working with overnight. hopefully by morning, the weather will clear a little bit and visibility is very bad because of the intense smoke from the fires, a number of oil rigs in the bottom of the ferry, and those have burned and they're trying very hard not to leave the ship too much. just keep the fire contained. get the people off and determine what they can ferry. >> the ferry still burning in the sea between greece and italy. appreciate it thank you very much. i'm poppy harlow in new york. our coverage continuing live coverage of missing airasia flight 8501 continues right now. this is cnn breaking news. >> all right. top of the hour 9:00 eastern here and we are live in new york continuing to cover this breaking news this tragic news

of another missing passenger airline. we're talking about a routine flight in southeast asia over the water, suddenly disappears without warning. so far still, no trace. let's reset, run down what we know at this hour. still a lot of questions, but we know that the search has resumed. the weather has gotten better for the search and rescue crewing. they were able to talk off again at dawn joined a coordinated effort on the air and the water in the general area where the plane was last tracked. these anguished people family members, loved ones in indonesia waiting for any word about their family members. 162 people on that plane, most of them from indonesia also seven members that were flight crew on board. big part of this investigation at the stage involves the weather. very bad weather. they were flying through thunderstorms, one of the captains lost contact with the ground was to request to move higher to go to 38,000 feet to try to get around some of that

horrible weather. the airline's ceo says it is too early to draw any conclusion from that. the flight took off from indonesia's second largest city surabaya. that is where our andrew stevens is right now. he has been tracking the story from the beginning, and andrew you've just gotten some information about where the families are and who they're hearing from right now. >> reporter: that's right, poppy. if you look behind me you'll see a table there, empty table surrounded by cameras, and just behind that table in the main building is a briefing room where there are now dozens of family members seated, listening to officials from airasia. at this stage, we don't know what they're being told whether there is any new information at all at the moment. for several hours now, no word from the searchers that any wreckage or indeed anything has been spotted. they have an area they are

searching, it is still quite a wide area and as yet nothing has turned up. but very very difficult for the family airasia has been putting the family members in a hotel here they've been keeping them informed as much as they know. that is very little can happen overnight once the search was, was stopped for the evening because of light. hopefully we may get some sort of clarification of what's what actually happened to flight 8501. but the family members we spoke to yesterday, very distraught they want to know where their loved ones are and your heart goes out to them poppy. you can't imagine the sort of pain they're going through at the moment. i did manage to look inside the door it's obviously closed door it's not open to anybody other than family members. some very very sort of emotional people in there as that meeting started to get under way, poppy. >> andrew can you tell us a

little bit about the people that you've been encountering there. i know you were telling me earlier a story about two children that have come. >> reporter: that's right, poppy. incredibly poignant scene yesterday. late or early this morning, very late yesterday, about 2:00 or so in the morning. there were two young teenage girls who were with some family members, and also some members of their school. these were schoolgirls going to school in singapore. and they were friends, and both of these girl's parents were on that flight. they were waiting for them to arrive in singapore and when the flight 8501 didn't show they came down here to surabaya to try to find out what's going on. as i said they're with some family members, most are members of the school. they looked absolutely lost and bewildered as they tried to get information. again, the information's very very hard to come by at the

moment. i spoke to a woman that her brother, her brother's wife and their two children are on that plane. she's got four family members on there. i was watching television and i saw that incident and i saw the disappearance of airasia, but i thought to myself it's okay because my son always flies garuda which is the national airline. and she rang up her other brother just to make sure and he broke the news to her that their brother was on that flight. and he's missing with his entire family. and that woman, when we spoke to her last night, kept breaking down as she told us her story. you can imagine just a little bit glimpse there of what sort of pain these relatives are dealing with. it's not just here in surabaya it's in singapore, the destination for this flight. 150 of the 155 passengers were from indonesia though. >> it breaks your heart. andrew stevens, thank you for bringing us the personal stories. this is what it's all about, the

people families loved one, 162 souls on that plane. let's talk about more of the questions we have what we know what we don't know let me bring in my panel, les is a airline pilot, tim taylor an ocean search expert and ken christianson former nasa liaison, thank you all for being here les, let's begin with you. no mayday call no mayday call at all, not even a panpan or lesser call any distress signal surprising? >> no it's not surprising. especially if they were dealing with a situation that required their control of the airplane right then and there. the last thing that's going to help any of the people. we just discussed this before you know the accident we followed was navigate commune, communicate being the last thing. if we had time and there was a situation unfolding rapidly and very quickly. they may not have been able to get that out. >> okay. let me go to you, tim. what we snow an australian plane

is helping. we're also told that the u.s. navy seventh fleet in the pacific region is standing by ready to help if they are asked. talk to me about how they are going to approach this search area given the fact that the weather has significantly improved there? >> well obviously this is a visual search. so any increase in good weather or the ability to have good weather is allowing them to see further and further in calmer waters allow you to pick out objects on the surface. a lot better than very windy weather which creates lots of white caps which creates white-looking items. white caps are white. and a lot of the parts of the plane are white. eyeballs in the field looking is what they need. and the more they can get out there, the better. when we had lost dyers on -- divers on projects got behind the boat. we would have everybody on the boat come up and look and find them shortly after. but all eyes looking for someone if they're lost. that is standard operating

procedure for man overboard, for anything as many eyes as you can get in the field. >> that brings up an important point about, ken, lessons learned after 370 and the real delays they had in the search and rescue efforts, first in the wrong place, then waiting and waiting for some of that key equipment in the weeks and months that followed. are you surprised that say the u.s. navy hasn't been called on more countries haven't been calleden to help as you guys were just saying? as many eyes as possible? >> no i'm not surprised after seeing malaysian 370. how that started up it was just delayed from the get go. and i think what you need to do and what we do in the u.s. is once a plane is lost off of radar contact, an immediate electronic search is done. they try to reach the airplane notify other people and it starts very very early. this process with this last

airplane started three hours after. so an hour after it was supposed to arrive this process got started. that's just that's very very late. particularly if people are in the water and already. so you think that would have gotten improved because of malaysian 370, but, in fact it wasn't. and that is really sad for the families. >> also to you, ken, when mh-370 disappeared, a lot was made of the transresponders switched off in the cockpit that ken, manually switched off. how do you explain the sudden loss of contact in this situation? >> the trance responders that communicate the plane's position and communicate with air traffic control, those can be turned off. are you talking about the emergency locater transmitter? >> right. right. >> all right. because the trance responders just putting the flight number up it's a helps the controllers track it. those can be turned off, but the

emergency locater transmitter can not be turned off. if because it wasn't a sarsat and the emergency aircraft does do that it'll broadcast a signal. that tells me that the plane went in the water and squelched the signal. that would on the happen if it crashed on land. again, that's very troubling, but if i think it was more weather-related. that's certainly what it's pointing towards now. particularly with the altitude and the time they were on lost contact and then there was nothing. >> can you, can you clarify that and i want les to jump in a little bit, talking about what you just said that the signal from the emergency, what sends off those emergency signals, that that signal would be squelched if it crashed in the water or on land or are you saying it would still be sending

signals off if it were to have ended up in the water? >> it would, because it's just like a radio, it's a transmitter, if it crashed on land it would transmit that signal unless that antenna got broken off. if it goes in the water, once it hits the water, it grounds out and it can't transmit. >> so les, to you, it seems odd that the technology meant to signal in an emergency would stop working if it hits water at all? >> well i'm not so sure -- if it hits water and immersed right away yes, that would be the case which may have occurred with mh-370 because of the elts, the emergency locater transmitters were located in the rafts that were probably never utilized. but, they also activate upon impact. and it depends on the g force they impact with. >> okay yeah. still so many questions, again, don't want to make assumptions because we do not know what happened tim, talk to me about

possible wreckage sightings, what we do know about this java sea area this corridor specifically busy waterway shipping route. does that give you any encouragement in terms of looking for any wreckage or survivors? >> of course. what i said before is more eyeballs out there. so all these, when you're at sea and there are accidents like this everybody's on alert, everybody's out looking with everybody that's on the boats are contributing to the search even if they're just passing through the area. so any type of debris that's spotted and reported is of course vital information and the more eyes out there, even if there's civilians, going through the area or fishermen is vital. so yes, it would be an asset that this is an area. and the weather's clearing, so the boats, more traffic will ensue as these, as the weather clears. >> let's hope let's hope and let's hope that there are survivors. thank you very much stick around don't go anywhere. quick break, back on the other side and talk about this. there are still a lot of questions, many many things we

don't know why did the flight vanish? and what we do know it was flying through some very rough weather. we're going to talk about how bad it was and also talk about whether this kind of weather would ground flights, say in the united states or elsewhere. are the rules different in different countries? cnn special live coverage continues after a quick break. blan

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i'm poppy harlow in new york. this is special live continuing coverage of yet another missing plane. this one, an airasia flight vanishing after leaving indonesia on its way to singapore. officials say that the pilot asked to change course mid-flight to avoid bad weather. it's unclear if the weather conditions played any role in this plane's disappearance. let me go to our meteorologist, he's been tlaking the -- tracking the weather in the region during the flight and how it is now. thousand might impact the search. what are we looking at fest with how wad the storms were when that flight was in the air. >> well we could only go with infrared satellite data because we don't have a lot of radar information from the region. and they were 55,000 feet when the pilot reporting first having some weather problems at 32,000. this is realtime flight radar. it's getting active now. local time it's about 9:15 in the morning. so we're starting to see the activity from surabaya toward singapore to the north. now, to give you an indication

here of the java sea, we've been talking about how shallow it is 1 to 200 feet. local area about 7:30 this is over 24 hours ago. 7:30 in the morning, air control operators lost contact somewhere around this little island. 7:30 in the morning. so they had some time yesterday to look for this and now things are getting better. this is a thunderstorm that we believe was developing becoming what we call a super storm status coming from areas of the northeast in toward the flight plan. now we do know at 32,000 feet pilot saying bad weather, what we don't know is so many more elements. did he try to fly around. where you see the deep red is incredible uplift and updraft. he got into clear air. icing can occur. downdrafts can also occur, it's very turbulent. maybe trying to recover the cluster. what we know now in starting to look at other pictures other elements. this is water vapory imagery, this was the largest storm in

the region look how quickly it reigns itself -- rains itself out. it's coming from high above and vanishing hitting the ground. this is a pilot briefing chart. it tells pilots in the area about possible turbulence. most pilots and most of them do check these out. here is australia to the south let's head to the corner here. this area in red tells us here's east java, here's the island. occasional embedded thunderstorm. you see a wall at 53 or 55,000 feet. that's incredible. so many unanswered questions here but here's what we can tell you. the conditions are improving. december is the wettest month of the year here, but even they're seeing their entire month of december rainfall in two to three days we're talking two and three feet totals in two or three days. this is fabulous news.

skies are opening up. the sun is able to burn off any kind of sea fog we may have. concerned on the thunderstorm on the end there. maybe for downdraft problems. indonesia's rescue crew right now. operation crew have 12 swresz ls in the area they have three helicopters, five military aircraft. we're also getting reports from singapore sending us c-130, kuala lumpur malaysia sending a c-130. australia has a ryan aircraft on stand by and of course the seventh fleet from the west. winds if there's any debris possibly if there's a lodge or part of a wing or tail sticking out could get caught on the winds. that's what we're watching and i'm sure everybody else is doing the same. >> thanks for breaking it down for us. it's even tougher in bad weather, good thing it's getting better there for right now.

let me bring in the retired lieutenant colonel, he is back with me. also a consultant for the air force on these operations. can you walk us through, colonel, the mechanics of a search and rescue operation now, about 26 hours after this plane has disappeared with improving weather. >> yes, i mean that's always, you know a great start to have good weather. so the crews would be briefing they'd be looking at getting some information from the coast guard or the navy on where the currents are, the last known position from air traffic control did the plane dissend in one -- descend in one piece or multiple pieces. why that's important, if the plane broke apart in flight then it would perhaps fall at a slower rate and scatter more. if it came down as one aircraft there could be a better chance of survivors in to concentrate the search area. so those, those searches would be preparing right now fueling

up planes and having a plan on thousand attack this and go to the most probable position because there's still a chance that people could, there could be survivors in the water. and they could find rafts and or life preserver units. >> and ken what we're also learning is this area where it is suspected that the plane went down where it went off radar and disappeared is actually in the range of radar, also that the water is relatively shallow. and frankly, relatively warm. given all of that how confident are you that we are going to find this plane soon? >> i'm very confident. if you look at the water depth, the water depth is very similar to flight 800 off the coast of long island when they went out. and so because it was only a two and a half hour flight and it, lost off radar contract about a third of the way there. they know where that plane disappeared. so from that point on that

plane could have only traveled so far. and that's what they call the most probable position. the most likely position that the airplane would be at. they're going to start a concentrated search there. both at a high level to see far and then have the airplanes at low level. you can see bigger pieces up and if a plane broke up when it hit the water, you'll see insulation you'll see floating seat cushioning and debris. that is going to be affected by the winds and the currents. so a lighter items will move further, heavier items will be in the area or sink straight down. and that's and then they'll incorporate boats, helicopters, and it'll be a very systematic way of searching in the concentrated area. >> i want to get your take on this because i think of all the tweets that i'm getting and all the questions tonight, the preeminent one is if we can track cell phones anywhere why can't we track every flight every moment it is in the air, no matter where it is in the

world? realtime data being relaid from the plane to the ground. what is your take on this debate over whether every single plane should have that? >> you know i talked about this with candy crowley on state of the union, and the current system that we have the emergency locater transmitter, underwater locater beacon and the flight data recorder. it was a major upgrade back in the '80s on these systems when they went to a digital storage or like flash memory. and that's what our current technology is. clearly we've made such a magnificent leap in technology particularly within the last ten years that i think you're going to see regulations change and have gps signals sent via satellite, and again, something that the crew can't disable, but it's going to be in there. and just transmit where they are and in a couple parameters every second or even every ten seconds until that plane would,

you know disintegrate or hit water. and malaysia's flight 370, you would have sent rescue as immediately to the position -- >> the right place. >> exactly. and i think this is this is a second part second aircraft craft within what ten months that is going to point towards this technology. just look at the moneys spent on looking for both these aircraft. it's time. it's time to move forward on that for legislation. >> and the lines we're talking about now between these two flights more than that. >> go ahead. >> i was going say, if you can find my iphone then you can find an aircraft. the technology's there, we need to utilize it. >> all right ken. thank you very much. appreciate you joining us this evening. coming up next the crisis of this reminds us of the frantic days after mh-370 disappeared. there are big differences, we're going to look at those straight

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all right. we're back with our continuing live coverage of the search for missing airasia flight 8501. when word spread that another airliner was missing in southeast asia a lot of people immediately thought of malaysia airlines flight 370. it has been ten months since that boeing 777 disappeared, and it still has not been found. let's bring in two analysts and experts. inspector general for the u.s. department of transportation and jeff weiss here in new york with me. thank you both for being here. mary let me go to you.

okay. understandable that a lot of people are saying wow, i can't believe this happened again, but there are some very important differences here to keep in mind right, walk us through them. >> well i think one of the most important differences is we do have an idea where the plane was because we at least we believe that we have accurate radar data as to where the plane was when the plane may have gotten in trouble. when the radar information ceased when the last radio communication os cured, et cetera and presumably this time around all of the nations, indonesia and others are cooperating fully and providing all of their radar data and none is being withheld. there's no delay in the search as we recall in 370, they spent four days searching in the south china sea, and malaysia knew that the plane was not there. >> right. jeff even as we acknowledge these differences in the cases, which is important, what can be learned from that makes 370 that would best be applied to have an

accurate successful search here? >> well you know that's where the question gets tricky because it was unlike any other we've ever experienced, and hopefully this will turn out to be nothing like that. member at the very beginning the mh-370 it looked just like this. there was searching in the area where the plane was last observed. didn't find wreckage and the other baffling information, astonishing information emerged, hopefully in this case this will be a much more run-of-the-mill, as a horrible tragedy regardless but at least the passengers family members will have some sense of conclusion as to what happened. it was merely a weather incident, some kind of, you know malfunction or what have you results in a known quantity. ten mornts later, we don't know what happened we don't know where or why. >> yeah. >> it's hard to learn from that. >> mary walk us through a little bit about the last signal that we got coming at 6:24 a.m.

just about 40 minutes after this plane took off. what that last signal was specifically and what it tells us? >> right. and there's a little bit of a, a little bit of a mystery about some of the signals. now the initial information said that first the radar data went down which is really nothing more than coordinates. the radar shows you where you are and it is primary radar, it's literally just a blip on the screen and if you have a secondary, then you have altitude and other information. and then the next thing was the radio communication ceased and then finally it was what's called the adsb which is more advanced form of communication, but it's really just positional location. so they didn't all fail at the same time and to me that's significant, or it could be significant, now maybe we don't know what all the information is and maybe they just got that information at different times but its systems went down at different times. it's possible that the airplane was experiencing problems.

and the airbus certainly the airbus 340 did this in airfrance. the plane tried to save itself it's programmed to shut dpoun other systems and ensure the most vital systems to keep the plane flying. it's possible it was doing that here we don't know but the different times on systems failing to me might be significant. >> all right. mary jeff, i appreciate it. thank you very very much. this also just in we are getting word that right now the airport briefing of the families has been happening, that it has ended. it was behind closed doors. we're going to bring you the details next this is cnn's continuing live coverage of the search for airasia 8501.

i'm poppy harlow in new york this is breaking news coverage of the search for airasia flight 8501. here is what we know at this hour. australia is sending in a ryan maritime control plane to join

the efforts. aircrafts and helicopters, ships resumes at day break. that was just about three and a half hours ago. the airasia plane was headed from indonesia to singapore when it suddenly disappeared, vanished from radar, officials say the pilot did ask to fly at a higher altitude to go up to 38,000 feet because of weather. the new york times reporting that request was denied due to heavy traffic in the region and officials though say it is far too early to tell if weather played any part in this plane's disappearance. we also know the plane was carrying 162 people 155 of them passengers along with seven crew. family members waiting for any word on the fate of their loved ones from this plane. the ceo of the airlines says they are caring for the families and it is their top priority to look after them right now as they search for any possible survivors. to better understand what those search crews are facing let me bring in search experts.

she joins me now from washington. this is your area of expertise. given the job, given the relatively shallow depth of it what are the upsides to this search effort what are the biggest challenges? >> well again, the upside is is that we're still, we're getting better weather, which was first and foremost that was a real deterrent last night to the search crews being able to cite anything. the clearing is tremendous in that what you have at the moment is all hands on deck everyone is out there mobilized and looking on the ocean for survivors, for debris for an oil field. anything that will give them a starting point from which they can, they can start really presenting what they think may have where we might have some something. and it's it's very difficult because i think in the past 24 hours, the important thing here as well is that everyone is so stressed, everybody really wants to find something. everyone wants answers.

and again, the weather conditions you can't fight that you have to do the best you can, and at this moment they are looking, they're visually looking for clues. for survivors, ideally. >> i wonder if at this early stage, 25 26 hours after the plane disappeared. would they be using any underwater technology or this is this all about surface, eyes on on the water? >> this is really all surface on the water. i think the next would be the aerials. i think at this point, time the water conditions again being a little bit warmer or warmer waters you do have a higher probability of survival if you have depending on how the impact, you know what happened as the plane going to pieces did it nose dive as ken was saying you're going to be visually looking for clues. is there a flotation device if so where does that lead to? you're working with currents and wind. everything is moving that initial impact area around.

and so you have a lot of people on on boats, visually just looking for something. anything that'll lead us to more. >> and what can you tell us about the grid system? i know that they've divided this region where they think the plane went down into i think four different areas. how does this grid system work most effectively? >> well everyone's going to be covering an area and sort of it's ticking it off. it's saying we've covered this much. this is what we found, what we didn't find and moving on to the next. that's is a search pattern. starting from one area and moving on to the next. everybody coordinating their efforts and coming up with a scenario that is most viable to proceed from. >> yeah. all right. well we wish them all luck. tough, tough, tough job that they are undergoing right now trying to find any possible survivors or any wreckage christina, appreciate the expertise, thanks so much. >> thank you. coming up next we're getting brand new information from officials in the search. we're going to take you live for

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all right. breaking news now into cnn as we continue to follow the disappearance of airasia flight 8501. let me read you a statement we just got. coming out of a press conference in jakarta. officials there are saying the chief of indonesia's national search and rescue agency saying

they believe flight 8501 quote, is on the bottom of the sea. again, the chief of the national search and rescue agency saying they believe flight 8501 is at the bottom of the sea. let me go straight to andrew stevens who is there tracking it live for us. how do they know this this early on? >> reporter: >> well this is a press conference coming from jakarta, poppy i'm down near surabaya. so we don't know yet what what they're using and what information they have that we don't have to say something like that. obviously there has been a search, the search yesterday, when the plane first disappeared and its been ongoing now for three or four hours today. what's happening where i am is the families of the passengers and the crew are being at a closed door briefing.

i saw 60 or 70 family members listening to the briefing. we haven't yet been able to ask them what they think means. buzz that meeting broke up literally just a few minutes ago. and the press conference here has begun. and at the moment they've just been talking about the asseting being deployed from -- assets being deployed. many sort of vessels on the sea plus air reconnaissance flights as well. that is the focus so far. that's very very poignant because the submission that it has crashed in this area. and now it becomes just a matter of time to find the black boxes to find the emergency beacons to locate the plane. >> andrew you're in surabaya at the airport, the crisis center there, where a lot of family members who have loved ones on the plane are gathering. i'm wondering, are they hearing yet what we are hearing? that the officials believe this plane is at the bottom of the sea? have they heard this yet?

>> we don't know at this stage. the meeting with the officials and the members of the family broke up just a few minutes ago, poppy. we can see through the windows, the media is not allowed into the area obviously, but they did not seem to be there was no real reaction no emotional outburst that i could see, because the meeting there was one or two women crying. throughout the meeting, they are looking grim-faced and listening to the information coming from the indonesia authorities as well as airasia. i cannot tell at this stage. >> okay andrew stevens, thank you very much. please stand by as we continue to follow this again, i want to reset for you as we follow this missing airasia flight 8501 what we do know very important, significant development coming to us from the chief of the indonesia national search and rescue agency saying at a press conference just wrapping up they believe that flight 8501

quote, is on the bottom of the sea. let me go to cnn aviation analysts let me read you a little bit more that we have from the head of this search and rescue agency quote, this is the translation, quote, the coordination that was given to us and the evolution from the calculation point is in the middle of the sea, our early conjecture is that the plane is on the bottom of the sea. this is about 25 26 hours after it disappeared from radar. how could they know that this soon? >> they, it seems to me that they must have additional radar data other surveillance data in terms of information provided to them from other countries and other governments and to be able to pinpoint on the area where it is. they must have some pretty good information. not just because they have said where they think it is it suggests that they do have this additional information from other governments, but since they have publicly said it i think everyone learned lessons from 370 that you do not give families information that is not

and you need to have you need to be pretty certain about what you're telling the families so i would suspect they have information for those two reasons. that they know where it is they think. >> that's what i wanted to ask you, because we just don't know at this point in time whether the families have been notified of this latest development yet. as andrew stevens said who is there with us with the families that are in a closed door meeting, it's not clear whether they've been told this information or not. can you speak to what possible other information could tell them this that they would be so sure, because like you said, after mh 3 sencht hmpt 3h370mh370, where a lot of information was dispelled at the beginning. are we talking about satellite data pings from the plane? >> they wouldn't have the pings

from the black boxes yet, but could have emergency locator transmitter information, they could have information from satellite surveillance. certainly there was a lot of searching for that in 370. i think they must have additional coordinates. and then it's possible talking to anyone who could have seen or heard something, they also might have people near the scene, near where they think it is at the bottom of the sea who have seen something. >> mary, stand by. thank you for your expertise. don't go anywhere. let me bring in our other experts, tim taylor a specialist in underwater search and ken christiansen joins us again, who has done extensive work with the u.s. government. let me go first to you, ken. given now that the main search and rescue agency in indonesia leading this effort says they believe that this plane, quote,

is on the bottom of the sea, what happens now to the search? what technology is used? >> well, again, i'd like to see that the aircraft is on the ground. but let's just go with that. if it's there, it's a recovery at that point. they'll send divers down to look at the wreckage. the heavy items, the engines, the landing gear they should be all within a similar area. the lighter areas could move down. so you could look for an area wreckage one and a half two, maybe even five miles, depending on what the winds aloft were and if the plane broke up prior to hitting the water, or if it hit the water. if it hit the water, the debris field will be smaller. if it broke up in flight the debris field will be larger. the post crash forensic evidence is how the crash investigators

are going to know or start to know what was causal in this accident. but clearly that's all a recovery phase. then they have deep sea salvage ships. it wouldn't really be considered deep sea. but the salvage ships would go down and start hoisting up wreckage much like twa flight 800. >> still a big question. we don't know what happened to this plane. you are in the shoes of the search and rescue crews. now that you're getting word from the head of the search and rescue operation there in jakarta, they believe that this plane is on the bottom of the sea. how does this change your strategy? >> well let's make one assumption that they have some data that pin points this a little more. find wreckage. the same plan reveils, but

narrow it down, put the pinger locators in the water, find the pinger noise, which is the easiest search to do the first search then you can start doing the side scan sonar, pick up the data of the debris field and then map that and go get some high resolution pictures and then send your salvage divers down. it's shallow enough there that they can use divers to recover black boxes. so that's a much faster easier operation than using rovs. but when they start pulling the debris up they'll be using probably some robotic gear and a lot of salvage gear. but at 100, 150 feet it's deep there's some decompression obligations for divers, but it's quite workable. it's easier than 5,000 or 4,000 feet of water. >> and ken, to you, we know that these data recorders, there's a cockpit voice recorder and a

separate what's known as a black box or a data recorder from the -- >> flight data recorder. >> we know they can withstand a whole lot. assuming they are able to quickly recover those, what is the most important information they'll be looking for to try to figure out how this could have happened? >> you look at the flight data recorder records parameters engine speed, temperatures flight control positions, attitude of the aircraft air speed, different flight computers, and what they were sensing. that's the flight data recorder. the other one is the cockpit voice recorder and that's picking up the cockpit noise. ambient noise in the cockpit, noise of the engines, people talking, and then all communications all channels of communications coming into the aircraft and going out of the aircraft. and so you take the communication, and you put it on top of the flight data recorder and you plug all this into a flight simulator of that type

aircraft and then you can reconstruct the last half hour the last two hours of the flight of that aircraft. you can sit in the simulator and watch what happened up to the time of impact. >> and mary skee yafo i want to get to you. i want to get to this headline in our continuing coverage of the search for qz8501. press conference out of jakarta by the main search and rescue agency there, leading this effort they believe, their early conjecture is that this plane is quote, on the bottom of the season. mary to you, again, we just -- you're so worried to say definitively that this happened because of all the misinformation we got after mh370 disappeared. what tells you they can be so sure of this? >> well, that they have

announced it. there was so much criticism of the handling of the prior one. that's a wealth of information that we probably don't know satellite surveillance and videos. and they've been investigating and searching for many hours. so it's possible that they have some sort of eyewitness sightings or even possibly some kind of physical evidence at this point. mary when you talk about the families this is so important. i mean we can also show our viewers some of the images because this is what it's about. this is a human story. this is about the people that loved those 162 people on board. you have dealt with families in the aftermath of tragic tragic situations like this. what are they going through right now? and i sure hope that they are being given this information before we in the media are.

>> they're supposed to be. in the united states we have regulations that say they are to be given it before the media. and given that's occurred that will occur for them. but what they're going through is just unimaginable. there's scarcely words for it. many cling to hope against hope and there will be many many in the room who are still hoping that there are life rafts somewhere, that they got the inflatables out and about, and they will hold on to hope but it is just devastating. it's really important for the carrier not to be just an airline at this point, but to give them absolutely everything they can in terms of support, anything they need transportation help assistance. because the hell is unimaginable. it is the worst that you can think of. >> absolutely. >> still a big question whether or not weather had anything to do with this. we do know the weather was very bad. we know that the pilot requested

to elevate to 38,000 feet. request was denied because of traffic. you had a heavily trafficked corridor a lot of planes flying through there. any concerns about future flights flying through weather systems like this or is this an anomly. >> i don't think it's an anomaly. this is weather they have during the monsoon season. i'm a little surprised the pilot would elect to go that high with the aircraft. the higher you go the thinner the air, and the less capable maneuvering your airplane is going to have. so one good thing, you can top the weather, but those weather tops were around 55,000 feet. 38,000 feet is not even close to that. and you're compromising the controllability of the aircraft at those altitudes. so maybe a better option would be to make a u-turn. but the crew -- without the

cockpit voice recorder we don't know what the crew was thinking or what they were doing. >> we don't. our thoughts with all of the families, ken, tim, mary, thank you very much. i'm poppy harlow. thank you for spending part of your evening with us. our coverage continues. we'll hand it over to our international network. >> hello and welcome, everyone to cnn's special coverage of the search for missing airasia 8501. >> let's begin with that urgent search under way off the coast of indonesia for any sign of that missing flight and the 162 people on board. >>