i'm chris hayes, taking over at msnbc world headquarters in new york. we are, of course, following breaking news, multinational search for the egyptair flight that disappeared over the mediterranean on its way from paris to cairo. just before the sun went down over there about three hours ago, the airlines said wreckage was found but the associated press says a greek official is disputing that claim. on top of that, u.s. intelligence says there are, quote, strong indication there's was an explosion of the 76 passengers and crew on board, state department says there are no indications any of them were u.s. citizens. but u.s. navy says, one of its surveillance aircraft is helping out at the request of the greek government. families are waiting for news on an exact cause. we can't conclude with certainty this was an intentional ability.

that said, egypt's aviation minister says a terror attack is more likely than mechanical failure. the weather was good, and the crew was experiences. why do the plane swerve sharply before disappearing from radar a half hour before it was expected to land? kerry, what are we learning? >> we're now about 19 1/2 hours into the notification that this plane disappeared from radar. we have a general idea we believe where the plane went down, as near the karpathos island. you can see on the map here, the area, 173 miles from the coast in egypt. it was heading in that direction when it went off radar. one of the things they're using to help find more information about if there is indeed debris down there, with the u.s. navy. a p3 owe ryan, an old aircraft but amazing technology, one of the things that this plane can do is it can drop buoys that

come out with a parachute and land on water, and can pick up indications if there is anything on the water. the sea state is important. the more waves there are, the harder it is for technology to work but it can pick up floating debris. there's a debate, if it's debris from the flight or whether debris. there's a lot of garbage that floats in the ocean. generally authorities get pieces of debris, if it's on a ship, take photographs and begin examining the photographs to see if there are serial numbers on pieces. that of course, the most help of what they can do. as we take a look in the area, there are ships that are converging in around the area where it's believed this debris has found. the arrival of ships will begin to pay off tomorrow because it's, of course, now nighttime when the light comes up, when we have the sun, ships in the area,

scattered around there, will get an opportunity to see if they can spot something that is indeed some sort of debris. now, if they can find this area, the key is, of course, then finding what's called the black box. i'll pick this up here for you. it's orange, but it's called the black box. this is a flight data recorder, and it also records communications. now, not just the communications of the pilot or the co-pilot talking initially to the greek authorities because we know they have that and didn't talk afterwards when picked up by air traffic control with the egyptian authorities but this picks up conversations and sounds. if there's a sound of a problem in the cockpit it will pick up and conversations between the pilot and co-pilot. finding this would be key. the difficulty, of course, finding it in the ocean. a vast ocean. when we take a look at depths that we're looking at in this area, talking about a mile to two miles down.

so, chris, it is difficult. but, i want to point out that it was in 2009 when air france 447 went down off the coast of brazil. it seemed impossible that anybody would ever find something like this in the ocean. but in 2011, a team from the woods oceanic institute found this. right now, though, what this thing is doing, if it's working properly, it's pinging, making a sound. designed to be found with a pinging sound. so, as long as the battery lasts, and as long as that pinging sound is going out, there's the possibility that the authorities can get to the area with those rovs, remotely operated vehicles that go down into the water and look for this. back one more time to take a look at communications so everybody understands how this all went down. it was 8:30 p.m. when they were in communication. talking to the greek authorities. then, at 8:40, they disappeared

from the radar and then at 8:50, the attempts to reach the flight were unsuccessful and that's when the authorities realized, there's a problem here, chris. >> kerry sanders, thank you. bill neely in cairo. bill, the egyptian authorities have been quite tight-lipped about all of this so far. what are you hearing there? >> reporter: yes, chris, whatever way you look at it, this is an egyptian tragedy, an egyptian plane, most of the dead are egyptian, and egypt will lead the investigation. actually, we've just heard within last hour, that the french air accident investigation branch, the main investigative body, is sending three investigators here to cairo. also one person from airbus, the manufacturers of the plane that went down. but egypt will lead the investigation as it did with the metrojet crash in october of last year. the egyptian prime minister said today, it was too early to rule

out any explanation but he did specifically say, including a terrorist attack. his aviation minister here at the airport was much more forthcoming. he said it was much more likely that this plane crashed as a result of terrorist activity than of mechanical failure. he didn't give or provide any evidence for that, but obviously, chris, you know, egypt has a history here, it is specifically targeted by isis in the sinai peninsula, that is the group that brought down the metro liner last year. every week egyptian security forces, tourist sites, places in egypt, are targeted by isis. in the last month they issued ten videos specifically making threats against egypt. so it is very much an egyptian problem. the president met his national security cabinet today to

discuss this because if it's mechanical, if it's terrorism, the egyptian economy will suffer, the egyptian image in the world will suffer. they came under great criticism for their reaction, if you like, and investigative clarity in the metrojet crash last october. it was seen that they weren't giving information. they innist sisisted it was an t information when russian government sources and investigators said it was an explosion. waiting for news from cairo carefully but that news could as easily come from the french investigator whose are arriving here today. chris? >> bill neely in cairo, thank you. greg feith, a former ntsb investigator, former senior crash investigator. greg, we've got basically ten minutes between the last time that the pilots are talking to greek air traffic controls as

they enter into greek airspace until it disappears from radar. what can we make of that, if anything, and is there any conclusions to draw in the absence of physical evidence? >> chris, it's hard to draw any kind of conclusion in that last ten minutes without really having the two key elements, one, the wreckage, two, one or both of the black boxes, the cockpit voice recorder, flight data recorder. there's a lot of evidence apparently in the radar data, whether it's from the commercial side or the civilian side of the radar data, or the military side, because it's apparent that the military, at least the minister of the greek military who said that this aircraft descended at a very high rate of speed, went down to 15,000 feet, made some turns, both left and right. they've got some pretty good fidelity in the radar data they're looking at. they may be using other elements

from other radar sites. so, there is some good information to start to put the story line together. we just don't know why that airplane went into a descent right now. we do have some ideas, especially now with the u.s. saying that they have some evidence of or high likelihood of an explosion. but we don't flow if that's a mechanical explosion or a bomb, if you will, on the airplane. >> let me ask you this, greg, bill referred to the fact there was quite a bit of controversy over the investigation to the metro liner plane in october that was in sharm el sheikh about lack of transparency, about investigative accuracy. who is going to run this investigation right now? how will that be managed? >> typically, right now, it will be the egyptians. it was the flag carrier of egypt that crashed in their territorial waters in their airspace. so they'll be the lead investigative authority. they may invite the greeks to

assist, they'll definitely invite the bea, which is the french equivalent of the ntsb and have the dgac, french equivalent of our faa and of course, representatives from airbus. the engines on this plane were built in the u.s. they may or may not invite the national transportation safety board and the faa. it all defends on what they start to find in the investigation. but it's a multinational investigation. just like metrojet was to an extent with the russians and then they used some of our assets in the fbi and things like that. there's going to be a lot of people working on this from various countries, providing a subject matter level of expertise to try to determine what caused or what brought this aircraft down. >> all right. greg, thank you. joining me, evan kohlmann, nbc news terrorism analyst. we have an egyptian official saying likelihood of terrorism

but we should also note that this may be partly due to the sort of blame incentives that play back during sharm el sheikh crash, extremely retie sent to identify terrorism and never evenly definitively said that it is. and in this case, obviously, this plane originates from de gaulle in terms who would be responsible from the security perspective, were it to be terrorism, that would be much more on french authorities than the egyptian ones. >> yeah, it would stand to reason the egyptians would have less to deny here. on the other hand, it really is hard to imagine why anyone would get behind security at the de gaulle airport with intent to strike at the enemies of isis and would go -- or al qaeda or whatever -- go after egyptian airliner instead of western airliner. there's dozens of flights that leave directly from de gaulle every day to the united states. that part doesn't seem to make a lot of sense. then the other issue that there have about been no claims of

responsibility. not a single claim of responsibility from isis, al qaeda, none of the groups. in fact, we've just seen isis put out their evening bulletin of the latest news items and no mention of the egyptian airliner. so it's curious, we now know these folks definitely have had means to communicate. they've sent out news items of the day. this was not among them. and i'm not sure that we're going see anything else from isis or from any other group, frankly, at this point, given it's already late at night in the middle east. so it's a bit of a question mark here. it only took isis about, what, ten hours to claim credit for the downing of the russian airliner in sinai. generally speaking, they only take about 10 to 12 hours to claim credit for major international acts of terrorism. it's been a lot more than 12 hours now. does that mean it wasn't terrorism? no, it's not. does it mean it definitively wasn't isis? we don't flow that either.

>> interesting. >> we have to be cautious saying this is terrorism. i don't think we know that for sure. >> that's a good point. go back to the first point, the first thing that struck me about this, was if you are able to penetrate security at charles de gaulle, airline with 66 passengers heading to egypt, seems like, in some ways, the least spectacular target you could come up with if you've already managed to pull off what i would imagine is extremely difficult penetration of charles de gaulle airport security. >> yeah, i mean, 15 of the 56 passengers on this flight were french. who in their right mind would go after this as a target to strike at france? it doesn't make sense. flight only carried 56 people. this was a commuter flight. you know, there are major international flights that leave every single hour out of de gaulle. why would you go after this one? it doesn't make a lot of sense.

it doesn't fit in with the theory isis is issuing threats to france and this is the culmination of that. we don't know enough here to say this is terrorism, it's isis, it's al qaeda, you know, explosive decompression, it's very rare that that would happen in a brand-new airbus flying at 30,000 feet. it's very rare. but it's also rare an act of terrorism would occur targeting a major international airliner. that's very, very rare. and you know, in the case of sharm el sheikh in sinai, we knew the airport had lousy security, we knew it was easy to sneak through the airport security, we knew a possibility of an insider there. the idea of insider at charles de gaulle, that's a lot more complex for isis to pull off. now, there are other scenarios possibly in play here, but again, these are questions we need to resolve and i'm afraid we're going to only be able to resolve them when we see wreckage and the black box. >> great points all. evan kohlmann, appreciate it? we'll head out to the greek island where any wreckage

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a want to express my condolences to egypt and to all other countries impacted by the disappearance earlier this morning of the egypt air flight over the mediterranean. the united states is providing assistance in the search effort, and relevant authorities are doing everything they can to try to find out what the facts are of what happened today. >> secretary of state john kerry on missing egyptair flight 8047 the associated press saying greek official disputing

egyptair's claims that debris from the aircraft has been discovered in the mediterranean. nbc has not yet confirmed this report. security highened at l.a.x. for the safety and security of passengers and visitors. do you have any more clarity on what seems to be a kind of factual dispute between egypt air authorities and greek authorities? >> well, chris, as you can see, the situation, instead of getting clearer, while time passes, it's getting even more complicated and complex as the hours go by. well now, earlier on today, the defense minister here in greece confirmed the debris found were parts of the plane. egyptian -- egyptair and the foreign ministry in egypt said a few hours later that they confirmed those were the debris part of the plane and then now, the head of the air accident investigation and aviation

safety is disputing that, saying debris is not part of the plane. a lot of contradicting reports, that doesn't make it easier for either investigators or all of us, of course, to understand what's really going on there in that investigation. what we know, of course, is that the search and recovery operation, which is not a search and rescue operation anymore, it seems, or at least seems some time a couple of hours ago, when it was confirmed that the debris was part of the plane, well, that's not easy, of course, for investigators because they are look for needle in the haystack there. they are looking over why they are in the mediterranean sea where they think the plane may have downed. they have plunged into the mediterranean sea. we were told by a number of authorities, both in greece and in egypt, that they found at least some of the pieces in that leading investigators to at least an area where to look for the wreckage of the plane. and now we're being told that

that's not the case. as you can see, this can only be -- this can only become clearer tomorrow, when the search and rescue or a search and recovery operation will resume, crisp. >> claudio, thank you very much for that. joining us brighton in the uk, tony cable, aircraft crash investigator. we saw, back when mh-370 went missing, the sheer difficulty of covering the size of terrain and sea that had to be covered in that investigation. we're dealing with a much more constrained area. are you confident we will get the wreckage in fairly short order? >> i will not put a time scale on it. i think, yes, it will be recovered. i mean, there's a fairly good official position from the sound of it from the radar data, which i understand terminates at

10,000 feet altitude. so, the spread of where the aircraft might have gone from there is not going to be terribly great. and that is a big, big difference from mh-370. having said that, no marine recovery tends to be very quick. and the fact is that the water depths, the visibility, amount of current and very particularly the type of sea bait, whether it's one extreme, nice flat plain or rocky and mountainous and that makes a very big difference with the kit that's available for looking for aircraft wreckage on the seabed. >> given the facts that we know, are there -- does it match fact patterns of other crashes that you're familiar with? i know when 370 went missing there was a lot of focus on the air france flight that went down

in the pacific -- in the atlantic ocean east of brazil. is there a fact pattern this is reminiscent of you for as you puzzle through this with the rest of us? >> i know the circumstances of the accident, i mean the thing that's reminiscent and it's been raised by a number of accidents in recent years, is the concept that the flight data report recorder and the cockpit voice recorder carry the data on the aircraft rather than transmitting it to a ground station on a routine or emergency basis. what it means, obviously, you have to find the wreckage and recover the recorders, very often in order to get a good evidence on what caused the accident. >> are you -- what is your reaction to the fact that this flight originated from charles de gaulle? >> i don't think you can put any

significance on those sort of factors, personally. i mean, basically, you need the evidence and it's going to be, as in any investigation, it's going to be very slim. >> right. >> in the early days, probably. >> tony cable, aircraft crash investigator. i think you cut out for a second. thank you for your time. after the break, we'll head out to paris where the flight originated. fall in love with a new daily fiber. new mirafiber from the makers of miralax.

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we're back with breaking news coverage of the egyptair flight crash. joining me from paris, where the plane took off from, laura haim, white house correspondent. what are the french authorities focusing on from their end of the investigation, particularly charles de gaulle airport and the plane itself? >> yes, absolutely investigators are looking very closely at the

plane and where the plane stopped before it come to paris. it's interesting because the plane was on the rotation and before to come to paris, the plane went to tunisia and stopped in tunisia and then the plane went to eritrea and then the plane spent a few hours in eritrea, and then the plane came to paris, before go to egypt. the investigator in france are looking at three cities to see if some people have access to the plane, to put something aboard, that's the first thing. the second thing investigators are looking at the past of the pilots, they're seeing that the pilots are well-trained but really looking at history because they're saying it might have been a suicide mission. and then the third thing is they're looking very precisely at the passengers' list to see

where the passengers inside the plane. they're looking at saudi citizen and also looking at the three security guards aboard the plane. they really want to understand why aboard this specific plane there were three safety guards. >> laura haim in paris, thank you very much for that. joined by kevin russo, who spent nearly two decades as a pilot for american airlines. when you hear this scenario, what do you think? >> sounds like, first of all, the pilots, doing any type of maneuver or trying to get out of somewhere like he said he did, either he's seeing something or something catastrophic is happening to the airplane. and i they from listening to some of the news they're talking about possible terrorist attack or maybe a bomb on board. but -- >> or possibly mechanical precipitating explosion. >> mechanical, yeah, would occur probably before the explosion or the airplane breaking up. a number of items that could

cause all of that. >> when you're -- take us through the kind of handshake process here in terms of when you enter airspace you talk to the air traffic controller in that new airspace, correct? >> absolutely. from the time you leave france to the time you arrive in cairo, you may be talking to 10, 15 different controllers from different countries. but you have a flight plan. that flight plan allows you to go through the countries and into their airspaces. >> the protocol when you enter airspace you affirmatively collect in with them? >> absolutely. they'll send you from one airspace and might tell you to contact cairo approach and you contact cairo approach or cairo international. but you always have one controller passing you on to the next controller. >> and how long usually do you go between talking to air traffic towers? >> it all depends. you might have 10, 15 minutes sometimes, maybe talking to them every couple of minutes.

all depends if there's traffic they're trying to give to you or whether information and other times quiet for a good five, ten minutes. >> so, when you have a gap like we had here in terms of a plane, they talked for ten minutes we don't hear for another ten minutes, that's when the plane goes off the radar, how -- that ten-minute gap there, how anomalous is that? can happen in a normal course of things. >> absolutely. even over in the u.s., you can go 10, 15 minutes without talking to a controller and if something happens the pilot will notify the controller of an issue or emergency occurring on his plane. if something happens that's catastrophic, you may not be able to get a radio call off. >> how much training do commercial pilots get for dealing with some kind of mechanical failure in a flight, some sort of bomb going off, how routinely do you train for extremely unlikely but catastrophic scenarios.

>> expentensive. i go to school every six months corporate wise. every six months or every nine months, go through simulators to ground school to five-day process most of the time and you get three simulators four to five hours each day. and your procedures are all emergency procedures. >> training on stuff exactly like this? >> absolutely. going through all emergency procedures, everything you don't normally see on a normal flight. normally it's a nice, quiet day, go out, fly, land, that's it. but simulator you go through all of the emergencies, everything from catastrophic engine failures to fuselage breakup, decompression problems, electrical problems, fuel problems, loss of radio contact, anything that can happen on the airplane you do in a simulator. >> do you think that pilots internalize a sense of a threat when going through periods of time where there's been -- where airlines seem to be more the

target of folks, we have a few commercial airlines that have gone down recently, do you feel that as a pilot? >> i think the pilots know what can happen and they're ready for it and they know how to handle the issues, such as 9/11, after that we learned what the possibilities could and we set up the new program by having new cockpit doors, some of the pilots being armed. so we built on what occurred. for emergency procedures, such as catastrophic engine failures or other failures of the airplane, you know what to do. you go through the training, you practice in the training, you hope it never happens, but you know, there are incidents that it does happen and pilots bring the airplane home with no problem. >> kevin russo, thanks for your time. reaction from families arriving at paris airport where that flight originated. ♪

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if there's information we can provide in the future, we're happy to provide it, but this is still early in the investigation. the egyptians and the french are taking the lead on this and we'll be as supportive as we can be but we have nothing really at this point that leads us to any conclusions. >> pentagon press secretary there reiterating how much we still don't know in this now-multinational investigation. that includes the actual cause of egyptair's disappearance. airline says wreckage from the plane has been found. we have not confirmed that, and additionally the associated press is reporting greek officials are disputing that claim. u.s. intelligence officials say imagery of the area is inconclusive but does indicate some sort of explosion. that doesn't necessarily prove it was intentional act. a top egyptian official said it's more likely that the jet was taken down by a terror attack than technical problems. again, we have not confirmed that claim. nbc's keir simmons is in paris. some of the families of those on board are assembled there. >> reporter: yeah, that's right.

they've been assembling the a hotel near the airport here. we've watched as not just french officials but french government ministers arriving at the hotel. i think to meet with those family members, there have been complaints they haven't been getting enough information to meet with them. and ensure that they hear things before we do, that is exactly the right way to treat a situation like this. you don't want relatives of people who are on board complaining about the way the situation is being handled. that sends out a terrible, terrible message. some have traveled to cairo to be, i guess, closer to where the plane came down. it was, after all, around 30 minutes from landing in cairo. but we've also been hearing from the french foreign minister who on one side was talking about a kind of ad hoc collision searching for the debris, coalition of france, greece, of egypt, of the u.s., involved in trying to find where that plane is.

but also talked about the importance of being cautious, because they know that relatives are watching and listening. >> . >> reporter: so the french foreign minister, being cautious, that said, though, behind the scenes, chris, they are going to be really questioning what happened here, because if the evidence from u.s. intelligence officials based on the intelligence that they have really does lead to beyond just this impression that there may haven't been egg motion to signs there was a bomb on board the plane, the question

will be, how did it get there? did it get on board here at charles de gaulle? did it get on board at other airports and come here? jeff one of the scenarios involves a more sophisticated kind of terror attack than we have seen in recent years. in the past, back where al qaeda, particularly in the arabian peninsula was stronger, we did see attempts to use very, very complex bombs. but more recently, the isis brand, if you like, has been much more simple. it can't possibly have been simple if, just a note of caution, we don't know what caused this yet, we don't know if it was a bomb, but if it was, it will have to have been something, you assume, more complex than we have seen in other cases. >> all right. keir simmons in paris. thank you. let's bring in msnbc's cal perry, who is here. cal, what can you tell us? >> so, take a look at this. if we visualize it, we'll get a better idea of difficulty that the search and rescue operation, the search and recovery

operation, is having. we can chart out the rough plot here of where the plane went. we know it crossed over greece, came down here, headed to cairo. somewhere in here is where this search area is. and if you zoom in on it, and this will give us a better idea of the neighborhood, you get an idea of the mediterranean a humanitarian disaster of almost biblical proportions. refugees coming out of libya, out of egypt, refugees coming out of syria, coming this way. so this whole area is going to be a debris field which might explain why we're getting conflicting reports about the debris. is it debris from the plane? is it debris existing there beforehand? also, when you take a look at this, chris, you get an idea, again, of this area that we're talking about. there are so many conflicts happening in this area, which is why you have so many different navies, different militaries, so many different air forces in control of the mediterranean sea. one of the things that people hope is going to happen here is if civilian radar failed and lost track of this plane at some

point, maybe the military radar picked it up. the currents here in the mediterranean move this direction here and this direction here. so, if the debris is here, it's likely it's drifting here. they're going to have to regrid that search area. the other thing going on here, and this was true in 2010, in 2010 ethiopian airliner took off from beirut and crashed right here. took weeks, weeks, for them to find the plane and the reason why, forget this for a second, there are troughs like this in the mediterranean, okay. this is your sort of depth. in the case of the ethiopian airliner flight 4099 entire fuselage went into one of the troughs. so they were unable to ping it with a beacon and that was a serious problem. depending where the depth is, and the water is deepest where the search area is happening, that could be one of the problems, that depth right there. >> all right. learned a lot there. cal perry, thank you very.

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together, we're building a better california. it's too early to definitively say what may have caused this disaster. the investigation is under way and investigators will consider all of the potential factors that could have contributed to the crash. and, obviously, if there's an

opportunity for the united states government to support those efforts, then we will do that. and the president asked his team to keep him appraised of developments as they occur. >> that's the white house press secretary josh earnest commenting on egyptair flight 804 which disappeared inside egyptian airspace this morning. associated press reporting that a greek official is denying that debris from the aircraft was discovered in mediterranean as egyptair claimed earlier. security's been heightened at l.a.x., officials citing concern for passengers, airport workers and visitors. let's turn to captain john cox and ceo of safety operating systems and also with us, robert hager, retired aviation correspondent. mr. cox, let me start with you. what do we know about this plane? >> the a-320 in service since early 1980s. a flew it for six years, it's a

reliable, safe plane. it has a very good safety record. the -- i think that they'll certainly look carefully at the maintenance on this airplane but this is a proven work horse in the aviation fleet. >> bob, the fact that this initiated out of de gaulle, to me, is the detail that is the most flummoxing, evan kohlmann said earlier, sharm el sheikh, that airport, noted concerns about security at that airport. charles de gaulle, you imagine, probably one of the most secure airports in the entire world. >> reporter: but you've got to look back, too. i mean it came from cairo before, so that's something worth considering. and then it stopped a couple other problematic places prior to that, like in eritrea, tunisia, i think. but cairo would be a subject of intense interest for me, i think, since it was coming directly from there when making the turnaround at de gaulle.

when they look at planes on the turnaround, sometimes the turnarounds are pretty quick. explosive device could have been placed aboard in cairo and not discovered on the quick turnaround at de gaulle with some kind of timer aboard, it would have to be. >> mr. cox, have we learned anything since 370 about other possible causes of explosion midair in an airplane that perhaps we had not anticipated before or hadn't seen? do we have new information about what the range of possibilities can be? >> no, malaysia 370 remains a mystery. we don't know what happened to that airplane. we understand pretty well what the potential sources of ignition or explosion would be, be they structural, mechanical, or in fact, explosive device. and the investigators are going to look very carefully for the signature marks of any of those. in addition, they'll look to see if there's a potential maintenance problem or if there's a pilot action.

they're going to look carefully at the radar data, both civilian radar and the military radar that tracked the airplane. and they're going to assimilate all of these pieces of assimilal those pieces of data. that's their only job is to assimilate the evidence and data and then once they have it collected then they can begin to look at what could have caused it. right now it's all about getting the data. we heard that there's debris. that is the first step. that will lead to us the wreckage field. within the wreckage field are the recorders. from there the investigators can determine what occurred. >> bob, i can't tell if it's my perception or not that there have been a fair amount of commercial -- at least globally -- commercial air disasters. there was the 370, the other malaysian plane that was shot out of the air. there was the attack on that metro liner in sharm el sheikh.

where do you think we are right now in terms of general level of global air security? >> well, it's a little deceiving because those are very high-profile accidents the ones you're referring to in recent times and they have dominated news. if you look at the overall record it has been getting safer every year. there's better equipment, better training of pilots. the long range trend is for safety and more reliable travel. but you got this thing added to the mix, the terrorism which is so unsettling in recent years. i want to say too we're less than 24 hours into this but we already have some pretty good slivers of information. how it came down after a smooth flight. then there was a suggestion there was an explosion from the intelligence information and what may or may not be the first pieces of wreckage not a bad start for getting things under way. >> what's the significance of

the rapid descent there? >> well, it means that something very sudden and very unexpected happened and so when you go over all the things that could have happened, a bomb makes the most sense for a fall like that. but it could have been a break up in flight or an explosion or for some other reason like the twa airplane that had the explosion in the fuel tank. bomb is the most -- you think of that first. >> john cox, robert, thank you both. for how this crash is impacting wall street here's hampton pearson. >> the dow lost 91 points. s&p down by 7. nasdaq dropping by 26 points. that's it from cnbc first in business worldwide. i'm terrible at golf.

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state department says no americans were on board egyptair flight 804 but as a precaution as investigators work to determine if this was a work of terror some airports are increasing security here at home. we go to chicago's o'hare airport. blake, are passengers there notably affected in anyway? >> reporter: well i've been talking to passengers as they have been arriving. we're at the international terminal. it's a mixed bag as far as how they are feeling about this. some say they are not worried just the risk you take when you fly. others are concerned. take a listen. >> very nervous. very nervous. i'm hoping the security is real good. we'll have long security lines

so hopefully they are doing their job. >> do you have faith in airport security? >> i don't know. i mean that plane was going from paris and they are supposed to have real tight security. so if it was a terrorist attack it's nerve-racking. >> i mean how many are flying today and one out of that many. nothing. >> we both have flown enough that flying is still very safe and so i'm not worried. i'm just more concerned about the lines right now. >> reporter: as one man from brazil who was just arriving here told us earlier today if you're worried about things like this he wouldn't fly. chris? >> all right. any sense that the lines there, o'hare has had tremendous problems with long security lines, that's been the case. all chicago airports and across the country. right now the part of the airport, your end doesn't look too bad. are things still pretty packed

there? >> reporter: right. we can show you the line over here. it's kind of a slow time of day here at the international terminal. that's where the security line would be. the lines are okay right now. we did speak with tsa. they have not upgraded any of their security measures here but they want to know exactly what happened with that egyptair flight before they make any changes to the screening procedures. >> that probably makes sense. unknown whether terrorism is the cause of this plane's disappearance. we're learning more how isis operates from somebody who spent five months with the group. new york city man is revealing the details. foreign correspondent richard engel talked with a man known only as mo. here's what he learned. >> you thought that this was going be an islamic utopia. >> yes. >> what was it like when you got there? >> distopia.

april sorts of crazy. >> did you see evidence of the gore that we see in isis propaganda? >> at one point towards the end, as things were getting more and more serious i did see severed heads placed on spiked poles. and that was towards the end as things were getting more unstable for me emotionally. >> how did that make you feel? >> just keep my head down because it's just -- my whole point is to be unemotional and not risk making a mistake. >> do you regret that you had gone there? >> more than anything. it's obviously the worst decision i've ever made in my life. >> watch "nbc nightly news" at 6:30 p.m. eastern for more of this interview and tune into on assignment for an in depth look at mo's journey. that does it for this hour. i'm chris hayes.

i'll see you again tonight at 8:00 p.m. on all in. mtp daily starts now. good evening and welcome to of course a special edition of mtp daily. we're following the latest on egyptair ms-804. let's reset things. last night the plane took off from paris for a three and a hour flight to cairo. this was an airbus that never made it. u.s. intelligence officials say some data suggests there was an explosion that may have brought down the plane carrying 66 people. egyptian officials say it was more likely the jet was downed by a terror attack than by any sort of mechanical or technical problem. now the u.s. navy has surveillance planes in the air as well. there's a regional presence to help the search and recovery effort, which, of course, is being led by the egyptian and