. >> but colleen keller, you said it could be anything.n the last segment you said i hate to say it, don, but it could be anything. but at least it's something right now. and we've had nothing for so long. >> no, i agree. i'm thrilled that we're getting some detections. and i'm hoping one of them pans out. i mean, it could be that the crew of the ship that makes this detection needs to go straight to vegas and put their money down, because they're lucky men. but hey, if they get it, they get it. we -- the problem is, though, that we have two detections separated by 300 miles. one of them has to be wrong. both of them may be wrong. but they can't both be right. so it may be that this announcement coming out is just simply to explain the detections that have been made and explain that they're being investigated. >> go ahead, mike. >> i was just going to say, don, we know it's a pretty unsophisticated piece of equipment that detected this acoustic event. it was held on top of the ocean that was 4,500 meters deep. >> what do you mean, the micr

joining us now from new york, colleen keller, a senior analyst at metron, inc. defense contractor. how much time do you think was wasted in this search? >> i hate to call it wasted. i mean, it is possible that we were in the wrong area and it's really not fair to just come down on the malaysians. i mean, searches like this under high visibility often have problems like this. it was my understanding that the inmarsat analysis was done on the initiative of the analyst. they came forward and said, hey, we can do this extra stuff. so, you know, they might have been doing that in parallel while the other analysis was going on and just brought this to the malaysians' attention. this kind of information sharing or lack thereof is very typical of a big search under high scrutiny. i can name an example of many. >> the australian air chief was talking about some of the challenges. listen to this. >> we are working from a very uncertain starting point and i just wanted to reinforce that because it will take time. it's not something that's necessarily going to be resolved i

. >>> let's dig deeper with colleen keller, senior analyst with the consulting form metron. think the malaysia plane, colleen, could have landed intact? >> wolf, i'm very skeptical of that theory. if the airplane flew five or six hours on its own, i don't think somebody's going to be putting down that plane in the south indian ocean. i'm pretty sure it just ran out of fuel and went in. the question is, whether it was vertical or gentle descent like the air france jet. >> talk a little about what they call the try angulation that's necessary to really determine where the two black boxes are. they did hear pinging coming from two hours from one of the black boxes, they think, another 15 minutes or so from a second, but before they really know where they are, they want to trianulate, and that means hearing more pings, which they haven't heard over the last couple days, so explain what's going on here. >> sure, well, a lot of people are wondering, why don't we just quit and put the submarine down now, we're on top of it, but the answer is, the debris field could still be spread

colleen keller is joining us once again. senior analyst at metron inc, a defense contractor that helped find air france flight 447 back in 2009 after it crashed. talk a little bit, colleen, about the challenges that this bluefin-21 is facing right now under water. it's going around in some potentially pretty treacherous areas on the ocean floor. >> well, the biggest concern that we have, wolf, is the topography on the bottom is not very well known. i know they've said that it's rolling terrain, it's relatively smooth and silty. but until we get down there, we may be in for a big surprise. this could have a big impact on operations. likely they're going to float the bluefin higher above the surface than they'd like to because they're trying to be cautious. they don't want to run into anything. that's going to impact the effectiveness of the vehicle. won't be able to get the same resolution it could if it were floating lower to the surface and also will be slower going just because they have to worry about any obstructions they

jeff, colleen keller.e our conversations. >>> we'll have more on the breaking news just ahead includiinclude ing another major story we're following. mass stabbing at a high school in pennsylvania. we just learned of even more victims and what witnesses describe as a bloody rampage. >>> plus, we'll have more on those new pings that have searchers increasingly optimistic about finding flight 370. what can i do on a $7 a month android plan from tracfone? check the weather. borrow ted's wheelbarrow. post big tomato pics. buy a birdhouse for sparrows. download gardening apps. answer my wife's texts. search how to sculpt hedges into a t-rex. i can do all that with my android from tracfone for as low as $7 a month. [ male announcer ] unbeatable nationwide coverage, no contract. for a limited time, save $50 on the zte valet. now just 49.99. tracfone. do everything for less. [ chainsaw buzzing ] humans. sometimes, life trips us up. sometimes, we trip ourselves up. and although the mistakes may seem to just keep co

. >>> let's dig deeper right now with colleen keller, senior analyst with the scientific consulting firmor air france flight 447. are you very confident those four pings were, in fact, coming from at least one, if not both of those black boxes, colleen? >> well, i have to trust the experts, wolf. they've told us that they've analyzed the signals, they've shown them to the people that make the beacons, and they verified that it looks like the beacon signal. the one sonabuoy ping that we did pick up appears to have been discarded. i assume they did a signal analysis on it and determined it didn't meet the profile. i'm going to defer to the experts here, they've seen the data. >> who's going to decide the batteries on the black boxes are definitely dead? who's going to decide when those batteries are certainly dead? and that they're going to submerge that bluefin-21 to do a check on the bottom of the ocean there? >> well, i assume they'll zdefe to the folks on the ship. it's the navy and the folks from phoenix international that are actually running the towed pinger locaters. they probably

colleen keller, senior analyst with the scientific consulting firm metron.orked on the search for air france flight 447. and eric is joining us from sydney, he's an oceanographer with the climate change research center. talk a little bit about these waters. how challenging, eric, are they for searchers? >> well, they aren't very challenging, and it's just so deep. once you get down to the ocean floor, really we oceanographers, we've only done this for a little amount at a time and we haven't just had time to map everything. and most of our focus has been on the other oceans, not on the ocean here, the indian ocean off australia. >> colleen, you worked on the reofry, the black box from the air france disaster off the coast of brazil in the atlantic ocean. looking for a small box like that, a flight data recorder, a cockpit voice recorder, even if you have a general area, how difficult would it be in the indian ocean right now? >> well, you know, the depth compounds the problem. it just takes an awfully long time to drop the vehicle down there and then the sen

. >>> let's bring in richard quest along with colleen keller, a senior analyst at mettron, a defense the search of air france 447. colleen, you were brought in after they basically gave up. it still took two years to find the flight data recorders, cockpit voice recorders. you came in and came up with a new strategy and helped them. here's the question. if you were brought in to this current search, what would you do? >> well, wolf, we're just raring to go on this search. the first thing we have to do is look at all of the data that they have and estimate the uncertainty for the data. it's the radar and endurance cancellations and lay all of that out on the map and validate for them that they are looking in the right spot, existing right now. and then on top of that we would start accounting for their searching. every time they do a search and don't find something, that's very good information. and from my experience in the air france search investigation, the surface searches were not very well documented. we got pretty conflicting and vague information about where they looked. and

colleen keller is a senior analyst with a firm that helped with the search for flight from france.standable or unconscionable? >> it was a very large scale source. it was very daunting. there was a lot of conflicting information initially. they are a little bit disorganized. they finally find their groove. it is unfortunate that it seems to have happened a little bit late. >> those batteries and black boxes are going to start to die on saturday. there is just not much time. my next question is, the original area was determined on satellite and this one on radar and satellite modeling. was it a mistake to rely on the satellite images? >> initially, we use any circumstantial evidence we have, radar, satellite, intended flight path, to narrow down the area. the next step is to use drifting debris to narrow it down more, to get underwater search assets in to look for the underwater beacons and with cameras on the bottom of the ocean. >> still, three weeks. no debris related to the plane has been found. are you a little surprised abby that? >> no. i'm not surprised at all. our initial e

joining me now, colleen keller, with metron, a defense contractor who helped search for air france that in 2009 and gene raltson, an expert on the bluefin-21 being used right now. colleen, even if the first four searchers by the bluefin-21 emerge with nothing specific to show, no wreckage, it's still potentially beneficial as far as the overall search is concerned. explain why. >> well, wolf, it's what we've been calling negative information. when you search an area and you don't find something, you've learned something about that area and about the search area as a whole. you move on to new search areas but you always keep in your back pocket that you looked in that first place and didn't find anything, which increases the probability that you will find the target in the remained to be search areas. it's good to keep marking these things off. the key thing here is that you want to be spending your time in the highest probability areas. they've got several different locations where they have detected pings from the beacons, supposedly, and so they should have some idea of what is the be

. >> jeff densmore and colleen keller. thanks so much for sharing your expertise. >>> more on the flight, but up next house democratic leader nancy pelosi tells me if she agrees with the treatment of women in power. my exclusive is next. why relocating manufacturingpany to upstate new york? i tell people it's for the climate. the conditions in new york state are great for business. new york is ranked #2 in the nation for new private sector job creation. and now it's even better because they've introduced startup new york - dozens of tax-free zones where businesses pay no taxes for ten years. you'll get a warm welcome in the new new york. see if your business qualifies at startupny.com the annual company retreat. planned, as usual, by this guy. nature lover... people person. ♪ and you put up with it all... because he also booked you a room... at this place. planet earth's number one accomodation site: booking.com booking.yeah! >>> earlier on the "state of the union" we played the first part of my exclusive interview with na

. >> we are joined by colleen keller, her team helped find the wreckage of the air france jetliner inalso, joined by rob mcclel lond. he is a 30-year veteran and also helped with the search of the wreckage of air france flight 37. colleen, they moved the search zone yet again. gif given your expertise, your team helped map the area where it went down. are you confident in what's going on here? >> i am hopeful that they have some information we don't know that's guiding the movements of the search areas. it could be possible they have some other detection of the aircraft that it was a hint they should be looking elsewhere. it also is possible that they just haven't found anything in the existing search area and they are kind of moving around to maybe get lucky at this point. i hate to use those words. >> 26 days in, you are hoping not for luck. >> i think it is fascinating. in the absence of what we don't know, it seems like they are hoping for luck. that's a very precarious place to be this far. >> they seem to think they are in the right area but they are moving it around. it is kind

colleen keller volunteered in the search. >> before they could really pursue the evidence, they wereistracted by another piece of evidence that popped up which was a visual sighting out in the desert. that was tempting because whenever somebody says they see a plane people put credence in that. >> reporter: that came from a ranch hand in the area who tells authorities the plane flew over him while he was standing on his porch, 15 miles from where fossett took off. he said the plane was flying pretty low, just about 1,000 feet. the tip changes everything. >> it was terribly distracting. they never went back and looked at the previous evidence they had. they focused everything on the few new piece. >> reporter: the search area suddenly shifts dramatically from the mountains, about 60 miles northeast to the desert. the search continues for months. still no sign of steve fossett or his plane. that is until a hiker finds some of fossett's personal belongings. it is now october of 2008. more than a year after he disappeared. >> i came across the i.d. card and other cards. and the -- and $1

. >> joining us is hank whitmore and underwater search expert colleen keller. let me go first to you, hank. the new information tonight about the words coming out of that cockpit. i don't know, is it profoundly different although i think there is probably a lot of frustrations on everybody's part that the malaysian government led us to believe it was one set of words and now it's something different and we were told it was the co-by hot who uttered them and now we don't know who resulterred them. make any difference at all in this investigation? >> i don't think there is any substantive difference in the way the words are used. the only thing that seems to make a difference is the fact that they don't have -- there is a changes in the words. and it seems like if the tape said one thing, that's what it would say. it sounds like a substitution or a taper a tape that was cut off. and they discovered the tail end of it it's hard to understand what the significance could be. >> the one other thing i don't quite understand about it is that 1:19 a.m. is when we were t

. >> let's go to colleen keller, senior analyst of metron, inc.he air france tragedy. >> i know the detections have been occurring at the frequency for the black box frequency. it's a very unique frequency so they is to take them seriously. both ships were separated by 300 miles and they both heard something that could be the ping per pinger. it can't be both of them. >> i don't mean to parse words, though, but you say eight very unique ping, this 37.5 emission. is it an exclusively unique ping to a black box? >> it manufactured to ping at that frequency so that nothing else sounds like that and operates at that frequency. that said, can you get things like harmonics or other transitory sounds that might pass through that frequency that probably don't sound like that ping or look like it if you look at it on a spectrum analyzer, you can look at other properties of the signal that are very unique to the box. unfortunately from what i gather, the chinese did not record the signal that they got so they can't look at the properties of the signal to ve

colleen keller is here with me. test a former operation research analyst for the u.s. navy.ational effort, assets and countries that have come to play. we have ten military planes working today, nine ships, and seven countries coordinating. it does make you wonder how do you make it all work, how do you cover such a vast search area effecti effectively. >> you use the ships to stay a in general area. >> they more cover the whole area and the ships just stay in the zone that they think they're -- best guesstimate they have. >> the ships are there to pick up wreckage. they don't have a very big scan area. but the aircraft can cover vast areas and they move quickly. and in terms of the aircraft, they try to consider how fast the aircraft go and how long they can stay on station and what sensors they use. maybe a slower aircraft, they might put in the area closer to port so it doesn't have to go out so far, and maybe the ones that can move faster can cover more ground in the farther area. >> when you look at all of the assets and countries putting all this effort in, at what poi