paula hancocks, cnn, kuala lumpur, malaysia. >> and that is cnn newsroom. thank you for watching. natalie allen. for our u.s. viewers, our cnn special report is next. for international viewers, stay with us for open court. >>> a high tech aircraft. an experienced crew. and 227 passengers. what began as a routine flight for malaysian airlines 370 became the total opposite. leaving behind unending grief and unanswered questions. flight 370, the final hours. here in the cockpit of this

paula hancock is in kuala lumpur. paula? >> reporte neutrogena® makeup rer erases 99% of your most stubborn makeup with one towelette. can your makeup remover do that? [ female announcer ] neutrogena® makeup remover. [ male announcer ] even more impressive than the research this man has at his disposal is how he puts it to work for his clients. morning. morning. thanks for meeting so early. come on in. [ male announcer ] it's how edward jones makes sense of investing. >>> malaysian authorities will hold what they call a high level briefing for grieving family members. international experts including experts from china will update the families on the investigation into flight 370. perhaps too little too late for those families who still believe malaysia is hiding information. this candlelight vigil was held before today's regular briefing for family members in beijing. steve wang whose mother is one of the passengers organized it. >> we do not want to give up our hope. they are definitely still waiting for us somewhere. we ho

let's do to paula hancocks now. paula, each day, he seems to get more exhausted. he is saying it is not unreasonable for families to ask for hope, but as i was just saying to our paula newton in australia, this must be wearing on everybody by now. >> reporter: absolutely. certainly it is the hardest for the families and relatives of the passengers on board. we are three weeks now and still there is no physical evidence. they are just waiting for any information now. we know the acting transportation minister met with families saturday at the hotels where some of them are holed up. we understand from the private meeting, the families were asking that even if their loved ones were not alive, they are dead, they want guarantees that the authorities will continue to search for them. this is what the transportation minister said to them. he said, i give you a guarantee that the malaysian government and other countries involved in the search will continue to look for your loved ones. he also said that some still held out some hope. of course, they would hold out hope un

paula hancocks, cnn. >>> rob mccallum in seattle. families in anguish waiting for news from this search. one has to wondered should this has been handled differently. i'm not going to apologize for malaysian government but seems if they don't have information, don't know where it is, what can they be providing to the families they are not saying to reporters. >> can't give information they don't have. from a captain's perspective, a plane for of disgruntled passengers. if you don't have anything new, it's important to say you don't have anything new. if there's no information, you can't make things up, you have to relay the situation as it stands. >> rob, clearly, i think everyone can understand, emphasize how painful it is for loved ones of anyone on board this flight. we heard from an interview earlier last week, one of the loved ones who said she stopped watching the news. it's just too tormenting. you can't blame them, can you? >> it's a very difficult time. absence of tangible proof makes it worse. in the case of air france, eve

>> paula hancocks, thanks for keeping us up on all of that. am joined by retired united airlines captain roy ligett who wrapped up his long clear flying with 777s and don phillips known for decades as the dean of aviation reporters, form wlir "the washington post" and the international herald tribune. thanks for joining us again. i appreciate with it. let me start with the families just because it's so easy to identify with these folks and how horrible this situation is. and no matter what malaysia has done wrong or right in the investigation, is it pretty clear that they have mishandled the families? >> i don't think mishandled is a way to put it. they have done some really poor things mainly because they don't have much experience in this. the united states has a lot of great experience in this. and the national transportation safety board, one section of it, which is separate from the investigators, does know a lot about this. they know for one thing, for the first four years or so after a crash, nothing is going to satisfy these people. no

paula hancocks, cnn, kuala lumpur, malaysia. >> so what do you tell a little boy or a little girl?tate-run newspaper in china, you say whatever you want to, quite bluntly. in a hard-hitting editorial, this was what was said in the "china daily" newspaper. quote, all the related parties can do is to continue to search for the wreckage, carry on negotiations with the malaysian side for more information. and prepare to make arrangements for funerals. end quote. and if that doesn't sound somewhat heartless, check this out. quote, we can understand and tolerate those victims' families emotional catharsis, as well as their behavior doesn't violate social norms. that was in the newspaper. and as these families get over that, and also seek information, they're also, as you heard earlier, seeing compensation. but how much money can these families truly expect to get? this is not an american court system we're talking about. there are so many different scenarios. compensation attorney kenneth feinberg joins me from washington, d.c. he worked on the compensation disbursements for 9/11 victims

paula hancocks talked to the husband of a flight attendant who is struggling to figure out what he shoulddren. >> foong wai yueng's 10-year-old daughter and 4-year-old son keep asking where she is. 18 years as a malaysian airlines flight attendant, she was working on mh-370. >> it will take a bit longer to come home this time. and i even promised them i'm going to bring her home. but i really don't know where she is now. and now i'm not sure whether i could bring her home, you see. >> lee asked me what he should tell his daughter. he says foong is caring, she is loving. he speaks in the present tense. >> of course, i'm still hoping for god's miracles, but it's just like what we want is the reality, the true story. >> showing me mobile photos of his wife, he tells me he's angry at the way he's been treated. his wife was part of the cabin crew but lee feels the airline tells the media more than it tells him. he says he gets most of his information from televised press conferences. part of the reason he's hired a lawyer. >> it is not their fault that this happened to the plane, so therefore,

paula hancocks, cnn, kuala lumpur, malaysia. >> heartbreaking there.ifting let heartbreaking. >>> the twitter account of one teenaged girl tracks the agony of flight 370 since it first began close to more than three weeks ago. now, in the first week that marihu goes by the twitter handle gorgeous. she sent out about the missing plane, she called directly to her father. and her father is andrew nari, he said come home fast, dad. its only thing i want. daddy, you're all over the news and papers. come home fast so you can read them. don't you feel excited? and then on monday, march 24th, the families of flight 370 heard this. >> that according to this new data, flight mh 370 ended in the southern indian ocean. >> gorgeous, again, whose real name is myra wrights. we love you, but he, meaning god, loves you more. and myra is taking comfort in the arms of the tens of thousands of strangers who are rooting for her online. writing this, i received love from almost the whole world. i'm so touched. i don't know how to thank all of you. support, prayers, god bles

paula hancocks joins us live from kuala lumpur. the families holding this extraordinary news conference today to make new demands. what exactly were they saying? >> reporter: well, fredricka, these chinese families of the passengers of this missing airline actually travels from beijing to kuala lumpur because they basically thought they weren't getting the answered they deserved in china. they thought they had to be here on the scene where the investigation is ongoing so that they could talk to malaysian authorities. it was an impassioned press conference. you could see the desperation in many of the men's eyes as they were chanting, saying we want the truth, we want evidence, we want our family. and certainly they were asking for many things. they were asking for exact evidence, exact credible information that the malaysians have that they believe they're not getting. and they also ask for apologies. >> we want malaysia to apologize for the information that caused confusion in the first week, which delayed the search mission. and

. >> paula hancock's cnn, malaysia. >> after any disaster we talk about closure for the families.ut the case of flight 370 is like no other. we have jeff gardair now, he is a clinical psychologist. heart breaking to watch that story. difficult to watch what can you tell him and what can he tell his children? >> i would tell them to continue talking about his feelings. don't keep them bottled up. surely the brief is beyond words. the isolation is what brings the most damage. also talk to the children. let them know what happened and give it to them in a language that they can understand that their mom is missing and may be gone and sit back and let them talk. answer questions as much as you can is a parent but be willing to say i don't know. we don't know. we may know more later but we don't know right now. keep as much routine as possible in that home. all of the things that the kids are used to doing. don't put it on hold. keep them going to school and keep them active. >> so it feels familiar like home. >> you mentioned that you would recommend that he raise the question with hi

paula hancocks there for us in kuala lumpur.>> we are joining by tom gurley. he is the director and naval oceanographer. we start with the breaking news overnight. some of the objects, the three suspicious objects. orange, red and white. yesterday, one of our reporters was on the p-8 when they spotted a blue bag. there was a lot of junk, christi called it flotsam out in the ocean. do you believe these could be connected to 370 or is it still too soon to tell? let's start with steve. >> too soon to tell. this has been, you know, we keep getting sightings. ships are participating in this effort. really too soon to tell. there so much debris in the ocean. everybody is clinging to various hopes here. hopes we find something to definitively associate with the airplane. families are hoping for a miracle. there is no reason to take that hope away from them. what is this debris? i can't hazard a guess based on what i have seen. >> van, i know you have an oceangraphic search company. if you were in charge of this and you were waking up t

paula hancock is in kuala lumpur. >> it was an impassioned press conference in this kuala lumpur hotel. the chinese relatives of the passengers of mh 370 arrived hours earlier at the airport sunday morning. they said they had to come to malaysia because they weren't getting the answers they wanted from beijing. they were wearing t-shirts that read pray for mh 370, pray for return safely. we want evidence, want the truth, want our families saying they are sad and desperate. his relatives said we want malaysia to apologize for inform is a that caused confusion which delayed the search mission and we want the malaysian government to apologize for irresponsibly acting on the 4th when the plane crash. they want to meet with acting transportation commissioner, airlines, but technical staff from boeing and anyone else affiliated with this aircraft saying no one from those companies has approached them and does that mean they have something to hide. cnn, kuala lumpur, arab. >> lets talk more about this ongoing certainly for anything as it relates to flight 370. lets bring in the panel, with me

cnn's paula hancocks spoke with the husband of a flight attendant who told her how difficult it is to answer questions from his children. >> i even promised them i'm going to bring her home, but i really don't know where she is now. and now i'm not sure whether i could bring her home. of course, i'm still hoping for god's miracles, but just like what we want is the reality, the true story. >> that's just heartbreaking. the majority of those on board flight 370 are from china. relatives continue to demand more information about the flight and the search from the airline and also the malaysian government. they did just receive a briefing in the past hour or so, so let's go to cnn's pauline chiou live in beijing. any sense, pauline, what they heard? >> reporter: yeah, in fact, john, that briefing is still going on, and there's a lot of discussion right now about the four emergency beacons that are on that aircraft. this is the elts, the emergency locator transmitters. now, this is a continuation of a discussion that we had yesterday, at sunday's briefing, when one woman asked about the e

he tells our paula hancocks how he's simply at a loss as to what to tell their children. >> reporter: wei yueng's daughter and son keep asking where she is. 18 years as a malaysia airlines flight attendant, she was working aboard m-370. >> mommy is going to take a bit longer to come home this time. and i even promised them i want to bring her home, but i really don't know either way is she alive? and now i'm not sure whether i can bring her home. >> reporter: lee khim fatt asks me what he should tell his daughter. she says foong is caring, loving. he speaks in the present tense. >> there have been lots of miracles. just, like, what we want is the true story. >> reporter: showing me mobile photos of his wife, he tells me he's angry at the way he's being treated. his wife was part of the cabin cree, but lee feels the airline tells the media more than it tells him. he says he gets most of his information from televised press conferences. part of the reason he's hired a lawyer. >> it is not their fault that this happened to the plane, so, therefore, they have to be compensated for their d

our paula hancock sat down with the husband of the flight attendant on flight 370.em i'm going to bring her home. but i really don't know where is she now. and now i'm not sure whether i can bring her home. >> it's just heartbreaking. i want to bring in jeff gardere now, psychologist. it is heartbreaking to hear that. i'm not sure what we could offer the family to give them hope, but is there anything -- how can they cope with this? >> one of the things that the malaysian officials did, which was right, was to talk to them about their spiritual and religious beliefs. this is where you have to give it to a power greater than yourself because there are no answers. this poor man, the way that he's grieving like many of the family members at this point, it really is about holding onto hope as much as you can. but, don, one of the things that the family members have said until they find the bodies, if they find bodies, they can't really begin the grieving process. so this is something that is so horrible for them because they really are stuck in between a rock and a hard

let's bring in paula hancock live for us in kuala lumpur.ften does this specific airline, malaysia air, do these psychological tests on their pilots? >> these tests we are being told from the chief in a press conference, they say that every new pilot that joins the company has to undergo this psychological testing and it's not just when you start. it does continue throughout your career. it's important he said that after they do continue to test them. let's listen to what he said. >> that's something that we check every six months or depending on how old they are. that's normally done during an interview with the doctors. >> this is something that investigators are looking at. the focus is on the pilots and the absence of physical evidence and knowing what happened and the fact that malaysian authorities are saying it was deliberate action that let to this disappearance. it focuses on the pilots and the one question was, did they know each other? did they know each other and have they flown together before they got inside the cockpit. he sai