them an area to focus. and that's very, very important. >> and one of the nings we need to put in perspective is the size of the search area. the narrowed down from about 232,000 square miles to about 117,000 square miles. obviously, even at that even with the marrowing down, bob, we're looking at an incredibly huge area. if it does, indeed, turn out to be or at least they see indications this could be something from the plane and if you say possibly the skin, something that's floating on the surface, what's the next step then? >> well, at least that gives you an area in which to concentrate your resources. if you can get planes there and eventually ships, the important thing would be to get the ships there and put out this sonar radar they call it. the kind of radar that's sound

based and it operates under water. they put out these listening devices and they can listen for the ping. you begin to get the surface assets. the first kind of assets that will get there will be air. i think this will require patience. the time when the first plane can get there as i interpret is a little difficult to figure out the time differences. he said 8:00 a.m. that's sometimes off. this is going to require patience. that's for the first plane to get there. the planes get there and they take a better look at this and see whether we're looking at piece of junk or whether it truly is a piece of the aircraft. then you keep your ships abound for that direction if that's true if it looks like a piece of the aircraft. you try to identify when the ships get there is it is piece of the aircraft.

as soon as you can you try to get the ships there that have the sophisticated sates that i was talking about. the sort of things that can listen for the ping or flight data recorder or the cockpit voice recorder under water. you start to concentrate things. another thing that's really important about this is where the satellite has seen the objects is in the area where they had narrowed the search. it's about the size of colorado. it sure is better than what we had before, which is no idea. this area coincides with the area that the national transportation safety board, that's the american flight investigators told them would be the best area to concentrate their viewing in, and they had calculated that by the best idea where the plane had gone once it

got out into the indiana ocean. the best calculation is it has gone south. there was the two big arcs they marked off from where the satellite received pings before it crashed. this was at the southern end of the southern arc. they calculated where they thought the plane would have run out of fuel and gone in. as i understand it this coinc e coincidecoincid coincides with that area. it's a logical place for the wreckage to be in. that means a lot too. we'll see. >> i know you'll be standing by for us. thank you very much. it's three minutes past 2:00 in the morning here on the east coast. recapping our breaking news. tony abbott says objects possibly related to the missing malaysian plane have been

spotted. he says locating the objects will be difficult and they could turn out to be unrelated. he says he has spoken to his malaysian counter parts. malaysia flight 370 had 239 people on board when it disappeared more than a week ago. joining us from washington is kerry sanders. what can you tell us? >> reporter: i just got an e-mail from navy commander william marx who has been han e handling this. the aircraft had been diverted down to perth. he's saying the u.s. navy p-8 is in the air on a regularly scheduled flight. it may be over the search area as we speak. excuse me. it's able to continue to search

in daylight hours and nighttime hours. it's 2:04 p.m. in perth. it's possible this aircraft that flies at whatever altitude they need it to with the radar searching down, they can dip down and see if maybe there's a possibility of taking some high resolution imagery that will help them confirm what their radar data is showing. that can be shipped back long before the plane makes it back to perth. it can go in for further analysis. the other thing that's important to note is while the air assets are moving into this area to see what the satellite suggested maybe pieces of this plane, the likely first vessel to arrive is not going to be a military vessel. it's going to be a maritime vessel that's responded to calls

from the australian military and is now diverting itself to that general direction. if the piece that's in the water, there's two pieces that at least show up on the satellite imagery. one is 78 feet. the other is smaller according to the australian military. it's unlikely that a normal cargo ship passing in the area would have the ability to take that item out of the water. what they can do is lay eyes on it. that's important. as as if someone's go overboard. once you lay eyes on it, you want to keep eyes on it. 25 knot wind and 9 foot seas. while it's floating, there's no guarantee it remains floating. the hope is when the ship gets on there that sailors on board will keep eyes on it, keep appointing on it, keep aware of

it so if something happens before a naval vessel gets on site that we know where it began to go under water. >> not knowing what the time difference is, do we have a sense of when that either u.s. navy p-8 or the other military search planes that have been dispatched might get there? >> i have a feeling based on what commander marx is telling me that it's in the area right now. it doesn't need to be directly of it. it can see out around 10,000 square miles. they're heading to an area that as you noted was initially identified by the national transportation safety board. that's the u.s. agency that does accident investigation. they had calculated an area as of yesterday that they maugt was 370 square miles. they narrowed it to 117,000

square miles that they felt is likely where the plane went down. these two suspicious pieces in the water were slightly south of that narrowed target area. it falls within the area of where the national transportation safety board believed that there may be some sort of indication of late where the plane could have gone down. part of that calculation that the ntsb scientists have used is not only where the plane have gone down but they have taken into account the wind and current to see where there may be been a drift of some of the debris. that's part of the reason we're talking about a large area of 120, 117,000 square miles. this is slightly south of that, which is about 1500 miles west or southwest of perth,

australia. >> i know you'll be staying with us. i want to bring in former senior aviation director with the ntsb. greg, we have had some false starts before there was oil spotted that turned out no tot be jet fuel and pieces of debris not related to the plane. nothing was found after chinese satellite thought they found something. what does it sound like to you now? >> there's cautious optimism he here. these objects happen to be in an area that was redefined for sear search. it was folks from boeing and the faa who were figuring fuel performance and fuel endurance for the airplane looked for fuel

exhaustion points. if the airplane ran out of fuel and was ditched or crashed, that happens to be the area that these objects have been found in which would make sense. now we have to see what the satellite imagery looks like and now with aircraft on station who can give us a better idea. the australians and the americans will be able to, at least, give us a better perspective of is this another floating cargo container or some large chunk of debris from something else or is this actually an aircraft part. >> can you give us a sense, because i don't know, and i'm guessing most of our viewers don't, how detailed that kind of satellite imagery might be. we heard from the australian prime minister that this was credible enough. that's the phrase that he used. how detailed would it be?

is it just necessarily based on size because that would be a pretty large piece of something that would be floating? >> if you remember the chinese and they're satellite, that was a very grainy image. they were able to give measurements of their piece of debris of 75 feet by 79 feet. you really couldn't tell with any fidelity from those pictures really what it was. i believe it will australians have little better fidelity. because of the weather in the area it could be a distorted view. that always plays a part with imagery. you can get images down anywhere from 8 to 10 meters in size with some pretty good clarity and we also have assets, and i don't know what the australians had, but we do have assets that can see from space down toup at least two meters. the fidelity will be very good

if one of those two types of satellite images are the ones that they are looking in. >> greg, feith from former ntsb who has been with us throughout the last 13 days. military search planes are on their way including a u.s. p-8 to look for this debris what is called a credible enough sighting to lead officials that it would be part of that missing malaysia airline plane. one of the orbits perhaps as big as 75 to 82 feet. we're going to continue to follow this right here on msnbc. we'll be back with our coverage right after this. you've tried to forget your hepatitis c. it's slow moving, you tell yourself. i have time. after all there may be no symptoms for years.

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missing malaysian flight 370. they will be difficult to locate and could be unrelated to the case. water in the area is several thousands meters deep. visibility is not good. there's been false leads in the case before. we'll be back with more after this. i must begin my journey,

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yep. here, too. what about the dark castle? you call that defense?! come on! [ female announcer ] watch live tv anywhere. the x1 entertainment operating system, only from xfinity. welcome back to our continuing coverage of this breaking news. we now know there's been what is considered to be a credible sighting could possibly be debris from the missing malaysia airlines flight. joining us from kuala lumpur. >> reporter: there's been crewing talking in different languages. you get a sense here of the world of this place but also of the world holding its breath

while those ships and aircraft race to where this debris is thought to be been seen to try and see if they can get eyes on it and whether or not they can test it. we were just handed this piece of paper from the officials here. it says that at 10:00 this morning the prime minister of malaiysia received call from th prime minister of australia informing him that two possible objects related to the search have been identified. they are cautious. they said australian officials are yet to establish if these items are related to the search for flight 370. it's a stunning development given when you think back that we heard the aircraft disappeared over the south china sea and the news it turned and moved and spotted by malaysian radar coming back over malaysia

out into the sea and then we hear that news of the satellite pings that established it's flown for many more hours south, south, south. i was on one of the u.s. navy aircraft p-3 flying over the southern indian ocean earlier this week. it's an extraordinary experience. you stand in the cockpit and you look out 500 feet above the ocean across water everywhere. you can't see land, other ships, nothing. it really does feel like a no man's land except, of course, it's the ocean. that's the kind of area they will be searching. talking about 1500 miles off the coast of australia southwest of perth. that search happening there while relatives here in hotels and across in beijing where the flight was due to land are waiting for any news hoping to hear, but dreading what they might hear if this is debris in the ocean.

a really tense sense here. there's nothing people can do. all they can do is wait for news, wait for those aircraft and those ships to get there. one relative seamtress came here and got taken away. really emotional. collapsed. she was talking about how being in a hotel waiting for news is a bit like being in prison because they are held there. they can't really go out. it's nothing to do. at the same time there's no news. we just simply waiting here now for that. we expect the news conference here later today. that may be bring us some new developments, some new information. at the same time it may take some time to get to this debris and to establish what it is. >> let me ask you a couple of things. first of all, you said the phone calls came notifying the officials in malaysia at 10:00,

but what would that be local time here in new york? in other words, how long ago did that phone call come in? >> reporter: good question. you can actually reverse the times here. it's just after 2:00 in the morning. it's just after 2:00 in the afternoon. this is 10:00 this morning. >> so about four hours ago. >> 10: >> reporter: 10:00 in the evening u.s. time last night. >> about four hours ago. to the point we have seen those pictures and it breaks your heart of the families who are waiting. you cannot even begin to imagine the agony of what this has been like for them. what kind of system do they have set up? if this phone call came in four hours ago, are each of the famili

famili families assigned someone who will notify them. are they getting most information off of news reports. how would the information been relayed to those families? >> they have been working to brief the families before they brief us. i can't tell you is whether or not the families got told before this announcement was made. that's what they have been trying to do. they have had fair amount of resources to counsel the families. you can imagine the passengers on board with citizens on board have sent their own people. the chinese given how many chinese citizens were on board that flight. there have been real efforts to provide all other kind of psychological support that these families need and a genuine attempt to tell them before the world gets hold about each new development. for example, when there was a news conference here with the malaysian prime minister that feed of that news conference was

fed through to the family's hotel so they could watch it too. an effort has been made, but given the way that this is developed today, where the australians involved as well is a good question whether or not all the families were told before the news broke. we are at the hotel. we're talk to the families as best we can because, of course, for them, this is a very difficult point because they don't, they still don't have news. they have this information that the debris has been found. they also will be hearing as are, the caution it may not be from flight 370. difficult for them to put into words how they are feeling and have anything to say until they know what this is. families have told me through this last week is that they were becoming resigned to the worst being the case in relation to their relatives.

they simply want to know. they just wanted to know what happened be it good news or the worst possible news. they wanted to hear. that is potentially what might result from this. as i say, we don't know. at the moment it's this satellite imagery of debris that they are trying to find out what it is. >> you do bring up a good point. until we know for sure that debris, these two pieces of debris may be related to this airplane, many families holding out hope. we know the theories out there that it could have landed somewhere and not have been seen by satellite imagery. you mentioned news conferences and i know they have been held at 5:30. is that still the plane now? have you heard anything about the next news conference? >> reporter: we are still expecting the news conference to take place at 5:30. that's 5:30 in the afternoon

here. 5:30 in the morning there. they have at times come at the last minute. they will do that if they think they can't share things yet or if they potentially, for example, if they want to tell the family first about information. >> we just lost keir simmons. we have these pieces of debris. we have military aircraft from australia, the united states and new zealand that are on their way. you can see the search area that's outlined in yellow. the possible flight path and the debris found just outside that narrowed search area. among the planes on their way, a u.s. navy p-8 that can go down and take some photos. we're going to take a break and be back with more on msnbc after this.

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breaking news off the coast of australia. two pieces of debris that were seen in satellite imagery, could that be pieces of the missing malaysia airline plane. let's go to kerry. what can you tell us? >> on day 12 this is perhaps the most hopeful news that maybe they have located some debris from this plane that's disappeared and nobody knows where it is. the boeing 777 off the coast of perth, australia 1500 miles to the southwest of perth. that's where the u.s. navy has one of its planes. it hunts planes that exist on earth. it's airborne. it has the ability day and night to see things floating on the

surface. it's 2:28 p.m. in australia. they still have the advantage of daylight. that can drop the altitude down and start taking high resolution imagery if they see something. the australian military reported their satellite imagery indicated there may be two pieces of debris that looked like it may have come from an aircraft. the one piece is a rather large piece. it's 78 feet large in terms of length . the other one is slightly smaller. the first vessel will not be a military vessel. there's a civilian vessel that's diverting its direction over to this area. >> thank you very much. one of the things we'll be watching for is the wind and the currents. we'll be back with more. ♪

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on board that missing malaysia flight. the best piece of information we've had so far. satellite imagery that shows two pieces of debris. the largest one, 78 feet. the other one somewhat smaller. assets are on the way both in the water and in the air. bog

bob hager, what happens now? >> first of all big picture, i think this is potentially very, very important development because we have all these theories about where the plane might have been and pings charted here and there. nobody can figure out what's happened to this plane. if you can find some physical evidence and the flight data recorder that would be a huge breakthrough in trying to make some sense of this. that's the big picture. zeroing in on the importance of this and what will happen now, it's going to require some patience. they're time in australia is about exactly ours. here we are middle of the night in the u.s. and so overthere it's the middle of the day. this all takes time. it's so far offshore. by the time any planes get there it's going to be about

nightfall. that will be daylight in the u.s. by the time it gets light again in australia it's tomorrow evening in the u.s. it may take that long before we get some report of somebody close up getting a good look at this saying is it really aircraft debris or is it another false lead like the other early sightings. this potentially very important. the idea would be they can focus satellite. there's a lot of satellites up there. now they know where to focus and they can reflect the satellites so they are looking down on this area and they can scan the ocean surface from what they can see at satellite altitude to see if they see any more pieces of debris. meantime they have planes headed that way. they got ships which takes even longer, but the ship gets a better idea when it gets close. finally, if you do locate this piece in particular, you want to identify is it a piece from a

aircraft or not. then eventually, the aim would be if it's a piece from the aircraft it's probably skin because that's what floats on the surface. skin doesn't do you any good for the investigation, but it points you to the area where you need to look for the vital pieces which are below the surface of the sea down on the bottom. then you begin to get ships in there. the important thing is to use sonar. sonar is the under water version of radar. it works by bouncing sound waves off of pieces of objects. they can chart the sea bottom. they said the sea is pretty deep there. it's a couple of miles down. that generally is the line up of action that could be set in motion by what this new development, what we know so far. >> how important will it be to be able to get eyes on this very quickly. we understand that the winds are at about 25 knots there.

i assume they're not in any danger of losing the general area where this is bob. >> yeah, you want to see this object that they're seeing from the satellite. you can only see so much from the satellite. it is important to get there and find it as soon as possible before it drifts away. at least identify whether it's a piece of the aircraft or some other piece of debris which is all a false lead. that's real important. it could sink. it might disappear quickly. they got to move whatever assets they've got there as quickly as possible. if you find it, you figure that we're 12 days out now, and so the tide to the sea have taken this, if it's a light piece of skin probably a long way from where it originally was in the water and maybe the pieces that went underneath and down the bottom of the sea the original

point where the plane hit. the whole thing is very important to get there very soon. it may not be the exact spot where you look for the other debris but you sure want to get there before one little clue that we've got disappears. >> if it does turn out to be pieces of skin, which you've pointed out as we talked about this over the course of the last week and a half or so that is often what comes to the surface is this piece of skin. you have to ask the question, and i'm sure they must have calculations based on winds and currents how far it could have moved over the course of 12 days, bob. >> they swroulwould have these of calculations. they only take you so far. it's fine for the computers to say it would have drifted yay many miles from this particular point. you need eyes on the scene. not eyes but boats with sonar

that can look down. it may be a long way away from the calculation. we're looking in a much smaller area if it turns out to be a piece of wreckage of the plane. >> if you can stand by. i want to go to matt taylor. he's the asia pacific reporter for cnbc. i wonder if you're getting any information there from australian officials? i'm looking at the australians. they are suggesting, and we heard this from kerry sanders that the first ship that will lay eyes on this will not be a military vessel but a cargo ship and could be due in the area as soon as 6:00, which would be three and a half hours from now. what other updates night you have from there? >> that was what we heard from the officials.

they spoke to us a couple of hours ago from the australian maritime and safety authority that they asked a commercial vessel in that vicinity to go ahead and take a look. the australian government saying that one of its navy ships, is on route to that specific search area. it is still days away. hopefully we'll get a little more information as the hours tick by because ir crafts are verging on that search area which is some 1500 miles or two and a half thousand kilometers off the australian west coast in a very remote part of the indian ocean. take four hours flying time for the aircraft that will be departing and have departed from perth on australia's west coast. they have about two hours worth of fuel to search over that huge search area. 304,000 kilometers before they

have to return to the coastline before they run out of fuel. the australian government, the prime minister, tony abbott speaking a little bit earlier. he said the information they received new and credible in terms of the other australian authorities they say the objects are indistinct but they are credible sightings. that he redeployed their assets. have been searching on that southern corridor to this particular space. they say one of the objects 24 meters or 75 feet inside. >> let me just ask you if they give us a best sense what their best sense is of when they may have a real read whether this may be a piece of the plane. >> right. they have to get out there first and then as your previous guest

was mentioning there are movements of where this debris, these objects, we don't know if it is debris yet, may have shifted from where they got that satellite reading from. we do hope to have some information a little bit later on today once the aircraft do head out to that area and return to the coast. also, as your guest was mentioning it's about 3:30 in the afternoon, 2:40 in the afternoon on australia's west coast. it will be getting darker in a couple of hours time. >> thank you for that update. we should say we still are expecting what's been a daily 5:30 briefing. less than three hours from now we'll have that for you. we'll be back with more. ♪ oh-oh, la, la-la, la-la, la-la ♪ ♪ na-na-na, na-na-na-na-na some things just go together, like auto and home insurance. bundle them together at progressive, and you save big on both. ♪ oh, oh-oh, oh, oh hey, it's me!

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the search is on. we know satellite images spots two pieces of debris. one of them pretty large in size off the coast of perth australia in the general area of the narrowed search. poor visibility in that area. there are assets on the way both in the sea and the >rkxair. joining us us is kerry sanders.

one of the things that people can't understand is that given the technology and the size of the plane that nothing has been sited so far. this is when the high-tech goes into action. >> thest the piece of high-tech gear that's led to this location. that's from the satellite imagery taking pictures. now that has the assets as you say, the aircraft moving into the area. they will be the first ones to get into the target zone to see whether this floating debris is from the triple seven. the aircraft that will be the first one on scene and based on the e-mail i got from u.s. navy commander, i believe it's in the area now. this is the most advanced aircraft that the world has in terms of searching for submarines. they are using that technology which operates it day or night to be able to look down at the

surface. it has a spread of 10,000 square miles. it can go to 20,000 square miles. the best vision that this equipment can see is in that 10,000 square mile area. it could be looking out at that spot where they are waiting for some sort of confirmation whether this piece is floating there looking as if it may be part of an aircraft. we heard bob hager talk about the possibility this would be the skin of the aircraft that likely would be what would float. the ability of the p-8 to get an image could show, for instance, if there were windows there. the image that would come on the p-8's computers would indicate that it fell into the shape of a portion of the airplane. it's really kind of a matter of a short period of time before i think the very first indication we get from u.s. military as to

whether this looks like it complies with what the first suggestion was from the satellite images. in addition to the u.s. military sending its p-8, which is a jet engine plane. there are also p-3s headed to the area. there's a propeller plane which means they travel a little bit slower. one is from the new zealand navy and the other from the australian navy. this is sous of an area where they said this is where they believe the plane may have gone down.

it was trumped down to about 117,000 square miles. this debris that showed up on the satellite is south of that target zone. it figures into the larger target zone the national transportation safety board first came up with 48 hours ago which was 370,000 square miles. let's talk about really what the goal here is. if they can confirm that this is part of 370, the missing flight, the goal ultimately is to answer the question of what happened. it's likely they can do some of that calculation. it was the national transportation safety board's calculations that took into account the wind and the current to suggest this was an area to look at to begin with.

if they can get back to the area where they believe the plane went down, the real goal is to get the data recorders. the flight data recorders are what will answer many questions. another one records the data. the cockpit voice recorder, i've spoken to a friend of mine who is a pilot that suggested if the cockpit voice recorder is completely silent, it only records two hours and then it records over itself. if it's completely silent, he says, that will be as telling as any sort of conversation because it will suggest that the crew on the plane was incapacitated in some form or the other. the other recorder is the data recorder. that will provide a tremendous

amount of information. it records 25 hours of data. the whole goal here now is to find that and it has a bit of a pinger. that pinger lasts about, we have about 19 more days of battery power that will send off that ping. it's not like a ping you can hear with your ear. this is something that's a very low frequency. it pings about once every second or so. that pinger is picked up by akousic equipment that the navy will drop in the water. we're talking about depths of water that's two plus miles deep. you're already limiting the area of where that ping can go. >> all right. kerry sanders pointing out the first step has to be taken. we have to determine is this part of the plane and that raises a lot of questions that

still need to be answered and they still have to find what the main debris area might be and where the black boxes might be. we're going to take a quick break and be back with more of this breaking news coverage on msnbc right after this.

we're covering the breaking news of what could be a break in the case. this incredible mystery of the missing triple seven malaysia airline flight. two pieces of debris that have been found floating in an area that was determined by the ntsb to be a likely search area and the possible flight path. joining me on the phone john

mcgraw. good to have you with us. as you look at these developments and the possible flight path, what comes to you? >> this is obviously the most probable area the airplane could go down. the ntsb early on, days ago, determined this is the most probable path the the debris is in the right area. i also know from having participated in active investigations that often there are promising leads that don't pan out. there's a lot of debris in the ocean. finding something of this size in the area the promising. >> obviously, we have been cautioning people that we've had these situations before where they saw something or thought they saw something on satellite imagery. certainly officials are saying they are cautiously optimistic. from your perspective, how long do you think it could be, based

on your experience, before they have a good take on whether or not this is indeed a piece of that plane? >> i think the moving aircraft overhead which will have some pretty sophisticated sensors. they may be able to see features on the debris that will identify it as part of an aircraft and narrow the search field. the ultimate ability to find out what it is is getting eyeball os on the piece of debris in daylight and getting a ship out there to pull it up. there's chance they might get some photo graphic evidence. they have sensors to detect the thickness and how heavy the piece of metal. really once you get a surface area to pull pieces up is when you confirm you have what you're looking for. >> john mcgraw, thank you. planes are on the way.

we have ships on the way. the first that's likely to get there is a merchant ship, a cargo ship. they want to get close eyes on this floating debris at least one piece of it almost 80 feet across. we'll take a break and be back.

good morning. it's 3:00 a.m. here in new york.

it's 3:00 p.m. in australia near perth. tony abbott says objects possibly related to the missing airline plane has been malaysia airlines plane have been spotted in the south indian ocean. he has called this information new and credible and obviously this could be the break through that investigators have been looking for. however, the prime minister did caution that locating the objects will be extremely difficult. one of the concerns they have is that they have poor visibility and obviously that will always hamper a search and recovery effort. and also, there have been supposed sightings before including, you'll remember, an oil slick that turned out to be unrelated to the case. there was no jet fuel in it. he has spoken. the australian official to his malaysian counterpart. and we are getting word also that some family members who