jim tillman, this is for you. everyone is focusing on mechanical error.hy isn't anyone focusing on human error on the parts of the pilots. decompression or -- no, i'm sorry, could it be pilot error? jim tillman? >> yes, you can always say that pilot error could contribute to a crash. i don't think this evidence points to that a great deal. i don't know that the pilots made a mistake that made this thing crash. i think that's another one of those ideas. >> mary, i was trying to give jim tillman your question here. so i'll give it to you now. this says, decompression caused by aircraft fatigue or a deliberate act? nina says, could this have began as faulty decompression and escalated to pilot suicide when all died but him, mary? >> well, it's possible. there have been other accidents where we've had cabin decompression and from fatigue in the aircraft or maintenance mistakes. one is where the maintenance crew forgot to turn back on the automatic pressurization. another was from a crack in the fuselage. so it's possible. you know, at that point you would ass

jim tillman, you're a very experienced pilot. yesterday we were working on a theory that had come from comments from malaysian officials that this plane had taken a massive detour, almost done a u-turn and gone way off course for hundreds of miles. now we have images released by the chinese which if they are genuine would seem to suggest the plane had in fact stayed on course. and we're therefore getting two completely different versions of events. what do you read into this? >> i read the fact that there's conflicting information. i read into the fact that this is a very frustrating investigation. and i wonder who's really running it. because even this satellite imagery, i really hope it's correct. i really -- that would make things so much better. we would have a chance to nail down some things. but the more i study it, i'm not a radar expert. but i can tell you the more i study it with my eyes it looks like it's the wrong size, the wrong everything else to be the parts of the aim. -- airplane. i know this airplane very well. a

jim tillman? we're having problems with jim. we'll get back to him and the rest of our panel. >> coming up, it's a huge search area. on top and under the water. that's coming up next. benefiber is clear, taste-free and dissolves completely. and unlike other fibers, you'll only know you're taking fiber by the way good digestive health makes you look& and feel. benefiber. clearly healthy. ♪ [ male announcer ] a car that is able to see, to calculate, to think -- and can respond to what it encounters. ♪ even if that means completely stopping itself. it's the stuff of science fiction... minus the fiction. the 2014 e-class. see your authorized dealer for exceptional offers through mercedes-benz financial services. see your authorized dealer for exceptional offers so our business can be on at&t's network for $175 a month? yup. all 5 of you for $175. our clients need a lot of attention. there's unlimited talk and text. we're wodeals all day. you get 10 gigabytes of data to share. what about expansion potential? add a line, anytime, for

jim tillman, this is from sam. says if we knew that the route was changed, shouldn't we know the destination they entered, like a gps of a car? >> we might, and then again we might not. i don't understand what they had in mind. i've been trying to find the endgame for a long time. until we have a better feel for where they wanted to end up and wanted to do, it's still going to be a mystery. >> this is for jeff weiss. this is from curious 2. the question, is do you think it may have been a dry run for a future plan? scary. lots have been made about that. is it possible that the flight computer was not in the pilot's control, that the change in the course was made by someone remotely to take over and crash a boeing 777 and then ditch the plane in the indian ocean where it would unlikely be found, jeff? >> that's a potential scenario. it seems very remote. i don't think it's physically possible to do that, and to speak to the tweet, i don't think it was a dry run. clearly it was an intentional act, it was a run. we do

. >> jim tillman, we have a description indicating that it might be three different pieces. you heard those measurements tom costello was talking about. but, of course, it could actually be more pieces of that than different measurement. but based on what we've heard so far, what do those measurements and the size of those pieces indicate? well, lawrence, i really hope these are pieces of the airplane. it will give us some place to start from that makes good sense. but i'm very skeptical about that because the size and the scapes of the pieces that have been described just don't fit the pattern of what could come off of that airplane. that's one thing. the other thing is these pictures were taken i believe on sunday. i don't know how close the actual wreckage would be now if they are still floating or if they are not. so we're still looking and looking with great sensitivity with all kinds of listening devices and all that. but i agree with the u.s. in terms of saying let's keep the patterns that we have going. let's push forward with what we know until we get something bett

let me start with you, jim tillman. we've talked before this week about the various twists and turns quite literally of the fate of this plane. what do you make of these extraordinary new revelations? >> well, they're just about as confusing as everything else i've heard about this event from the very beginning. for example, let's talk about pings. it's my understanding that the devices don't ping until they are hitting water, until they get into water. and the pings went on and all of a sudden stopped over the indian ocean. that's just the opposite of the way that i have always understood them to work. that that should be when they really start going. the other thing is, i got to tell you that i find it very difficult to believe that this captain and his crew decided to just commit suicide out there in the middle of the indian ocean. they didn't have to go that far in order to commit suicide. and they had to know that's where they were. if they were -- if they had some kind of situation on board the airplane that cause

also back with us is jim tillman.fessor hanson, about all the theories out there about what happened, at this point which seem most plausible to you? >> well, we've got to keep everything on the table but a couple days ago everybody rejected the catastrophic failure idea and now it's pack on the table and that's credible. the original turn-back was towards the closest available airport, so that makes sense. so the initial part actually makes sense, some sort of catastrophic problem. >> when you say catastrophic, you don't mean instantaneous, you mean mechanical issues on board that the pilot had time to try to make that turn to try to find the closest airport. >> sure. yeah, some sort of progressive problem like smoke in the cockpit if you had an electrical fire in the avionics bay or something like that, he would have turned to the nearest airport which would have made sense. under that hypothesis if they became incapacitated or if there was a flight control problem. if there was a flight control problem, they still

. >> jim tillman, we learned today that the pilot made a call from his cell phone before the plane departed. is there anything unusual about that? did you as a pilot, i don't know if it was cell phones, but would people call. anything unusual about what he was doing? >> i've seen it done. recently i've seen it done, and no one thought any differently about it. it was a pilot who may be letting his family know something that he felt was important for them to know. >> jim tillman, richard quest is about to jump out of his seat over here. why? >> because of all the flight attendants and pilot friends i've own. unlike you and me that have a phone that we can use at the drop of a hat. they are trapped in a metal tube and they always make calls. >> i have a friend who is a pilot and he texted me saying i'm about to take off, bla, bla, bla. jeff wise, question. this is from sue mason. it says, why is there no satellite footage showing this plane from the time it disappeared just like there is alleged debris? would the plane show up on satellite images during the time it was in the air? >> that's a

retired pilot jim tillman, and lieutenant colonel michael kay, and geoffrey thomas. get your reaction to what richard and i were having quite a discussion about earlier, to what david said. first with you, mary schiavo. he's saying listen, this could take two years if not more and he believes we've lost the opportunity to hear the pinging on the black boxes. >> well, we may have. but on his idea that it could take two years or more, actually the average aviation investigation takes about 3.5 years, so he was being conservative. >> michael kay? >> yeah, i think one of the big problems we've got here is that the accuracy of the search operation is predominantly based on assumptions. we know from the data that we've got the distance and the arc. what we don't know is how far down the arc south that it's gone. and what is fueling this information is assumptions based information. to it's distance, it's track, it's also altitude, and it's speed. but they're all based on conflicting evidence as what we've seen. we don't know what happened after that last transponder ping.

jim tillman, let me bring you in. do we have this video of the helicopter, u.s. helicopter? this is the first one we've seen, brand new video of a u.s. helicopter taking off to take part in that search. jim, what are they looking for? >> well, they are looking for just about anything, chris, right now. the whole investigation is wide open. we don't even know, as you may have heard earlier, that the crash was in the water. it may very well have ended up on land. there are all kinds of scenarios that are being floated around. you have to be careful, because often times we go in the wrong direction in these investigations. we should take our time, be very, very patient and understand we have the most sophisticated group of people out there and equipment to find the secret to this, and they will. they will eventually find it. how long that will take, i don't know. >> don't you have to start with what the probabilities are here, and i'm wondering what could have happened that was so catastrophic, so fast, that we find ourselves in this position three days later. >> well, there ar

joining me now is jim tillman. how hard would it be for a pilot to pull off the kind of maneuvers necessary to shadow another aircraft without being detected? >> well, it would be difficult. but i'm not of the feeling that these guys would shy away from difficult. because i think this whole thing was planned from beginning to end. i don't know what the end game is yet but i think there is one. this was also a situation that would require great skill and experience to pull off. sure, that kind of a pilot could fly up and fly in formation off a commercial airplane going from here to there. that's a possibility. and it would show up as just one block on the controller scope. but we know that the plane ended up someplace in this area and you've heard tom talk about that. but where did it go from there and if these guys had a good plan, once they got to a certain point, were they just going to say, okay, we're here. can't think of anything else to do. let's just go. let's just go fly into the ocean. i don't think so. >>

i'm going to bring in aviation expert jim tillman as well as retired special agent jim kavanaugh on the law enforcement analyst. jim, i'm going to start with you because the question on the passports is an interesting development overnight. and the question as to how it was when two individuals would be able to actually board an airplane with passports that should have been invalidated. i want to play a little bit of sound from one of the gentlemen who had his passport stolen and we'll talk about it. >> my passport, nobody can use again, because when they come back to italy, i talk with police for a lock on my lost passport. so then nobody can use. >> so jim cavanaugh, there's a fair expectation. you think you lose your passport and report it as missing and nobody should be able to use it, and yet we know two people were actually able to use missing passports to board this plane. >> right. i mean, it's disgustingly sloppy whether this comes out to be anything related to the crash of the airliner, karen, but when you present a pass port, it is in the interpoll database and stolen two yea

to discuss this, we are going to bring in jim tillman. chael okay is back with us, former pilot and british military officer. jim, i want to start with you. one of the things that has been tossed out there, maybe there was a mechanical problem on this plane. maybe there was an electrical fire, smoke in the cockpit. if you are a pilot in that type of situation, what are you supposed to do? >> you immediately react. smoke and fire really speak to an incredible emergency, because the thing you don't want to do is to get behind it. you have to get on the ground as quickly as you can. you go for the nearest suitable airport. you put your airplane on the ground where you can handle this. the fires that have happened on aircraft, particularly commercial airplanes have been devastating. what can happen is that you don't necessarily see any flame but you get that toxic fumes and smoke off of smoldering wires or insulation or whatever else. it can be incapacitating. you have to get your oxygen mask on and you have to take action to get the airplane

to find the airplane where ever it is. >> jim tillman, thanks so much for your expertise.lso, overseas, riveting testimony in the oscar pistorius murder trial. what a security guard said that could hurt the case. so our business can be on at&t's network for $175 a month? yup. all 5 of you for $175. our clients need a lot of attention. there's unlimited talk and text. we're working deals all day. you get 10 gigabytes of data to share. what about expansion potential? add a line, anytime, for $15 a month. low dues, great terms. let's close! new at&t mobile share value plans our best value plans ever for business. so i tried depend it really made the difference between a morning around the house and getting a little exercise. hi-ya! and i tried a baking class. one weekend can make all the difference. unlike the bargain brand, depend gives you the confidence of new fit-flex® protection. it's a smooth and comfortable fit with more lycra strands. it's our best protection. take your weekend on with a free sample at depend.com i reckoreckon so.s a brewin'. reckon you gotta hotel? r

joining me now are jim tillman, and aviation expert and former american airlines pilot, and jim cavanaughlyst who has been deeply involved in many high profile investigations, including the unabomber case. >> thank you, reverend al. >> thank you, reverend al. >> jim tillman, let me start with you. abc news is reporting two communication systems shut down simply on the flight. the data reporting system they believe was shuttle down at 1:07:00 a.m. the transponder which transmits location and altitude shut down at 1:21 a.m. what does that tell you? >> well, it first tells me that we're not getting the full story all the time. it's like why didn't someone say this earlier? it would have made a lot of difference in the way we analyzed the data we were getting. what it really means is the system that is automatically sending maintenance information to the ground and the airlines communications, and the transponder is your means of communicating with air traffic controllers electronically to let them though what your aircraft is doing, which direction it's flying, how fast it's going and all th

joining me to hash this all out is jim tillman, an aviation expert and former american airlines pilot. thanks for joining me, jim. >> my pleasure. >> let's begin with the new wall street journal report, do you think it was possible to travel undetected for that many hours and then simply vanish? >> yes. >> how do you think that's the case? would someone have to actively turn off the transponder from within the cockpit? >> well it sounds like the transponders were off. subsequent to that if the crew elected to do so, they could fly what we call map of the earth and bring that airplane down to just a few hundred feet off the deck. and it would be very difficult for most radars to pick him up. the further he got from the prad ar antenna, the more difficult it would be for them to track him. is it possible? yes. but that's just the question, is it possible. to answer that, yes. >> we learned the "uss kidd" is heading to the indian ocean. what type of cooperation is likely going on between the countries, u.s. and malaysia, when it comes to finding this airplane? >> i hope a lot of cooperat

jim tillman, retired pilot. mary schiavo. former inspector general of the department of transportation. thank you very much all of you guys for joining us. mary now represents victims of negligence by transportation companies including airlines. and tom fuentes is a former assistant fbi director. a lot of folks to get tochlt you were plotting with sara. >> it is entirely right and proper that investigators look in to the pilots. of course it is. the police, the criminal, every aspect of it. what has happened in the last few hours, it's taken an unavor i have, unpleasant tone. >> how so? >> because we have sources who aren't named basically saying names of people who it may turn out to be did something wrong. but sara is right. >> they have every right to look in to it. >> of course they document they must. >> you have spoken to an expert on what would have happened to have happen on board for this plane to take this course. what did they tell you? >> look, there's two elements to this. first of all, there's the course change

we're in unchartered territory. >> jim tillman, let me ask you this. a tweet from a viewer, francis tweeted a question. could a plane with an onboard fire remain in flight for six to eight hours with or without pilots? >> yes, it could. when you start thinking in terms what a fire is on an airplane, particularly an electrical fire, it's not necessarily big flames. it may very well be smoldering and smoking. and as big as the threat to you is the fact it's throwing out toxic fumes as opposed to burning through something, whatever. it could take place over a period of time, and if you're not really careful and right on top of it and get an oxygen mask on, you can become incapacitated pretty fast and make a lot of bad decisions before you pass out. >> again, i keep coming back to -- and again, if this is an emergency situation, maybe we shouldn't be looking at any sort of rational light of day but wouldn't the co-pilot have said something in that final communication rather than just okay good night. >> he not only would have said something, anderson, he w

there's no evidence of that. >> let me go to jim tillman. a couple questions. the idea the plane may have turned back to kuala lumpur and not hear a ping out of the ocean? so many questions. you go with your questions. >> we're wondering about the same kinds of things. the radar return that gave the impression the airplane turned back from where it started from, i've seen that return and if it's not any more clear than what i've seen, it doesn't have to indicate an absolute turn. it could be part of an airplane that's breaking up. i'm not convinced about that part. just like i wasn't convinced about the oil slick being jet fuel. it wasn't. so, i mean -- >> where's the ping? where's the ping? >> the pings we're not hearing because, one, maybe that device was damaged to the point that it won't. and two, because maybe we're so far away from it until we're not able to recognize it. i mean, the thing is, we don't know where that airplane went. we just don't that it disappeared from radar and did it in such a fashion that it made it obvious that no one would be able

jim tillman is a former pilot and aviation expert. you heard the malaysian defense minister saying there's no confusion at all. do you agree that assessment? >> i can't believe he's said that. he's obviously not hearing what i'm hearing or seeing what i'm seeing. it's full of confusion. >> how shocking is it that the confusion is over where the plane was? they don't even seem clear on the trajectory of the flight. is that unusual? >> yes, it's unusual. i mean, what was going on on the ground? were they looking at radar? was the radar return giving them anything? and i've been hearing things about the transponders being turned off which would not give full data to the ground as to what the airplane was doing and all that sort of thing. if it was turned off, okay, then you've lost some of your radar control and contact, but not all of it because you still get a blip on primitive radar, i call it. you should be able to track and follow the airplane. >> but, i mean, why would a pilot turn off the transponders, any logical reason for that

and now to help us we have tom fuentes, and jim tillman, and cnn analyst and retired pilot himself, and our own cnn aviation analyst miles o'brien. mile miles, i want to start with you, just for the viewers to i suppose put the expectations into context here. this is the third satellite photo that we have had and treated as a clue, and the first one was really a disastrous mistake, and a chinese satellite as well, and put the search up there in the south china sea, and now we have a photo, and the australians said that there were a lot of planes in the air yesterday, and saw nothing, and how significant of a development is this or does it show just how little progress is made in the investigation that, you know, what they have to latch on to clues like this, because they don't have anything else? >> well, what you said there at the end is the most accurate statement that we can say. in the absence of anything else to look for, you check it out. but we don't even know that it went in that direction, and you know, when you look at that piece, not only is the piece an odd and large shape a

jim tillman former pilot and expert we appreciate your time. president obama will meet face-to-face with ukraine's minister as they talk wednesday at the white house. both leaders have called the referendum calling it illegal. i want to bring in michael it to make it part of the russian federation. the thing that caught everyone off guard. it forced the president out, it is unthinkable. there is pro russians fighting are pro ukrainians and here the people in the rest of the you crane are stunned that it came to this point and what you are referring to it must have been a complete turn around you had protesters with the west. they wanted a better trade and now they are facing something diff frept. what is the food there they are threatening to cut off natural gas they are putting the check on kieve economically. >> what it speaks to is the complex make up of the country. and you have a large ethnic puplation with russian. some of them hold russian passports as well. and it moved as being threatening in a way. and putin was not being shy in stoki

joining me now live is aviation analyst, jim tillman and al deal, former ntsb officer and author. i want to begin with you. we really have new bits of information. bun as suzanne was reporting that the flight was not preprogrammed to make this turn. and now also this new satellite data that show as long, slow path into the south indian ocean. i know from speaking with you before you've been convinced that something criminal took place to divert this plane off its path. given what we know now, though, has this changed your analysis of the situation? >> jim, very little has changed. i mean, the most important has changed, if there is one, is the information about what the uk was able to come up with about position of the aircraft and just before it hit the water. but that's just one analysis. we really have a whole lot to analyze before we come up with anything conclusive. for example, exactly how long did it take to go from 35,000 to 12,000 feet? why 12,000 feet? what was the idea there? if it went down as rapidly as i think it did, they probably would have had to have used a speed

we have jim tillman and cnn law enforcement analysts the former assistant of the fbi. and miles o'brien. jim, if i can start with you, another day turning up objects that look possibly from several hundred feet in the air like they could be from the plane. some of them more than four to six feet long. when you hear of those dimensions or color does that make you think that it could be parts of this plane? >> yes, it does. because, you know i don't know the dimension ps of the evacuation slides but it falls in that general arena. i don't think it looks like the rafts which are a completely different style and size. but that would be wonderful to find those. >> just a question, would those slides be able to open automaticcly if they were able to open? as i remember how they are hooked up, once they depart the airplane, they inflate. they are attached to like the doors and when you open that door, they flop out and fill up with air and they are ready to float and they are generally, generally capable of carrying several people as you go along. they are pretty sturdy. miles

joining us to sort through the twists, retired american airline pilot jim tillman and richard joining us in the studio. first, jim what do you make of the report that we're hearing the plane may have continued to fly some four additional hours after contact was lost? >> well, i can tell you that it's as plausible as many of the other scenarios we've heard. sure enough, there would have been enough fuel for the airplane to fly that far. why wasn't it on radar? i don't know. i don't know how low an airplane like that would have to fly to duck under the radar, probably 400-500 feet under the deck. could they manage that? i don't know. the captain had a flight simulator, very so fiphisticaten his home, if you want to follow that reason. you have to follow logic and common sense. there's not a lot of either one of them applied to this situation. >> still, in the vacuum that exists, people are coming up with a range of ideas. the malaysians at this time denying the report from the wall street journal. help me understand richard. what is the technology? explain it to me. >> it's very simple.

captain jim tillman joins us from phoenix. he's a former american airlines pilot. can captain, than -- captain, w. >> thank you. >> suggested the altitude of this flight went up to 45,000 feet, came down to 20,000 feet. what do you make of that? >> i'm very suspicious of those altitude readouts, for one it also indicates they dropped some 40,000 feet in one minute. i don't think there's any way under the sun to make that airplane fly down at that kind of speed. i mean even if the airplane was in pieces and it fell, it wouldn't fell that fast. and if you took the nose down and used power, you couldn't bring it down that fast. >> let's talk about the transponder. how easy is it to turn off the transponder? and why would a pilot do it? >> it's easy to do, it's a switch in the cockpit. i can't imagine a pilot would do it, unless he is doing something, to hide the airplane. >> what about the devices to hide data to the airplane, how difficult is it to turn off those devices? >> it's a little more tricky, there is a secondary circuit breaker called the e and e department

jim tillman is a retired captain from american airlines and now serves as cnn aviation analyst. . how are you? >> i'm good. i want to talk about this half ping. it came after 8:11 a.m. what might this show? >> i think it is going to have to be carefully analyzed in terms of the timing of the half ping and its nature. it may very well be the very last attempt for the airplane to hand shake with the authorities other means of discovering what's going on through the satellite. it may become very, very significant. right now, it is all part of that same jigsaw puzzle that we have with all those pieces that they have finally located in the debris field. >> so, this half ping, i'm just trying to figure out what it could mean. the electrical system would have been down or the plane would have been communicating better with satellites, right? this mysterious half ping. so when that hand shake was made, could that mean the electrical system somehow came back to life? could it mean that the plane came in contact with salt water and that somehow activated the electrical system? what could i

jim tillman, here's my first question to you. i read this opinion piece on cnn.com by robert goyer. talking a lot on cnn. he wrote this whole hypothesis. he writes about the 777 and how altitude is key. and concludes while it's horrific to imagine, a botched hijacking or failed pilot commandeering of the airplane are still the most likely scenarios. do you agree with that? >> i read his piece with great interest because i've had some confirms and skepticism about where we were going and -- >> oh, we losing him? >> we're figuring out your signal, because i can hear you intermittently, jim. richard quest, did you read this piece? what do you make of that notion? >> i did read it. the whole attitude is one that's been doing the rounds. could the plane have gone that far south if it wasn't at 35,000 feet. i've had some pilots e-mail me saying the plane could have done a very long distance, 12,000 feet at a slower speed. i've actually looked at airline charts and fuel burn charts now. but the core point -- let's get away -- the core point of the article is a strong one. all the circumsta

. >> i want to bring in jim tillman, a retired aircraft pilot.does this tell you about the last contact with the transponder? >> i'm troubled by the lack of more complete information. i've been looking at the timeline, jake, and it's very interesting to me that conversation that you mentioned that they had, the last known transmission from the cockpit was stated without any emotion or without any indication that anything was wrong. and moments later, literally moments later, the transponderers went off the line. now, what happened in that little time span between everything's okay, roger, have a nice night, and transponderer is off the line and no communication whatsoever after that point? and the other thing is, this thing about the engines communicating with acars on the ground, it's my understanding that transmission is not absolute in terms of by the realtime, this is a precise moment, that the information can be collected and saved and then sent out in bursts of communications through the system. that could happen after the engines may not b

jim tillman, retired commercial pilot.just heard from the national transportation safety board managing director, he told cnn that it is possible to turn off the transponders. how difficult or easy is it to turn off a transponder? >> oh, it's not difficult at all. my question, don, goes a little bit further. what was going on from the ground controllers? where were the air traffic controllers that tracked this airplane for everything it does and doesn't do? they should know right away that this airplane is not on course. they should be querying the airplane to find out what are your intentions? and i don't have any reports that there was any inkling made from air traffic controllers in any place. it happened that the transponders were turned off just before entering the vietnamese air space. that means that that was a critical point. that's where the air traffic controllers from one country should be handing them off to the next country. there are questions that go back and forth between air traffic controllers, they shoul

right now want to bring in retired american airlines captain jim tillman who joins us by phone. jim, when the air traffic controllers said they lost contact, how often are they monitoring that? is it constant? >> it is constant to the extent whether they have regular reports that they have to make and that sort of thing. i would suspect, and i don't know this for a fact but i would suspect that they also may have lost radar contact with them. this route as you point out on the map there, is mostly over land. they're not dealing with the thing where this airplane was over the middle of the ocean someplace. being over land means there are lots of places and lots of antennas and lots of radars and lots of radios that would be at your disposal. this sounds really bad, anderson. it sounds like a really bad situation. i've been trying to come up with every scenario i could to just explain this away, but i haven't been very successful. >> you point out that it's over land, this plane was two hours late getting to beijing. you would think unless they're -- obviously there are some very r

let's bring in cnn aviation analyst jim tillman, a retired american airlines pilot joining us from teeon. much of the investigation now is focusing on the pilots, but given some of the new information you learned about the pilots not requesting to work together and apparently there was not more fuel added to the plane, even though they have taken the simulator from the pilot's home, i understand it's not unusual for a pilot to have that. does all the information help substantiate the view that the pilot should be examined further or does it rule them out in your sue? view? >> in my view it is those pilots or others that are enforcing their will on the pilots and making sure they do what they are told to do. i have to tell you, fredericka, this whole thing has been very well plained and executed up to this point. i have no reason to believe that there isn't some end plan, end zone, whatever else, that's the target for them beyond what we have already seen them do. we have been behind them all along, so now if they had a plan, and if that plan included being able to set down some place,

jim tillman is with me, a 30-year captain. also peterbergen, a national security analyst. if i can put you on the spot, everything you heard about the transponder timeline, the fuel on board, is this scenario that the plane was common deered and taken to another place? is that a plausible one knowing what we know now? >> it's plausible, but like a lot of other things that have been released to us, it's a little bit confusing. let's put it this way. when they communication from the cockpit to the ground, "all right, good night," whatever took place, i'm told this was after the transponder had been turned off. i don't understand that. because even if it was or not, where was air traffic control? the people who were supposed to be monitoring that flight for wherever it goes, why wasn't there some outcry as soon as they lost visual contact with the transponder would have been giving them? why weren't they asking the airplane to squawk i.d. it's just a phrase used by air traffic controllers routinely to ask an airplane to punch a button on the transponder and that lights up tha

. >>> let's bring in jim tillman, a former pilot as well as an aviation expert. come to the program. you know, if we look at the technology, the black box, et cetera, it's pretty much been the same for 40 plus years. why do we know more in some cases say about a tesla than we do about realtime aircraft information? >> well, first of all, the black box you're talking about has improved a lot over the last 40 years. it's a completely different device now and it's gone right along with all the other technological advances we made over that period of time. but so far as this particular accident is concerned, we haven't quite gotten there yet. we haven't found the boxes. we don't have any idea where it is at this moment. the frustration that we are experiencing is based upon the fact that we just have so little to go on. >> that's sort of my point. people have raised this before. why is the black box on the plane? can't we translate -- transmit the signal some place else so that when we have something like this, we at least have the information available that may not b

. >> jim tillman, somebody said why can't the pings on the black boxes on an airliner last for monthstead of 30 days? >> well, they should last a lot longer. such a much more robust system that we're using to date. we had this for quite some time. time for us to upgrade it to the extent it was maybe two or three months or more or six months or whatever it takes. we know now that it is inadequate to have to sit here and count days and hope we get to it before it runs out of gas. >> stand by, everyone. we have more on flight 370 straight ahead. there is another big story that we want to tell you about. our george howell following a desperate search in washington state. it is a major landslide. he's going to be live for us coming up. weekdays are for rising to the challenge. they're the days to take care of business. when possibilities become reality. with centurylink as your trusted partner, our visionary cloud infrastructure and global broadband network free you to focus on what matters. with custom communications solutions and responsive, dedicated support, we constantly evolve to mee

about it are richard quest, jeff wise a private pilot and aviation journalist, robert guyer, and jim tillman very much for doing this. jeff, this issue of the diego garcia. obviously, this is something that's pretty much been dismissed as one of those water cooler conversations. there was a reason this one came occupy, right? >> apparently investigators look at the captain's flight simulator. there's been a lot of speculation why he had a flight simulator. they went in there and looked into the computer files. and lo and behold there was diego garcia logged into among the places he visited. so logical conclusion perhaps, maybe he wasn't to diego garcia. unfortunately it's not in the areas we've now determined it must have been that morning. what's more, they've checked diego garcia and it wasn't there. so that one. >> we would have known it was there, obviously, as richard was saying during the commercial. robert, you know, a lot of people -- this spawns the other set of theories which is could someone have shot this plane down and don't want to admit it? >> yeah, that's very unlike. the who

from phoenix, cnn aviation analyst and retired pilot jim tillman. let's talk about these items and the search area. one thing that really impressed me was the fact that two of the search items, or two of the objects found today were three minutes apart by air, and that gives you a sense of scope of how large this area is. is that what we're going to be seeing? these search areas picked up in a radius so large and significant that you're going to be, have to figure out what is and what it's not? let's start with you. >> unfortunately, this late in the game, this many weeks later, yes. unless they are clumped together by some kind of wind pattern or current pattern, or they're in a mall ga mitt because of wires and hanging together, and you get a big section of it, they're going to be scattered, individual things potentially scattered everywhere. if it went down in florida, we'd be looking off the coast of maine. spread out across an immense area. >> we see a sort of net, looks like a fisherman's net, picking up something small. we don't know whether

joining me now, cnn law enforcement analyst, tom fuentes and jim tillman.e aware of the reporting on the two lost or stolen passports. no nexus to terrorism yet. although that's by no means definitive. we are still tracking, end quote. so, what does all of this say to you? >> well, it says that the investigation is going to be very intensive to verify the circumstances, not only of the passports and individuals who reported them stolen, but you have all the other passengers on that plane and trying to verify the identities of people listed as passengers as to whether they really were. more than 150 passengers for chinese nationals, so the government of china will be trying to verify their identity and then all of the other nationalities you just listed. so, that's an important area to try to determine were the people on the flight manifest actually on the plane. we have these two that are believed to not have been on the plane because their documents were stolen, so that's an important part of the investigation. i should add you'll have many countries wanti

. >> jim tillman, thanks so much. i've got to take a break.to come in the "newsroom," if this is debris, how did hit get there? martin is inside the flight simulator. hi martin. >> hey carol. we've moved magically in time thanks to the simulator, four and a half hours ahead. we're approaching the area where the degree was spotted. we'll tell you what we found with this aircraft coming up. check it out. i can't believe your mom has a mom cave! today i have new campbell's chunky spicy chicken quesadilla soup. she gives me chunky before every game. i'm very souperstitious. haha, that's a good one! haha! [ male announcer ] campbell's chunky soup. it fills you up right. and better is so easy withrning you cabenefiber.o something better for yourself. [ male announcer ] campbell's chunky soup. fiber that's taste-free, grit-free and dissolves completely. so you can feel free to add it to anything. and feel better about doing it. better it with benefiber. how much money do you think you'll need when you retire? then we gave each person a ribbon to show

we have jim tillman, a retired captain.u learning on the ground in beijing on this story? >> reporter: well, ari, as countries are starting to look into the fate of their citizens, there are two governments that have told their local reporters that their citizens who are on the passenger list weren't actually on the plane. both officials from italy as well as austria have told their local press that they called the families of those citizens and that they found out that both of those citizens were actually safe in different countries. now the curious part about this is that both of those citizens had said that they had their passports stolen in the recent past. now this is raising a lot of questions as to the identity of the people who were actually on the plane, why there would be false identities being used on that plane, and how that could potentially relate to the fate of this airliner. ari? >> right. we've been speaking to investigators here. there is not concrete public information on the nature of the missing airplan