unraveling a family mystery. that's coming up at 9:00 p.m. at 10:00 p.m., meet t"this e with lisa ling." stay with cnn and cnn.com for news any time. thanks for joining me. i'm ana cabrera. the following is a cnn special report. it's one of the greatest mysteries of all-time. >> nobody expects a 7 77 to vanish. it doesn't happen. >> the state of the art aircraft with 239 people on board. disappeared without a trace. >> all communications are suddenly disabled. switched off. >> 370. >> how could it happen? >> you have a serious of events that appear to be human driven. >> 370. >> mistakes? >> everything went wrong there. it borders on scandal.

>> missed opportunities? >> the aircraft was still flying. four hours later, no one's 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 fligtsd 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. kuala lumpur international airport. just after midnight, the pilots of malaysia airlines flight 370 are preparing for takeoff. >> it's all about checklists in

aviation. they're going through checklists. >> miles o'brien is a pilot and aviation analyst for cnn. >> it 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 of aviation. >> in the 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 level might 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've 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. >> captain zaharie and i go back

30 years. we started flying together. >> nick, a former chief pilot for malaysia airlines. >> my wife, she's a stewartess. >> and there is real confidence in the aircraft they're about to fly. the boeing 77 77. >> it's a great airport. >> for any critical electric or hydraulic system that would fail, there are two or three backup systems. after making final preparations, the pilots are ready for pushback. >> at 12:32 a.m. the pilots taxi to the runway.

>> 370. right cleared for takeoff. good night. >> 32 right cleared for takeoff. >> cleared for departure. flight 370 takes off for a six hour scheduled flight to beijing. >> the human control, that physical control on the control s will probably cease. >> by 1:00 a.m., they're cruising comfortably at 35,000 feet. even the pilots can relax a little. the plane is basically now flying itself. >> there was no particular challenge 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 communications 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 by radio transmission. >> then at 1:19 a.m., a standard handoff with air traffic control as the plane leaves malaysian airspace and enters vietnamese airspace. >> malaysian 370, 120, good night. >> good night, 370. >> did the controller hear, attempting to speak to hi chi min? he said good night, ma layeren 370. something i would do. >> there is no indication that anything had gone wrong. >> david sucie is a former safety inspector for the faa. for the first 40 minutes of this

flight, up to that point everything has been routine? >> uh-huh, 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 about which sends out a signal to air traffic control. it tells you what height it's at, which direction, and what speed it's traveling. suddenly, this giant 777 is blind to the world. >> and there's no easy explanation for why it happened. >> either it was intentional and someone tried to turn all of those 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 goles is 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 goles sees the red flag. >> it was completely out of the ordinary that there was no distress call. that the turn takes place and there's absolute silence. it means that somebody on that plane redirected it to a new course setting 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 hand-over 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 just seems to me that there was something, now, it doesn't mean that it was nefarious, it doesn't mean anything else, but remember, there's a lot of systems doing a lot of things at that time as well. >> so the critical moment is immediately after this hand-over? when you're essentially in this kind of no man's land in the sky -- >> yeah. nobody's watching right then. >> 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 just is so painful to think about, that four hours later, no one's looking yet.

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in the middle of the night on march 8th at 1:21 a.m., malaysia airlines flight 370 vanishes into thin air. there's been silence from the cockpit. and by 1:37 a.m., a second flight communications system, acars, isn't working, either. >> acars, was a 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 are disabled, switched off, broken, blown up. >> is an investigator looking at this, what would the determination be at least to this point as to what is happening? >> at this point, i've got two different paths. one is that that aircraft was taken over and the systems were intentionally set, 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's no evidence one way or the other. >> but there would be piles of evidence if acars hadn't stopped transmitting. >> you'd know the air-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, 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 former chief pilot, nick, has 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've tried the radio, they've 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. they did do that. those airplanes tried to reach mh-370 as well. no success. >> with no response, an air traffic controller in kuala lumpur calls malaysia airlines

for help. >> fundamentally you have to assume nobody expects one of these planes 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, oh, the aircraft's fine. we know exactly where it is. >> yet, they've had no communication. >> they've had none. they've 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. you're not search and rescue anymore. you're 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 scandal. the airline in the middle of there just offering up just complete red herrings and dead ends. it's inexcusable. >> at best, the malaysia airlines information to air traffic control was unhelpful. at worst, it was downright

damaging to getting an investigation and 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's 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's clear the plane is lost. did air traffic control notify emergency responders? >> that two hours was incredibly critical toward 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's looking yet. >> 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 onboard flight 370? >> we do not know what the perpetrator are, we will never know the reasons why, but definitely there's a human hand involved.

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female announcer: recycle your old fridge and get $50. schedule your free pickup at: 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 if 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 7777 is believed to be hundreds of miles off its original course. >> we don't know what's normal for their military. 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 not fully explained, doesn't tell anyone in civilian authority what it's 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's 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 sucie, however, there's a gray area. >> here in the united states, we would know that in a heartbeat. over there, it wasn't set up that way. it was a clear delineation of firewall between military and civil operations and the two just didn't meet each other. >> a missed opportunity. >> exactly. >> on the ground in beijing, of course, the families waited 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. >> this 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 now covers millions of square miles. >> the world's attention turns to the malaysian government and airline officials. to many critics, they don't see to know when they're talking about. >> there was a deer in the headlights component to those early news conferences. and you could almost see them struggling through it, not knowing what they were doing. >> we cannot enindulge in speculation. >> not understanding how to start the investigation. >> there are currently 43 ships and 40 aircraft searching for it. >> an 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 would like to refer to news reports suggesting that the aircraft may have continued flying for some time after last contact.

we'll confirm shortly those reports are inaccurate. >> so they ended up on both sides of a bad situation with too little information. >> even days after the plane disappeared, families believe they aren't being told the truth. this chinese woman demanded answers just before another press conference in kuala lumpur. she didn't get any. >> after ten days to two weeks, you know, there was a public perception that was set in stone that the malaysians were not able to handle this situation and that they were having trouble. >> as far as the images is concerned, are concerned, i don't think we can actually verify when they were taken. i will check with the australian -- >> ladies and gentlemen. >> 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 this long wait, and something that's increasingly feeling surreal and rapidly turning into a farce. >> the main priority here is the orange area. >> adding to that, the early conflicting reports on where authorities think the plane actually is and whether it had turned or not. >> initially, the malaysians said there was no turnaround. the transport minister said no turnaround. and he was very definitive and that was misleading and that was wrong. it's noticeable in the day and days after, he became, 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 did put some of those questions to malaysia's prime minister. >> what would you say to the critics, and be blunt, prime minister, who say malaysia wasted time on various parts of the investigation?

>> i don't think they're a fair criticism. you remember when the plane was reported lost, i was briefed that morning and i took the position that with much search four areas, the south china sea and the northern part. >> 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 perpetrator are. we'll never know the reasons why. but definitely there's a human hand involved. >> no matter what scenario you go with, we're deep into the world of crazy. crazy scenario. obscure scenario. evil scenario. 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 en ge gendered in the first few weeks comes this, a completely different search area based purely on math meematicmathemat >> it's 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 wrong places. >> why was there so much confusion when it came to where to search? >> we had no aircraft where that aircraft was, yet the pressure is on to do something. often eno. thank you mom for protecting my future. thank you for being my hero and my dad. military families are uniquely thankful for many things, the legacy of usaa auto insurance could be one of them.

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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's 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 just simply say we're looking to the west? >> yes. that's because newly discovered military radar reveals the plane may have turned back to 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 had 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, but yet the pressure's on to do something. >> rescue 71. >> 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 data. >> inmarsat, a british company reports that flight 370 had exchanged digital signals known as handshakes, with their satellites. >> that was a watershed moment and that changed everything. >> it changed everything because everyone had thought flight 370 had gone completely dark, but the discovery of the digital handshakes was proof 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 6 1/2 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. i mean, it's a feat of mathematics, and ingenuity and

reverse engineering, but we just don't know how accurate it is. >> but it is also the only hard evidence available to investigators. and malaysian prime minister najib rezak. >> i asked them again and again, 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 more somber news. >> flight mh-370 ended in the southern 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 would be 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 "ocean shield" lowers its towed pinger locator 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 locator in the water. >> i was convinced, this is it, they've got the answer. it's a matter of days. >> the robotic submarine scours the 329-square-mile area where

the pings were heard. it's 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 was that? >> oh, 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. coming up, authorities investigate the last two men known to be in the cockpit of flight 370. >> we need to know what happened. it is not an option not to know.

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malaysian 370. 120 decimal 9. good fight. >> good night malaysia 370. >> these are the last words heard from malaysia cockpit flight 370 and the moment the

mystery begins. >> you have a serious of events 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's a distress. uhf radios, vhf radios. many, many, many ways. >> none of that happened? >> none of it for seven hours. >> could the disappearance of mh-370 be 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 initially raised eyebrows. >> that was very concerning to me that he would have invited someone into the cockpit. once you're in the air, that's it. >> i don't think we indict a first officer with that, but i do think it's 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. >> at 5,000 hours on the 737 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 malaysian airlines in

february. in an eery coincidence, it was one of fariq's last training flights on the boeing 777. >> 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 whether he was having extramarital relations, whether his marriage was actually 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 mission police visited the home of the pilot. >> it seemed like a potential lead. until investigators declared it a dead end. >> examination of the flight simulate revealed nothing suspicious for the authorities. >> and nothing came of speculation about his marriage or political leanings. like first officer fariq, zaha rirks rie lacked any apparent motive. >> many aspects of the case have been centered on the captain and the more they've looked, the less they've found. >> i just don't see any logic. i don't see any reason why he would want to be a rogue pilot. >> zaharie's sister spoke out to channel news asia. >> he did not have that kind of makeup. >> he got married fairly early.

great guy, extremely helpful, and always willing to share. >> nick spent zaharie at malaysian airlines during the rigorous days of flight school. 30 years ago. >> we can count our teeth in it, you know, 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. he flies little planes also, builds small toy planes and flies them. he has aviation going through his veins. >> if it wasn't zaharie and it wasn't fariq, what about the other passengers on flight 370? could it have been a hijack? >> explain the fact the radios were shut down possibly systemically, it would explain why there may not have been communication. >> are there any suspects?

they've gone through everybody on the aircraft. and they've determined that there is no one there who would match the profile of someone who would take over that aircraft. >> if not human intervention, if not human intervention could something on the plane have malfunctioned? >> it's got to fly for another six hours. that's the problem with the mechanical questions. >> what kind of catastrophe could shutdown 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 entire experience of aircraft investigations is that yes it's usually the obvious but it's quite frequently something you never even thought of. >> there's no way to know until the black boxes are found.

>> until you find the plane how can you rule anybody or anything out. >> well, you can't. what you'll know from the black boxes is what happened. what you won't know necessarily is why. >> there are no black boxes inside. 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's a big, big hunk of ocean. it's as remote as you can get

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

and we look for the way points and the airways, there aren't any. it's 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. >> with the anlage of what we got out there for the moment, we're not searching for a needle in a hay stack, we're still trying to find the hay stack. >> that was march when this vessel set out in hopes of finding the plane and failed. >> we probably limited it to a small number of haystacks. >> now the australian transportation safety board is searching again with chief commissioner martin dolan in charge. >> we have very good techniques for detecting needles in those haystacks. we have high confidence that if we've got the right haystack we'll find the needle in it. >> friends and family members can only hope that's true.

>> it's easy to forget the plight of these families. you can imagine the roller coaster of emotions that goes along with this and you go through the stages that you go through including denial, wondering if it happened at all and in this case there's no wreckage so you can imagine how people would say well maybe they are alive somewhere and how much would that add to your torment. >> dolan believes he has 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 sailing out from the coast of australia and so again in terms of duration we have some challenges and we're operating at the range toward the limits of the equipment that is available to us which is the best equipment available.

>> this is the smaller one counted on to do the job. >> the fugro equator joined by the fugro discovery and by this vessel, the go phoenix. for the most part the ships taking part in this search will be canvassing part of the indian ocean seabed that have never been charted and a huge task costing huge amounts of money with no guarantees of success. >> but experts say failure is not an option for so many reasons. >> this is an airliner with a sterling safety record. 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 the least of which of course is the families. but understanding this mystery is more than just satisfying our

curiosity. it could very well be about safety of all of us as we fly. >> there's more than 1,000 777s out there. that speaks to the crucial nature of finding the aircraft. not just for the humanitarian reasons of finding those on board but they have to know what happened and the only way you're going to do it is find the aircraft and get to the aircraft. >> getting to the aircraft will take an effort unlike any before it. >> what's going on here is unprecedented. so there's surprise, there's puzzlement, there's a great mystery that's sitting there and so that's been our focus. let's find the best way of getting an answer to this mystery. >> it's a big hunk of ocean. it's going to take a long time. will we find it? i hope so. i know we can't stop looking. we can't stop looking. so 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. >> how does the joke again? three men in a bar? but it's not a bar. imagine the box. a corner bodega maybe a luncheonette, a diner. simply by consequence they find themselves in the same place at the same time. sitting at the counter, across the room, door opens and who