so still with very little to go on when it comes to locating the missing plane, susan malvo has a look at the airplane's last moments of contact before disappearing. >> reporter: saturday march 8 at 12:41 a.m. local time malaysia flight 370 takes off from kuala lumpur headed to beijing, china. the boeing 777 is carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew on board. 26 minutes into the flight, at 1:07 a.m., one of the plane's critical communications sends its final transmission. the on board computer is called the aircraft communications addressing and reporting system, or acars. it measures thousands of data points about the plane and pilots' performance and sends the information via satellite. it is due to transmit again at 1:37 a.m., but never does. 1:19 a.m., someone inside the cockpit -- believed to be the co-pilot -- provides the last verbal communication with air traffic controllers. his last words "all right. good night." it's a common good-bye to controllers after being handed off. at 1:21 a.m., the transponder which identifies the plane to civilian radar, goes off. critical information

susan malvo looks at possible reasons why. >> on september 11th when high jackers took over planes headednew york and washington passengers onboard started making calls. those onboard reached out to loved ones sought help and warned others of the impending terrorist attacks but more missing flight 370, silence, no calls, no texts, no tweets. one theory that the phones didn't work because of the plane's altitude. 45,000 feet was much too high for a signal right? possible but rare. >> no nearby cell towers. >> there was a point where there were a couple of major cities and towns and villages is it possible that those cities could have gotten to a tower? however, it is also possible that they weren't able to communicate. we have to be in touch to have a conversation. those onboard were able to have conversation because the planes were flying low. but experts say, most of those calls were not made from cell phones but airline phones which use radio or satellite technology. one that has been faced out due to its high costs. but it had phones in the business class. they may have been disablded.

thanks very much to susan malvo in washington. i want to bring our panel of experts to continue this conversation and get to the issue of the zombie flight. mary schiavo. author of the book 'n' finding amelia." a retired commercial airline pilot and our analyst david soosy. i want to give you a chance to comment on this scenario. talk in the idea of a zombie plane. what would cause that to happen. looking at the data as you see it now, i'm not going to hold this to you but do you see information pointing in that direct? >> i don't see the zombie scenario. there's two parts to that, really. one, in a zombie scenario, you have inability to communicate with the person, although your communication system is intact. in this scenario, it's totally different than that. we have no communication with the aircraft. i want to go back to what rick gillespie said. it's important to understand we may be using experience against us here. i call it institutionalized thinking. our skperp is valuable in trying to determine these things. you have to