Plane with 239 people on board crashes in Southern Indian Ocean

[Smid]

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?

SJoyce puts forward one suggestion, I might offer another. We don't tend to question the authority of pilots and the like, if the pilot or co-pilot were complicit in this (needn't be both - one could have easily used a date-rape drug to knock out the other, for example), they could have come on the intercom and said something along the lines of "we have been warned of some serious weather ahead. We are going to be making some course adjustments to avoid this, incuding large drop in altitude. This maneuver is uncommon but we have planned for it and will remain in control of the plane, so don't be concerned. Please remain in your seats with your seatbelts fastened." It was flying at night, so no one would even be able to see landmarks until it was ready to land/crashed.

[Smid]

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...

[Smid]

Cheers mate! Reading the Slate piece, the "it's possible" seems to be more at the "not impossible" end of the probability spectrum.

[Smid]

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

[Smid]

To follow up my previous post….

I could buy the onboard emergency theory, but it only fits in with the satellite data if there was a second course correction.  So the sequence of events would be….

1) Onboard emergency knocks out the transponder, and any other means of communicating with the ground.

2) Pilot turns around to make an emergency landing at Pulau Langkawi.

3) Pilot realizes things are worse than he thought, and they won't make it to Pulau Langkawi, so he makes another course correction, perhaps to attempt a landing somewhere else--somewhere that isn't really a suitable landing strip for a 777--but he has to take the risk, because they'll be dead soon anyway.  The new heading is presumably towards the south.

4) Whatever the emergency situation is kills the pilot and everyone on board, but the autopilot keeps them flying on that brand new southerly heading until the plane runs out of fuel and crashes.

5) While on that heading, when everyone onboard is dead, but the plane is still flying, it sends out that signal to the satellite, which shows it still in the air, many hours after the accident.

Yeah, your previous link plus these points makes the most sense to me.

[Smid]

Radio this morning was quoting reports from the Maldives of a very low-flying jet passing overhead and continuing out to sea at about the right time for this flight to have possibly have reached there. Apparently said jet was white with red stripes.