Australian PM: Search for Flight 370 Most Difficult in Human History
CUOMO: Welcome back to NEW DAY. The Australian prime minister today called the hunt for flight 370 the most difficult search in human history. And it just got more difficult. The ship that officials hope will help detect the flight's black box is delayed as the search grid is adjusted yet again. Paula Newton is live in Perth with the latest. Paula, why are they shifting the search?</s>NEWTON: such a moving target, it is, Chris. When we asked them a straight answer about whether or not that search zone has been narrowed, Chris, they're refusing to tell us if it has or his hasn't, but it doesn't sound good. What they've said is the other areas that they've searched, that they aren't finding anything new. They're not sighting anything new there, which is why they're searching the adjoining waters. At the same time today, Tony Abbott, the Australian prime minister, hosted the Malaysian prime minister. And both of them had very sobering words saying, you know, basically this mystery may never be solved. The same time, they're sure that, even despite the 12-hour delay from the Ocean Shield, that all the assets are in play. What they need, of course, what everyone needs is a trace of that flight 370, and then they will be able to backtrack, take it from there and look for those black boxes. I think, though, Chris, that many here are wondering how much confidence they have that this is the right search area. And it's a certainly a question that continues to nag family members. Is this really where flight 370 went down?</s>PEREIRA: All right, Paula. Thank you. Now, we should point, you should remember, this was all coming as time runs out on the battery life of the flight data recorder's pinger, which could certainly complicate finding the plane's location. Let's bring in David Soucie. He is a CNN safety analyst and the author of a book called "Why Planes Crash," also a former FAA inspector. Good to have you. We know you're there in D.C. working on some stories. Let's talk about this shift in the search zone again. Does it make sense in your estimation to shift the search zone and rule out certain areas given that what we know of the currents and the winds constantly moving items in the ocean?</s>DAVID SOUCIE, CNN SAFETY ANALYST: You know, I think it really does make sense that it's shifting. As Michael Kay said earlier, though, I'd like to see more towards staying on the arc and moving up to the north. I'm not certain as to why they're not doing that. It would make sense that they would. But -- which indicates to me that perhaps the assumptions they made on that arc are a little off or that they're readjusting or recalibrating those assumptions.</s>PEREIRA: And that's the tough part, right, that we're basing all of this on assumptions. We don't have a lot of hard data to focus on. So let's talk about the hard data that we have, the limited amounts. It's being recalculated and recalculated, but it's also netting sort of these wildly differing conclusions. That is frustrating to some people. And I imagine from your point of view, too, that sort of seems like we're just sort of casting a wide net.</s>SOUCIE: Well, we are. And something that happened yesterday that's very interesting to me, and that's that the -- we had the suggestion that -- that we recreate it. Why don't we send a 777 out there with similar equipment, start the pinging, turn off the ACARs and attach it to the STATCOM, get some pinging that could be compared? Actually fly the -- fly the routes that we think it may be. Compare that to the l-bands on the satellite information, and let's see if we can narrow this down to a very close period of time. So I've contacted Boeing through some sources, and we're going to talk about that today hopefully.</s>PEREIRA: Has it been done in the past to recreate a situation to figure out what could have happened?</s>SOUCIE: Yes, absolutely. The 737 that crashed in Colorado Springs, we did extensive testing to try to duplicate that issue of the -- the rudder pedals. There was a shuttle valve that was half-way through and got stuck at that point. So we did thousands of hours flying that 737 through the same area trying to duplicate the winds and the position and the throttle position and rudder position from information we got from the black box, the flight data recorder.</s>PEREIRA: Let's get back to some of the resources and assets that are being used right now in the investigation -- in the search, rather. We know that the Japanese pulled back one of their assets. There was a Gulf stream that was in the area. They turned it around about 45 minutes into that search. Do you get a sense that countries are going to start pulling back assets? Are we going to see in the next weeks or days a bit of search fatigue?</s>SOUCIE: Well, absolutely. And every investigation, especially when you're not getting results, you're going to lose a lot of motivation, a lot of push. You know, the prime minister talked a lot last night about saying we're going to do this -- we're gonna do everything we can humanly possible to continue this investigation and to find this airplane. But as I said last night, humanly possible has its limits. There's a point at which, this winter, it won't be humanly possible to do this.</s>PEREIRA: Sure, and to that end, you talk about winter. The Australian ambassador to the U.S. said they're going to search until hell freezes over. It's a pretty bold statement and a pretty big commitment.</s>SOUCIE: Yeah, and it will feel like that up there, I'll tell ya, when it gets cold. So -- but, yeah, Michaela. One other thing I wanted to just mention real quickly is, it's time I think to shift our efforts from -- if we just took a fragment of the amount of money that we're spending in a reactive way to find this airplane and spent just a fragment of that doing proactive things --</s>PEREIRA: Like what, David?</s>SOUCIE: Like funding the Nextgen program.</s>PEREIRA: OK, talk about this.</s>SOUCIE: Well, Nextgen is an air traffic system. It's updating the system that we've had in plates since the '50s. And it needs to be done -- it needs to very much be done because of the fact that the air spaces are getting more and more crowded. You can see it at airports, airport delays, all that. In addition, the amount of fuel, billions and billions of dollars are being spent unnecessarily routing around aircraft around to these waypoints that we talked about earlier. Under Nextgen, that doesn't have to happen. And it gives information to other airplanes, so in this scenario -- now, I'm just -- Nextgen is only for the United States air space, but it should propagate into other air spaces eventually. But once we put it in place and prove it, it would be, in this scenario, all the other airplanes around there would be receiving radar data as though they were the radar controller, and they would be able to tell us exactly where that airplane was the entire time without expensive satellite connections or anything else. It's right through the</s>ADS-B. PEREIRA: So the FAA might be looking into it for America and for American air space. How does it then get adopted by international entities and how do you make sure that that kind of thing is available the world over?</s>SOUCIE: Well, literally, every single aviation authority that I've worked with internationally has adopted at least a version of what the FAA does. The FAA is the world leader in safety. And it's followed by almost every other country, including Australia, including Malaysia, including everybody else. You'll notice that those regulations are almost cut and paste and put into them and then adopted to their particular culture. So it wouldn't be a stretch to have the ICAO support this. And once the International Civil Organization accepts it, and the European Aviation Organization, the EASO, once those are accepted by those two, other countries would definitely fall in line.</s>PEREIRA: We certainly can expect there will be changes. That's one thing we can almost be certain of, David. David Soucie, contributing again with us on our coverage of the missing air flight 370. Thanks so much for being with us today. Chris?</s>SOUCIE: Thank you.</s>CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: All right, thanks, Mich. Let's take a break here on NEW DAY. When we come back, another shooting spree at Ft. Hood; 16 injured, three critically. We're going to speak with the trauma surgeon who operated on some of the victims and focus on what's going on with them. Plus, we're going to go inside politics where a new poll shows who has the most 2016 buzz. I don't think it's who you think it is. Let's make a little bet. Tweet.