what happens through hypoxia. >> what happens is the blood starts to become deoxygenated. you get carbon dioxide buildup, and unless you get more oxygen in, you start getting tingling -- everybody experiences differently. common denominators are tinge nlg the outer extremities, flushness, cold feeling. if that continues, you pass hypoxia and go into true oxygen starvation, you just go to sleep. >> it's not painful. you just become a little bit incoherent and it progresses to sleep. >> the 45,000 feet, that's an estimate. once you get further away from radar you have what's called bean width distortion. that could come up with a very false reading. if they wanted to -- if whoever did this, and we're making an assumption here that they wanted to depressurize the dock pick, at 35,000 feet, if whoever was running the airplane went on separate oxygen system and depressurized the cabin, the people in the cabin would have 15, 10 seconds of useful consciousness. you don't have to go to 45,000 feet. 35 would have done the job. >> captain, fascinating insights. thank you. >> you bet

and what if it was that payne stewart scenario where effectively everybody on board just went into hypoxiand the plane kept running until it went out of gas? now earn two times the points on dining out with no annual fee. go to citi.com/thankyoucards. >>> back with the mystery of flight 370 with my colleague richard quest who is our aviation expert with cnn. we were speaking with albert johnson in chicago, a retired pilot, 42 years of experience in the cockpit, the last 15 of them in the exact model we're talking about, the boeing 777 model 200. same plane we're looking for at this point. if i can start with you, captain johnson, the critical question many have been wondering at this point, is it possible a payne stewart scenario could have played out here? and i say that -- and for those who may not remember, in 1999 payne stewart was flying in a lear jet and effectively there was decompression and everyone on board the plane, pilots included, sufrled severe hypoxia and just passed out and froze and that plane kept flying. >> ashleigh, the situation in the malaysian incident does not have

>> a mechanical problem, either hypoxia, a loss of steering capability like japan airlines.ation like stewart, where the pilots are no longer flying if you're just all over the place. but the second part of the news that came out today that rang so true it was frightening. and that is that the plane was up and down all over the place. on flight 93, the hijackers deliberately did that. they did that to throw the passengers off. remember they were trying to break into the cockpit. we did video recreations of the flight. in that case they would take the nose up, try to throw them to the back, and try to throw them off balance and rock it back and force. that is the only thing that struck me like terrorism. everything else is basically six or seven pings. and pings don't tell me terrorists. pings say something is wrong if that is all you have. but there is like i said -- >> what about the transponder being turned off? that is something the pilot can do manually? >> no, we don't know if the transponder was turned off. we know we got no more signals from the transponder. the only

would the autopilot, once if everyone on board is not conscious including the pilots, hypoxia, woulde autopilot revert back to the original destination? >> it could be anybody's guess. you go with my fire scenario or mile's scenario with hypoxia, it depends upon how degraded the autopilot system was. if it managed to maintain altitude and course, whatever was put into the plane management computer, whether it's kuala lumpur or some other alternate airport, the fmc is programmed to go to that destination. if it has nothing else to go to, it'll maintain a heading. and continue on that heading. >> that's the question. so if they were -- so were they not on autopilot at that point? so at this point, if something like this happened, which this -- which the information we're gleaning from this, as if that something happened in the cockpit. they were trying to get lower in order to take care of it. to find another airport or to get to air where -- to a spot where they could clear the air, so to speak, in the airplane. so then the question is, they're not on autopilot at that point. correct?

they'd start their turn back to kuala lumpur and their emergency procedure without any oxygen so hypoxiaould take over fairly quickly and they would both become incapacitated. i mean, that's -- you know, that's a possible outcome here. >> very, very quickly. if we don't get the data recorders, the so-called black boxes, there l this essentially remain a mystery? >> i suspect it probably will. i'm not an expert on finding sunken black boxes but it seems an awesome task after the air france 447 took two years and they knew exactly where that aircraft was and in this case they don't. so they really must try and locate those black boxes whilst there's some battery life on the flight deck recorder. it's only got a range of about 10 kilometers so you've got to literally be on top of it to find it and the faster they get throughout the better. >> what about 13 days left before those batteries completely run down. alistair, good speaking with you. we appreciate your insights. we know you have experience not just flying planes but also investigating this kind of stuff too. thank you for being wit

include hypoxia and as we said, harris, without the plan and hard evidence it is speculative. we happen that the u.s. military pa, it is taken off for a sorting. >> they had taken it out of theaur. that is expensive and high equipped aircraft. and doug, thank you very much. you heard me talking about the weather and typhoon. they have those storms. and it is a dangerous section for the ocean known for rough seas anyway. janice, i am reading 40 or 50 foot waves out there. >> sure, this area is hard to get to as the reporters mentioned with the winds and waves and getting in the fall and winter months in the region and more storm systems and they are both of the areas of possible debris. yellow from last week and red where we saw the images on sidle early this morning. and it is very strong currents and continuous movement inryfñ water. it is a curvature, due to the earth's rotation. and the wind and temperature and the tides and the pull of the moon. and this is where we have prevailing ocean currents and the counter clock wise currents. and you would think that the general dir

>> they could have taken the aircraft sufficiently high the people would suffer hypoxia and be dead.transportation safety board is interested one thing, that is what, not why. tonight there are discussions on why. and what we first have to find is the location. so leading towards finding that location it's been down now 4 or 5 days already. it is where it is. what we have to do is find it. once we find it, if we can get the recorders we'll learn what and learning what, we'll be able the rest to fly. >> how credible do you believe this plane suffered a mechanical failure, period? >> i initially thought that, with the dribbling out of evidence but now i don't think that is true. i think the aircraft lasted beyond the point of which the transponders went off. >> what do you -- how closely as an ntsb guy would be looking at pilots and people on board? do we automatically go to pilots? >> yes the reason is not to indict them. but to find out how they're leading the aircraft to where we can find it because key here is still to find that wreckage whenever it is. >> you believe the crew is s

officials say all on board died of hypoxia, the lack of oxygen at the high altitude. could flight 370 have suffered a similar fate? joining us former navy s.e.a.l. and federal air marshal. one major difference is the helios pilots reported a problem before it really got into trouble. we didn't heat anything from the pilots on flight 370. >> that's exactly one of the most telling things. i've been going back and looking at with all this talk about the debris fields and things i've been analyzing the initials happenings that went on right before the plane started doing its erratic movements. it just appears that there may be some type of -- either a pilot takeover or other people coming in, because you have that relationship between the pilot and the first officer. this first officer is new, he comes in and he could have been under stress, which would explain the last words that he said weren't typical of the way you sign off. that would be completely different than what you're talking about here with this other airline that crashed in greece. >> there's also -- and i h

a chartered jet carrying payne stewart lost pressure and the people on board suffered from hypoxia and plane flew for more than four hours and crashed in south dakota. whether the answer is ever known on flight 370 depends on what debris gets recovered. dials and gauges and conditions of passengers' remains. >> we can find out whether the engines were operating at the time, whether it was fuel starvation. >> one thing that might help solve the mystery is if malaysian officials ever get enough information to rule the disappearance of the plane an accident. such a conclusion would likely affect any potential litigation on behalf of the passengers and that likely in turn would lead to a closer look at the plane's maintenance and inspection records. >> and if there was a problem with that 777, they've got to figure out what it was there. are 1100 777 flying around the world. if there's a problem, they've got to find out what it is. joe johns, thanks very much. >>> just ahead, violent weather caused pressure search hours. the search has resumed. a plane has just taken off from perth, austra

so in other words hypoxia is out there. >> so in other words an explosion. >> no, depressurization coulde a subtleing compasstation because the crew did not activate the cabin ceiling, in other words the aircraft rose and the cabin rose with the aircraft. remember payne, the golfer? that's what happened to him. >> in a private class. you are saying, came, you are saying terror? >> my gut feeling right now is it is terror. of course. >>. >> we don't know yet. >> there could be a one in a million chance something else. >> in a long show. something bad happened. >> jim hall, former ntsb safety board chairman, you are on the phone there thank you so much. you got the ntsb fellows headed there, along with the fbi, how unusual is it for the fbi to go with the ntsb for an accident investigation? >>. >> it's not unusual at all. in fact, it's rather common sense, since twa and zoents, but, no now one thing we do know is that until we found the recorders, we really won't know whether this is a criminal investigation or whether it was a mechanic am or malfunction of the aircraft. >> how rare is it

and joe said if any bodies are recovered would it be able to tell if they died from hypoxia or not?yes, they. can and having read numerous reports, most notably the crash of 447, the air france to paris, it disturbing to read it. but the pathologists and postmortems can determine with a great degree of accuracy, the cause of death. i'm not going into many more details but suffice it to say there have been times whether they have been able to determine how the person dies. >> we should be careful talking about the families. the families are distraught and watching this. it is a possibility. >> there is no question at all they will be able to determine that, god forbid that is the eventuality. >> what are there are survivors from this flight? the woman i'm about to talk to is a soul survivor of an crash in the '90s. she survived on nothing but rain water until she was found. she talks about her story next. ♪ ♪ ♪ [ female announcer ] with five perfectly sweetened whole grains... you can't help but see the good. take this simple test. press your tongue against it, like this. it moves! d

do you somehow depressurize the cockpit and let them go unconscious for hypoxia?re speculation at this point. at this point, we know where the plane was at certain times and have to build everything from that. >> let's talk about the timeline here. about when the akars system was turned off, when the transponder was turned off. just before vietnamese airspace. and then when it turns and then say after all of these incidents had occurred, that's when it's all right, good night. >> yes. well, to me, it seems very clear, again, i don't know if it's the investigative thing or component of my background. with all these red flags, from the beginning, it's very nefarious and the way it's kind of laid out. it just seems extremely calcula calculated. some involvement there as far as people being put out or passed out or the pressure and all that. i don't -- i'm not -- i can't really say on that aspect or not, but i do feel that there is significant calculation here, that this was deliberate, that it was very likely these pilots considering some of the things that are comin

you may have heard theories about hypoxia, about how the whole cabin could be put to sleep. how might that work? let's say somebody takes it up to 43,000 feet and there's a switch in almost every airplane's cockpit where it's pressurized and you can flip it and immediately dump all the pressurization in the cabin. if you did that at 43,000 feet, you would have about ten, 15 seconds of usable consciousness in the cabin, but the fact you do it immediately, an explosive decompression, that cuts it in half, so maybe five to ten seconds of consciousness for the people in there. now, the pilots have oxygen masks. they reach back and pull them over their face and right there. but there are all sorts of ways we can think about this. they're talking about lithium ion batteries, and we can't rule them out, but i think this week and especially today we're beginning to get evidence that's narrowing down the possible scenarios. >> charlie: how long would you believe it might be to find the wreckage if, in fact, they're in the broad area it is now suspected the plane miff crashed? >> i'm

if you remember the payne stewart event where the crew suck culled to hypoxia and the plane fuel for 400 miles, you could possibly have another scenario like this if this was something that incapacitied the crew and/or airplane. >> but can you see a legitimate reason for the plane trying -- a reason other than speculating people not allowing the pilots to make any conversations with an air traffic control tower, what would make them turn that plane around from a mechanical perspective? or anything that would not allow them to contact an air traffic control. >> it would have to be a event that was so consuming, where it required both pilots to be on the flight controls trying to handle the airplane, and because of that that, you know, situation, it consumed them, because typically, as a pilot, it's aviate, navigate and communicate. you're going to do whatever it takes to maintain control of the airplane before you make any kind of radio call. >> that makes sense there. >> let's talk about the oil slicks. what do you make of those? there's two, supposed to be very large in size, one ab

bodies from mh 370 are recovered from the ocean could they tell for certain if the cause of death is hypoxiat? can you answer that? >> not with any expertise. i would recommend a pathologist answer that. >> richard quest? >> yes, i'll -- yes, they can. having read numerous reports, most notably the crash of 447, the air france rio to paris. it's disturbing to read it. but the pathologists and the postmortems can determine with a great degree of accuracy the cause of death. and there have been times where there have been -- i'm not going to go into many more details. suffice it to say there have been times when they've been able to determine whether the person -- how the person -- >> we understand that we should be careful, we should talk about the families, the families obviously are distraught and they're probably watching this. >> yes. it is absolutely -- >> one possibility. >> there is no question at all they will be able to determine that, good forabout it that's the eventuality. >> thank you, gentlemen. stand by. >>> up next, what if there are 75ers from this flight? the woman i'm about

well, albeit the fire or hypoxia. i wouldn't be concerned about, you know, regulated altitudes and receptions and so on and so forth. my objective would be survival. >> so, mitchell, then the follow-up to there is -- to that is, if you are -- if something is, indeed, happening in the cockpit and you're trying to get down -- you would be trying to get to a lower altitude of flying, you would be trying to find the nearest airport that could support landing a 777 or trying to get the cockpit clear of whatever it is that's filling the cockpit. so that's -- that's sort of the follow up that would this be out of the ordinary to do a quick turn like that and get down? go ahead, mitchell. >> yeah. i would -- like he was saying, you get down. you vent the cabin. you're also talking on the radio. if you're going to do any of this, you're talking on the radio. so i would question why they didn't do that. why didn't they get on the radio? yes, in an emergency, you aren't paying attention to regulated altitudes. but you're also ta

could have been cargo problems, could be that the pilots were lack of oxygen had hypoxia and passed out. this is the leading theory. this is what the americans have found out so far and now we're talking about this entire part of the indian ocean which as i mentioned is very deep. they think that that flight path that they got one ping over here kind of leads them over into this area and into the indian ocean. >> we'll talk to stephen ganyard more about that path in a minute. now we want to get more on the search from lara. >> now we want to get right to that point. let's go to bob woodruff who is on the scene in kuala lumpur with the latest. bob. >> reporter: good morning, lara. we just got out of this news conference a short period ago. asked a lot of questions. they didn't have a lot of answers. all they said they know about the location of this plane as much as they did six days ago. this morning, abc news has learned the search operation has been expanded further into the south china sea and the indian ocean. the malaysian ministry of transport announced that the two oil slicks wer

you look at the helios airlines 737 where the crew and the passengers became incapacitated due to hypoxiayou look at a payne stewart type accident where the airplane was still flyable and continued to fly for several hundred miles before it crashed, we could have a scenario where something happened at 35,000 feet, rendered the crew and passengers incapacitated, and the airplane flew in some direction until something either knocked it out of normal flight or the airplane ran out of gas somewhere and we just haven't found it. >> greg, thank you so much for your insight. again, a tragic story over the weekend. we really appreciate it. >> terrible. >> you're welcome. >>> we've got about 15 minutes to go into the close. the dow is off 42 points. the s&p only 2 points. bill, i just got to say for the cost of search and recovery and how important it is to our national -- international transportation system, with not invest in gps tech following for these snashth. >> maybe they will now. it takes something like this for that to happen. goldman sachs warning that stocks with super high growth expe

i've been speculating about, that, you know, the airplane crew got overcome by potentially smoke or hypoxia's likely the plane may have continued on that westerly heading and then perhaps on its own started, because of winds, may have jet stream type winds may have started to turn itself toward the south. >> fair point of observation, david, let me bring you in here. if it had gone north, the big rationale for why that is less plausible for people in the investigation is that we would have known. someone would have said something if it had entered that type of air space between the sophistication of india and pakistan and the paranoia and all the sovereignty issues and people on the ground that the idea of it landing seems to be as remote as any possibility. fair appraisal? >> absolutely. the likelihood that this airplane is on the ground by landing somewhere is virtually no. far more likely it did go south. otherwise we'd have other collaborating data points. now if it turns out this debris is from the airplane, the best news is now that we can bring in our very sophisticated signals intel

>> well, if they depressurize it at that altitude, they're going to suffer the effects of hypoxia and possibility. >> >> i've seen that idea that the crew put on oxygen masks and depressuredize it in a way to knock everyone else at that time. if you're sitting in a court of law and you have such an expertise in the area. you've been a slight instructor for 30 years. if you were presented with this evidence. you see the flight pattern. you see the altitude, what would you weak away with this? if a judge asked you what is your best guess? what would you say? >> well, my worst fear, and it is a guess, is that someone stole this airplane. and that raises the question as to why would they want to steal the airplane. a boeing 777 would make a perfect delivery device for a weapon of mass destruction. just yesterday i heard a former deputy director of the fbi suggesting that very thing. that this aircraft could very well be somewhere on the ground as we speak being reoutfitted for some other purpose. what that might be remains to be seen. it's also equally plausible that it did ultimately cra