deborah hersman, she chaired the national transportation safety board, now president of the national safety council. deborah deborah, thank you for joining us. even though the searchers are having great difficulty accessing this crash site, there are photos of the plane, debris. how much will investigators learn from the actual wreckage itself itself? >> they're going to learn the most when they recover the black boxes, the cvr and the svr. but they can learn a lot from the debris field, particularly if they find something on the flight data recorder that kind of guides them to a part of the aircraft, one of the four quadrants of the plane, the nose tail and two wings, if there were any control surface problems or control ability issue highydraulic or engine problems they'll want to look at that debris. but the black boxes are the best information they can get. >> i know they've found one, i'm not sure which. there are conflicting reports about that. what's most important if they only find one? >> you know, that's like trying to ask someone to pick between their children. they're both

. >> joining us now from chicago president and ceo of the national safety council deborah hersman a former. >> first question if i can, very simply we heard the cockpit voice recorder was said to be damaged but presumably usable and your time at the ntsb what success did you have when they refer to these voice recorders as being damaged? what can you listen for beyond just voices? >> you know it's no surprise they are saying the recorder is damaged. it has a case outside intended to protect the data, so given the catastrophic of this case that case is probably damaged. what's important is the damage inside that recorder is protected. so if they can pull information off of it they are likely to get not just the conversations between the crew and air track control, but any conversations in the cockpit, but more importantly in a situation like this if the crew is getting incapacitated, if they're sluring their words or if there is a struggle or anything that they hear that can give them clues, they can hear sounds ambient noise in the cockpit. they can also hear things that are occurring in t

deborah hersman is president of the national safety council here with simple tips to help keep your familythe sloechs. tip one is the kind of hill you sled on. >> absolutely. location location location and no obstructions at the bottom. >> reporter: right here no matter how far you go, even if you're an amazing shredder you can't hit anything out here. >> no trees, no fences and no cross traffic. >> reporter: here we go! for these tips i obviously need to show you. right now i'm making two big mistakes. can you guess what they are? >> this is a seated slide and you went down head sfoirs you didn't have any ability to steer. if you're going down headfirst you want a slide with some ability to steer or control it. >> reporter: handles in front. >> that's right. >> reporter: notice i almost hit that tree. couldn't steer away. can you guess mistake number two? >> you weren't wearing a helmet and we know that the number-one cause of serious injuries are head injuries and so a helmet is your best protection. >> reporter: but take another look at the videos. most kids don't. and neither did megan

richard quest and ntsb chairman deborah hersman. >> i know you've been looking at the data and you seetters not in the great scheme of things but the descent is nearer to ten minutes, than to eight minutes and if you look at the rate of descent it's not this sort of very even 3,000 feet a minute. sometimes it goes into 1500 then it goes up to nearly 4,000, so i think perhaps what we're seeing is that the descent was more erratic than first thought. it was slightly longer but it doesn't avoid the core issue, that we don't know what happened. this plane took off got to its cruise altitude stayed there for a couple of minutes. and then inexplicably began this ten-minute descent to the ground. >> deb, we've heard just unusual this is for a crash at mid flight. when you look at everything that's come out in the past 24 hours, what stands out to you? >> you know i think the thing that really stands out is that we've got experienced pilots we've got reliable aircraft and inexplicably we've got an aircraft that's descending towards mountainous terrain. that's not where anybody wants to be in a