nbc's tom costello has the latest from our washington bureau. >> reporter: good evening. this was malaysia airlines flight 370, a 777 with 239 passengers and crew monies board, including we're now told four americans, one of them an infant. this plane was flying from kuala lumpur to beijing on an early saturday morning flight local time. two hours into the flight, malaysia airlines says it lost contact with the plane. the plane should have been in vietnamese airspace at that point in the flight. china says the flight never entered its space. chinese tv says there are no reports of a crash in chinese waters. but search and rescue teams are launching at this hour. malaysia airlines tells nbc news that its thoughts and prayers are with all the affected passengers and crewmembers and their families members. all told they represent 14 different nationalities. four americans, a malaysia airlines 777 disappear thoing o this flight the red-eye flight saturday morning. rescue teams launching. this would be the second fatal crash involving a 777 in just the last year. we had the 77

nbc's tom costello has been following the developments overnight, and he has the latest on the satellite images and the search there. so, tom, tell me this, these images are a few days old. explain. >> reporter: yeah. yeah, they were taken four days ago, and just now we're told once they weeded through them and tried to decipher what exactly they're looking at, they got the impression that this is something significant here in the waters, as you mentioned, off of the coast of perth, australia. what's interesting, also, here is the remoteness of this location. we're talking about 10,000 to 16,000 feet of water is what those images will be floating on top of. so potentially the wreckage would be below that somewhere. hundreds -- within hundreds of miles range of that. let me go back to the main map here and show you how this plays into the overall scheme. here's malaysian down here. that flight, therefore, took one very long detour to the very end, we believe, exhausted its fuel and quite literally, under this scenario -- which, by the

>> tom costello starting us off again tonight from our d.c. newsroom. tom, thanks. >>> we have a firsthand view tonight from malaysia of this search underway from what so far remains a kind of wide bodied ghost ship. nbc news flew along today on board one of the search aircraft deployed, and now fanning out over a wider area. a huge effort over a vast amount of water. our report tonight from nbc's keir simmons in kuala lumpur. >> reporter: day after day, this military transport plane has been searching. today we took off with them. life jackets are needed because we will fly so low, sometimes at just 500 feet, scouring the ocean above naval ships, all looking for a plane that simply vanished. we're flying over the malacca strait, the water stretches out on either side of us, you can see ocean on this side, ocean on that side. all day we fly, looking for any clue. we seem to be banking around as if they saw something? the plane turns hard to get a closer look at some debris. false alarm. it took us eight hours to cover 30 square miles. just a tiny fracti

tom costello has more on the search for answers. >> reporter: off the coast of viet na, two fuel slicks may provide the best hope. the plane left at kuala lumpur, the red eye flight to beijing, with 239 passengers and crew. among them, american phillip wood, ibm executive, but one to two hours into the flight 35,000 feet, air traffic controllers lost contact over the gulf of thailand. investigators say, it points to an abrupt end to a routine flight. >> whatever happened was catastrophic, and incapacitated the airplane such that the crew couldn't get a may day call off. >> reporter: the plane, boeing 777-200 series, nearly 12 years old, middle age for planes. it lost the tip of a wing after clipping another plane on the ground in shanghai. the wing was fixed but did that contribute to the accident? nbc news aviation analyst captain john cox. >> one of the things under way is a thorough review of all of the maintenance record of the airplane and if the airplane has sustained damage in the ground incident, that is something that certainly the investigators are going to look at. >> reporte

i'm carol costello. thanks for joining me. the opening bell kicking off on wall street. u.s. stocks closed slightly yesterday with dow and s&p 500 covering all time highs. futures looking steady earlier on the heels of moves last week with the tense situation in ukraine. as always, i'll keep an eye on things for you. >>> but we begin this half hour with the search for the malaysia airline jetliner. new developments that may down play terrorism. police identify two men that use stolen passports to board the plane. both are iranian, neither tied to terrorism groups. let's get the latest from pamela brown. >> we learned the second passenger that boarded the doomed flight was a 29-year-old man by the name of delavar seyed mohammad reza. he was traveling with a 19-year-old iranian who was traveling to germany where his who are lives, according authorities. the two men tried to get to europe as part of human smuggling not terrorism. >> investigators have identified the two men traveling with stolen passports o

tom costello, quite the mystery. and as we found out, the big news of the morning is both the oil slick and the supposed debris that were found off the coast of vietnam have no connection to this plane. anyway, tom costello, thank you very much. >> reporter: okay. >> i'm joined by a former managing director of the ntsb, peter goals. mr. goals, good morning to you, sir. >> good morning. >> all right. you've heard everything. at this point, what's your educated guess? and again, we know it's a guess. we know that there's a lot of data we don't know. what do you think could have happened? >> well, i mean, it's simply inexplicable, but the one thing i want to underscore is exactly how difficult it is to find an aircraft in open ocean. i mean, we -- i was involved in the twa 800 accident that was only nine miles off the coast of long island, and it took us days to find the wreckage on that. in this case, as tom costello mentioned, there is very minimal radar data. they are starting from scratch, and it is very hard to fin

tom costello has the latest. >> reporter: the search for flight 370 is shifting west as u.s. government sources tell nbc news there's evidence the plane's automated systems gave off faint pings for up to four hours after going off radar. that means the plane could have traveled 2,500 miles any direction. a vast expanse of the globe that includes tp indian ocean. >> what it doesn't tell us is what direction. whether it went west, east, north, south. at this point we know the airplane was operational and probably didn't have a mechanical malfunction or failure. >> reporter: the u.s. destroyer uss kid is now moving to the strait of monica, and the white house says the search area could expand further. >> based on new information that's not necessarily inclusive, an additional search area may be open in the indian ocean and we are consulting. >> reporter: u.s. government sources is say it appears more likely ma lmalaysia did pick up the radar over the indian ocean. search teams were unable to find any debris in the olocation whee the chinese satellite spotted something. they said

michael gold farb tom costello. thank you. >> joe biden is in war saw today condemning russia and putin for what biden called a land grab. the former annexation of crimea. russia will see additional sanctions if it continues down the current path but putin is hardly backing down. joining me now from moscow is jim maceda. putin's show of force and strength today was really apparent, first in the kremlin itself and then red square, to the multitudes. instead of backing down, he's doubling down. jim? >> reporter: that's right, andrea, he is definitely doubling down and it was a vintage vladimir putin performance, full of sound and fury and fanfare and history, all by the way from putin's point of view which many officials in the west which biden would called flawed and deep in the cold war and in any case great nflourish, he explained it's 60 years as a ukrainian territory and it was time for crimea to be unified with russia again because that's what the people's will was. at his most emotional putin tore into the west

nbc's tom costello as the latest on the search. >> reporter: off the coast of vietnam, two fuel slicks on the water may provide the best hope for finding malaysia airlines flight 370. the plane left kuala lumpur at 12:40 a.m. saturday, the red eye flight to beijing, with 239 passengers and crew on board, among them american phillipwood, an ibm executive. one to two hours into the flight at 35,000 feet air traffic controllers lost contact with the plane somewhere over the gulf of thailand. veteran crash investigators say it all points to an abrupt end to a routine flight. >> whatever happened was catastrophic and incapacitated the airplane such that the crew couldn't get a may day call off. >> reporter: the plane, a boeing 777-200 series nearly 12 years old, middle aged for planes. in august 2012 it lost a tip of a wing after clipping another plane on the ground in shanghai. the wing was fixed, but did that contribute to the accident? nbc news aviation analyst captain john cox. >> one of the things under way ace thorough review of all the maintenance records of the airplane. and if the

once again, nbc's tom costello in our d.c. news room tonight, good evening. >> reporter: hi, brian, several countries including japan, indonesia and thailand have complained that malaysia has done a poor job with some planes sitting idle without instructions. now the malaysians are starting to see some control even asking the u.s. u.analyzing data taken from the homes of the crew. now they are asking for help to analyze the computer data taken from the homes of the cockpit crew. now, the fbi is involved helping to analyze copies of the computer hard drives removed from the homes of the pilots. including the flight simulator taken from captain shah's home. >> we are in continuing conversations about how we can help and we will make available whatever resources we have. >> reporter: malaysian authorities today said some of the computer files on the captain's flight simulator were deleted a month before the flight. >> what we have from the simulator is that the data has been cleared in february. >> reporter: of course, the delete

tom costello is in washington, d.c. how difficult is the task ahead? >> it's a herculeanas sara poin very rough waters. the conditions now are very rough indeed. we're hearing nine to ten foot sea swells. it's been high winds. it's been poor visibility. you're already in one of the most remotest places on the planet with no infrastructure to help you. you've got to fly four hours out. you don't have any, you know, land mass nearby, et cetera. me go to the telestrator. here's why this is so fascinating. this is essentially the route we're talking about here. it may have been more of a curvature. the bottom line here is that this is almost precisely the intersection of the two key pieces of data. what they thought was the -- the last possible distance, the farthest this plane could fly based on its fuel. secondly, the other piece of data that's important is using the axis or using those satellite pings on trying to figure out where this plane was. those two lines come together. they cross pretty much right at that spot there in the south indian ocean. ri

nbc's tom costello is following developments from washington. tom? >> reporter: hi, lester. almost three week news since flight 370 went missing, and search teams still have not found a single piece of wreckage. now, more satellite images of what could be a debris field 1600 miles from australia. the thai satellite photos were taken on monday, images of what they say could be debris in the ocean, and in the same general area that a french satellite spotted debris a day earlier. also today, japan released this map showing the area its satellite photographed what could be ten pieces of debris, the largest piece measuring 13 feet by 26 feet. but the weather in the area has been awful, high winds and waves and icing conditions forcing search aircraft to turn around. pilot says the whitecaps on the water and poor visibility make it nearly impossible to identify anything. >> we're flying so quick. we're flying at 200 knots going as slow as we can go for this mission that you really get very little time to identify objects. >> reporter: now with only nine days of battery life left

now after years of neglect we have just gotten a report on how we have to pay the piper, nbc's tom costello has more. >> reporter: in miami, the construction crews were in full sweat building the construction chain here. one upgrade to a national system of roads and bridges that is cracked, crumbling, patched up and rusted. driven home last may by the i-5 tractor-trailer incident after it clipped a support beam. now, after the high amount of potholes, the government has put a price tag on where to get the roads where they should be. up to $145 billion, 25 billion for the rail and bus systems. >> we have a leaky roof and what happens when you have a leaky roof is if you don't fix it, it becomes more expensive to get it put back together again. >> reporter: while congress has put together billions for the recovery act, transportation for america reports 11% of the nation's bridges remains structurally wrong. bridges typically have a 65-year life span, this bridge here built in 1950 carries 70,000 cars a day but is starting to strain under the load. to pay for the national repair job president

tom costello has the latest. >> reporter: this is video of the malaysian airlines plane that is missing, flying into los angeles last october. a week after it disappeared in southeast asia, u.s. government source says the plane continued transmitting a ping to an orbiting satellite hours after going off radar and cutting communications with air traffic controllers. an investigator say it's increasingly likely the plane did double back making a left-hand turn flying over malaysia, strait of mall la ka and the indian ocean possibly staying airborne for another four to five hours. that means the plane could have traveled up to 2500 miles in any direction. a vast expanse of the globe that includes the indian ocean. who was piloting the plane and where were they going? malaysian authorities say anything is possible. >> there's been a lot of media speculation today after comments from unnamed u.s. officials that the plane may have traveled for some time after losing contact. as is standard procedure, the investigation team will not publicly release information until it has been properly verif

we get more on our report tonight from nbc's tom costello. >> reporter: the crash scene on a wisconsin road in 2006 was horrific. three teenaged girls in a chevy cobalt slammed into a tree after their ignition allegedly switched off, locking up the steering. the air bags never deployed. 18-year-old natasha wagel and 15-year-old amy rademaker died. but lawsuits claim gm knew of the ignition problem two years earlier, yet never ordered a recall. >> these were our children. and they just act like they don't matter. they may not have mattered to gm but they mattered to us. >> reporter: those wisconsin teens among 13 people who died in accidents involving gm cars that were only recalled last month, including the chevy cobalt, saturn sky and pontiac solstice. now, the investigators are demanding an internal investigation. why did it take ten years to demand a recall? the names of personnel involved, how many complaints, accidents injuries and fatalities have there been, and how many lawsuits? it was only last december that gm paid off a $49 billion taxpayer bailout. >> took billions of dolla

>> tom costello, thank you. and if you keep with the theory that it was a deliberate act, you have to assume everybody on the plane is under investigation, passengers and crew as authorities explore all possibilities trying to determine who might have had a motive and the ability to commandeer that plane. nbc's keir simmons has more. >> reporter: as the search for flight 370 continues, malaysian officials are now looking at how the plane could have disappeared, and who might be involved, including the crew. the flight's captain in his 50s, highly experienced. he had logged 18,000 flight hours. his copilot, farik hamid, 27, relatively new, with 2800 flight hours. both are being investigated, but so is everyone on board. the key questions, who else on board could fly a 777 who might have a motive to commandeer the aircraft and for what purpose. and if the plane was hijacked, where was it going? during the crucial first hour of the flight, there would have been an opportunity to break into the cockpit despite secur

tom costello in our d.c. newsroom tonight. tom, thanks. >>> and overseas tonight with continuing tensions over ukraine as the backdrop, president obama delivered a powerful message to america's nato allies today. spoke in brussels. he says the u.s. will never waiver in defending them against aggression from russia. he denounced their brute force aggression and reminded europe of all we've been through together. this came after the president made a solemn visit to flanders field, the world war i cemetery honoring hundreds of americans killed in that region of belgium. he said the lessons of that war still speak to us a hundred years later and what happened in crimea cannot be ignored. >> if we apply a coldhearted calculus, we might decide to look the other way. our economy is not deeply integrated with ukraine's. our people and our homeland face no direct threat from the invasion of crimea. our own borders are not threatened by russia's annexation. but that kind of casual indifference would ignore the lessons that are written i

we begin with tom costello in our d.c. newsroom. tom, good evening. >> reporter: hi, brian, they're guardedly hopeful this could be the wreckage from flight 370, four aircraft are working this zone today in which they think the debris spotted in the satellite photos may be floating. it takes three to four hours to get there which leaves only two hours or so to actually search before they turn back, but a cargo is in the area with all hands forward to watch for debris. in the waters southwest of australia, a p-3 sub hunter looking for any signs of flight 370. those satellite photographs taken four days ago offering what may be the first real clues into the plane's final location. two pieces of debris 14 miles apart, one piece 79 feet long, the other, 16 feet long. >> the task of locating these objects could be extremely difficult and it may turn out they're not related to the search for flight mh-370. >> reporter: the spotted debris is literally in the middle of nowhere, in a place previously identified as an area of interest by the

i'm carol costello. thank you so much for joining me this morning. piece spar ration grows by the hour. a second u.s. navy ship joins the massive international effort to search for any signs of a malaysia airlines jet that's missing and presumed crash. dozens of planes and ships are scouring the gulf of thailand for debris or any other clue to the flight with 239 passengers aboard, including three americans. whatever struck the flight was so violent and so catastrophic neither the pilots issued a distress signal. >> reporter: this morning the search intensifies for missing malaysia airlines flight 370. >> we are equally puzzled. >> reporter: now three days into this exhaustive search for clues multinational rescue teams are scouring the waters of the south china sea. overnight malaysia's civil aviation chief says no wreckage has been found. >> we have not found anything that appears to be objects from the aircraft let alone the aircraft. >> reporter: teams from the united states, thailand and china all i

i'm carol costello. thanks for joining me. it's day six in the search for malaysian airlines flight 370. efforts to find the boeing 777 have suffered blows. malaysia says china released these images by mistake. search crews have found no sign of the jet liner. the engine is said to have sent data four hours after the plane vanished from radar meaning it could have traveled another 2 2,500 miles in any direction. jim is in washington. good morning. >> good morning carol. >> it seems like we get new information and malaysia disputes the report. do we have anything solid that's n new. >> this is a pattern. it happened with the radar data showing the left turn continuing several hundred miles toward the indian ocean. it happened with the satellite images, raised, questioned, denied. it's happening now with the report about engine data coming from the engines raised in the newspaper and knocked down immediately by malaysian authorities. often times you have different views of things between the malaysian government and chinese gove

tom costello, thank you, that was good information. i do want to reset for our audience, the big headline this morning, they told the families that flight 370 has been lost. i want to play some sound from just moments ago, this as the malaysian prime minister made that announcement. >> it is, therefore, with deep sadness and regret that i must inform you that according to this new data, flight mh 370 ended in the southern indian ocean. >> such difficult news for the families, they've been waiting, hoping beyond hope somehow their loved ones would be alive, but we're hearing today from the malaysian prime minister he does, indeed, believe and the air investigation branch, a british group, this new, never-been-used before information that this analysis concluding this flight indeed went down in the indian ocean. i want to take you now to keir simmons live in kuala lumpur. this is not the information they wanted to hear. >> reporter: absolutely. it really isn't, bettly. we just witnessed some really heartbreaking scenes behind me here. ea

tom costello starting us off from d.c. tom, thanks. again tonight we saw him in our setup piece, we turn to greg feith. he's senior air safety director, a veteran pilot himself. greg, this left turn had to be manually punched in in the cockpit, knowing what we know about you pilots, it's in your blood, whether you fly a single engine or a wide body to always know where you go in case of trouble, sometimes it's behind you, below you, out in front of you. always cognizant of where to go in case of trouble. why wouldn't this be consistent with a captain who perhaps had trouble on board? >> it could be, brian. we just don't have enough information. it's possible they programmed in their alternate plan. that is, if they had taken off, had a problem, all they would have to do is pull up that stand by flight plan, put it in the active window, hit execute to come back to kuala lumpur. or they could have put in a stand by flight plan to take the plane away from beijing and return to kuala lumpur and put it in a phantom waypoint all the way down

tom costello, thank you very much. let me go to keir simmons, in kuala lumpur, watching the families, been in the room with the families. >> reporter: hey, chuck, good morning. we are hearing here that the families are in meetings -- that's right, chuck, we're hearing the families are in meetings here now, discussing whether or not to -- well, the news, and whether or not they might make that move to australia. it is incredibly difficult for them. what i've been hearing from various relatives is that some are crossing their fingers that this is something to do with flight 370, because they just want to know what's happened. others are saying that they are hoping that it's not, because while they want news, they don't want the bad news that would represent. so we're told that the families were given the information early in the morning here, perhaps even 5:00 a.m. they are trying to give them the information first, perhaps if they move them to australia, that might make it easier. the trouble with that decision, of cour

nbc's tom costello has been following this for us. let's start with why the search was called off for the night. was this due to

but first, we go to tom costello with all the breaking details. >> reporter: hi, ann, if true this could be breaking news for the people looking for the disappearing flight 370. it disappeared early saturday morning. these images were taken on sunday from a government satellite over the south china sea. the images according to the chinese shows three objects that seem to be floating in the ocean, large pieces, 43 x 59, 56 x 62, and 78 x 72. importantly, these images are identified as being in the very area of the south china sea over which the plane was reported half way between malaysia and vietnam. the coordinates put the wreckage south of vietnam. and this is an area that has been searched heavily by dozens of ships, plane, helicopters and from a dozen navys. again if the images show the plane debris then the plane never made a u-turn and headed back towards malaysia, and the strait of malacca, as the military suggested the past two days. the development comes as the defined search zone grew to 35,000 square miles. to the gulf of thailand, to the west, the strait of malacca, and the s

tom costello has the latest. >> reporter: the search has entered its fourth day. dozens of ships, helicopters and planes running searches. so far, nothing. oil sheen and debris spotted over the weekend ended up being false leads. on board the uss blue ridge, commander william marks. >> it will make search conditions more challenging, but i can tell you our radars are very advanced and they can negate a lot of the surface clutter. but it does present a challenge for this big international effort. >> reporter: the last reported location for the boeing 777 was over the water halfway between malaysia and vietnam. but with radar suggesting the plane may have started to turn back, the search zone is expanding to include malaysia's mainland and now the waters to the northwest. among the questions why would the plane turn back, and why didn't the crew radio air traffic controllers, a former senior ntsb investigator says a sudden loss of cabin pressure could have incapacitated the crew and passengers within seconds while the plane t continued flying. >> you have to start l

tom costello has the latest. >> reporter: the search for flight 370 is shifting to the west as u.s. government sources tell nbc news, there is evidence the automated systems gave off paint pings for up to four hours after going off radar. that means the plane could have traveled up to 2500 miles in any direction, a vast expanse of the globe that includes the indian ocean. >> what it doesn't tell us is what direction, whether it went west, east, north, south, because we have no radar coverage. so at this point, we just know that the airplane was still operational and probably didn't have a mechanical malfunction or failure. >> reporter: at the request of the malaysians, a destroyer is moving into the strait and the search area could expand further. >> based on new information that is not necessarily conclusive, but new information, an additional search area may be opened in the indian ocean and we're consulting with international partners about the appropriate assets to deploy. >> reporter: u.s. government sources also say it appears more likely that malaysia military radar did pick

nbc's tom costello starts us off tonight. tom, what are they doing to find this airplane? >> reporter: investigators have now re-enacted in a simulator what little they know of flight 370's path and have asked our countries to recover sensitive radar data, looking at the plane's path. meanwhile, they're looking at the backgrounds of everybody on board, with special attention to the cockpit crew, when it's clear that someone disabled the communication systems, said good night to controllers and then took the plane off course. the search in the waters off malaysia and thailand may only be a formality at this point, with satellite data suggesting flight 370 flew up to seven hours after its last-known point of contact in the strait of malacca. two wide satellite arcs show the potential direction of travel. if it went south, it likely headed deep into the vastness of the indian ocean, not covered by radar. if it went north, it could be anywhere from burma, bangladesh, kazakhstan to uzbekistan. so far, five countries, including india and pakistan, say their radars did not pick u

nbc's tom costello continues on this story from washington. tom, good evening. >> reporter: hi, brian. the search was suspended today, tuesday, because of bad whether in the region. the search zone is massive. it is about the size, we're told, of alaska. and so far, they haven't found a single piece of debris that they know came from this plane. meanwhile, there's speculation it could take years to find this plane, if it's at the bottom of the ocean. in beijing this morning, outrage and anguish as hundreds of family members marched on the malaysian embassy demanding answers about flight 370. while a world away, the brother of american passenger philip wood is just trying to cope. >> sometimes i'm angry, sometimes i'm just crying. and sometimes i'm just holding it together. >> reporter: meanwhile, we're learning more about why investigators are focused on the southern indian ocean. engineers at inmarsat examining those faint pings transmitted by flight 370 compared them with data from other 777s flying at the same time. then with some advanced

>> tom costello covers aviation for us. starting us off from our d.c. newsroom, tom, thanks as always. and tonight, we're joined by greg fife, a veteran of these investigations. as a former senior air director with the ntsb, also happens to be a veteran pilot. greg, you're in the business of ruling nothing out. though if this were submitted as a hollywood script, it would be rejected for being too incredible. if we're looking for this over land, doesn't that mean that we're kind of theorizing it could have been a situation like the pro golfer payne stewart on board that small aircraft? they were overcome by something and the plane went on flying, although in this case, with no electronic trail. >> absolutely, brian. and you bring up a good point. with the fact that if this airplane had an explosive decompression and incapacitated the crew and the airplane was still capable of operating, the airplane could continue on any number of tracks. because if it goes into the jungle it can be enveloped into the dense jungle and not be seen readily. >> we have a w

because twitter's boss costello embarked on his first visit to china sparking speculation that they are hoping to mark a return to the chinese market. it was banned in china after being blocked by censors in 2009. >> dick costello and the company describing a personal tour. i don't think anyone thinks he is there for the tourist site and the dumplings. they have been blocked for three years. as soon as there was news that the top executive is there and meeting with government officials in shanghai, everyone has gotten very excited. everyone is seeing it as possible ambitions in china. it is very, very active with 600 million internet users. they don't always have free reign. if you think of google and withdrawal from the mainland pause of censorship issues. and dick costello said why he would love running twitter in china, he isn't going to sbg guys principals to do it. twitter has a small but active user base in the company. ai weiwei. >> let's look at some of the day's other news. air traffic controllers in france have called a 24-hour strike. the action in response to hollande's prop

tom costello has the latest. >> reporter: off the coach of malaysia, the search for flight 370 has entered its fourth day. dozens of ships, helicopters and planes running grid-like searches in the waters between malaysia and vietnam. so far, nothing. an oil sheen and debris spotted over the weekend ended up being false leads. now sea conditions are expected to worsen. on board the uss blue ridge, commander william marks. >> that will make search conditions more challenging. but i can tell you that our radars are very advanced and they can actually negate a lot of that surface clutter. but it does present a challenge for the international effort. >> reporter: the last reported location for the boeing 777 was over the water, halfway between malaysia and vietnam. but with malaysian military radar suggesting the plane may have started to turn back, the search zone is expanding to include malaysia's mainland and now the waters to the northwest. >> our aim to find aircraft will be -- >> reporter: among the questions, why would the plane turn back and why didn't the crew radio air traffic control

>> tom costello starting us off from our d.c. newsroom tonight. tom, thanks. >>> and we turn out west to washington state where it has been almost a week since a mountainside gave way, consuming a square mile below and consuming just about everything and everyone in its path. all week a slow and exhausting search has been going on for the missing, in mud up to 40 feet deep in some places. and tonight, the awful news that the death toll has worsened. nbc's miguel almaguer remain there's for us tonight. miguel, good evening. >> reporter: brian, good evening. the official death toll remains at 17, but rescue officials tell us it will certainly climb dramatically. tonight 90 people are missing as hope fades. boots in the mud. it's thick and waist-deep. more than 200 search in slow and dangerous conditions. it could take five months to scour this debris field. >> the rain and weather is basically working against us. >> reporter: fresh crews are headed in to relieve teams who are exhausted. even the search dogs are tired. >> they come into waist deep an

i'm carol costello. thanks so much for joining me. it is day 21 for the search for malaysian airlines flight 370. a busy morning of new developments. just minutes ago we learned several planes, five to be exact, have spotted objects in a new search area. overnight officials abandoned their previous focus and shifted their attention to this new zone nearly 700 miles away. now this latest reboot of the search nearly three weeks after the plane's disappearance was too much for the families of those aboard. you see here they walked out of a briefing in beijing accusing the malaysian government of wasting precious time and even covering up critical information. so let's talk about that new information. cnn safety analyst and author of "why planes crash"crash" david is here. >> nice to be here. >> an australian official says they've moved on from the old search area because they are no longer classifying earlier satellite images as debris. is that a bad idea, to totally abandon that old area? >> in fact what this tells me is they've got rea

meanwhile, the nation's roads and bridges continue to take a pounding, tom costello, washington. nbc news. >>> when nbc nightly news continues on this saturday, a first, football players at a major university tries to unionize. >>> and later, what hollywood hopes will be a big draw at the box office. with non-insulin victoza. for a while, i took a pill to lower my blood sugar, but it didn't get me to my goal. so i asked my doctor about victoza. he said victoza works differently than pills, and comes in a pen. and the needle is thin. victoza is an injectable prescription medicine that may improve blood sugar in adults with type 2 diabetes when used with diet and exercise. it is not recommended as the first medication to treat diabetes and should not be used in people with type 1 diabetes or diabetic ketoacidosis. victoza has not been studied with mealtime insulin. victoza is not insulin. do not take victoza if you have a personal or family history of medullary thyroid cancer, multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2, or if you are allergic to victoza or any of its ingredients.

lawrence, back to you. >> tom costello, thanks. u.s. officials tell nbc news tonight they, quote, cannot attest to the voracity of the chinese imagery. and a spokesperson for the u.s. seventh fleet, which is helping in the search tells nbc news they now have no plans yet to change their search area after the chinese satellite imagery. joining me now is john cox, a former us airways captain for 25 years and now ceo of safety operating systems. and a former american airlines captain for 30 years. john cox, what do you make of these new satellite photos? >> well, i think it's certainly evidence we need to look at. there has been a lot of conflicting information, and as a good investigative team would do, they're running down each one of them as the information becomes available. that's -- i think it's wise that they have aircraft going to the area. they can dispatch some ships with potentially underwater search capability. i think certainly they will do that. >> jim tillman, we have a description indicating that it might be three different

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it is where we begin tonight our coverage of this story with nbc's tom costello in our washington bureau. tom, good evening. >> reporter: hi, brian. this is the area in the southern indian ocean 1500 miles off the coast of perth, australia, where satellites and searchers have been focused, and now they're pretty confident that this plane did indeed start in kuala lumpur and travel all the way to the bottom of the earth. the new evidence say the experts is compelling. flight 370 likely crashed in the waters 1500 miles southwest of perth, australia. the malaysian prime minister says the data is conclusive. >> therefore, with deep sadness and regret i must confirm you that flight 370 ended in the southern indian ocean. >> reporter: engineers at inmarsat and boeing went back to refine the data from the faint pings transmitted by flight 370 and picked up by satellite over the course of six hours on march 8th. combined with the last known heading, speed, and altitude, the so-called doppler effect convinced the experts that the 777 had flown deep into the indian ocean. >> if you can imagine the

>> tom costello with us, thanks, tom. let's drill down on that search under way, start from australia, trying to find the pieces of debris, we mentioned, were spotted by satellites. nbc's bill kneelly is following that part of the story for us from perth. bill? >> reporter: good evening, lester. this is the most intensive day of searching at least so far. at least 10, possibly 12 flights will take off from here. two chinese planes have just left, joining the search for the first time. and a u.s. poseidon plane will be going. i'll be on that one. we'll be looking not just for the big debris but the small objects seen by commercial planes, the wooden pallet, and also some multi-colored belts or straps. the problem, of course, is that they could just have easily come from a passing cargo ship as from a plane. but morale among the crews is good. they're optimistic. the weather, not so good. a tropical cyclone is due to hit the search area. that could move the debris or it could sink it all together. lester? >> all right. bill

and again tonight we begin with tom costello covering the story from our d.c. newsroom. tom, good evening. >> reporter: hi, brian. "the telegraph" out of london has released these transcripts of the calls between the pilots and air traffic controllers. experts say it all looks very routine. meanwhile, this is the kind of flight data recorder search teams hope to recover. but first they have to find the debris that will lead them to the wreckage. at the australian maritime command center they're coordinating an international effort growing more complicated by the day. still focused on a grid 1500 miles southwest of perth. >> although the search area is much smaller than we started with, it nonetheless is a big area when you look out the window and try to see something by eye. >> reporter: in the air on friday, three p-3 aircraft from australia and new zealand, an american p-8 sub hunter, and a c130 dropping buoys that drop ocean data. a norwegian cargo ship is keeping watch. today crews rely more on binoculars than radar, but still no sign of the debris photographed by sa

. >>> nbc's tom costello has been following this. the first i have is related to when these objects were first spotted obviously something is in the ocean. it's going to move. if it's such a significant size, i'm curious why it's taken us this long to get to this point. >> let's do that very quickly. first of all, these images they believe are out in the ocean, somewhere about 1500 miles or so southwest of perth. you mentioned when were these images taken? four days ago, and then it takes the considerable time for the computers to use the analysis. why does this matter? take a look. if this plane had come all the way from malaysia, the ntsb had calculated very early on if it maintained its speech of about 500 miles per hour, the eight attitude of about 35,000 feet, it would have run out of the fuel right about there. guess what? four days ago we have the satellite images show it may have indeed ended up exactly there. i'm going to show you one more image. that's this one. telestrator, just one more image over, a tight shot of the sur

we're going to start out giving a basic overview of where we stand with tom costello. he's been in the trenches of the story, monitoring the search from the beginning. what's actually new about this debris find? >> hi, ronan, good afternoon. these are the pieces of debris. one of them is about 79 feet and that's a big piece of debris. the other one we're told is somewhere in the neighborhood of 16 feet. here's the area we're looking at. it is a long way down from malaysia all the way down to this point, four miles, 1500 miles off the coat of australia -- four hours, rather. you take the intersecting lines of the last known location on the satellite ping and extrapolate out that was the destination or the heading, if you will. then you figure, okay, what's the last amount of fuel, the last drop of fuel that you could get out of this plane when those two lines intersecretary? guess what, they intersect right about there. that is where the ntsb was suggesting that australian authorities look there. now they find this piece of debris, two pieces as we said, about four hour

. >> tom costello joins me from washington, d.c.. i see the map behind you. all these new theories. what do we know this morning or at least where is the investigation focusing? >> i must say i think he made a good point. we don't know if the systems went down because somebody was under occur recent, we don't know if it was because the plane was being hijacked or if it was because of some the cataclysmic mechanical failure.if it was be being hijacked or if it was because of some the cataclysmic mechanical failure. what we do know is that this plane did continue to send out a pinging message to the satellite four hours to five hours after it went off radar. and that means the plane would have continued to fly. and the zone here as you know, you just ran this a minute ago, is massive. because at least if it flew into the indian ocean, which is the last believed, and i underscore believed, the last believed direction of travel, it could have gone 2500 miles out into the indian ocean, right? if however it made a turn and went into another correctiodirel bets are off and we no krd. becau

i'm carol costello. thank you so much for joining me. it's day 12 in the search for malaysian airline flight 370. newest lead may be just as baffling. investigators are trying to recover data that was deleted from the home made flight simulator inside the pilot's home. cnn kate bolduan is in the malaysian capital of kuala lumpur with more on that. good morning. >> reporter: baffle cigarette a good word for it. they don't know what the data s-of course because it was deleted. they don't know why it was deleted. they don't know who deleted it. they did announce this morning it was deleted from the flight simulator in early february. i think february 3rd. we do have that information. with every new detail that seems to come out it does seem to raise more questions. one thing we're learning is that according to u.s. officials as well as australian officials they are now focusing more, they believe, they think it's more likely the plane went along that southern cross border and that's where they are trying to

let's get right to nbc's tom costello following this story. first of all, the boeing 777, pretty good overall impressive safety record, right? >> reporter: very good safety record. this is the boeing 777 200 series, the earliest model of this plane. and this one in particular was about 11 or 12 years old. there was one incident with this particular plane back in august of 2012 when it was on the ground in shanghai. it clipped the tail of another plane, and we're told the piece of the wing tip broke off. and then the plane was repaired. so, you know, we have all these hypotheses right now about why this plane has disappeared, and what might have happened to it. this will be among those hypothesis. did something happen to that repaired wing that caused this plane to suddenly apparently break up in flight? the other concern that we have at this hour is that we have now got it on the record that two individuals who were said to have been on the plane when it went down, one austrian, one italian, in fact, were not on that plane. that their passport

nbc's tom costello has been following the story for us. what's the latest we know or don't know about this plane? >> i think that it is what we don't know. what we know was that it was getting off this ping signal. it was not transmitting data like its location, speed and anything like that. really just saying hear i am and

nbc's tom costello, who's been following this story for us since the beginning, joins us now with more on the search. and tom, did it come down to that satellite analysis? >> yeah, mrsat, which was receiving those pings, you recall, off the acars system to a satellite 22,000 miles or so up in orbit, tried to refine that data even more. they had already suggested somehow this plane may have taken a southerly arc, you may recall, so they were trying to get a fix on these pings they were getting once an hour coming from the satellite and figure out, okay, where would this plane be, so now they believe that that last ping would put it somewhere in this juncture. so what does that mean? it means this plane probably came down like this. pay no attention necessarily to this original arc. what really matters is what is the location of the last ping and all suggests that it's probably in the deep south indian ocean. the distance from perth, australia, we've talked about this before, pardon my back as i try to move from one screen to another here, we talked about the distance here, 1,500 miles o

. >>> we are going to hear from tom costello. he'll talk about the boeing 777 and the impressive safety record in about ten minutes from now. >>> meantime, the stand off in ukraine is happening today. russia is warning that any u.s. sanctions imposed on moscow over this crisis will hit the u.s. like a boomerang. ian williams is in kiev for us. ian, i understand you spoke to the acting president of ukraine. talk about how he's handling the tension in his country. >> reporter: that's right, alex. i spoke to him yesterday. he's clearly rattled by these events down in crimea and hopes, believes that international sanctions, international pressure can still restrain moscow. he said to me he believed that international help, that ukraine would not be desserted by the international community. i spoke to him just before that tense stand off last night in crimea. he had signed a decree friday, in which he outlaws the referendum that is due in a few days time. he says that's illegal and unconstitutional. he also told me ukraine was trying