[Brooke Baldwin, Cnn Anchor:] Here we go. Top of the hour. Thank you so much for being with me on this Thursday. I'm Brooke Baldwin. Busy, busy news day here as we're following two major stories this afternoon. First, right here in New York City, look at these pictures. Incredible amounts of smoke. A deadly scene there in Harlem as fire crews, New York Police Department's bomb squad have been working this five-alarm fire after an explosion and two buildings, not just one, two here collapsed in east Harlem. The latest numbers we have here, two dead, 24 others hurt. We have heard from New York's mayor, Bill de Blasio, speaking to reporters just a little while ago saying several people are also missing, but he will not, of course, speculate on that possible number. The blast happened right around 9:30 this morning. The local utility company says it was called out to the location for a possible gas leak, but the explosion happened before its trucks arrived.
[Announcer:] This is CNN breaking news.
[Baldwin:] Let's get straight to our breaking news though. A new development in the other story we're following for you, that we have been following for days now. The latest in that search for that missing 777, that Malaysian airliner. Sadly it appears Malaysian officials still do not know where this plane was flying when it vanished with 239 people on board. And with each and every clue comes more confusion. Here's what we've just learned. Malaysian police are now questioning the friend, this man who hosted these two Iranian nationals in Kuala Lumpur, the Iranian nationals who had those stolen passports who boarded this jet. So we have more on that angle in just a second as we're just learning that. But we're also hearing this report that the last words heard from the crew of the plane were "all right, good night." That's according to "The Straight Times" newspaper. "All right, good night" from the crew. After spending five days searching the area beneath the intended path of this Beijing bound flight, Malaysia's military now says it may have radically changed course, popping up as a blip on radar more than an hour later and hundreds of miles away. A dramatic change in course over the Malacca Straits. Also, that means, the search area has suddenly doubled in size today. It's a development so baffling that Vietnam I mean just look at this map. So you have Vietnam here scaling back search efforts until Malaysia gets its act together. Twelve or so nations working on this. Reporters aren't getting clear answers either, by the way.
[Unidentified Male:] You're getting increasing criticism now. You're searching east. You're searching west. You don't seem to know what you've seen on radar and it's taking you until now, five days later,
[Hishammuddin Bin Hussein, Malaysian Defense Minister:] I think that's not true.
[Unidentified Male:] Well, can I ask you
[Hussein:] Yes.
[Unidentified Male:] This is utter confusion now.
[Hussein:] I don't think so. I think it's far from it. It's only confusion if you want it to be seem to be confusion. We have made it we have made it very clear and we've been very consistent in our
[Unidentified Male:] But you answered you do not believe
[Hussein:] Yes, in these two areas.
[Baldwin:] So exactly how desperate has the situation become? A shaman, a witch doctor if you will, says a Malaysian leader enlisted this spiritual ceremony to uncover any clues. This is this is how desperate they are and he came up with nothing. On top of that, CNN has also learned that the home of the pilot is being searched by authorities here. Let me bring in CNN International's Andrew Stevens, who's watching this story for us there in Kuala Lumpur. And, Andrew, let's begin with the new nuggets that we've just broke here, the fact that this friend who hosted these two Iranian nationals is being questioned by police. Tell me what you know about that.
[Andrew Stevens, Cnn International:] Yes, he's being picked up by police, Brooke, and as we speak he we understand that he's actually being interviewed at the central police station here in Kuala Lumpur. CNN spoke to him we just spoke to him just in the last few minutes. He said he's safe and he's well and he's expecting to be there for another couple of hours. Now, he was the friend of the two Iranians, the 18-year-old and the 29-year-old, who used the stolen passports to get on board that doomed flight. The theory on their use of these stolen passports has less to do with anything related to terrorism and more to do with the fact that it was people smuggling. The one of the Iranians, the young Iranian boy, was his final destination was actually Frankfurt, where his mother was waiting to meet him at the airport. And the other Iranian was going to Copenhagen. But certainly the police now questioning their friends here in Kuala Lumpur as to exactly what his connections were and what he knew about these two. I mean the police are talking to a lot of people. They also have been to the home of the pilot, the 53-year-old pilot. A very experienced pilot. He was also something of an aviation geek, Brooke, and he had his own simulator in his house. So police have been there and they've looked at the data on that simulator. No word yet on what they found.
[Baldwin:] OK, I was curious as far as what police could be looking for at his home. So you have those two things happening. In the meantime, I just go back to these families. I mean you had 239 people on board this 777 jet and with all these conflicting reports and Malaysian Airlines, you know, backing off one thing for another report, how are families handling this?
[Stevens:] Well, you can only imagine just how difficult it must be for these families. We are going into our sixth day now. In fact, it's just turned day six in the hunt. We're still several hour away from daylight here. And still, we don't have anything concrete. But what I can say about the search, Brooke, is that the Malaysian authorities did confirm today something that we got unofficially yesterday, the fact that this there is a path, a flight path, which has been reflected on a radar map, which shows a plane, an unidentified plane, flying back over Malaysia into the Straits of Malacca. Now, why this is linked to the to Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 is that the radar signal was picked up just after the plane lost contact. And it was on the same flight path and then it did a big deviation and went back across Malaysia into the Straits of Malacca. That is why that search in the western part of Malaysia is getting so much bigger now. The question is, how high was that plane flying when it was last reported to be about 200 miles northwest of the coast? It was high. It could have been flying it could have been flying for another couple of hours. It could be way out into Indian territorial waters. So, what this means is, those families who are sitting there, waiting hour by hour to get some information, could be facing days even weeks before they get some sort of understanding of where that plane went down.
[Baldwin:] Hearts and thoughts go out to them as they sit and wait and wait. Andrew Stevens, thank you, in Kuala Lumpur. I want to focus now really on this search, as Andrew mentioned, that's now suddenly doubled in size. The search area to this flight. The area they're searching now covers some 27,000 square miles. Authorities clearly don't know exactly where to focus the search for the missing airliner. So let's bring in a pilot, a former international captain of Northwest Airlines, David Funk. David, welcome.
[David Funk, Pilot & Fmr. International Captain, Northwest Airlines:] Thank you, Brooke. Good to be with you.
[Baldwin:] So, let's begin with the what we know and what we don't know. What we don't know, debris. There was a clear lack of debris in the water.
[Funk:] Absolutely.
[Baldwin:] You know, no pieces of the plane, no cushions, no nothing. What might that mean?
[Funk:] Well, that means one of two things. Either, a, we're not looking in the right place, or, b, the airplane touched down, not unlike Captain Sullenberger did on the miracle on the Hudson, where the airplane touched the water or maybe it's on land somewhere. But if it did ditch, it touched down in a controlled state. Hopefully that that was the case and the folks got off with the rafts. But I would be inclined to believe that if they touched down in a controlled state, somebody would have grabbed the emergency locator transmitters, which have to be manually activated on that airplane. They'll actually go on if you just throw them in the water on their own. They're water- activated. However, that hasn't happened. So I'm inclined to think that's not the case. There's a lot of triple canopy jungle in that part of the world down south of Thailand, across Malaysia.
[Baldwin:] I wanted to ask you on that. We keep focusing so much on the water.
[Funk:] Yes, so if it's on the ground somewhere
[Baldwin:] We keep focusing so much on the water
[Funk:] Right, we
[Baldwin:] But there is heavily forested area in that part of the world. It's possible it could be on the land and no one would see it, right?
[Funk:] That's correct, if you're not looking there. Now, it would be not impossible but difficult to look at our satellite data from that part of the world and see, can we see any recent flame or explosions, a new gash on the ground. But that takes time to go through and sort that data. Like you said, 27,000 square miles of ocean, plus all the land mass that that airplane potentially flew over. The fact that they made a turn back towards land makes me think one of two things, either it was some catastrophe in the cockpit that was caused by a breach of the flight deck and the crew being forced, or did they have such a mechanical problem that they had to concentrate on flying the airplane, who know what that could have been with multiple electrical systems, very unusual to lose every ability to communicate. In your comment earlier about what the pilot the last words heard from them. That's believe it or not, kind of a routine see you later.
[Baldwin:] I wanted yes, "all right, good night."
[Funk:] Nice to talk to you.
[Baldwin:] It is?
[Funk:] Exactly, "all right, good night." We're going to talk to the next controller or catch you next time, have a good day. I mean if you listen on the scanners around any major United States airport, you'll hear a lot of the same types of responses. That is a very common phrase heard in
[Baldwin:] Not alarming.
[Funk:] In the Southeast Asian area. Not alarming at all to me.
[Baldwin:] Glad you pointed that out. That was exactly where I was going next. David Funk, thank you so much. Always great to talk to someone who's been in the cockpit and knows how this works.
[Funk:] You bet.
[Baldwin:] We're going to have much more on the search for the plane, of course, throughout the hour. And the question, how the heck does a jumbo jet disappear for five now we're getting into the sixth day, especially with this kind of technology. This is a 777. This is a sophisticated aircraft here. We'll talk to Richard Quest. He'll show us how easy it may be for a plane to vanish. Plus, the Malaysian government announcing today this new search area. So we'll talk to Tom Foreman, who has a closer look at this new location and why it may actually be key in finding this missing plane. We are also watching this developing situation in New York City very closely this afternoon. This building just explodes this morning, comes crashing down. It's actually two buildings. Two dead, more than a dozen injured. And next we will go to the scene. We will talk to a woman who was trapped in her bathroom after the blast. Hear how a neighbor got her out.