earlier? >> well, no. to be honest, the underwater search is limited in that we really need a smaller search

area. so the towed pinger locater, the thing we've put in the water just earlier yesterday, can only search about a mile away for a location. until we have some indication where the plane might have gone or have we seen some surface debris, it wouldn't have done a whole lot of water. >> the black box batteries were due for overhauls in 2012, never returned to the manufacturer. if that is the case and the batteries are dead, will they be able to find the black boxes? >> the pinger locater will only work if the black box is activity sends out a ping. it's a passive listening device. it just listens for that ping. if it's stopped sending that signal out or if it was never sending it out to begin with had it been damaged in the crash, then no. our system won't locate it that way.

>> i imagine that there is a lot of noise in the ocean. i'm wondering what other natural sounds could be confused for the pinger. >> there are a couple different types of sounds in the ocean, tectonic sounds, whale sounds, that kind of thing. but the processor is able to distinguish the sound the pinger makes. >> this is a tweet from james. if the pinger locater gets a hit, how long does it take to deploy the rest of the technology needed to find flight 370? one australian scientist who developed the flight data recorder said finding them at this point would be "remarkable." would you agree? >> well, if we hear the ping in our system, we're able to put our other system into the water very quickly. so we've got two different types of systems operating off the australian navy ship ocean shield. the first is the pinger locater. the other is the bluefin 21. that can be equipped with a side can sonar or a still camera. we'll put that in the water,

make a map of the ocean floor to see what's under there. to see if we can find some debris, large or small aircraft debris and hopefully that black box. >> thank you very much. stand by. geoffrey thomas is with us. mary schiavo is an attorney for victims of transportation accidents. ocean explorer, tim taylor. jeff wise. jim tilmon. the batteries may already be dead. do you believe the data recorders will ever be found? >> if the pinger is dead and there's no debris on the surface and we're convinced it's along this southern arm, then what

we're really facing is we would have to go down and try to locate this thing with side scan sonar, which is equivalent of riding around the continental united states on a horse looking for this thing. it's getting extremely slow process. if you deployed multiple underwater robots, this could take decades. >> tim taylor, how does a search plan change, if nothing is found within the next few days? >> well, they're going to have to take a long range look at this and really evaluate if they proceed. jeff said it's going to take a long time. that equates to money. i have one quick thing. sound has a different propensity, low frequency sound underwater, there's a channel from 2,000 to 4,000 feet that allows sound to travel great distances. it has a ricochet effect.

maybe they're using this acoustic sound to get down to that depth to see if they can hear that beacon. no one has talked about this, but it's called the deep sound channel. i think that's extremely interesting that -- maybe they're hoping against hope that they can extend the range of this pinger if it's actually there. >> what are you writing, richard? >> i was just writing very interesting, the level which the pinger is going down, i believe reading about it this morning, is about 3,000 feet. that's the sort of level they're looking at. so he just latched onto something there. >> mary, do you think the u.s. should continue looking for this plane, would adding more resources at this point make a difference? >> well, i think we'll continue and we should continue for at least a reasonable time thereafter. we don't exactly know when the pinger is going to go dead, it could be dead already, it could

last another week or two after that. but we would want to deploy submersibles, side scan sonar, et cetera, to find it through submersible methods. but at some point, the u.s. and other nations will put back and leave this uninvolved. >> geoffrey thomas, so far the debris spotted has turned out to be trash. is it time to deploy more assets maybe under water? >> there are more assets coming, there's more planes coming. but we should not underestimate the will of the australians and the chinese, particularly the political will to find this airplane. i think as time goes by, more and more brains will be brought to bear on this. i think that this is a mystery

that will be solved, but it may be very, very long in the solving. but the political will to do this is very, very strong. the relationship between australia and china particularly. so it's going to be long and hard i know, but i believe that they will stay the course. >> lots more to talk about. coming up, the families of flight 370. a wife faces the future without her husband. and next, will we see any wreckage of the plane from the air? what about those hundreds of seat cushions? i've always had to keep my eye on her... but i didn't always watch out for myself. with so much noise about health care, i tuned it all out. with unitedhealthcare, i get information that matters... my individual health profile, not random statistics. they even reward me for addressing my health risks. so i'm doing fine...

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13 lanes, 11 ships searching for flight 370 right now, in an area about 84,000 square miles. back with me is my panel of experts. as we speak, the air search is under way. i would like you to take a listen to air chief marshal angus houston in perth last night. >> i think there's still a great

possibility of finding something on the surface. there's lots of things in aircraft that float. i mean, in previous searches, life jackets have appeared, which can be connected to the aircraft that was lost. >> richard quest, this one is for you. life jackets, other floating debris, how difficult is it to detect something small? >> let me show you more than anything else. there we have, of course, an aircraft seat. this is exactly the sort of thing that would float because it's made of materials that will float. >> it's very light. >> it's also designed for buoyancy. you have several hundred of them on the aircraft. not only that, but on the back of this, this was manufactured in 1996. but there's a huge amount of detail about the seat. the numbers, the serial code,

all that sort of thing. i'm not suggesting if you found one of these seats in the middle of the ocean you wouldn't be able to tell where it was from. but you would be able to definitively say this came from this particular aircraft. >> here's the thing. you said if it did break up. if it didn't, it's not going to float. >> right. which is why i'm interested in that first tweet, whether or not the plane went down substantially in tact. >> something as small as a seat cushion may help, but are they more likely to find debris by air or water? >> look, i think that with debris, if there's one piece, there's typically a whole lot of debris on the water. so the air part is still very, very important. it may well be the ships stumble onto something. but at the moment, what's happening is the airplanes, the spotters on the airplanes are

looking out for debris, possible debris. they're dropping markers. the ships have been going into have a closer look and pick it up. i think the main thing are eyes on the airplanes looking out. as you suggest, there's 11 military planes but there's also 4 commercial planes, as well with volunteer spotters on board. quite an armada of aircraft out there at the moment. visual sighting from the air i think is the best bet. >> jim tilmon, you've covered several air disasters. they're throwing everything they have at this. what if no debris turns up and no black boxes are found in the next week or so, jim tilmon? >> i think we go to plan b, and i think it's not too early to start making some definitive plans with plan b in mind. i have an individual approach to that. i want to go back to the last known absolutely documentable location for the airplane.

then the plan b should start from there, as if we haven't done anything else any place before. >> nic robertson addressed this earlier. do you think the malaysians should release the audio recordings of air-to-ground conversations with the cockpit, jim tilmon? here in the u.s., you can listen to the cockpit at any time because it's streamed online. isn't it stunning that they won't release it? >> i'm amazed the malaysians and what they have conducted this thing and what they consider to be secret and all that. where were all the radars? the malaysian radar was going, how long did it track the airplane? even the one in australia, i'm told that's one of the most powerful radar systems in that hemisphere. nobody seems to have seen the airplane beyond a certain point, unless they're just not telling us. >> malaysian officials haven't released the complete cargo

list. why not put all this out there? >> reporter: they say that's part of the investigation, don. they did talk about all the checks they're doing on that particular piece of cargo, where it was picked, who packed it, who transported it to the airport, who loaded it on the aircraft, all these sorts of things. just going back to that air traffic control conversation that hasn't been released as well, i talked to a former malaysian airlines pilot here. he told me if you look at malaysia, take the east and the west of the country. on either side you'll have radio buffs recording flight frequencies, air traffic control frequencies. at 12:42 air traffic control told the pilot and first officer to go to frequency 132.6 for the rest of their flight. this former pilot tells me,

normally on the east side of malaysia, there would be somebody monitoring and recording this, just an amateur doing it out of interest. he also tells me that week in question, that person wasn't recording because their equipment was down. any other week he said there would be an independent recording, don. >> i hate to cut you off. we have breaking news tonight about the search of the captain and the co-pilot. their hard drives. a source says the captain had several alternative routes, alternate routes programmed into that simulator, but there was no "we got it" information. when we come right back, a wife's anguish. her husband was on flight 370. now she says she can never give up trying to find out what happened for the sake of their two small boys.

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what's your policy? the worldwide obsession with the mystery of flight 370 has been growing ever since the plane vanished a month ago tonight. but none of us should forget that there were 239 people on board. all with grief stricken loved ones. danica weeks, her husband paul is one of the missing. she spoke to cnn's paula newton. >> the hardest thing for me is to understand a commercial airline can just go black. i don't think for the rest of my life i'll ever give up frying to find out what happened. i owe that to my soul mate and my loving, amazing, strong, awesome husband who, you know, was an amazing father and amazing husband. he was an extraordinary man.

i owe it to him. i still have a slight, slight hope, you know, and sometimes i catch myself, you know, seeing the excitement of him coming home and i have to -- i have to get rid of that out of my brain quickly, because i can't let myself go to that level of excitement because that would only -- it's only going to make me crash further when i find out the real truth, which we're all expecting that the plane has crashed. we need something. the families need something. we need answers. not just for me, but for my children. hopefully we do get answers and then we can go on. if we don't, this will be a life long quest for me. just for him. >> our thoughts are with danica

weeks, her two sops and all the families of the passengers of flight 370, which disappeared four weeks ago today. that's it for us tonight. i want to thank my panel. "unguarded" with rachel nichols starts right now. tonight on "unguarded" with rachel nichols -- it's the ncaa tournament's ultimate weekend. and rachel has the latest from the coaches and players fighting for college basketball's biggest prize. kentucky's head coach john calapari. >> we're playing seven freshman that are going to go out in front of 75,000. >> head coach bo ryan of wisconsin. >> it's so exciting to bring a team here. that's how i get excited. >> connect's star guard. >> i'm just so glad to be back here now. so happy you start crying. >> and florida head coach billy donovan. >> we've been a team that's gotten it done together. >> "unguarded" is on location from arlington, texas.