but today's breaking news is a glimmer of hope for the families of the 239 people onboard who have been on an emotional roller coaster for nearly two weeks now. that includes the families of three americans. one of the missing is 50-year-old phillip wood from north texas. seen here with his two sons. now, today phillip's mother reacted to the new developments with optimism and a healthy dose of skepticism. after all, she has been down this road before. >> until we get it from an official. so we're hopeful. we remain hopeful. of course, you know, this is another new twist. i want to know. one way or the other, i want to know. >> we begin now with nbc's sara james on the ground in melbourne, australia, where it is the wee hours of the morning. sara, the air search is set to resume very shortly, right? >> reporter: that's exactly right, abby. i'm struck by when that mother

said i want to know. those searchers are thinking about mothers and fathers and sisters and probrothers like th as they head out in just a couple of hours. they know a lot is riding on this mission. and many people want to know. and it's their job to get out there and, if possible, find these pieces of debris so we know exactly what they are. let me set the stage for you if i can because it's not an easy mission. they're going to be flying off the coast, the western coast, of australia, about 1,500 miles into the vast area of the indian ocean. and it's a long flight. it's four hours just to get to the location. and because these aircraft only carry about ten hours of fuel, that gives them two hours of search time and then they've got to turn right back around and come back. they fly as long as they can from first light all the way through until it's too dark to search anymore. and they're aided in their efforts by some ships which are coming to the region. there's a norwegian merchant ship which was actually en route from madagascar to melbourne, where i am, when it was diverted

by the australians saying, can you go to the site and actually look with all the sailors and others on board and have a look and see what you see? but there's also some very sophisticated technology at work here. the aircraft are 3-p o ryan's owned by australians and new zealand. an extremely so fi ll lly se ll poseidon. it's got really up to date military software. basically a sub hunter. it's got surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities onboard. these are the aircraft dedicated to the search. trying to find those pieces of debris so that we will know for certain whether or not they are connected to malaysian air flight 370. i have to say, though, that when the prime minister came out and said this, i think it was very clear. i mean, this didn't come out in

a normal safety briefing. he said it in parliament. so i think that he has some degree of hope and optimism that it is, indeed, a credible lead, abby. >> sara james in melbourne, a s austral australia. tom costello is in washington, d.c. how difficult is the task ahead? >> it's a herculeanas sara poin very rough waters. the conditions now are very rough indeed. we're hearing nine to ten foot sea swells. it's been high winds. it's been poor visibility. you're already in one of the most remotest places on the planet with no infrastructure to help you. you've got to fly four hours out. you don't have any, you know, land mass nearby, et cetera. me go to the telestrator. here's why this is so fascinating. this is essentially the route we're talking about here. it may have been more of a curvature. the bottom line here is that this is almost precisely the

intersection of the two key pieces of data. what they thought was the -- the last possible distance, the farthest this plane could fly based on its fuel. secondly, the other piece of data that's important is using the axis or using those satellite pings on trying to figure out where this plane was. those two lines come together. they cross pretty much right at that spot there in the south indian ocean. right pretty much close to where the ntsb had said, look in this area. they did exactly that. this is the first piece of debris, which would suggest maybe they've got a hit. what does this mean for the investigation? i want to show you the other piece of evidence here. because, you know, we've all been focused, of course, on what was the flight track. if this plane came all the way down like that, then what does that mean for -- didn't mean to do that. sorry. let's put the telestrator on. what does that mean for the

hypothesis? if this was autopilot, that seems to be the belief, it was traveling at 500 miles per hour, altitude about 30,000 feet. those are the numbers that we had when the plane was essentially over the strait of malaka or out over the south china sea. those numbers didn't change. why is that relevant? it suggests this plane was on autopilot. in fact, the plane on autopilot flew all the way to the ends of the earth. so what happened in the cockpit? why would this be the situation? was the cockpit crew overpowered? did somebody have a psychotic event? was somebody suicidal? were they murdered? were they both murdered? you can see why everybody is concerned now about the chain of events that transpired to bring this plane with what we thought was a very professional, experienced crew and a very, very good aircraft, to bring it to the ends of the earth and crash into the ocean. if this is the debris from this plane, it changes the dynamic, doesn't it? now you've got to really look at

what transpired in that cockpit. disturbingly as we have reported, the trouble is the cockpit voice recorder only records the last two hours in the cockpit. and then it rerecords again and again. it records over that loop. so if this is a six to seven to eight hours since whatever happened in the gulf of thailand happened, then it's been recorded over several times. and investigators will never hear what transpired in the cockpit at that moment. it's really creating a whole new dynamic about how this is going to go forward. there's one more piece of investigative news i need to pass on. that is that nbc news is hearing that the fbi has now physically got the copies of the hard drives from the computers taken from the first officer's home and the captain's home and that analysis now begins. back to you. >> nbc's tom costello, thank you as always for breaking this down for us. we appreciate it. former ntsb investigator greg

fythe back with us for the entire hour. also an aviation journalist writing about the missing plane for slate.com. he also wrote "extreme fear: the science of your mind in danger." i want to start with you, greg. what happens next? what do the search teams today hope to accomplish? >> hopefully, abby, the weather clears up. that's the biggest problem right now is trying to get those airborne assets into the area and low enough to be able to get high resolution pictures. if they find this floating debris. they still haven't found it. we saw it on the satellite. but those were four day old pictures. so they're going to have to try to find those pieces of debris first. then see if they can get close enough to give us at least some high resolution pictures so that we can at least attempt to identify whether or not they're from an airplane or some junk that's floating out there in the indian ocean. >> well, that's exactly right, jeff. as we were talking before the show, we're happy. we're hopeful when we find pieces of debris in the area

that could be where they were flying to, where they happened to fly to with the autopilot. but this debris could be anything. it could have nothing to do with this plane. and even if it is debris from the plane, it narrows down where you would search. but it would have been washed from somewhere perhaps far away. so it narrows it down, but not that much. >> listen, if this does turn out to be debris from the plane, that's still a very big "if" at this point, you're talking about the hard part is only just beginning. this is going to be an incredibly hard part. if you compare this to the last aviation incident that was remotely similar to this, i have to say, i have to emphasize, this is an incredibly bizarre incident. it's hard to really think about it. because it's so -- we don't have any reference in the past to compare it to. the closest thing in some regards is air france 447 which went down in the equatorial atlantic in 2009. similar case in that it went down in the middle of the night. it was a big mystery for a long

time. in that case, the wreckage, the first wreckage was spotted within days. it still took them 2 1/2 years to find the black box. then they pulled the black box out. it was another year after that before the french investigators released their report. it was three years after that plane went missing that finally we had these answers that we were all burning to get. that case -- this case makes that one look like a piece of cake. >> wow. >> because this one is more remote. even assuming -- even in the extremely, you know, optimistic case that this is actually true, we really have very little to go on at this point, but even -- okay. assuming that, then we've got a huge road ahead of us. >> right. >> i mean, this wreckage has been drifting for two weeks. if it's wreckage at all. it's been drifting for two weeks, not a few days. that means you've got this circle of uncertainty that's been growing and growing and

growing in these rough, remote waters that are deeper than where air france 447 turned out to be. it's a mess. >> greg, i was hoping you could speak to that as well. if and when they are able to identify these pieces of debris, how will they go about confirming that this actually came from this airplane. and what is ntsb's role in all this? >> the ntsb, like these other countries, they're technical advisers to the malaysians. the malaysians are responsible for the conduct of this investigation. and so the united states and australia and other countries are all in a support role. we're all providing technical assistance. i've got tongue tied today. technical assistance. so with the expertise that the ntsb has and, of course, we have the fbi as part of that team. we have the faa as part of the team. and, of course with b b, boeing.

we can provide a level of assistance because we do have a very good laboratory if they do recover the data recorder, flight cockpit voice recorder. we have the fbi working on the computer hard drives from the pilots. so we're in a support role just like the australians are. they may be out front in examining or searching that part of the world that they've been given responsibility for. but they, too, are in a support role of malaysia. now with regard to the parts. once they get a high resolution picture, we may be able to tell if it's aircraft parts depending on the resolution. there are specific identifying signatures. you can see that if that large piece of debris, that 78 or 79 foot piece of debris, that could either be a wing panel, that could be part of the fuselage. it will be telltale with a good picture. if that doesn't work, then, of course, when we finally get a ship, whether it's the cargo ship that's heading that way or one of the military assets, someone will be able to get eyes on that piece of debris and give us a close-up identification.

and we should be able to determine short order that it is either aircraft parts or just junk. >> greg, let's say it is determined that those pieces are from malaysia air flight 370. how will investigators go about securing what i guess would become a crime scene? >> in this particular instance, because it's floating debris, it's not like you have to leave it. if it was a crime scene in a neighborhood you have to leave certain things laying in the street. you're collecting this piece of evidence. you're going to bring it onboard the ship. you're going to try and protect it. one of the big issues right now is that if this is wreckage, and as we recover more wreckage, the big concern is it's been sitting in salt walter. you have to immediately wash it down with fresh water. if you leave it sit, as soon as it's in contact with the air, the corrosion process really starts to take over. that's where you get to destroy a lot of evidence. so the investigators will look at these pieces as they're retrieved.

they'll try and determine if it was a high speed breakup or a high speed impact or a low speed impact going into the water. it's not going to tell us the cause. but it's going to try and help us understand the final moments of the flight. >> yeah. jeff, authorities are also saying that this object could also be something that is not plane wreckage. right? they say it could be something like shipping containers. but if we're talking about an object that is 79 feet, also in an area that is pretty remote, far away from commercial lanes, how many objects could it be? >> that's an open end question. i mean, if you're an object that's greater than, you know, 50 feet anywhere in the ocean and you're floating around, this is the time you're going to be getting a lot of attention. but, remember, not only are we looking for a piece of wreckage, we're looking for pieces of wreckage in itself are floating debris. it itself has been missing four days. that satellite photo is four days old. this piece has been four days removed from wherever it was. it's just, like, searching upon

searching. i mean, it doesn't even look like it's necessarily above the surface of the water. it looks like it's floating below. it almost could be anything. i can't even characterize would it could possibly be. shipping containers, a piece of construction debris. >> really anything is on the table. >> practically anything is on the table. >> speaking of anything being on the table, this whole investigation, anything remains on the table. i want to ask you to narrow down the theories a little bit. your hypothesis if we're going to take the idea that this thing flew into the indian ocean on autopilot for several hours as tom costello, toward the end of the earth, almost as far as it could go, what do you think happened? >> well, i'd almost want to back up and say, we have this sort of constellation of facts which range in the degree of dubiousness that we can attach to them. some of them, you know, you hear and they might be true. they may not be true. some of them, for instance last saturday the prime minister of malaysia came forward and said there's these two arcs we

believe based on this ping data. we've been treating that as gosp gospel. sit re is it really? we don't know. could turn out when all of the cards are laid on the table that some of the things we put enormous faith in were not actually true. if we back up and say what are the pieces we think are the most gold standard, i would say those two arkcs. on the northern arc or southern arc. there's been sources from the u.s. government apparently have been promoting the idea it's really on the southern arc. that's really where the consensus has been shifting. there's a big problem with the southern arc which is that it's very difficult to think of a plausible, psychological motive, for flying eight hours, having conducted a rather elaborate evasive maneuver at the start of the flight which i would parenthetically say is another gold standard piece we can go on. flying eight hours for what? why? it's very difficult.

so listen. there have been all kinds of crazy theories. and which is crazier? it comes down to judgment. your own gut feeling. >> these are questions all of us are asking. everyone wants answers to. especially the families. jeff weiss, thank you so much for your insights. greg, you are staying with us for the entire hour. hang tight. we will talk to you again in a moment. up next, what possible clues are hidden in those satellite images? we will take a closer look with the help of an expert from the smithsonians air & space museum. this is a key day in the unprecedented mystery that's captivated all of us. we've got it all covered from angles all over the place in "the cycle." co: i've always found you don't know you need a hotel room until you're sure you do. bartender: thanks, captain obvious. co: which is what makes using the hotels.com mobile app so useful. i can book a nearby hotel room from wherever i am. or, i could not book a hotel room and put my cellphone

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back now with our continues coverage of the breaking news in the missing plane mystery. the first potentially credible lead, two large pieces of possible plane debris spotted on satellite imagery. a norwegian ship has reached the remote area in the south indian ocean where those objects have been seen and air search is set to resume in minutes. our coverage continues with andrew johnson, geographer for the smithsonian national air & space museum and a man who knows the ins and outs of satellite images, anthony roman, former corporate pilot, president of the global investigation firm roman & associates. andrew, what do you make of these images that have the world sort of on its feet or on the edge of its seat hoping this is part of this plane? >> yeah. we've all been waiting for more evidence, more information. so i was just as excited as anybody to have a look at these

images. i've got to say, the images are pretty inconclusive, i have to say, from looking at them for two reasons, really. first of all, the size of these potential pieces of debris. they're pretty small compared to the smallest details that are visible in the kinds of images that you're seeing here. i'll take a minute just to explain the images. you'll see there's two versions of each image. one is a black and white image. the other actually has color information. the very smallest things that you can see in the black and white image are down to two or three feet. the smallest things in the color image, maybe we're talking about six or seven feet. the challenge here, especially with the smaller piece of potential debris, they're talking about 14 feet wide. that's right at the edge of where an object would be visible in images like this. we really can't trust the fact it's exactly 14 feet large versus 20 feet or anything like that. the other factor is that we're looking at the open ocean. now, these images weren't necessarily coming from a satellite that's designed to look at the open ocean.

so this may be showing a reflective object at or near the earth's -- ocean surface. it may even be wave crests. especially the smaller object that they're purporting to show. i'm not really sure. it's really unknown. it's an important piece of information. i would say it's worth checking out. >> but still a lot of questions. >> remains to be seen what's there. >> anthony, i wanted to get your thoughts on a quote "new york times" in the that really grabbed my attention from assistance engineer and a satellite expert who said if debris from the plane is found in the predicted area, that suggests that the plane would not have been under active pilot control during the last few hours of the flight. that it would have been on autopilot. do you make the same assessment? >> well, this plane was designed as most modern jet aircraft are designed to fly themselves. and pilots today have been pretty much relegated to be systems managers. of course, you have to maintain

your stick and rudder skills. you know, to safely manage the aircraft should there be an emergency. really the significance of it flying on autopilot the last several hours is -- is nothing. >> andrew, talk to us about the impact of weather in this area. the object is floating in t sufficientest seas in t world. one australian oceanographer said this region has incredibly strong winds coming from the west. we're talking 30 miles per hour that whip up giant swells and waves. how difficult is it to even see anything? >> it's very difficult. if we're talking about the satellite imagery just for a second, the challenge there is to get a clear view in the absence of cloud cover. they were able to get a clear view as we saw in the images that have now been distributed. but even from an aircraft now you've got the challenge of seeing something from that altitude. we know that the first flights that went out from australian

were unsuccessful in finding something. part of the reason may be that maybe nothing was there. even if there was something there, the weather wasn't great for a search. there was cloud cover and so forth. that plus the winds blowing on the surface of the ocean means that we're far away from where this aircraft may have entered the ocean. because as you've already made clear, the images now are four days old. we're going on two weeks since the aircraft was lost. >> anthony, let's talk about the black boxes. in air france the boxes were not near the floating debris. two questions. how far from the floating debris did you find the black boxes? and more specifically, we're all obsessed over the black boxes. what exactly is on it that investigators need to have? >> well, in terms of the distance that it was found, in the air france case, it was a 24,000 square mile area that was searched. the initial debris field, which

was a minor field, was found five, six, seven days after the initial event. the black box is in the main body of the debris. not found until a considerable time later. virtually two years. so the information that's contained on them is absolutely essential. one is a cockpit voice recorder that runs in a two-hour loop. so in the case of a malaysia air, the problem is going to be that you're only going to get the last two hours of conversation, if that's found. the other box has a treasure-trove of data regarding the flight controls, operational systems, the position of flaps, where the thrust handles were set, et cetera. so it'll tell you all about the airplane configuration for a significant period of time. but we're well two weeks into

this. and those devices only signal for, you know, 30, 35 days. >> wow. anthony, andrew, thank you very much for being here. once again. up next, more on the missing plane search. we're going to talk about the fbi probe. his bank of america savings account to his merrill edge retirement account. before he opened his first hot chocolate stand calling winter an "underserved season". and before he quit his friend's leaf-raking business for "not offering a 401k." larry knew the importance of preparing for retirement. that's why when the time came he counted on merrill edge to streamline his investing and help him plan for the road ahead. that's the power of streamlined connections. that's merrill edge and bank of america.

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even if, which is a big if, this debris turns out to be wreckage from flight 370, it could be years before we actually know what happened onboard, if at all. let's bring in two veteran investigators, foria eunice work odden the twa flight investigation and other high profile crashes. also back with us, forler ntsb investigator grate feith. foria, i want to start with you. we know from tom costello's reporting earlier this hour nbc news confirmed the fbi is in possession of copies of the hard drives from the pilot and

co-pilots computers. what will the focus of the fbi's role in this and investigation be? >> well, the fbi will work together with malaysian authorities and other governments. we already had a couple of agents that worked out of malaysia long before this incident. other agents probably have joined those two agents to continue to help. all those investigative steps. the first, most important thing, is to try to give the families some answers as to what happened. if it is coming up that this is the actual debris, then it's about collecting evidence to find out what exactly happened. so that could be not only from the debris that's below the water over there, but the fbi's going to also continue to do those other investigations on the mainland of malaysia. finding out more about these passengers. finding out more about airport security, which is very essential. were there any weaknesses or any issues relating to airport security. so all of these questions that you ask the citizens, you ask

neighbors, you know, you look at that computer hard drive. what were the pilots looking into beforehand? as we know, every now and then there are some dark people that walk around, that plan very, you know, terrible things. so sometimes even though they may not say it outright to people that they associate with, they may be doing some sort of research. those are the things we look at. were they researching this system about the plane? were they doing other types of research? not just the pilots. but this would be, you know, all the passengers at some point would be looked at to kind of rule out some of these other things that could have happened. so that's basically what the fbi is doing. they take a very close look at the computer information. and even -- as we know, even though things can get deleted, we try to go back and find out what has been deleted. >> foria, if this debris turns out to be something, eventually we'd have to do a sort of underwater forensic detailed search of the wreckage if we

were able to -- ever able to find it two, three years out in the future, perhaps. you've been part of that sort of underwater gathering effort for that twa 800 flight we referenced earlier. how is that sort of underwater forensic search accomplished? and what would be your advice to search teams that are perhaps going to have to do that in the near future. >> you know, it's one of the most difficult air crash investigations that are going to take place. twa 800 was not too far from long island. there was a mainland we set up. a big hangar we put all the evidence that was gathered, we were able to put that plane back together. my job was working with the coast guard, bringing up some of this evidence. you're going to need specialized equipment. some of those depths, you're going to need, you know, the type of equipment that found the titanic that was used to go down deep to find the air france plane that crashed in the

atlantic. you're going to need that type of equipment. you're going to need the best type of teams. you're going to need locations. you're going to have to switch off teams every 30 days. because these are hard shifts to work so far off the mainland. at the same time, you're going to make sure that the families are getting the information that they need. >> yeah. greg, on that note, what will the role be of navy submarines? i mean, we have not really heard at all about their capabilities or what their involvement is. what are they capable of doing? >> well, the navy doesn't publicize what the activities of submarines are. it's typically classified. but in their role, if they're called in as an underwater asset, they can assist in finding the black boxes. as long as we have that time period, that 30-day time period and an active pinger. that's really the race against time right now, abby. trying to find that main wreckage debris site. because it makes it a lot easier to find the cockpit voice

recorder flight data recorder if we have the pinger. that's not to say that if we don't find the main wreckage for a month, two months or a year, that's not to say we won't get it. it's just that we're going to have to use a remote operated vehicle with a camera and actually visually look for that box like we did in air france 447. >> foria, briefly, in all the things that you've read or heard or from even your own checking around with your sources and what you know, have you come across any markers that would lead you to believe that terrorism played a role in whatever happened to malaysia air flight 370? >> i haven't seen too much to indicate that it's terrorism for political purposes. and really that's part of the investigations. we shouldn't really make some conclusions until we get some evidence. i haven't seen that. but this whole idea of switching off the system, it almost seems as if somebody intentionally wants to cause malaysian airlines these problems or make the government look bad to make

this plane pretty much try to disappear or make it as hard as possible. when we had that egypt airline pilot suicide, the only reason we got some evidence on that was the cockpit voice recorder. which showed the two pilots struggling. one trying to bring the plane down. the other one trying to keep it up. but from what i'm hearing now, that only has a two-hour capability. then it records over itself. so that's going to be a problem if this plane was on autopilot. so that even probably would lead more to go back to the -- you know, to the other things that the pilots and other passengers had to try to figure out exactly what was going on that might have caused this plane to go down. >> greg, what do you think about what foria just said about deliberate attempts to evade radar and why that may have happened? >> well, it is obvious that whoever was in command of this aircraft, they intentionally turned off the transponder which

is is basically a camera, if you will, that tells the air traffic controllers where the airplane is. again, you have the acars that was shut down. it is another form or another camera that basically provides information to folks on the ground about the status of the airplane. but it also gives position of the aircraft. it is obvious that somebody didn't want to be followed. didn't want to be observed. and the path they took, that route, that southerly route, they went down a path of least resistance. there is no radar in that area. and there is no satellite coverage in that area. so if you want to disappear, that was the perfect place to just disappear. and the length that they flew, 3,200, 3,300 miles going out into the heart of the indian ocean, they took that airplane into a place, whether they were consciously take k it there, left it on autopilot, pointed it in that direction, we don't know that part. but they took it to a place in the world where it is very difficult and most likely we may never find this airplane. >> perfect place to disappear,

as you said. greg feith and foria younis, thank you so much for your valuable insights here. >> you're welcome. when we come back, if i can use my phone to find the nearest starbucks, why can't we find one of the biggest jumbo jets out there? when it comes to good nutrition...i'm no expert. that would be my daughter -- hi dad. she's a dietitian. and back when i wasn't eating right, she got me drinking boost. it's got a great taste, and it helps give me the nutrition i was missing. helping me stay more like me. [ female announcer ] boost complete nutritional drink has 26 essential vitamins and minerals,

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back to breaking news in the missing plane mystery. one of the biggest questions that's been asked over the past two weeks is why can't we find this plane? for goodness sake. i can use an app to find my missing keys. that gps in the car always knows where i am. but we can't find one of the largest airplanes in the world? that's the vexing question explored in time international's latest cover story "into thin air." the article is also inside the magazine for us here at home. joining us now is michael sharer, "time" magazine's washington bureau chief. michael, answer the question. how is it possible that we can't find a boeing 777 with 239 souls onboard? >> and be specific. >> because it's not an iphone.

in short, it costs a lot of money to retrofit these aircraft with the latest technology and it really hasn't happened yet. there's a process happening here and around the world to use gps to locate planes. but in the u.s. the faa says that new system won't be in place fully until 2020. we're many years out. internationally it'll probably be many more years before we have that kind of a system. right now we have a real hodgepodge system in place. you have radars that are located in various countries. you have military radars which back those up. when you're out over the open ocean, and especially if you're able to turn off a transponder which is meant to communicate with that radar and send identifying information, there isn't a backup. you can get directv maybe on an international flight. but you're not able to -- the cockpit is not communicating directly with a satellite by default. so we just didn't -- don't have this information. one of the people we spoke to for our article said that there's sort of a tombstone

mentality in aviation. what he meant by that was that problems tend to be fixed once something goes wrong and someone dies as a result of it. so i think you can expect that going forward, there will be a far greater rush to solve these sorts of problem. but it wasn't seen as a problem before because we really haven't had that many or any incidents like this in the past where a plane has just disappeared in the sky. >> yeah. michael, you mentioned the article. the new article in "time." "in to thin air." it asking all the questions we are all asking. how do you not track a jumbo jet. this is what the article says. for the all the post 9/11 security protocols we submit to every time we get on a plane, much of the basic technology that is meant to track our progress through the sky is full of holes. even our most modern aircraft can be rendered invisible by a human hand. is this why we're all so mystified? is this why we are all so obsessed with the story? we cannot understand how something like this could happen? >> yeah. i think we've come to believe

that everyone's tracking our cell phones everywhere we go. so it is hard to believe. it's not just the hodgepodge of being able to track planes. it's the hodgepodge of security internationally. i have no idea whether it's related to the plane's disappearance. there have been conclusions made that it hasn't. we know people got on this plane without -- with stolen passports. we know those passports weren't checked against data bases that exist internationally that would have stopped those passengers from getting on the plane. the reason is the international standards that airports in malaysia and most other countries use don't require what is in the u.s. considered a pretty basic check. just like the radar system is sort of a hodgepodge system internationally, the security system also has a lot of holes in it. >> michael scherer, thanks so much for those details. joining us no u, msnbc aviation analyst john cox. a former airline captain. and currently the ceo of safety operating systems. john, question for you. because if this debris is actually parts of the plane, then that would suggest perhaps that it went into the ocean. so when a plane like this were

to meet the ocean going as fast as it would have been, would that cause the plane to break? would meeting the sea floor cause the plane to break? >> no. what we've seen in past cases is as the airplane touches down in the water, it'll break apart. sully sullenberger's landing in the river was a very rare event where the airplane didn't physically break into a lot of smaller pieces. that was because it was under full control in daylight on calm water. and he was able to get the airplane very much slowed down. it was a nice piece of flying. but the -- for an airplane like a 777 to hit the water, it's got to break into a lot of small pieces. and then sink. most of those are going to sink to the floor. some will float. that's the debris field. the floating debris field that we're looking for right now. >> and, john, do you think as a result of this incident, there's going to be a rethinking of capabilities like being able to turn off the transponder

manually in flight? and a retrofitting of planes so that they do have more modern technology? >> well, i think there's going to be discussion about it. but there are -- there are reasons to have the transponder be able to be switched off. and, remember, we don't know that that transponder was switched off. we know that it ceased to function. was that an interruption of electrical power? was it a failure of the transponder? or was it deliberately turned off? we do not know that. now, the acars is a different matter because it continued to function. but it was not upstreaming data. that is more likely a deliberate act. but in the future as we go forward, it's going to be important to recognize if we have transponders on all the time, that can overload the air traffic control computers. some airports will request you to turn them on. others don't want them. so until there is uniformity around the world, it is probably going to be necessary to have some means of turning transponders off.

as far as the upgrade to newer technology, what is called adsb, i think you're going to see that take a number of years to progress. what we're going to find is, i think, the need is there for the new technology. it's just a matter of when. >> john cox, thanks for that information. very interesting stuff. you have been glued to your tvs for the past hour. at least we hope that you have. still ahead, a leading psychiatrist will help explain the fascination we all have with this in air mystery. [ male announcer ] ortho crime files.

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the next hours will be critical in the search for the missing malaysia flight. planes set to to resume their flyover over the area where the debris was spotted shortly. it's been 13 days, and we are now learning of a possible break through. an unprecedented period of time, and the world has been riveted by every minute. so what is it about this story that's captured all of our attention? here to discuss is dr. gail salt, a psychiatrist and a professor. great to have you here. we to want get to the families in a moment. we are thinking about that. but what is it about the story. we want to know answers. we have conspiracy theories. what's it about the story? >> right. people are drawn to the conspiracy theory. there could be control over something like that happening to us. humans don't like the idea of

randomness that leads to death. if it's a natural disaster, a mechanical, bizarre failure, then do we have control over that? if it's a terrorist or somebody that we can track down that we can block and prevent from doing this in the future, that makes us for comfortable. in addition, we want someone to blame. when there is a loss of 239 people, you better believe that we want to be able to point the finger and hold them accountable. if it's mother nature, you're not taking revenge, not blaming, holding accountable. both those things conspire to make us believe somebody is behind this. >> all of our hearts are with the families in the terrible situation of not knowing. let's listen to the reaction of one of the mothers.

>> i mean, the emotion is just over the top because they don't know. there's no ability to have any closure. >> one, it's the mystery. it's on and on, which allows, sadly, family members to imagine the worst. and believe it or not, in some ways, there's even worse than death. if you imagine they died in a horrible way or that they sustained terrible fear for some unknown length of time before they died. >> right. >> we tend to -- if you're a grieving family member, you put yourself in your family member's position. and i think part of the reason also that we are consumed and watching this over and over, to some degree, whether there's a trauma, the way that people grapple with trauma is go back and forth between it's the worst and no, there's hope. it's the way your brain acclimates to a horrible loss. and we replay trauma over and

over again. we're doing that. we keep watching and going, they could be alive. no, they're at the bottom of the -- back and forth. it's a way of slowly accepting this terrible loss. >> aviation, dr. gail, has become so safe. safer than ever in history, and yet people, so many people are still so afraid of flying. of every flight. so when something like this happens, it gets to a sort of primal fear in all of us. >> you know, when there is unknown and not 100%, which is basically everything, those people who tend to be more anxious, any anxious person, and a fear of flying, one of the most common phobias, that will be tripped up. you will say to yourself, well, now there's evidence that there's not 100% chance that i -- even though, obviously, if you think about this world, this is utterly bizarre. this is a smaller incidence than a lightning strike, or something else that's also very infrequent. if people would look at the

numbers. the likelihood of something happening in your car is -- >> far greater. >> on an escalator, calm yourself down. and i advise people to do that. but it's hard. >> but the rarity seems to -- if you're a fearful person, seems to say, see? it could happen. >> that's right. that's what the anxious brain does. it says, okay. this is not completely under my control and there's a possibility. and the more obsessive you are in your anxiety style, the more you -- unfortunately can lean toward that not 100% controllable. and go with that. and ruminate. >> that's me. that would be me. >> it's a lot of people who are very successful. >> there's this interesting psychological tension between wanting to know what happened and what's going on, and not wanting to get bad news. >> right. >> so i'm wondering what impact that has on, one, the grieving process, and two, on the sense of reaching some sense of

closure. >> closure is important, but you're absolutely right, that in the attempt to preserve your feeling state, you step back and take in what you want to. so there's something called motivated skepticism, which basically means that what you want to believe is the outcome. and you will filter all the information that comes in through that prism. so you might look at the images, and you want to believe they're alive and say, those clearly look like cargo to me. this clearly does not look like the plane to me because you don't want to believe that's what it is. so unfortunately, we'd like to believe that we can analyze information objectively, but we don't. our brains are not objective completely. it depends on what you want to the outcome to be . how you will react to the evidence. >> how do you cope when the mystery is never resolved ? many people have sadly experienced that.

>> that's right. it delays and complicated grieve. some people become depressed or path logically involved. the people are not dead. sometimes they believe that the person is gone and they are able to move on. depends on the individual's psyche. >> doctor, thank you for being here. this is such an important part of this conversation. stick us. we'll be right back. ♪ [ girl ] my mom, she makes underwater fans that are powered by the moon. ♪ she can print amazing things, right from her computer. [ whirring ] [ train whistle blows ] she makes trains that are friends with trees. ♪ my mom works at ge. ♪

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this special hour of the cycle, the mystery of flight 370. a mystery that could be closer to being solved. stay with us at msnbc for the latest developments. now with alex wagner starts right now. the sun is about to rise over the indian ocean, and search planes are about to take off on the hunt for a break through. this is thursday, march 20th, and this is "now." >> we are following some breaking news. >> new and credible information has come to light. >> there may be parts of the missing malaysia airplane. >> satellite images reveal two large pieces of potential debris. >> 1500 miles southwest of australia. >> possibly linked to malaysian airlines 370. >> it's the biggest lead we have right now. >> these two satellite images. >> this is a