using high tech equipment began its work on monday. crews are hoping to finally find the boeing 777 that vanished on march 8th. it was flying from kuala lumpur to beijing, off course, authorities have in idea why. they believe the plane crashed when it ran out of fuel. we'll be back at 11:00 p.m., another edition of "ac 360." the following is a cnn special report. it is one of the greatest mysteries of all time. >> nobody expects a 777 to vanish. it just doesn't happen. >> a state of the art aircraft with 239 people on board. disappears without a trace. >> all communications are suddenly disabled, switched off. >> how could it happen?

>> you have a series of events that appear to be human driven. >> mistakes? >> everything went wrong there. it borders on scandal. missed opportunities. >> the aircraft was still flying. four hours later, no one is looking yet. >> many more questions than answers. >> there are no black boxes inside human beings. that's what we need in this case. >> what happened to malaysia airlines flight 370? and will we ever find it? >> we need to know what happened. it is not an option not to know. >> "vanished: the mystery of malaysia airlines flight 370." >> march 8th, 2014. call w kuala lumpur international airport.

just after midnight, the pilots of malaysia airlines flight 370 are preparing for takeoff. >> it is all about checklists in aviation. they're going through checklists. >> miles o'brien is a pilot and aviation analyst for cnn. >> doesn't matter how mundane it is, how many times you've done it, you do it religiously because that is absolute foundation of safety in aviation. >> in a cockpit, 27-year-old first officer fariq hamid. this video shows him training on the 777. flight 370 was his first time flying the aircraft without an instructor. >> so while his experience may have been low on the aircraft, he was totally up to date on how to fly it. a lot of airline pilots tell me these are the best people to fly with because they just come out of rigorous training. >> next to fariq, zaharie shah, a captain with over 18,000 hours

in the air, and a stellar reputation. >> we go back about 30 years. we started flying together. >> nick is a former chief pilot for malaysia airlines. >> my wife is chief stewardess. she with like zaharie to fly the plane because i've got great confidence in the guy. >> and there is confidence in the aircraft they're about to fly, the boeing 777. >> it is a great airplane. it has got a sterling record of safety. >> that aircraft it the pinnacle of all the aircraft i have flown and the automation is fantastic. >> for any critical electric or hydraulic system that would fail, there are two or three backup systems. after making their final preparations, the pilots are ready for pushback

. >> at 12:32 a.m., the pilots taxi to the runway. >> cleared for departure. like 370 takes off for a six-hour scheduled flight to beijing. >> the human control, under the controls, the landing gear goes up. >> by 1:00 a.m., the crew and 227 passengers on board are cruising comfortably at 35,000 feet. even the pilots can relax a little. the plane is basically now flying itself. >> there was no particular chlenge there for a seasoned captain and that first officer

to handle that flight without any problem. >> and at 1:07 a.m., all seems well according to an automatic message sent from the aircraft's communication system called acars. richard quest is an aviation correspondent for cnn. >> think of acars as a giant smartphone that will send out huge amounts of information via satellite or radio transmission. >> then at 1:19 a.m., a standard handoff with air traffic control as the plane leaves malaysia air space and enters vietnamese air space. >> the controller here attempting to speak and she's good night malaysia 370, something i would do. >> there was no indication that

anything had gone wrong. >> david susi is a former safety inspector for the faa. for the first 40 minutes of the flight, up to that point everything has been routine. >> mm-hmm, yes. >> everything was routine until now. two minutes after talking with air traffic control, 40 minutes into the flight, the plane's transponder goes dark. >> the plane's transponder is effectively the instrument by which sends out a signal to air traffic control, it tells you what height it is at, which direction, and what speed it is traveling. suddenly this giant 777 is blind to the world. >> and there is no easy explanation for why it happened. >> either it was intentional and someone tried to turn all of the systems off at once, or the pilot was unable to communicate, kept from communicating, or there was a mechanical failure of some kind that took all those systems out at one time.

>> then, minutes after the transponder stops, the 777 makes an unexpected turn heading west and way off course. >> that the plane turned immediately after the transponder went off is completely inexplicable and very worrisome. >> peter goals, former managing director of the ntsb. >> we don't know whether this was done voluntarily, whether it was done under duress. we simply have no idea. >> no idea what really happened, but goals sees a red flag. >> it was completely out of the ordinary that there was no distress call. that the turn takes place and there is absolute silence. it means that somebody on that plane redirected it to a new course heading and they were not telling anyone. >> not telling anyone and never checking in with vietnam air traffic control.

>> the fact that the westerly turn happens at the point of handover between malaysia and vietnam, for many, is the strongest evidence that something nefarious was going on. >> you've investigated many incidents. is that coincidence that everything seems to go wrong at this particular critical moment? >> it can't be coincidence. i don't believe in coincidence with my accidents. it seems to me that there was something. it doesn't mean it was nefarious, it doesn't mean anything else, but, remember, there is a lot of systems doing a lot of things at that time as well. >> so the critical moment is immediately after this handoff. when you're in this kind of no-man's-land in the sky. >> yeah. nobody is watching right now. >> for 19 minutes, no one was watching. and flight 370 would vanish.

coming up, a critical mistake by air traffic control, with time running out. >> the aircraft was still flying as we know now. that was painful to think about, that four hours later, no one is looking yet. ♪ [ male announcer ] over time, you've come to realize... [ starter ] ready! [ starting gun goes off ] [ male announcer ] it's less of a race... yeah! [ male announcer ] and more of a journey. and that keeps you going strong. at unitedhealthcare insurance company, we get that. with over 30 years of experience, we'll be there -- ready to go as far as you. so consider an aarp medicare supplement insurance plan, insured by unitedhealthcare insurance company. like all standardized medicare supplement insurance plans, these help cover some of what medicare doesn't pay -- and could save you in out-of-pocket costs.

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in the middle of the night on march 8th, malaysia airlines flight 370 vanishes into thin air. there has been silence from the cockpit. and by 1:37 a.m., a second flight communication system, acars, isn't working either. >> acars was either switched off, or it failed. we don't know which. because whatever did happen, this is the crucial moment. we pretty much know that all of the columns are disabled, switched off, broken, blown up. >> an investigator looking at this, what would the determination be, at least at

this point as to what has happened? >> at this point, i've got two different paths. one is that that aircraft was taken over and that the systems were intentionally shut down. the other side would be that there was a singular failure at a common location and that singular mechanical failure would have done exactly the same thing. at this point in the investigation, there is no evidence one way or the other. >> but there would be piles of evidence if acars hadn't stopped transmitting. >> you would know the condition of the engines, the route it was taking, the altitudes it was taking. we would know exactly the state of that aircraft. >> just the kind of information someone taking over a plane wouldn't want anyone to know. >> if you were doing something nefarious and switching off acars would be a crucial part of making the plane go dark.

>> 17 minutes after the plane went dark, 19 minutes after the last words from the cockpit, there was still no check-in with vietnam air traffic control. a call made thousands of times. >> you have to be, like, drunk for you to forget to check in after somebody tells you immediately to check in. every pilot will want to do that as soon as possible. anything more than two to three minutes already abnormal. >> around 1:38 a.m., air traffic controllers try to reach the aircraft. >> they try the radio. they tried to call and see if mh-370 was out there, no response. >> you attempt to communicate directly with the aircraft first. >> right. that's the first thing you do. if that's not successful, you try to contact other aircraft around and they didn't do that and they tried to reach mh-370

as well and no success. >> with no response, an air traffic controller in kuala lumpur calls ma larb w s malays for help. >> you have to say nobody expects an airplane to fall out of the sky. nobody expects a 777 to vanish. >> malaysia airlines tells air traffic control a completely different story. they say mh-370 hasn't vanished at all. according to their own internal flight tracking system. >> malaysia airlines says the aircraft is fine. we know exactly where it is. >> yet they had no communication. >> they had none. they had none. so their system was showing that the aircraft had continued to go on that heading. >> over the next hour and a half, malaysia airlines gives air traffic control more promising messages. they had exchanged signals with the flight. the plane was in normal condition. and the plane was flying off the

coast of vietnam along its scheduled flight path. >> and at that point the guard is let down you start going in a different direction, not search and rescue anymore, just trying to communicate. >> but an hour and a half after that first reassuring message, a tragic realization. malaysia airlines now tells air traffic control the information was wrong. >> we don't know where the aircraft is. our system told us it was there, but it wasn't. >> the airline tells air traffic control their flight tracking program was based on flight projection, and not reliable for aircraft positioning. >> everything went wrong there. everything. it borders on a scandal. the airline in the middle there, just offering up complete red herrings and dead ends. it is inexcusable. >> at best, the malaysia

airlines information to air traffic control was unhelpful. at worst, it was downright damaging to getting an investigation a search under way quickly. >> not only did malaysia airlines have bad information, air traffic control waited to sound the alarm. >> i think air traffic control waits so long because it is just a normal confusion of the moment. but at some point in all of this, an air traffic controller can push the big red button that says, help. panic. missing plane. and that's what they didn't do until much later. >> not until two hours after it is clear the plane is lost did air traffic control notify emergency responders. >> that with hours was

inconsiderably critical towards finding the aircraft and finding it if there were survivors. >> and it had been four hours since atc had last spoken with the cockpit. >> that just is so painful to think about, that four hours later, no one is looking at it. >> as precious hours pass, time is running out. while flight 370 flies further and further over one of the world's largest oceans. coming up, what happened on board flight 370? >> we do not know who the perpetrator are. we will never know the reasons why. but definitely there is a human hand involved.

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in the pitch black darkness, an hour after its last radio contact, the malaysian military spots a plane where no plane should be in the middle of the night. they don't yet know it is mh-370. >> if you see a primary unidentified return flying toward your country at 500 plus knots, that should raise concerns very quickly. >> but it didn't seem to. by now, the 777 is believed to be hundreds of miles off its original course. >> we don't know what is normal for their military and i think a

big part of the problem with this investigation is that the malaysians were very tight lipped about what they had, what they knew, and when they knew it. >> the malaysian air force, for reasons still in the fully explained, doesn't tell anyone in civilian authority what it had seen, for hours. >> governments don't want to talk about this. they don't want to talk about holes in their radar system, a posture which is not as ready as they want the world to believe it to be. >> not only is no one told, nothing is done. no jets are scrambled. >> why would you have an air force if it is not capable of doing something like this. that's a big error. that's a big mistake and frankly the malaysian government has not really accounted for it in a proper way to these families and to the rest of the world. >> for david susi, however, there is a gray area. >> here in the united states, we would know that in a heart beat. over there, it wasn't set up that way. it was a clear delineation of firewall between military and

civil operations and the with just didn't meet each other. >> a missed opportunity. >> exactly. >> on the ground in beijing, of course, the families waiting patiently for the arrival of flight 370 knew none of this. finally, an hour after the plane was expected to land, malaysia airlines makes its first public announcement, on facebook. >> flight mh-370 lost contact with air traffic control at 2:40 a.m. this morning. >> it quickly becomes the biggest story in the world. >> where is malaysia airlines flight 370? >> more questions than there are answers. >> the hunt for flight 370 covers millions of square miles. >> the world's attention turns the to malaysian government and airline officials. to many critics they don't seem to know what they're talking about. >> there was a deer in the

headlights component to those early news conferences. you could almost see them struggling through it, not knowing what they were doing. not understanding how to begin the investigation. >> currently 43 ships and 40 aircraft searching for it and unprecedented investigation that would baffle the greatest minds in the aviation world and the accident investigation world. >> they put out information without really corroborating it and much of it turned out to be false. >> i with like ould like to refs reports that the aircraft may have continued flying for some time after it lost contact. those reports are inaccurate. >> so they ended up, you know, on both sides of a bad situation. with too little information. >> even days after the plane disappeared, families believed they aren't being told the truth.

the chinese woman demanded answers just before another press conference in kuala lumpur. she didn't get any. >> after ten days to two weeks, there was a public perception that was set in stone that the malaysians were not able to handle the situation and that they were having trouble. >> as far as image is concerned, i don't think we can actually verify when they were taken. i will check -- >> sorry, this is very important. >> i know it is very important. >> family members were left asking what on earth was happening? >> one wonders whose interests are being served and protected by the long wait and something that is increasingly feeling like a farce. >> my priority is the orange area. >> adding to that, where

authorities think the plane actually is and whether it had turned or not. >> initially the malaysians said there was no turn around. the transport minister said no turn around. and he was very definitive and that was misleading and that was wrong. in the days after, he hedged. he hedged. he suddenly -- i'm not talking about that, i'm not saying that, we're not commenting on that. >> weeks after the flight vanished, richard quest put some of the questions to malaysia's prime minister. >> what would you say to the critics who say malaysia wasted time at various parts of the investigation? >> i don't think they're fair. you remember when the plane was reported lost, i was briefed that morning. and i took the position that we must search for the areas. the south china sea, and the northern parts. >> but no one was willing to

comment either on the biggest unanswered question, did mh-370 vanish because somebody with intent took over its controls? >> there is some level of human intervention. this is undoubted. >> nick has piloted the plane thousands of times. >> we do not know who the perpetrators are. we will never know the reasons why. but definitely there is a human hand involved. >> no matter what snare kncenar go with, whatever it is, we're in crazy land, right? this is stuff that doesn't happen. >> but it did happen. a truly astounding mystery. there is only a handful of verifiable facts and after the confusion, delay, and chaos engendered in the first few weeks comes this, a completely different search area based

purely on mathematics. >> never been done before. they were making it up as they go along. they were using information that was never intended to be used for this purpose. >> coming up, searching in all the wrong places. why was there so much confusion when it came to where to search? >> we had no idea where that aircraft was. >> but yet the pressure is on to do something. turn the trips you have to take,

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on the morning of march 8th, four hours after flight 370 disappears, a search is launched in the south china sea east of malaysia. >> as with any search you start where the plane was last seen. >> we begin this morning with a desperate search at sea after a jet carrying 239 people vanished off the southern coast of vietnam. >> but very quickly overnight, very quickly there is no debris, they can't find anything from the aircraft. and that's unusual. >> even more unusual, searchers

also start looking in the opposite direction. hundreds of miles to the west. >> i sat in the studio covering this. and we would look at each other and say did he say we're looking to the west? >> yes. that's because newly discovered military radar reveals the plane may have turned back it the west. at the same time, new leads are coming in. >> late today, chinese authorities released satellite photos of what they call a suspected crash site. >> an international fleet of aircraft and boats are now searching in two different areas. >> they had to look in the east because that's where debris was allegedly being reported. they had to look in the west because that's where their radar data told them the plane had gone. >> but searchers still find nothing, days turn into weeks,

and the search area expands even farther. why was there so much confusion when it came to where to search? >> we had no idea where that aircraft was. the pressure is on to do something. >> it became the biggest oceanic search of all time. >> this is completely unprecedented on so many levels. nothing has ever happened quite like this. >> and into this confusion suddenly drops the inmarsat. >> a british company reports that flight 370 exchanged digital signals, handshakes, with their satellites. >> that was a water shed moment and that changed everything. >> it changed everything because everyone thought flight 370 had had gone completely dark. but the discovery of the digital handshakes was proof that the plane was in the air for several hours longer than anyone

thought. >> suddenly they have evidence that it flew west and south and continued to fly for some six and a half hours. >> using complicated calculations, inmarsat could roughly determine where the plane was going. >> this is evidence that is kind of getting close to black magic. it is a feat of imagine mmathem ingenuity and reverse engineering but we don't know how accurate it is. >> but it is also the only hard evidence available to investigators, and malaysian prime minister najib razak. >> i asked them again and again, are you sure? and their answer to me was, we are as sure as we can possibly be. >> he needed to be sure. because based on those calculations, the prime minister was about to deliver some very somber news. >> flight mh-370 ended in a

sudden indian ocean. >> the southern indian ocean, thousands of miles away where no one could likely have survived. family members were shocked. distraught and angry there was no rescues, no debris. now, a last hope remained. find the black boxes before they stop emitting pings. >> you're not in an ivory tower. you haven't got the luxury of time. you've got pingers that may expire. so you've got to say, this is our best guess now. >> their best guess is a remote area more than twice the size of california. >> good morning. these are all the aircraft flying today. >> the australians take over the search. and soon after the australian

ship lowers the ping locater into the water, pings are detected. >> clearly this is a most promising lead. >> it was, wow, again. >> it was miraculous. they had just put the towed pinger locater in the water. >> i was convinced this was it. they have the answer. it is a matter of days. >> a robotic submarine scours the 329 square mile area where the pings were heard. it is painstakingly slow work. then, two months later -- >> a massive setback in the search for malaysia airlines flight 370. the u.s. navy says the underwater pings are not from the plane's black boxes. >> how big a setback is that? >> it was terrible. it felt like we were right back at the beginning again. >> back to the beginning. and no closer to solving the mystery of malaysia flight 370.

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these are the last words heard from the cockpit of malaysia flight 370. and the moment the mystery begins. >> you have a seer are series that appear to be human driven. you have a transponder being turned off. you have an acars system being turned off. you have the plane being turned not once, but at least twice, probably three times.

>> and most perplexing, no distress call. >> there are so many ways to notify people that there is distress. many, many, many ways. >> none of that happened. >> none of it, for seven hours. >> could the disappearance of mh-370 have been deliberate? to answer that question, investigators zero in on the last two men known to be in control of the plane. seen here passing through security on the night of the flight. first officer fariq hamid was only 27 years old. >> very young to be flying a 777 in the u.s. but had gone through all the gates and had passed and was with a very senior guy. that's a perfectly safe scenario. >> there were these 2011 photos taken of fariq in the cockpit with two passengers that nerb y initially raised eyebrows. >> that was concerning to me, he would have invited someone in

the cockpit. once you're in the air, that's it. >> i don't think we indict the first officer with that, but it is something to note and to remember as we think about what might have happened. >> fariq had no known motive. and no apparent reason to take down the plane. >> there was just no indication that there was anything going on in his life other than he had made it. >> fariq had made it. and was on an impressive career trajectory. >> you go from a small plane to a big plane, and this was his promotion. >> cnn aviation correspondent richard quest gained permission to fly on malaysia airlines in february. in an eerie coincidence, it was one of fariq's last training flights. >> there is absolutely no question that he was a qualified, competent pilot. the captain said he was one of the best they had.

he landed the aircraft perfectly. >> one of fariq's next flights would be his last. malaysia 370. and what about the pilot sitting beside fariq hamid, captain zaharie ahmad shah. >> there were questions about whether he was having extramarital relations, if his marriage was in trouble at all. there was questions about his political affiliation to the opposition. >> then, there was the flight simulator zaharie had built in his home to practice landings. >> yesterday officers from the royal police visited the home of the pilot. >> it seemed like a potential lead, until investigators declared it a dead end. >> examination of the flight simulators revealed nothing suspicious for the authorities. >> and nothing came of

speculation about his marriage or political leanings. like first officer fariq, zaharie lacked any apparent motive. >> many aspects of the case have been centered on the captain. and the more they have looked, the less they have found. >> i just don't see any logic. i don't see any reason why he would want to be a rogue pilot. >> his sister spoke out to channel news asia. >> he does not -- he did not have that kind of makeup. >> he got married fairly early. sor socially great guy, extremely helpful and always willing to share. >> nick met saturday met satur years ago. >> everything was very, very regimented. >> above all, he remembers his

friend as a skilled and seasoned pilot who loved to fly. seen here in a video tribute posted by his family. >> crazy about flying. flies airplanes, builds small toy airplanes and flies them. he has the life of aviation running through his veins. >> but if it wasn't zaharie and fariq, what about the other passengers on flight 370. could it have been a hijacking? >> it would explain the fact that the radios were shut down, possibly systematically. it would explain why there may not have been communication. >> are there any suspects? >> they have gone through everybody on the aircraft. and they have determined that there is no one there that would match the profile of someone who would take over that aircraft. >> if not human intervention, could something on the plane have malfunctioned? >> it has got to fly for another six hours. that's the problem.

but the mechanical questions, what kind of catastrophe could shut down the plane's communications but still have allowed it to fly? >> anybody that chooses to hang their hat on one scenario or the other in my view is heading for a fall. the the entire experience of air crash investigations is that yes it is usually the obvious, but quite frequently it is something you never even thought of. >> there is no way to know until the black boxes are found. until you find the plane how can you rule anybody, anything out? >> you can't. what you will know from the black boxes is what happened. what you won't know, necessarily, is why. >> there are no black boxes inside human beings. that's what we need in this

case. >> our best hope of solving one of the greatest mysteries of all time, presumably still lies somewhere at the bottom of the indian ocean. >> we need to know what happened. we need to know whether this plane came down at the point of a gun, by the hand of the pilot, or whether by mechanical failure. it is not an option, not to know. >> coming up -- a brand new search for answers begins in the indian ocean. >> it is a big, big hunk of ocean. it is as remote as you can get and still be on this planet. ♪ who's going to do it? who's going to make it happen? discover a new energy source. turn ocean waves into power. design cars that capture their emissions.

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the southern indian ocean, rough, remote, forbidding. >> when we look at that route as pilots, we all look at the

charts. we look for the weigh points and the airways. there is really, there aren't any. it is as remote as you can get and still be on this planet. >> this is where experts believe the wreckage of flight 370 may lie. finding it, an immeasurable challenge. >> we are not searching for a needle in the haystack. still trying to define where the haystack is. >> that was march when the vessel "ocean shield" set out in hopes of finding the mren and failand -- the plane and failed. >> we have limited it. >> now the australian transportation board is searching again with xhchief commissioner dolan in charge. >> we have high confidence if we have the right hay stack we'll find the needle in it. >> friend and family members can only hope that's true.

[ indiscernible screaming ] >> easy to forget the plight of the families. imagine the roller coaster of emotions that goes with this. go through all the stages you go through. including denial. wondering if it happened at all. in this case there is no wreckage. you can imagine how people would say, well maybe they are alive they are some where. how much would that add to your torment. >> dolan believes he has the the tools to find the answers. >> this is no easy task. but we think we have the best vessels and the best crews to carry it out well. >> and experts have continued to refine the search area. but that doesn't mean it's easy to reach. >> it's six days out from the coast of australia. and so, again, in terms of duration we have some challenges. we are operating in the range toward the limits of the equipment, which is the best equipment available.

>> this is the vessel, the "fugro oequator" and the "go phoenix." the ships will be canvassing part of the indian ocean sea bed that have never been before chartered. and a huge task costing huge amounts of money with of course no guarantees whatsoever of success. experts say failure is not an option. for so many reasons. >> this is an airliner with a sterling safety record. now if there was something wrong, mechanically, and we don't know about it. that's serious. it's very important that we get to the bottom of this for a lot of reasons. not just -- not the least of which is the families. but, understanding this mystery is more than just satisfying our curiosity. it's, it could very well be

about safety of all of us as we fly. >> there is more than 1,000, 777s out there. that speaks to the crucial nature of fining the aircraft. not just for the humanitarian reasons of those on board. but they have got to know what happened. the only way you are going to do it is to find the aircraft. get to the aircraft. >> getting to the aircraft will take an effort unlike any before it. >> what is going on here is unprecedented. so there is surprise. there its puzzlement. there is a great mystery that is sitting there. and so -- that's been our focus. let's find the best way of getting an answer to the mystery. >> a big, big hunk of ocean. it will take a long time. will we find it? i hope so.

and as long as we continue to look, there will be a chance it will be found. the worry i have is -- it may not solve the mystery. >> announcer: this is cnn "breaking news." >> this is cnn tonight. ichl's don lemon. breaking news, london on edge after an islamic terror plot is foiled. four young men arrested, weeks after ten others were take known custody. the telegraf graph reporting one of the men may have ties to isis. unclear what they are reporting. what may be a second ebola case in europe. in this country, a mother and father's desperate vigil, their son isolated in a nebraska hospital fighting ebola. they're going to tell us how he is doing tonight. taking the fight again