look what happened with silkair. you have one piece of wreckage, about 75% of the wreckage was found and you have three different entities. the civil court here in los angeles, the u.s. authorities and the indonesian authorities, three different responses to the same piece of evidence. >> all right. thank you very much. horrific when you see these stories. joining me now is a former ntsb board member. john thank you for taking the time. you just heard the reporting on the silkair story the suicide as ruled by the ntsb. look, it's hard at this point to speculate. everybody is speak late. we have this debris field that could change the view of what happened here because it was essentially on the flight path although not exactly. do you think the case we're looking at now could possibly have been a pilot >> every accident we approach and look at all the factors. and if this airplane suddenly came down and that piece of debris tells us thought came down in that area, we're going to look at all kind of actions. defects in

and when i think back at silkair and some of the things that were taking place, you had to look at out of the ordinary, if you will. that is what really got me interested in the fact that this was an intentional act and not an accident. >> and i'm painfully aware the pilots are not here to defend themselves, you mentioned 1997, silk air, the plane deliberately flown into a river by the pilot. we're getting into a criminal area here, but what would they need to do to at least run that possibility through? >> typical accident investigation looks at, basically, the pilots' background. they do a 72-hour history of the pilot. they try to determine personal life and things like that. but with silk air we had to take it much deeper. we actually got into a lot of personal issues with the pilot. we looked very far back in his background and we saw that there were some psychological issues that were developing, thanks that were out of character. i think that's what investigators on the criminal side and the accident investigation side will really have to get into determine what the path of this

. >> reporter: a suicidal pilot was also to blame for this, december 1997, the crash of silkair flight 185. it was heading from jakarta to singapore when it crashed into this river. >> translator: it sounded like a bomb, a bomb dropping. first explosion up in the air then it exploded again then it crashed into the water. >> reporter: the plane dropped into the river in less than a minute, breaking the speed of sound and killing all 104 passengers and crew. the ntsb concluded that the pilot deliberately directed the flight to crash. in indonesia, they claim the findings are inconclusive. randi kaye, cnn, new york. >> it's certainly a troubling and perhaps remote possibility but one that has to be explored by investigators. joining us two pilots who are both cnn aviation analysts, les abend and miles o'brien. does that make sense in any way that a suicide pilot or co-pilot would be involved in this? >> why do it in the middle of nowhere? it just doesn't make sense. i would have done it after takeoff. my understanding is that there's one of the world's biggest buildings and towers in kual

heard earlier that there are still people who are insisting that some of these other crashes such as silkairn intentional act, a suicide, when in fact we proved years later thought was a 737 tail rudder. and it takes years to really find the truth. but eventually we are able to find the truth. it does come out. and we'll be able to prove that. compensation will come in due course. >> let me ask just quickly, if for example we take the theory of a pilot or copilot taking this plane off nefariously, who is culpable for that legally? is it the airline? is it boeing? is it all of them? who takes responsibility? >> well, clearly it's the airline because under the montreal treaty, the airline has automatic liability. that doesn't prevent other people from also sharing responsibility. it could be independent crew companies that provided the crew, that didn't do proper background checks. there may have been some other person involved with the asisting the crew to do this. so, it doesn't end the question of who else might be involved. whether or not the manufacturer is involved is a more difficult qu

whether or not someone had a bankruptcy, a financial problem, maybe heavy stock losses, i think that silkair, that crashed into the indonesia river, the pilot there had heavy stock losses, so anything to do with financial problems, maybe a personality trait, upset about something, depression, medical records, they will be looking at everything. >> can you talk about how difficult it is to talk to a family member say of a missing passenger of that plane about those sorts of things? i would assume that the authorities have to do that if they have not done it already. >> that's right, but the authorities are good at that. i remember a psa flight that crashed in california where literally, it dove into the ground in san diego, and the agents were required to go out and interview all of the family members and talk to them and get dental records and what have you. it's a difficult job, but they're certainly up to the task. and the malaysian authorities would do well to make use of their fbi counterparts here in the united states. >> do you think they have done that already. >> i do believe so. i k

silkair, royal air, there have been a number of incidents like that. >> let me stop you there, philipt me ask you a follow-up on that specific point because that is a very interesting response you have given in those other circumstances you just listed. was there no warning in any of those, either, at all to anybody that this was happening? >> well, if you are dealing with hijackers on board an aircraft, whether it was an organized gang or whether it was some psychologically disturbed individual, that if somebody managed to gain access to the flight deck and neutralize the crew then again there wouldn't necessarily be any communication at all. as we witnessed on september 11th. if there was explosive decompression, if a bomb detonated on the aircraft there would be no communication. you have to look at pan am 103 over lockerbie, no communication in that instance. i think those in the industry if you're thinking about the bomb theory, slightly less credible because you would have expected to have found debris by now in the crash zone. >> okay. let me bring back jim tillman. the pilot's

>> egyptair, jetblue, silkair. >> these were murder-suicides. >> but there are tens of thousands of pilots in the world, hundreds of thousand. you cannot, must not, because otherwise you'll start a witch hunt. you'll have les looking at his co pilots -- did this. and his co pilot saying les was ten minutes late for the flight, what's going on, marital problems, drinking problems? that's what you'll end up with. >> is that such a bad thing? is that such a bad thing you police each other? >> we do police each other. you know, what do you do when you spend anywhere from 6 to 14 hours in a cockpit. we talk about our families. things that you folks talk about here. you know, so we get to know a person -- especially when we fly with them on a frequent basis. we get to know that individual. and if something is going wrong with their life. and i can guarantee you that, you know, my particular airline at this point has 85 people. 8,500 people on the seniority list. not including -- by these are wonderful -- they're wonderful people. >> last quick comment. >> but what's your threshold for when you w

. >> reporter: a suicidal pilot was also to blame for this, december 1997, the crash of silkair flightding from gentlemjaka singapore when it crashed into this river >> it sounded like a bomb dropping. first explosion up in the air then it exploded again then it crashed into the water. >> reporter: the plane dropped into the river in less than a minute, breaking the speed of sound and killing all 104 passengers and crew. the ntsb concluded that the pilot deliberately directed the flight to crash. in indonesia, they claim the findings are inconclusive. randi kaye, cnn, new york. >> it's certainly a troubling and perhaps remote possibility but one that has to be explored by investigators. joining us two pilots who are both cnn aviation analysts, les abend and miles o'brien. does that make sense in any way that pilot and copilot would be involved in this? >> why do it in the middle of nowhere? it just doesn't make sense. i would have done it after takeoff. my understanding is that there's one of the world's biggest buildings and towers in kuala lumpur. why not do it going into beijing? >>

one of the things we found in silkair was that when captain su decided he was going to do something intentional with the 737 in indonesia -- >> that's the crash i should say where they believe it was essentially pilot suicide. >> correct. >> yeah. >> we started talking to other people to get a character study. is this the way he normally handled himself in the cockpit? did he do these things? we found on the day that he did, he took this airplane down, he was out of character. he didn't do things that he had normally done. and i think that in the investigation of this event, they should be asking those questions. they'll be interviewing other pilots. is this the way the captain programmed the airplane? is this the way he operated? is this the demeanor he had in the cockpit? how about the first officer? was he a dutiful first officer? did he know what he was doing? did he always have, you know, proper procedures? so they're going to do a character study because with this new information, as tom said, this was premeditated. this wasn't something that was done on the fly because the acars basicall

silkair in the late '90s boeing was sure it was a pilot suicide.t turned out to be a problem with the rudder and that caused the crash. >> coming up your questions are coming in. we are answering them. keep them coming to us. hashiwatashi #370 qs. qs. we use more natural gas.lou, this ensures we can produce clean electricity whenever our customers need it. ♪ [ female announcer ] most of the time it's easy to know which option is better. other times, not so much. so it's good to know that mazola corn oil has 4 times more cholesterol blocking plant sterols than olive oil. and a recent study found that it can help lower cholesterol 2 times more. take care of those you love and cook deliciously. mazola makes it better. suddenly you're a mouthbreather. well, put on a breathe right strip and instantly open your nose up to 38% more than cold medicines alone. so you can breathe and sleep. shut your mouth and sleep right. breathe right. >>> breaking news tonight. there are a lot of theories ranging from sensible to maybe a little bit out there. i want to fi

. >> reporter: a suicidal pilot was also to blame for this, december 1997, the crash of silkair flight 185. it was heading from jakarta to singapore when it crashed into this river. >> translator: it sounded like a bomb, a bomb dropping. first explosion up in the air then it exploded again then it crashed into the water. >> reporter: the plane dropped into the river in less than a minute, breaking the speed of sound and killing all 104 passengers and crew. the ntsb concluded that the pilot deliberately directed the flight to crash. in indonesia, they claim the findings are inconclusive. randi kaye, cnn, new york. >> it's certainly a troubling and perhaps remote possibility but one that has to be explored by investigators. joining us two pilots who are both cnn aviation analysts, les abend and miles o'brien. does that make sense in any way that a suicide pilot or co-pilot would be involved in this? >> why do it in the middle of nowhere? it just doesn't make sense. i would have done it after takeoff. my understanding is that there's one of the world's biggest buildings and towers in kual

and we had the silkair crash a couple years back where the pilot flew it deliberately into a swamp. so is it likely? no. but it's something we have to look at. right now we have to find that airplane. we have to find the wreckage. or we're just going to continue to guess into perpetuity. >> that's what we're doing here, stephen. just so many days have gone by now and just the frustration of the families and everyone involved in knowing that there's so many planes that are out there. there are so many ships out there, but yet, nothing is being found. >> exactly. i'll tell you, i'm personally losing faith in the malaysian government's ability to conduct this investigation. they have not told anybody why they've shifted their search area 500 miles off to the west. why not off to the east? what aren't they telling us? what did they see? and in all of the countries such as the u.s. and china and vietnam are all complaining that the malaysian government has not been forthcoming. i just don't see the coordination that's required and i'm losing faith in their ability to find this airplane.