[Cabrera:] So far, there's precious little evidence of what happened to Flight 8501. For now, investigators are sifting through what we have, including air traffic control audio, the last known recordings of the pilots' voices.
[Unidentified Female:] Wagon 8501, cleared. Again, 8501 cleared to Singapore. Flight level 240 initial. Do you want alpha departure? Squawk number 7005.
[Unidentified Male:] Squawk 7005, alpha departure 8501.
[Cabrera:] What else can we learn from the debris found in the Java Sea? Here to talk about this, David Soucie, CNN safety analyst and former FAA inspector and author of "Malaysia Airlines Flight 370: Why It Disappeared and Why It's Only a Matter of Time Before This Happens Again," written before this latest missing plane. Also with us, Jeff Wise, science writer and author of "Extreme Fear." Thank you, both, for being here. David, let's start with you. We have some pictures of the debris they have collected so far. When you take a look at some of the images we're going to put up here, based on I know you already have already seen some of them from other reporting we have been doing what strikes you about what they have pulled out of the water?
[David Soucie, Cnn Safety Analyst:] Well, it appears to me that what they have there, we thought that that was the baggage from the passengers. But after talking with some mechanics who work on that aircraft, that that's actually a go bag or an air flight bag. What's contained is extra lightbulbs, oil, things like that that would be necessary if the aircraft had to land in a place where there was no maintenance in case it had to go again. So it's a bag that contains that stuff.
[Cabrera:] Almost like a first-aid kit, but with more technical...
[Soucie:] Like in your car you have those extra lightbulbs, things like that. It's just extra stuff that they might possibly need. In addition to that, the bottle that came out there is a bottle that was used to inflate the slide that goes over the top of the wing. And that slide that goes over the top of the wing is what I think the other object is as well. It appears that what happened is that door that came off was in the aft baggage area, because all these things are contained in that same area. So something happened in that area.
[Cabrera:] So that would be in the back of the plane or underneath?
[Soucie:] Correct, on the aft ride side.
[Cabrera:] Now, based on this being again just six miles from where the plane was last located according to the radar and the communication back at air traffic control, what can we learn from sort of how the debris field is now defined, Jeff?
[Jeff Wise, "slate":] Well, bear in mind, of course, that what we have now is just the beginning of the data that's going to allow us to define the debris field. So, You know, as the day continues in Indonesia, they will be gathering more material. They will have a sense. And probably you will have a kind of circular scatter pattern and then they will do a drift analysis, and have an I presume they have been dropping buoys and they know how the water is moving through this body of water. And they will be able to then narrow down the area where, presumably, the black boxes will be underwater.
[Cabrera:] Does a larger debris field mean one thing vs. a shorter debris field? Or does that tell us how the crash happened? Or is it more about currents that it tells us?
[Wise:] It's both. Listen, if you have a massive depressurization at altitude or a decompression that, you know, blasts the material into a wide area from altitude, then, yes, that itself is going to give you a big debris field. If you have an intact airplane that's hitting the ground at high speed, you can get a very compact debris field. But then as you point out, you then have the environmental effects. The water currents always generally make a larger and larger pattern as time goes by. Now, compared to some of the other recent incidents that viewers will be aware of, this debris field will be located much more quickly than some of the others, like Air France 447, for instance. It was five days before debris first was located. And so, it should be more compact. But, yes, there are these multiple factors that will affect the size of the debris field.
[Cabrera:] And it's obviously very sensitive how they go about doing the search.
[Soucie:] Very much so.
[Cabrera:] Right, David?
[Soucie:] Yes. Everything has to be documented exactly where it is. As far as 20 years ago, we were using GPS to document every piece of wreckage at every accident site I was at. So luckily we could do that digitally. Before that, it was flags and buoys and things.
[Cabrera:] I want to read you something about the black boxes that we heard from, I guess, the president of Malaysia, excuse me, not Malaysia, but the AirAsia flight and leading all of this. If I can find the piece of paper where I put it, and of course, I can't at the moment. But essentially I will paraphrase what he said. He talks about how once they find where the black boxes are, if they, indeed, find those elements, that they don't actually extract them from the water immediately. They basically just say, OK, they're here, but there's a process, he says in terms of removing them in order to contain the clues that they may hold.
[Soucie:] Yes, it's a very sensitive operation, really, and they're more susceptible than people would think. It's like a laptop being dropped down into the water. But mostly what it's about is the corrosive material, not just in MH370, we worried about pressures. If it's at a low pressure and then you bring it to a high pressure, it can affect it structurally. But in this case, what we're talking about is the buildup of salt. And the salt gets in on the components inside can actually short those components out and cause transfer of static electricity. So you want to make sure you rinse that thoroughly and maintain the same pressure as you bring it up and then you rinse that thoroughly and get all of the saltwater out to where you have clean, pristine water to move everything out of there if it, indeed, was breached, which most of the time it is.
[Cabrera:] And, of course, there's a little bit of a time limit on how quickly they will find that because of the pings that those transmitters put out on the black boxes, right, Jeff?
[Wise:] You remember in the case of MH370, there was this great race against time to try to locate the black box pingers before the batteries ran out and, indeed, they were never located before the time, 30-day limit ran out. In this case, you know, we have got a much, much better situation, shallower water, probably a much smaller search area. And so I don't think that that's going to be a problem in this case. But I think, you know, people with memories are going to be fresh, as David can attest, that, you know, people were really thinking, if only, if only these batteries had been mandated to be longer, you know, it wouldn't have been so tense. I don't think we're going to be worrying about it here.
[Cabrera:] It's tough to talk about the victims of this flight, because obviously it's such a tough situation for those families. And we know that three bodies have now been recovered. There were 162 people on board the flight. One of the bodies that was pulled from the sea was of a woman. And she didn't have any clothing on, but her undergarments. I understand that tells us a little bit about, perhaps, the crash impact.
[Soucie:] It's a little early to talk about that stuff for me. But there are some very strict statistics that I wrote about in the "Why Planes Crash" book about how as an accident investigator we can determine the speed and the impact. The only reason that we talk about those things and understand them so thoroughly is so that we can understand exactly how it hit the air hit the water in determining the initial cause, because if we can't figure out the root cause, then these are just all simply clues. It's important to point out when we talk about these things and we have been today talking about these things, it's not for the purpose of making it difficult for other people. And so I think it's best that at least for me I'm going to back off on that question until it's pertinent to exactly what it is trying to accomplish.
[Cabrera:] I think, you know, we talk about it in the goal of trying to find answers for the families as well. If you're a family member, everybody wants first and foremost to know where their loved one is. Is it surprising that we have only now learned of finding three victims where there are 162 people on board?
[Wise:] I wouldn't say so at all. This is a process, it takes time. This is a fairly normal pace of after a plane goes missing, it takes time to locate the wreckage and then to locate the black boxes and so forth. There was a case in 2007 that was very similar in many respects to this air crash, which a plane was flying also in a very similar part of Indonesia. It took 12 days before wreckage was discovered. What we really saw in this case was a lot of nations committing resources, a lot of money and energy being expended. I think in the wake of MH370, there was a lot of concern about another plane going missing. Can this really be happening? And I think everyone wanted to move this out of category of missing airplane to trying to understand what happened, trying to get a grip. As David says, the reason that we apply all of this brainpower and manpower to understanding what happened is so it doesn't happen again. We want to understand so that no other families have to go through this again.
[Cabrera:] Exactly. And I guess I will let you have the last word on that note. David, how does finding these different pieces and providing answers for families and the rest of us help to prevent another disaster in the future?
[Soucie:] Well, we talk about the root cause. And that's root cause or the proximate cause. The proximate cause is the last thing that could've prevented the accident. We look for that, and that's what the NTSB is finding primarily is finding, how could it have been prevented? What it needs to what the clues lead us to is back up that chain of events through the Swiss cheese is what we were talking about before. The defenses are the Swiss cheese and the holes in those defenses when they line up, and failures occur, that's when an accident happens. The ability to trace that back and find out what was the latent causes, why was the aircraft in that situation, was there a failure in the systems of being able to identify the storms? Or was it a decision-making process, a distraction in the cockpit, perhaps? All of those things are taken into consideration on every accident because we're at a really fine detail now. We're not just saying we're trying to reduce accidents and deaths. We're trying to reduce the potential for an accident or death as well. So we're really, really working on those fine, fine details.
[Cabrera:] David Soucie, Jeff Wise, thanks to both of you for being here. Just ahead, Richard Quest is going to join me live on how this airline is handling the investigation and also important how the airline is treating the families. Plus, developing right now, a security firm says the Sony hack was an inside job, that a former employee could be to blame and not North Korea. But brand-new reporting from CNN says otherwise. More details straight ahead.