CNN tried to rent a real plane to augment their missing jetliner coverage

For the better part of a month, CNN reporter Martin Savidge has occupied the cockpit of a Canada-based flight simulator as his network’s wall-to-wall coverage of the missing Malaysian passenger plane which is assumed to have crashed in the Indian Ocean. But installing Savidge in a mock cockpit was not CNN’s first choice. The Associated Press reported on Friday that CNN initially tried to rent a real airplane to augment their blanket coverage of MH370.

“CNN initially sought to rent a real 777 airplane for its coverage, but found it impossible,” the AP reported. “Individual airlines were also reluctant to make their simulators available.”

“So CNN arranged time with the company uFly, from Mississauga, Ontario, near the Toronto airport, which has a simulator that is the same model of the plane lost in Asia,” the report continued.