[Lemon:] Ten search planes are soon to be in the air looking for any physical evidence of missing Malaysian flight, airways Flight 370. Planes scour a section of the Indian Ocean 23 days after Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappeared. Ship crews finally retrieved objects from the search area today after three weeks of looking for possible objects that never materialized. And I want you to look at this, but to be clear no link exists between the objects and the missing airliner. It could just be sea trash. So, let's bring in now, our correspondent Atika Shubert at the Pearce air base in Perth, Australia. Atika, have the planes taken off or are they still waiting to go up into the air?
[Atika Shubert, Cnn Correspondent:] Well, they are preparing to go up in the air and I believe, the schedule is that a 9:00 plane, a Chinese
[Lemon:] And so the objects that we saw that were retrieved, right, they're picking up in the net, how long before they can get that to a place on land where they can examine it?
[Shubert:] Well, they are examining them on the ship right now, and now if they get something that looks like it might be debris from the plane specifically, then they can examine it on the ship, and they'll likely bring it back here to Freemantle, which is the port here in Perth. But the thing is that it is still 1,800 kilometers out to the search site so that means we're looking at at least a day, possibly two before the ships get back here. So it's a long process. It is going to take more time.
[Lemon:] Yes, Atika, we are hearing the weather conditions, and it was sunny this morning a little bit, when Will was there, Will Ripley and he said that the clouds were rolling in, and the weather conditions may deteriorate there today in that search area, and what do you know about the storm as we look at the radar here live. What time will the rain start?
[Shubert:] Well, we don't know exactly. So far, what's been happening is the mornings start relatively clear, but then the weather starts to deteriorate, but what we understand from the Australian coordinating team is that even if the weather gets worse today, they are going to try and press ahead with the search. And when is spoke to one oceanographer who said basically, this is the way it's going to be for the next two to three months, because it is autumn now here in Australia. It's getting into winter, and the weather is just going to get worse and worse and at some point it's going to mean that ships and planes are simply not going to be able to handle the weather conditions out there which is why it's critical to do as much searching as we can while the weather is still relatively good.
[Lemon:] Atika Shubert, appreciate your reporting. Thank you very much. I want to talk about the objects now. Let's focus on the objects pulled from the Indian Ocean, and how that may affect the air search. Joining me now, aviation analyst and 777 pilot Les Abend, aviation analyst and pilot Miles O'Brien, aviation analyst and former FAA accident investigator Steven Wallace and ocean search specialist Rob McCallum. So Steven, I'm going to start with you. An Australian navy ship set to depart from Perth later today after being fitted with a black box detector and an unmanned underwater vehicle. Do you think that they may have the signal that they have found something promising in the ocean?
[Steven Wallace, Fmr Faa Accident Investigator:] I don't know. I mean, we have all looked at the same photographs of the wreckage, and we can't draw any conclusions here. As far as the conversation that you just had with Atika there, on the ship, they will certainly have people who are capable of making a fairly good judgment about it. They get something that they think is likely to be part of the aircraft, I would assume they would photograph that. I mean this could be as simple as a baggage tag with some identification on it, or a Boeing part number on something.
[Lemon:] Anything. Rob, to you now. You saw the objects retrieved today, and do they look significant to you or just ocean trash or can you tell from the pictures?
[Rob Mccallum, Professional Expedition Leader:] You know, it is really difficult to tell from the pictures that I saw. You know, they certainly could be, but more significant are the photos that were taken from the aircraft, and they show a significant sized parts. So, you know, here is hoping, because we really do need to find something that's linked to that aircraft in order to be able to start thinking about how we would go about searching.
[Lemon:] Miles O'Brien, 10 search planes expected to fly today, but weather is of course getting worse. Rain. How do the search crews maximize the time they have available, and how much rain can searchers handle before calling it a day?
[Miles O'brien, Cnn Aviation Analyst:] Well, these guys will push it as far as they can, but there are limits as far as the ceiling and the visibility, and at a certain point, they are wasting their time out there. And this goes back a little bit to what I've been talking an awful lot about. You know, 10 planes relative to the size of the search zone is just not enough in my view. There should be a much bigger fleet of planes involved in this search, and perhaps an aircraft carrier, the "George Washington" is about away in Japan, and could be there, and the U.S. carrier, but, you know, the aircraft on board there are not optimized for search like a P-8 is which is a land-based aircraft, but there are helicopters, there are E2s, C-2s and it's more eyeballs on the scene. And given what Atika is just saying the weather window is going to close here pretty soon, and it is a huge area, and I fell like a full court press is in order.
[Lemon:] To Les Abend now, the FBI is almost done with the review of the hard drives belonging to the pilot and the co-pilot. U.S. officials telling CNN that nothing is jumping out to them. And it is time to rule out any theories about pilots with nefarious, possibly nefarious motives?
[Les Abend, Cnn Aviation Analyst:] Well, we're not going be privy to all of the information, I'm sure, but you know, just by everything that has happened, it is just for me personally gut feeling is that it just does not add up. I mean, I'm looking at a captain that seems professional, that seems to be a family man, that enjoys aviation, enjoys geeky things like showing people how to set up an air conditioning unit, and everything after the last verbal contact seems to the say to me that everything was normal.
[Lemon:] Right. So Miles O'Brien, similar question, you know, we've been looking you have to look at every single possibility, but in some instances, you know, the pilots' names have been dragged through the mud here, but still no evidence that they did anything wrong.
[O'brien:] And you know, they have families, too. Let's not forget that, what a horrible thing to indict the crew without any evidence. It is just you know, listen, they are on the list, and you can't rule it out, and that is just the way that these investigations go, but to take it to the next step and start reading things into, you know, a young man bringing some women into the cockpit, you know, a 27-year- old first officer showing off, you know, or a guy who is interested in flight simulators, and there is nothing in that that tells me there is any shred of guilt that should be obvious there. So this is the worst kind of speculation in my view. And I think that, you know, we just don't know. And these are human beings with families who are suffering right now.
[Lemon:] Yes. Rob, you know, this is everything that adds to sort of helps to put the puzzle together. And sometimes you may be looking at things that are really small, and I think that most people are looking for some big object, and maybe tail or wing or what have you. But I want you to dig into a little bit more about it could be the smallest possible thing, and one of my guests earlier said that it could even be a magazine page from an airplane or something as small as that can be an indication of what happened to this flight.
[Mccallum:] I mean, at this stage, almost anything that links any debris to MH-370 would be valuable. Simply to validate all of the work that is being done by the analysts of the satellite data, and the people who have been reworking the handshakes and the crews of the ships and the aircraft that have been out there looking, we really need to find something in order to validate all of that, and to know that we are in the right place.
[Lemon:] All right. Thank you, guys. Stick around, we're going to talk a little bit more about this, and also we want to talk about the partner of an American businessman who was on flight 370 opens up about her pain, and the connection she still feels to the man she loves.
[Unidentified Female:] Not too many people get that in life. And even if he doesn't come back, that won't change.
[Lemon:] Her very emotional interview just ahead.