MH370 Families Outraged, Stage Protest; Bluefin-21 to Expand Search Area
BERMAN: We are now beginning week eight in the search for Flight 370. And the talk now is about expanding the deep sea search area. As we speak, the robo sub, the Bluefin-21 is scanning the final 5 percent of the underwater area where authorities believed is the most probable place that that flight ended. So far though the sub keeps coming up empty. Now, the families of the 239 people missing on that flight today staged a protest.</s>BERMAN: They gathered outside Malaysia's embassy in Beijing to demand answers about their loved ones.</s>PEREIRA: And they might just get some answers. Malaysia's prime minister tells CNN that his government will release a preliminary report on the plane's disappearance. We're told that will happen next week. Our Richard Quest pressed the Malaysian leader to find the plane regardless of the cost.</s>NAJIB RAZAK, MALAYSIAN PRIME MINISTER: We owe it to the families. We will search. We will spend as much as we can, as much as we can afford to find the missing plane.</s>RICHARD QUEST, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: Could I ask you for a yes or a no on that question?</s>RAZAK: It would be a yes, but as I said it has to be on the basis of our affordability. But we owe it to the families to find answers that they're looking for.</s>BERMAN: The families of those on board Flight 370 say they're not giving up hope on their loved ones, even if they can't get answers, they say, from Malaysian officials. Overnight I spoke with Sarah Bajc, whose partner, Philip Wood, was on the plane and she says, as you know, she's just fed up with the way things are being handled.</s>SARAH BAJC, PARTNER OF FLIGHT 370 PASSENGERS: Actions speak louder than words. The briefings both in Malaysia and in China have been a joke. They have their officials -- at the beginning they actually had officials at those meetings who would sleep in the meetings, they would laugh at the questions produced by families, they would not answer the questions. It's been a recurring theme. And the patience level of the family group is just gone.</s>BERMAN: We'll have more from that interview in just a few minutes, including what she thinks the truth may be on what happened to that plane.</s>PEREIRA: I think it's mind-boggling for a lot of people that not a single piece of debris has been found in the 49 days since that jet vanished. I want to take you live to Perth, Australia, right now. Erin McLaughlin is there. Good to see you with us again, Erin. So let's talk about this initial search for Bluefin-21 is nearing its end, some 5 percent left of the area that was set for it to search. But we know that there's an expansion plan in the works, more resources and expanded area and maybe even some fresh eyes.</s>ERIN MCLAUGHLIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Michaela. Today Australian authorities putting out a statement sort of responding to some of those questions about what next. What happens when and if they actually end up ruling out this most -- the current search area, which is basically their best guess as to where the black box may be. And they're saying now that the Bluefin-21 will then start searching some of the adjacent areas. Interesting, though, no mention of any additional submersibles being added to the mix, something that people here are wondering about considering there are more powerful submersibles out there like the Orion, which can go about a mile deeper into the ocean. It can stay down there for weeks on end. And we asked them that question. So far we're not getting any answer but we know it's something that Malaysian and Australian officials are discussing.</s>PEREIRA: Erin, we want to take advantage and talk to you about another situation, a bit of a turn here that does involve another airliner. This one was an Australian plane that had a bit of a hijack scare. Can you tell us more about what happened there and what we know now?</s>MCLAUGHLIN: Yes, it sounded pretty - it actually sounded pretty scary. We know it was a Virgin Australian flight from Brisbane, Australia, this morning to Bali and apparently an unruly passenger disrupted things onboard that flight according to local media. The pilot actually turned on the emergency transponder more than twice. Thankfully, in the end, the plane landed safely. That unruly passenger was taken into custody at the airport and the passengers were able to proceed as normal, Michaela.</s>PEREIRA: I can imagine, given how much MH370 has been in the news, I can imagine that caused extra panic for those folks aboard that flight and certainly for folks in Australia. Thank you so much, Erin McLaughlin.</s>BERMAN: Let's bring in our safety analyst, David Soucie, author of "Why Planes Crash." And David, let's start by talking about that flight right there, that Virgin Atlantic flight, or that Virgin flight. A passenger starts banging on the cockpit door trying to get in. Maybe he was just drunk. Still, how dangerous a situation is that?</s>DAVID SOUCIE, CNN SAFETY ANALYST: Extremely dangerous. Not only just from the fact that he's trying to get in and it excites the passengers, becoming unmanageable within the cabin, but then you also have the worry of the distraction of the pilots from flying the aircraft and having to deal with that emergency as opposed to flying the aircraft.</s>PEREIRA: All right, let's turn to Flight 370, David. It seems to be the topic that we are sticking with and need to because obviously we're into, what, Day 49 of this search. Australians are talking about the need to expand the search area for the Bluefin-21. Is that the way to go at this point, in your estimation? Or is the idea to bring in new tools, new eyes, do new math and start from there?</s>SOUCIE: I think that there's a step before we bring in new eyes and new tools. Not new tools though. The new math, I think we're in the right direction, the Inmarsat data to calculate where they're at, that's good data. The pings are definitely good data as well. So expanding the search makes a lot of sense. What doesn't makes sense to me is that they haven't called in additional equipment which can go deeper because new areas they're talking about are much deeper than where they've been.</s>BERMAN: Hey, David, I want to press you on that. Because sometimes I'm left with the sense here that analysts, people looking at this, say we have to search there because it's the best information we have. Just because it's the best, does that necessarily mean it's the right information? At this point, can you still be 100 percent confident that it's correct?</s>SOUCIE: Well, the pings, yes. The fact that it's the best - we've heard that from the very beginning. This is the best lead we have, the best information we have. And that is kind of a copout because the fact is there's no other information. This is all they have. So it's kind of a nuance as far as how it's being said. But, nonetheless, the confidence that I have in those pings is extremely high because of the fact that I've investigated several different possibilities of what else it might be, including Woods Hole itself has monitor beacons that they use in the ocean on various species to try to track them and those do operate in that same frequency.