Multiple Objects Spotted in New Area in Search of Flight 370
BANFIELD: After three full weeks of shock and confusion, the dead ends and the mystery of Flight 370, it has really been a fruitful and potentially pivotal day, as well. Of 10 search planes that took off today from Perth, Australia, to check out a newly identified zone of interest, five of them, half of them, spotted multiple objects of various sizes and colors. And not only that, but for the first time, a plane was able to come on back and do a second pass and actually relocate something that had been spotted by a plane before it. It's not clear if any of these objects actually came from the Boeing 777, which now vanished less than an hour after taking off from Kuala Lumpur March 8th, 22 days ago. But the ships that are being sent out there are going to try to fish some of those objects out of the water at first light. Take a look at the photograph, though. One of the first photographs, actually. It is after midnight now in that part of the world, but this new zone of interest is critical. It's almost 700 miles northeast of the earlier search areas. And it's based on a brand-new assumption that the airliner ran out of fuel a lot earlier because it burned up a lot of fuel a lot sooner in the flight. At least sooner than first expected, anyway. This new area is closer to Australia, which is great because that allows the planes to fly a shorter distance and spend more time in the air circling in the search area than actually traveling to their commuter work space, so to speak. And with that I want to bring in CNN correspondents Kyung Lah and Will Ripley, who are live in Perth right now at this midnight hour, and also CNN's meteorologist, Chad Myers, who's here live at the CNN Center in Atlanta. Will, first I want you to get me to this newest and I think very exciting prospect, an actual photograph that was seen by two different crews. Walk me through how that information is now getting downloaded, since the crews have arrived back where you are.</s>WILL RIPLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: You know, this is a late hour here. Normally things are kind of quieting down at Pierce Air Base. But the energy here tonight is palpable. As these planes have been landing, journalists have been coming up to us saying, look what we saw. And this is the picture right here, going viral. OK, I just scrolled past the picture. Here it is, Ashleigh. The picture going viral online. The iPad never cooperates when you want it to, does it? Anyway --</s>BANFIELD: We might have the same one you're talking about, Will, right up -- to the right of you. Yes, there it is.</s>RIPLEY: Let me tell you about the picture that you just showed. The CCTV image. You do. Yes. Yes. This thing is not cooperating with me. But you saw the picture, the square object. It's white. It's light gray. It's blue. They're floating around in the ocean. And as you mention, a New Zealand aircraft spotted it first and then an Australian aircraft was able to see for the first time the same piece of debris. And those colors are fairly significant, Ashleigh, because the exterior of a Malaysia airliner would have those three colors, the white, the gray, the blue. A lot of other things would, as well. But those pictures, as we speak, are at a lab. They're being analyzed. People are looking at them. And those ships. We have five ships headed to that area to join a Chinese vessel, which is already there. At first light, they're going to go to the site where that debris is. They're going to try to get it out of the water and see what it is. So, yes, a lot of - a lot of energy, a lot of momentum tonight here.</s>BANFIELD: And not only that, but, Kyung Lah, you just stepped off that Cadillac search machine, the P-8 Poseidon. You spent, I think, if my math was right, about 10 hours on that search mission out to the old zone and back. But give me a feel for what you saw and what your crew that you were with, what they're debriefing everybody back at that base. What's the information you can bring?</s>KYUNG LAH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, I can tell you that immediately when we hit the search area -- and it was much easier, according to the crew, to get to the search area than the other one -- is it took about two hours and 20 minutes. When we dipped down, one of the crew immediately said that they saw something. He was seated to the left side. There's a window to the left of the plane, a window to the right side that looks out. Very large windows. He saw something. The plane dipped down, and it made a dramatic turn. And then another crew member said, "I see something." And so we took two passes around. The camera in the front, also making sure that the other crew members did see, as well. So, in all, what the P-8 Poseidon was able to see, the crew members aboard, some white debris. We don't believe that it is connected to the New Zealand debris. But it was separate debris that was found nearby, near this search area. There was orange rope, as well as a blue bag. Now, what the crew is saying is that they put the coordinates in, and that they have instructed a ship nearby, you know, communicating with the Australian authorities, to go to this area to look at it. We don't know if it's connected to the missing plane. But it is debris that was found.</s>BANFIELD: And, Kyung --</s>LAH: We should point out that there is a lot of sea junk in this area, Ashleigh, but this is certainly an intriguing bread crumb.</s>BANFIELD: And just clarify for me, because I have been following your trip since you announced it, I think with Wolf Blitzer yesterday. You were being held back in the hangar for bad weather and bam, you were mobilized and out you went. But that was before the search area changed. So effectively, you got on the P-8 not knowing you were headed to the new zone. You thought you were headed to the old zone, but you effectively searched the new zone?</s>LAH: No, before we got on to this particular flight, they knew that this new search area was being pointed out. They knew that it had happened very dramatically, last-minute, that they were going to go to this new search area. We had learned about it just a short time before arriving for the flight, and so what the new search area looks like is it's northeast of the old search area. And the way the planes move is what I find really intriguing. They zigzag back and forth and it's almost like they're mowing the ocean. That's how one of the pilots described it. That's how close they get to the ocean. That's how carefully they look. The crew is determined to try to find some piece of debris and bring it back.</s>BANFIELD: I want to just bring Chad Myers into this, because this new zone, while on the map it may not look as significant, it is entirely different for all sorts of reasons. Lay them out for me.</s>CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: If you have a two hour and thirty flight two on back, that leaves you five hours, on site, not two. That is a big deal. But, Kyung, can you tell me, what was the sea state like when you were out there? Were there still white caps out there? Was that still annoying, to see white on white, looking for a white plane, or was it better now?</s>LAH: Well, let's first talk about that five hours. It really was five hours on the sea right there, and they were able to spend a good deal of time looking. As far as white caps, very, very minimal. The seas were very calm, and in the words of one of the crew members, if there's debris, we're going to find it.</s>MYERS: Is that the only piece of debris you saw in five hours?</s>LAH: It is the only piece of debris that we did manage to see. And, you know, given the weather conditions out there, I'm fairly convinced the way this crew was carefully combing the ocean with their eyes, they were using radar, they -- they were being very, very diligent, that they didn't miss anything else. So, this was debris that was immediately spotted when we went in, three different pieces of debris, all in the general area.</s>BANFIELD: All right. Kyung Lah, live for us, excellent reporting, and thank you for the hustle, as well. She's just gotten off that extraordinarily long flight, and it's just great to know that there are actually -- there's a way to see it, and there is a professional there logging it and sending those coordinates back. We're going to get deeper into that and exactly how they mark those spots, what the map is, and when they come back, how they download that information, how it's disseminated. Now that the search area has shifted, are the objects seen early in those satellite images at different locations, are they relevant anymore? It's only been 24 hours since this was the lead story, 300 objects spotted by satellite. Do they even matter now? A panel will weigh in.