from communicating or kept them so busy, until they could no longer communicate. >> pelley: sully sullenberger from the oakland airport for us this evening, thank you very much, sully. >> thank you, scott. >> pelley: in another major story developing tonight, we have learned that secretary of state john kerry declined an invitation to go to sochi today to meet with russian president vladimir putin about the ukraine crisis. kerry apparently wants putin to respond to set of questions. russia invaded the crimea region of ukraine more than a week ago, but most people there are of russian heritage and next sunday, they plan to vote on joining the russian federation. elizabeth palmer is in crimea. >> reporter: it's not a celebration yet, but pro-russian demonstrators feel that victory is just around the corner. over in the government offices, they're already working on the referendum details. and when we asked if the vote would be free and fair, the man in charge valery medvedev, was indignant. "how i can prove that to you?" he said. "but my hands are clean." over the weekend, russian forces and par

and we'll talk to sully sullenberger about what might have been gone wrong. for the first time, the father of adam lanza talks about the sandy hook shootings and his son's mental health. >> reporter: does he blame himself in any way? >> pelley: don dahler has the story. at a blood test may predict alzheimer's disease. dr. jon lapook on the new research. and chip reid reports on what may be the biggest obstacle keeping man from reaching mars. captioning sponsored by cbs this is the "cbs evening news" with scott pelley. >> pelley: the mystery has the attention of the world. what's become of malaysia airlines' flight 370. tonight, dozens of ships and planes from a numbef countries, including the united states, are conducting a search of from the boeing 777 vanished. the plane left kuala lumpur, malaysia, saturday morning for beijing, china, with 239 people on board, including three americans. today, relatives in both cities held vigils and tried to comfort one another during what has become a painful and frustrating wait for news. we have a series of reports ton

we'll get the latest from seth doane in beijing, and captain sully sullenberger. more russian troops apparently sent into crimea. charlie d'agata and elizabeth palmer are on the ground in ukraine tonight. budget cutters take aim at military commissaries. what it would mean for the families who depend on them to make ends meet. >> it would directly affect my household budget. >> axelrod: and daylight saving. who really stands to gain when we lose an hour of sleep tonight? captioning sponsored by cbs this is the "cbs evening news." >> axelrod: good evening. i'm jim axelrod with a western edition of the broadcast. a malaysia airline 777 cruising along at 35,000 feet from kuala lumpur to beijing disappeared off the radar early this morning, no radio call, no distress signal. and now two oil slicks seen off the southern coast of vietnam are fueling fears that the plane with 239 people on board crashed into the south china sea. relatives of passengers have been gathering at the airport in beijing. three americans are reported to have been on board. the names of two pass

>> schieffer: we'll hatch the latest from malaysia and our team of cbs aviation, including sully sullenberger. then ask the chairman of the house intelligence committee, mike rogers, who he knows about the plane's disappearance. then we'll turn to the other big story, the vote today in crimea and the crisis over ukraine. what can the u.s. and our allies do if russian president vladimir putin tries to annex the former soviet state. we'll hear from former obama national security advisor tom done lone and a panel of experts about that and the other developments. 60 years of years because this is "face the nation." captioning sponsored by cbs >> schieffer: good morning again as i said earlier there is breaking news now on ukraine have agreed in a phone call according to the russian ministry, to seek resolution to the ukrainian crisis through what the news release says, is constitutional reform in ukraine. that is the sum total of our knowledge of this, it just came over the wires, our state department correspondent margaret brennan has on this. what have with you able to find out? >> this is base

. >> captain chesley sully sullenberger takes control of the airplane from his copilot with two simple words. "my aircraft." remarkably there is footage of the plane's last moments airborne. >> sully took over control of the airplane and called for the dual engine failure checklist that we do. and i started to perform that. >> trying to get the engines restarted. >> yes. >> was there any luck at all? >> no. the engines have to be in a certain start envelope, we call it, to start. and that usually is predicated on you going a lot faster. the airbus dual engine failure checklist assumes the engines have failed at cruising altitude. 30,000 feet would have given the pilots ample time to figure things out. hitting a flock of canada geese at just 3,000 feet, that's another story. what at this point is going through your mind? >> at this point i'm thinking, this can't be happening to me. >> if the engines weren't producing thrust why wouldn't the plane have fallen from the sky, out of control in the answer, simple aerodynamics. a plane with an engine failure can still be controlled as it come

now, what if they did a sully sullenberger type landing, tried to land on the water and actually landed the middle of the indian ocean, and then slowly the plane began to sink? >> well, you know, i don't know how the currents run over there. but i think when you take an airplane and try to ditch an airplane like that -- remember, sully landed in the hudson. it didn't have waves, didn't have currents like that. it was calm and it was daylight. i mean, this aircraft didn't have anything going for it. if that was the case, i'm sure it's in the bottom. >> and even if it were floating for like the sully sullenberger's plane on the sudden son, people would start getting out of the doors. so they would be floating, if you will. so it's -- these are all the theories that are out there. as you guys well know. and it's heartbreaking to think about. let's not forget, 239 people. >> absolutely. >> >> were aboard that airliner. stand by. as new data from thailand reveals a possible change in course, we're also going to check in with our own martin savidge in a flight simulator to get a feel for bein

airways pilot sully sullenberger pulled off the seemingly impossible safely crash landing his passenger-packed jet in one piece on the hudson river. >> kudos to him, man, did a great job. >> reporter: most of the time is wreckage is not in one piece, debris scatters, some sinking, some floating. >> life jackets could be in there, seat cushions, anything in the bins that floated. so it's certainly possible that substantial pieces of lightweight debris, not aircraft structure, could be found floating six days after if the aircraft struck the water. >> reporter: air france flight 447 crashed into the atlantic ocean in 2009. in this case floating debris led search crews to the wreckage five days after it went down. the debris field was relatively contained. that shows it broke up when it hit the water before some of it sank 2 1/2 miles to the ocean floor. in 1996 twa flight 800 exploded in the sky near new york. debris scattered far and wide. investigators had to map out several debris fields. the cockpit sank, but the fuselage and wings scattered far because of how high up the plane was when it e

and we'll talk to sully sullenberger about what might have been gone wrong.stime, the father of adam lanza talks about the sandy hook shootings and his son's mental health. >> reporter: does he blame himself in any way? >> pelley: don dahler has the story. a blood test may predict alzheimer's disease. dr. jon lapook on the new research. and chip reid reports on what may be the biggest obstacle keeping man from reaching mars. captioning sponsored by cbs

" we'll go to kuala lumpur on the latest on the missing plane and get reaction from captain sully sullenbergerorida, is the most corrupt city in the state and why lawmakers want to wipe it off the map. >>> and actress emmy rossum joins us this in studio. thanks for watching. i'm anne-marie green. have a great day. -- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com watching. i'm anne-marie green. have a great day. -- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com >>> your realtime captioner is linda macdonald. >>> good morning, everyone. it's wednesday, march 12. i'm michelle griego. >> hi, everyone. i'm frank mallicoat. 4:30. a little weather and traffic and a little bit of change. i can't put my finger on it but something's changed a little bit. >> something strange around here. the winds are whipping around the bay area today. it looks like we have some 30- mile-an-hour gusts even one 40. but lots of sunshin coming our way. >> some of us noticed it was a two hands on the steering wheel kind of morning. we'll have the morning commute coming up. >> it was windy. >> thank you. developing news right now. ome a massive f

we'll get the latest from seth doane in beijing, and captain sully sullenberger.e russian troops apparently sent into crimea. charlie d'agata and elizabeth palmer are on the ground in ukraine tonight. budget cutters take aim at military commissaries. what it would mean for the families who depend on them to make ends meet. >> it would directly affect my household budget. >> axelrod: and daylight saving. who really stands to gain when we lose an hour of sleep tonight? captioning sponsored by cbs this is the "cbs evening news." >> axelrod: good evening. i'm jim axelrod with a western edition of the broadcast.

since there was no distress call from the captain or crew, it's just a mystery, but sully sullenberger says don't read too much into that lack of communication. >> whatever happened probably happened quickly and either kept the pilot from communicating or kept them so busy until they could no longer communicate. >> reporter: among the 239 people on board were three americans including sarah bajeck's boyfriend phillip wood. >> phillip is dead, i refuse to believe it. of anybody that could survive something like this it's him. >> reporter: the u.s. navy is helping with the search and the chinese government is also redirecting satellites to search the area from above. mentioned authorities are searching that west coast of malaysia now. it's not clear why, if they found any more evidence, ken, they haven't exposed that to the public. >> they are going to keep searching the original flight path as you say, but wasn't there a report earlier that said they may have turned around? >> right. so we've heard some possibilities that it turned around in midflight. so it may be they're just expandin

and we'll talk to sully sullenberger about what might have been gone wrong. for the first time, the father of adam lanza talks about the sandy hook shootings and his son's mental health. >> reporter: does he blame himself in any

. >>> captain sully sullenberger, who saved passengers when he made a forced landing on the hudson riverays solving the mystery of what happened to the flight will take a long time. >> the aviation industry never really tolerates this level of ambiguity. you can be sure huge sums will be spend to solve this mystery, even though it's likely to take months or years. >> he believes the black boxes will likely be found. >>> a new study questions whether airport security is cost-effective. it concluded that those measures are not effective, and it may be time to reduce them. the numbers were calculated before a gunman killed two at l.a.x. in november, the studies coauthor said that attack doesn't change his conclusion. >>> it was two years years ago that south bay teenager sierra lamar disappeared, and hasn't been seen since. sierra was honored at one of her favorite spots. ♪ [ music ] >> another sad anniversary. >> thank you so much. >> no problem. >> it's been two years of heart ache, searching, and waiting. >> today we come together. family, friends, to honor sierra lamar. >> family, frien

air captain sully sullenberger who made that miraculous landing on the hudson river now five years ago now cbs news aviation and safety contributor. what do you make of this latest situation, should we be hopeful about this, these new images that we've seen? >> well, good morning, bob. everyone is grasping for any bit of hope. this is an extraordinary circumstance in many ways. with each passing day it makes it more challenging because of the combined affect of wind and current on what floating debris there may be. if it turns out that this debris is part of airplane which it might not then of course searchers have to work backwards for several weeks, that wind and current information to find where on the ocean floor the aircraft may be f. that's where it is. unfortunately there was some missteps made very early on. here we are three -- in to the third week of the investigation just now beginning to narrow the search that are areas as large as the united states. >> schieffer: you know, this information keeps coming out in dribs and drabs because some of it we're learning when the searc

sully sullenberger struck a flock of geese. he is now a safety expert and joins us from san francisco. captain, good morning to you. >> good morning. i wish it were under better circumstances. >> absolutely. >> this is a flightening situation. i think people are baffled. how does a plane of this size flying over land disappear? >> it's not clear to me if this was a portion of the flight where they were under constant air traffic control surveillance from the ground or between air traffic control centers. basically, they were on their own until they got to the next point where they would be observed by radar. this makes finding the aircraft more difficult. >> officials did not receive a distress call from the plane. how unusual is that? >> not terribly unusual. this harkens back to the june 1, 2009 crash of air france 447 over the south atlantic. of course that happened over the middle of a deep ocean in the middle of the night. it was some time before the wreckage was found. of course the water is deeper in the south atlantic t

. >>> cbs news aviation and safety expert captain sully sullenberger knows about flying a plane in theiddle of an emergency. he's in san francisco. sully, good morning. >> good morning, anthony, norah. >> good morning to you. this defies explanation. i mean, what happened to this plane? how does a boeing 777 just disappear? what problems do you think the pilots could have encountered? >> well, as bob was just saying we don't know yet. absent any hard evidence you know, no wreckage having been found, having not found the recorders yet, all causes should be on the table. it's clear though that this happened suddenly and perhaps catastrophically, and as you noted, from personal experience and from talking to others who have been in dire emergencies, i know exactly how the workload and the pressure of trying to find out what's going on can keep a crew busy when they're unable to communicate. what happened to us five years ago, with the hudson river landing, it was an advantage. we knew very early on exactly what had caused our engines to fail, the bird strike. so i didn't have to spend a l

captain sully sullenberger, great to have you here. thank you so much. >> good to be with you again. >>> a car plowed into a crowd overnight attending the south by southwest festival. it happened outside a nightclub in austin. nearly two dozen others were hurt, five critically. the driver is under arrest this morning. adam of k.i. reports from the scene. >> reporter: good morning, charlie and norah. we're standing about two blocks from where this all came to an end at sotheby southwest. the police tape is still up. this morning, police have arrested a man they say drove through a crowd of people. >> he just ran through a bunch of people! >> where you at? >> red river. >> reporter: this was the scene just after midnight. >> everywhere you look, somebody's been hit. >> reporter: victims lining the streets just moments after a car barrelled through protective barricades, crashing into a crowd of people. >> we were waiting to get into the show, and we were, like, around the side, and all of a sudden this car just, like, driving through, li

with us here in studio 57 captain sully sullenberger known for the miracle on the hudson landing.instinct say to you, and what is the baffling about this and what are the contradictions that puzzle you? >> well what's so frustrating for all of us -- and i can only imagine how frustrating for the families of the passengers and crew -- is that we don't know very much. there is no hard evidence. we have not found any wreckage. we have not recovered and analyzed the recorders. until we do we're going to have many more questions than answers. ultimately we will find them. >> one thing you do know is what it's like to be there under stress. it is likely a pilot would issue a distress call? >> the situation that they faced may have been so overwhelming and their higher priorities of flying the airplane and trying to solve the many problems they faced are higher priorities than just communicating that they would have done later had they had the opportunity to. so the fact that they didn't indicates to me that they were either unable to or too busy until they couldn't. >> what interests me

perhaps what captain sully sullenberger encountered when he took oven countering geese.ven though low to the ground, airline intact, made the distress car letting them know what was happening and as we know successfully landed the aircraft in the hudson. >> certainly what we would hope for with anyone having trouble. we appreciate your time today and look forward to having you back. thank you. >>> president claiming obama care is cheaper than your monthly cell phone bill. is that true? as the president makes a sales pitch on daytime tv we make a check. a stop on the tracks, how this ended and what the heck the truck was doing there in the first place is a good question. march madness happening as we speak. who do you have going all the way in your bracket? tweet me your picks. we'll read picks at the end of the show. ♪ ♪ ♪ humans -- even when we cross our "t's" and dot our "i's," we still run into problems. that's why liberty mutual insurance offers accident forgiveness with our auto policies. if you qualify, your rates won't go up due to your first accident. because mak

why don't we go to the nearest big airport just like sully sullenberg. he wasn't going to fly over manhattan. this guy wasn't going to fly over kuala lumpur. there's an airport that's bigger, has over-water approaches so there's no risk to people on the ground. i think this guy was trying to do the right thing and he just got overwhelmed. we can talk about a couple of other actions. one that's very curious, had to be a human in control. in 2005 we had a 737 out of cypress, a greek airline where they had a slow decompression and a flight attendant ends up taking over control of the airplane to try to save it. it's a male flight attendant. he can't do that, but they fly for 2 1/2 hours until they run out of gas. does that fit? al diehl is not saying that's what happened, but i would sure keep looking. wie just hope the united states navy gets out there with a significant number -- >> i do, too. dr. alan diehl, formerly ntsb and an faa crash investigator. thank you so much. so we're living off mystery and intrigue fumes and we kind of all are, those of us w

we are going to talk to captain sully sullenberger on the possible reasons there was no mayday call from pilots. and then seth doan, he is in china, he spoke to the girlfriend of one of the american passengers. the reason she is still holding out hope that her boyfriend is alive. and then, finally, a california pioneer in human genetics is with us in studio 57 with his plan to help people live longer and healthier live. we all want that. the news is back in the morning. we will see you at seven. >> all right. norah, thank you. >>> it is 65:71. we have a fight over francisco's waterfront and it's washing ashore. >> should the voters have to weigh in any time a developer proposed a tall building on the edge of the bay? a judge is set to hear arguments in week. we have an inside look. >> good morning. frank and michelle. imagine you are a developer and you want to build a high-rise on the waterfront. you spend millions of dollars paying architects and lawyers and getting permits and approvals from all the right city agencies. this takes years, by the way. once you are done with that it's st

. >>> we're joined by chesley "sully" sullenberger and jim toma, he flew commercial jets for nearly 30ptain sullenberger, for a boeing 777 to disappear, it's one of the most reliable airlines out there, isn't it? >> it is. and it disappeared during one of the most risky times of flight, the cruise. planes are going to spend more of their time in cruise. >> the 777, it's got built in redundan redundancy, it has backup systems if something goes wrong. the crew didn't have enough time or wasn't able to for whatever reason to actually communicate, what does that tell you? >> it tells me that something catastrophic took place there, it was sudden, unplanned and they had a lot to deal with quickly. >> captain sullenberger, you know what it's like to have to make a quick decision when something goes wrong on a flight. you say that when faced with a sudden emergency, pilots have a list of priorities, can you explain what those are? >> absolutely, in fact, most pilots know them by heart. first, 88, then navigate and only last communicate. the pilots would have been working together as a crew, t

sully sullenberger was a hero because of it. is that possibly what could have happened here?d our pilot mitchell join me inside the boeing 777 simulator. martin, a lot of conversation has been going today towards how to ditch an aircraft in water. if you're in crisis and have no communications, can you bring a plane down if you're low on fuel and save the people on board? can you walk me through that with mitch? >> we can. you know, warn you we're not experts, either one of us, on that particular. but we can give you an idea of what it would feel like in the aircraft, what the aircraft might be doing. we can't take you all the way down to the water because this won't simulate it and even if we did out of respect of families who might be watching, we won't do it. we're actually over the southern indian ocean, that's all programmed in. remember, we're trying to emulate 370 as much as we know. we're about currently 906 nautical miles southwest of perth. so we're in the rough area of that debris. if you would just take us down lower. we're going to go from, where are we at? we're

structure on the ocean, obviously different on an ocean than in a river as sully sullenberger famously here? >> depends on who's flying if it's the autopilot or human being. if it's the autopilot and it's set for a specific speed and altitude, the autopilot will desperately try to maintain both as long as it can even as the engines run dry. what happens as it does that is the nose just starts pitching upward to about a 40-degree upward pitch. that's not a good situation for any aircraft, you can imagine. so then the autopilot gives up. and what we've seen in the simulators is that the aircraft goes down tail first. that could go a couple of ways. that would lead you to believe that it would be landing hitting the water at a relatively slow speed having stalled out. now, if somebody were actually flying it down, the airplane could glide down and, in essence, you can perform a ditching. but it's pretty hard to ditch in the water at night. so i can't -- i'm not exactly sure at that time after that much flying if they were in daylight conditions or darkness. that would be a key thing. >> n

we saw that in the miracle on the hudson with sully sullenberger. that could be on the co-pilot.cal systems occurred. that's not unprecedented. in 1996, a value jet out of miami took off. they had a fire on board down in the cargo hold. that in the ntsb report showed a progressive failure of flight controls and electronics. this is not without precedence. it could have happened. if that had happened, the autopilot would have been destroyed also and this would be an airplane with no pilots and no autopilot and it would be out of control. if the pilots had a situation where they ran out of gas, like sullen burg are, they could have collided that aircraft to safety or at least tried to get it to safety. >> we want to look at what folks on twitter are asking. we thought we would put some questions to you guys. we'll ask one question from the viewer. assuming the transponder and acars were disconnected deliberately, is it possible the recorders would have been switched off zoo. could they be turned off manually from inside the plane. >> according to these guys, they had advised me, th

the perspective now from captain chezly "sully" sullenberger, and jim toman.rcial jets for near 30 years. captain sullenberger, for a boeing 777 to disappear, it's one of the most reliable airlines out there, isn't it? >> it is. and it disappeared during one of the least risky phases of flight, during cruise. the most risk, obviously, is during a landing or takeoff. long haul planes will be spending more of their time in cruise and be statistically safer than short range aircraft. >> the 777, it's got built in redundancy, it has backup systems if something goes wrong. those systems weren't enough to right whatever went wrong and the crew didn't have enough time or wasn't able to for whatever reason, to actually communicate. what does that tell you? >> it tells me that something -- some kind of catastrophe took place there that was sudden and unplanned and they had a lot to deal with quickly. >> captain sullenberger, you know what it's like to have to make a quick decision when something goes wrong on a flight. you say that when faced with a sudden emergency, p

airways pilot sully sullenberger pulled off the seemingly impossible, safely landing his packed passenger jet in one piece on the hudson river. most of the time, though, the wreckage is not in one piece. debris scatters, some of it sinking, some of it floating. >> life jackets could be in there. seat cushions. anything in the bins that floated. so it's certainly possible that substantial pieces of lightweight debris, not aircraft structure, could be found floating six days if the aircraft struck the water. >> reporter: air france flight 447 crashed into the atlantic ocean in 2009. in this case, floating debris led search crews to the wreckage five days after it went down. the debris field was relatively contained. that shows it broke up when it hit the water before it sank 2 1/2 miles to the ocean floor. in 1996, twa flight 800 exploded in the sky near new york. debris scattered far and wide. investigators had to map out several debris fields. the cockpit sank, but the fuselage and wings scattered far because of how high up the plane was when it exploded. >> initial pieces of floating deb

why investigators are taking a closer look at the pilots today plus captain sully sullenberger is inemotional and physical stresses on flying a plane especially on an international red eye flight. and we'll introduce you to the mastermind behind oakland-based pandora. how he became one of the most powerful people in music. the news is back in the morning. we'll see you at 7:00. frank and michelle, back to you two. >> all right, thank you. >>> time now for kpix 5's roberta gonzales out in some mighty breezy conditions. mobile weather lab, roberta. >> wind was a big concern for yesterday's fire. you can tell that it's still windy out there. >> reporter: frank and michelle, yes. in the overnight hours, we had wind gusts up to 53 miles per hour right here in dublin in the eastern portion of the bay area. weather a concern fighting the china basin fire yesterday. so this morning i called on earlier chief of special operations at the alameda county fire department and here's what he had to say. when you saw that huge plume of smoke over china basin yesterday, five-alarm fire, what were you

we don't anticipate a sully sullenberger style hudson river landing is possible. all, you're in the middle of the ocean. it's wavy out there. i don't know. what's left over is confusing and leads to all kinds of stuff i don't want to get into. you know? because i don't know anything. it just seems wrong. >> right. if you're running an investigation and you're a little perplexed at this point is where you really go back and take a look at what you missed and maybe you made some leaps that you should have made on what you were told early on. you really have to go back and source what you have. >> i mean, it's -- oh, yeah. thank you. it's very hard to imagine that this thing could have flown over land and not been noticed by anybody. but now the folks in thailand come up today and say oh, yeah, we saw the thing in the air and forgot to tell you for 11 days. no clue. >> i think absolutely there's more radar data out there to be had. i think that's an indicator of more to be found in countries that either don't know they have it or they don't know how to figure out wha

sully sullenberger's miraculous water landing of us airways flight 1549 on the hudson river in 2009.return of missing children thought long dead like elizabeth smart on the three women plucked from a cleveland basement after being snatched a decade earlier make it hard to argue that those families should just give up hope. even when our rational minds tell us there's little hope to be had. the world loves a mystery. but as we continue to cover flight 370, we should all keep in mind that at the end of this fascinating story are 239 families for whom this is a very real and very personal agony. that wraps things up for "the reid report." i'll see you back here tomorrow at 2:00 p.m. eastern. be sure to visit us online at "thereidreport.msnbc.com. coming up next, "the cycle." >> all our thoughts are with the families right now. we're spending the entire hour on new developments on this missing plane. we've got it offered from all angles, pilots, fbi folks, a psychologist to talk about what these families are going through. it's going to be a special edition of "the cycle" next. >> indeed

about, because here, i can't help but think about the day i was on the air and a man named sully sullenbergerthe plane on the hudson. is there a chance this aircraft, it went down, it landed safely and radar was not -- radar didn't pick that up. air traffic control didn't pick that up. something happened to the controls on the plane where no communication could be had? >> well, anything is possible but in a situation like this you're talking about more likelihoods and more probabil y probabilities than extreme possibilities. if this plane was ditched into the ocean that would have still enabled enough time for a radio call unless all of the electronics and all of the power that took out the radios and the tra transponder, mind you, and a transponder is what allows ground control to track an airplane. you would have thought that would be a remote possibility as well. but now it is daylight there in the south pacific. southeast asia, and they know what the intended flight path was. they're not going to be waiting too long to go along that intended flight path. and if you had had an airplane and

777 hits water, whether it hits by accident or whether a pilot tries to bring it down like sully sullenberger did on the hudson? what happens and how big could those pieces be? >> notwithstanding mr. sullenberger's great success, landing on water is difficult. so in almost every case, the airplane does not maintain control, does not make that totally one piece landing like he did. so it comes apart. whether you're trying to land successfully or not. so we're going to have pieces in most cases. the pieces we see now are large enough. i've done a fair amount of over-water surveillance, actually, in the military. very difficult to tell what you have you from up high, where you're flying at altitude. but down low, good indications. the color is right. emergency equipment, emergency ramps, those types of things would be bright yellow, bright orange. the trouble, they would also be that way in maritime for emergencies there, too. so we can't be sure what we have. i'm a show-me kind of guy. i hope they can get a piece. >> you're not the only show-me person in this story. there are people around the

sully sullenberger's landing in the river was a very rare event where the airplane didn't physically into a lot of smaller pieces. that was because it was under full control in daylight on calm water. and he was able to get the airplane very much slowed down. it was a nice piece of flying. but the -- for an airplane like a 777 to hit the water, it's got to break into a lot of small pieces. and then sink. most of those are going to sink to the floor. some will float. that's the debris field. the floating debris field that we're looking for right now. >> and, john, do you think as a result of this incident, there's going to be a rethinking of capabilities like being able to turn off the transponder manually in flight? and a retrofitting of planes so that they do have more modern technology? >> well, i think there's going to be discussion about it. but there are -- there are reasons to have the transponder be able to be switched off. and, remember, we don't know that that transponder was switched off. we know that it ceased to function. was that an interruption of electrical power? was

. >> sully sullenberger has been the go to guy and calls this one of the most remarkable aviation mysteriesif they can't find it. thomas? >> bob, mika brings up there were no phone calls or texts that have registered anywhere. the sophistication of radar is at its best right now. the black boxes as i understand it only have two-thirds of battery power left to give off the pings. >> the audio one, the cockpit voice recorder which would tell you what went on in the cockpit, that records over itself every two hours. if the action all occurred at about the time they are losing communication, then it flies on and on and on and it's not recorded any more. even if you find it, you don't have that end of it. >> steve rattner, what is the biggest question you think of? you fly. i know i was pounding you saturday night at a party saying, why do planes have transponders you can just flip off? but i guess clearly there are safety issues there? >> you have to be able to turn your equipment off if something goes wrong with it so that is not unusual. >> what comes to mind? is there a theory? is there anyt

airways pilot sully sullenberger pulled off the seemingly impossible safely crash landing his passenger-packedon the hudson river. >> kudos to him, man,

. >> we watched sully sullenberg drop the plane in the hudson.hout fuel, was able to glide and people could have survived if we jump to the conclusion that the debris is the plane? >> well, if there is debris, then that would have been quite a challenging feat in doing that in high seas. that's why we're giving so much credit to sully. he did it on a very calm day. back to ethiopian airlines, there was a struggle at the last minute. but once the airplane starts to ditch and the water grabs those engines, then anything can happen at that point. could they survive? i'm not an expert in estimating that. i couldn't really say. >> we know the cushions are supposed to float and we know around those two big pieces, they call it a debris field. that would lead one to believe this may indeed be the plane. >> oh, sure. yeah. i'm sure they're going to follow the currents and look in designated areas. it's been a long time and however, they could find something. i'm praying that they do find something. i really feel for the families that they do need some cl