Plane with 239 people on board crashes in Southern Indian Ocean

[Donerail]

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That'd seem to rule out a mechanical failure. Has to be human action of some kind to switch off the transponder but keep flying.

[Donerail]

The fact that no one messaged out indicates that either they could not or were perhaps unaware that anything was wrong until it was too late.

Again, if they took the southern route, then they were basically over the ocean the whole time, and the cell phones wouldn't work.  There was that small strip of land in Malaysia/Thailand that they would have doubled back over, but that would have been early on in hijacking, and not clear if the passengers would have known what was wrong yet at that point.  Plus, even when you're flying over land, you're at such high altitude and speed that connecting to a cell tower on the ground isn't a slam dunk.  It worked on 9/11, because the planes were flying low, but that didn't necessarily happen in this case.

Assuming it's not a 1000 feet below sea level now and was a hijacking, how do one or 2 pilots take everyone's electronics without the passengers and flight crew rebelling?

Climb rapidly, like it allegedly did, depressurize the cabin, render the passengers and flight crew unconscious.

[Donerail]

I don't know enough about planes and things to know if this speculation is a crack-pot conspiracy theory, or if it's a legitimate possibility...

Slate says "maybe" and "it's possible".

[Donerail]

The only thing I can think of, and this assumes he was really really political, is that having a plane vanish would be an embarrassment to the government. Air Malaysia is a state airline.

There seems to be a few gaps in the pilot suicide theory, but one argument in favour is that apparently he was quite political and a strong supporter of the Opposition - and the Opposition Leader was jailed on the day this happened. Possibly coincidence, possibly something.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/police-search-homes-malaysia-airlines-pilots-suspect-wrongdoing-article-1.1723044

Eh, Ibrahim's party is pluralistic, democratic, anti-corruption and nonviolent. He's not any kind of radical leader. There's no real American equivalent of Ibrahim, but people aren't going to be committing suicide because of him. It'd be like committing suicide over - Evan Bayh? Jon Huntsman? Some sane centrist type.

[Donerail]

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So it's probably not an electrical fire either.

[Donerail]

Has anyone looked into the financial situations and any insurance policies taken out by the pilot or copilot? Could be a plausible reason for pilot suicide that would explain why it's thought to have flown so far away from everything.