david gallow co-led the air france flight 447 investigation.u know much about the under sea area in this new search area? i mean, he was saying it is about as deep as the old search area, which was certainly extraordinarily deep. do we know much about the topography there? >> well, there is a tremendous under water volcanic mountain range, called the southeast indian ridge. at the crest of it, it is about 2500 meters, off to the north it gets gradually deeper, about 4500 meters. that is kind of what i heard them say, beyond, so it will be similar to the old place. >> and david gallow, is it your understanding this is an area to look for the debris and do they believe it is in the same area or at least the area large enough that the crash site may also be in this area? >> that is kind of what i heard. and kind of what i -- then i didn't hear that. i have to say one thing, i have to wince a little bit, when they call it debris. that is the proper name for it. but undoubtedly there will be human remains mixed in a bit with it. so i am confused abo

. >> barbara, i want to ask you a question which david gallow put to us a few moments ago and it's an excellent question about it, and we talked to andy pasztor about it. but officials you were talking to believe the plane ended up in the ocean. how can they believe that if we were led to believe this plane went for some five hours, how are they saying it ended up in the water? are they saying that definitively? what leads them to that conclusion? >> let me start with, nothing is definitive in this story over the last week, as we know, other than this plane is missing. they have made some calculations based on this technical data, and what they believe the flight path could have been if they could have calculated it based on the radar returns, the so-called blips or pings, they believe the airplane was flying for five hours over the indian ocean. it was an airplane that matched the description and the engine type on this malaysian airlines flight. there was no other aircraft in the region at the time that matched that technical description, that matched the data, the blips coming off

joining us now is lon brown and david gallow, and bob bair. ron, these altitude changes that barbara starr has been following up, the altitude and course changes, does that require a human being to make those changes? >> most of the time it does, but i would like to take two seconds to say thank you for having me on your show and your crew. i really appreciate that you put a pilot that has experience in this area to represent the guys that are flying now and the guys that have flown in the past in asking our point of view. and the answer to your question is, most of the time if you see erratic changes in altitude and direction, someone is controlling the airplane. >> and when you say someone is controlling it, that has to be controlling it from on board, it's not something that can be done by remote somewhere else that somebody can hack into a system or something like that? >> well, that sounds a little hollywood to me -- >> that's why i'm asking. >> yeah, that's -- you know, hollywood is great at entertaining us, but the real fact is, common

and i want to bring in david gallow who was closely involved in spearheading the investigation, the recoverynce flight 447. and david, it is one thing to say from a nice studio that it is moderate conditions, poor visibility. what is it like out on the water when you're actually searching through aircraft or in a submersible, or on a ship, dealing with these conditions, trying to operate in these conditions. >> oh, anderson, i was thinking about that. i have not had the plane experience, but certainly been on a ship more than once where the winds were howling and coming over the waves, being tossed this way and that way. it makes it really tough. the people out there are incredibly experienced at this kind of thing. they will do their best, it will slow them down, not detering them completely. >> and in addition, once you have found debris in the distance of water, explain how difficult that is. >> well, we have -- now that we have these pieces, if they are in fact from the aircraft, the trick, each one of them will have its own trajectory after the plane impacts the water, depending how muc

david gallow is an oceanographer frowho discovered the remains of air france flight 447 and he joins us from boston. it's good to have you on the show, and thank you. we heard so much about the search, where it was, first of all, it was located in one area, and now it may be spread to a larger area. and i heard people say that it's like a needle in the haystack, but how do you find the haystack? >> yeah, that's important. and normally the way you would do it is start with the evidence, which is typically the last known position derived from radar or transponder, and i thought that we had a last good known position, but apparently not. because you want to find the x on the sea surface where the plane hit the water, and then the trick is to find the bits of plane you find floating on the water, and that gives you the center of that haystack. in this case, it's a huge search area because you have no evidence, and in fact, there's no shred of evidence to say that the plane landed anywhere on the ocean. but in that room, in that command center, there have to be an awfuan awful lot of emot

also, david gallow. david, first of all, what do you make of these satellite images released by china? this is one piece of the puzzle. are they too big? some experts say they're too big. >> using by algebra, adding those numbers up, it's close to the full length of the plane. they do seem awfully large to me, and how did they miss them during the aerial search if they are that large? i am encouraged by the fact that they're close to the last known position. i can't stress how important that is. one of the lessons we learned from air france 447 is you should always look close to the last known position. air france wasn't far from that, and it was within that 20 kilometer circle. but if those pieces are that large, which is odd, how could they have been missed in the aerial search, unless they sank? >> the fact that they're so large, you're saying it's possible they're from a plane, it just raises questions why they were missed. but is it possible that large of a chunk of plane would be in tact? >> it woul

. >> reporter: david gallow helped track down flight 447 that debris was recovered 2.5 miles below the surface of the atlantic. >> there's no gps. there's no radio communication. there's no power we have to bring our own. lights don't go very far. >> reporter: it took a french nuclear sub $50 million and two years to find the air france jet. that was after finding wreckage just two days after it crashed. it could take weeks to get equipment to 1500 miles to this search area and find submerged wreckage. it could take months to recover. working in a needier logical boundary line between pockets of ecuatorial and and arctic air with violet attorneys. >> you have to deal with currents, visibility, got to deal with things like wind and weaves if the ocean acts up. >> reporter: the ocean floor where the possible debris was spotted is three miles deep. scott, that is a half mile deeper than the air france flight. >> pelley: thanks very much. from the depths of the ocean, barry peterson takes us high above the earth toe where the picture of the day was taken by commercial satellite. >> reporte

actually, as luck would have it i have just been told by my producer we have david gallow who is availabledavid, can you hear me? >> yes, i can. how are you? >> thank god. what serendipity you are on right now. >> well, my laptop isn't working but i was hoping to skype in. too many movies, probably. >> i tell you what, go right to what you said i heard you say that on anderson cooper's show last night that when you wept back to your old maps you discovered you were right on top of the wreckage. it doesn't bode well for lay people like me who hear that and think we don't have a chance. >> and i'm sorry to give you the hopeless feeling, but because, you know, on paper these things work, the pingers work, they're the right frequency, the people that design them know what they're talking about. you should be able to hear them a long way away. but in practice if they're in a valley, if there's a mountain, and there's plenty of those at the bottom of the sea, or if there's thermal layers in the ocean, the oceans can play a lot of games with sound. same way you can hide a submarine just beneath t

editor in chief of flying magazine and david gallow director of special projects at the institution that helped lead the effort to find air france 447. he joins us from newton massachusetts. the larger of the two objects is said to be seven 59 feet long. flight 370 disappeared on march 8. could a piece of a jetliner that big stay afloat for two weeks? >> absolutely it could. there are parts of the tail that contain a lot of different boo ant sections to it. and the outer wing panels on the triple 7 as well. especially because the plane would have been out of fuel it would have been very boo ant and water tight as well. it is very conceivable that it could. based on the size of it if it is part of the wreckage of flight 370 i would guess it is part of the wing panel. >> the investigation started in all sorts of ways. we saw the data buoys being put into the water. what kind of information could they give us? how useful will it be to find 370 if this debris does come from the plane? >> the big trick is you hear many days later, 12, 13, 14 days later to be able to backtrack the items. the b