Narrowing the Search After Hearing the Pings
ASHLEIGH BANFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: I want to dig into what this latest information can actually mean for the search I'm joined now by expeditions logistics specialist Christine Dennison, CNN aviation analyst Lieutenant Colonel Michael Kay, who is a former advisor to the U.K. Ministry of Defense, and Thomas Altshuler, who's the V.P. and general manager of Teledyne Marine Systems, which designs and builds the black-box pingers and also the pinger detectors. So, Mr. Altshuler, perhaps you can tell me what the job is now, now that we've had these two very promising detections, particularly from the Ocean Shield, because it seems to be the longest, the two-hour ping followed by the 15-minute ping that had the echo. What's the job now for the Ocean Shield? What are they trying to do at this moment?</s>THOMAS ALTSHULER, VICE PRESIDENT, TELEDYNE MARINE SYSTEMS: So, they're trying to do -- kind of re-cover the area and narrow where they think that the ping's coming from. They need to shrink the box they're going to look in when they put the vehicle down. The problem right now is that the sound propagates through the ocean, so they don't have any real knowledge about where exactly that is. And as you look at the time and difficulty of putting like the Bluefin 21 down in the water, you want to have a very good understanding of where that pinger would be.</s>BANFIELD: Are those pings different by the way? Let's just go on the second detection that lasted only 13 or so minutes, and there was this double ping going on, which many people say is terrific, because there's two, two boxes that we're looking for, flight-data and cockpit-voice recorder. Is there something different about the way they ping? Are they identical?</s>ALTSHULER: Actually, they're not. And I'm holding a pinger now. And one of the things we've been saying that it's 37.5 kilohertz, but in reality it's around 37.5 kilohertz. It's not exactly. So, each pinger's a little different. And, so, what you would expect is the voice recorder and the flight-data recorder should have slightly different frequencies. They should come in a little differently and they should have different times. And, so, if you think about it, they're talking that they're hearing an echo or a ping and a ping, but what we haven't heard yet is they're hearing a ping at one frequency and a ping at another frequency.</s>BANFIELD: Which would be entirely different.</s>ALTSHULER: Which would say it's from two different devices compared to an echo or something bouncing off the bottom or something in the water.</s>BANFIELD: Yeah, that's the other question I had for Christine is that what are the odds that double echo or that double ping actually could have been as simple as a bounce off of a thermal layer or a cavern or a mountain or other debris?</s>CHRISTINE DENNISON, EXPEDITIONS LOGISTICS EXPERT: Well, Ashleigh, we're working -- or, they're working in very deep water, approximately 4,500 meters, 10,000, 12,000 feet. And, so, it's very dense water. Sound travels faster in deeper water, so that 350-mile radius between the Chinese ship and the Ocean Shield, it's very possible they're both getting the same sound, and it could be closer -- farther south. It's just traveling at that distance by the time the Ocean Shield picks it up, because according to what I've been reading, the Chinese picked up the pings first.</s>BANFIELD: So, Michael Kay, is this effectively the haystack that we've been looking for, or is that too optimistic?</s>LIEUTENANT COLONEL MICHAEL KAY, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: No, I think we've completely bypassed the haystack. I think this is unprecedented. I think we're going straight in for the needle.</s>DENNISON: I agree.</s>KAY: I can't remember a time in history on any accident investigation where authorities and search operators actually found the needle before they found the haystack. It's quite unprecedented. Just like to pick up on a point you've been raising quite a lot, Ashleigh. This is a critical time. The weakness of the signal will be deteriorating, or the strength of the signal will be deteriorating, so we're kind of now in very critical territory in terms of Ocean Shield now having to go and do those three long legs to try and triangulate and fix where the point is. We've got to remember all we know from this is its strength. We don't know its position, and that's key over the next two to three days.</s>BANFIELD: All right, Michael Kay, thank you. Christine Dennison, Thomas Altshuler, thanks to all three of you. The big question for all of us today are the noises heard by two different ships in this area, the pings, are they from Flight 370? We're going to talk about that with a guest from the company that makes the pingers used on the planes, coming up next.