I'm afraid that is one of many and one of the original theories but a possibility nonetheless.

Possible, but if that had happened then the tracking equipment on the aircraft (with its multiple redunancies) would surely have kept transmitting? There can't just be one single aerial on a 777 to transmit all the data required for tracking it?
If it did keep flying then surely it would have been picked up by Vietnamese radar?

Admittedly there are potential answers to all these questions too (it could have been damaged enough to kill the comms equipment but not the autopilot, and without the transponder broadcasting the Vietnamese ATC could have dismissed it as anaprop.) The problem is the sheer lack of data, to use a quote from a favourite film of mine "Data, data, data! I cannot make bricks without clay!"

One of the most volatile areas in the world and a 777 just goes "POOF".
:haha:

I'm not buying all the 'We don't know, no radar, donuts were on sale, not my job' hand fed crap designed to distract us.

Somebody knows where it went and when it went there.

and probably why.

I find a suspicious absent of Neal.
:hmmm:
Off for some 'training' that resulted in living in a metal box?
:o

Now I'm not a brainiac but I'm thinking we need to check this lead!
Wait! NSA already did that.
:haha:

To those who asked for at Link. I found it

http://mh370lost.tumblr.com/post/792...pened-to-mh370

Markus

Seems clear foul play was involved. Seems some are now thinking the plane landed somewhere, but find it more likely it crashed in the Indian ocean..

Well... Saw this on facebook. had to share :88)

I couldn't agree more!

Where did they get a -300? :hmm2:

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-26591056

Something that was probably always was suspect, but there you have it folks :hmmm:

The plot definitely thickens now... Looks like that was no accident after all.

I don't know about thicken, I think it's positively solidified!

The only places North-west of Malaysia are Burma, Bangladesh and India, and it certainly wouldn't have gone to India, Bangladesh is fairly unlikely, Burma is a possibility though...

The max range of a 777-200ER is about 9,000 miles, that's assuming full tanks which this probably would not have had, so let's work that down to the distance it would take to get to Beijing which is about 3,000 miles, allowing for loitoring let's give it 3,500 miles of fuel, about a third of a tank.
That puts it within reach of a lot of potential customers, Pakistan, Iran, Western China, although it's just out of range of Somalia which is about 3,600 miles.

This is a very worrying development. :hmmm:

There are 411 (well...410) B777-200ERs in service in the world today, below is a screenshot of Flightradar24 with only the B777-200ERs shown.

http://i.imgur.com/5OVMej7.jpg

There are three main reasons why it would be hijacked, all of them bad.
1) It was hijacked and deliberately crashed as a terrorist act against China...however the problem with that is that it would have been just as easy to do this either on Chinese soil, or over the South China Sea, rather than turning back and flying off to the North-west.
2) It was hijacked for something in the cargo.
3) It was hijacked for use in a major terrorist plot in a western city.

Given that no ransoms have been issued for the passengers and crew, I think it's safe to say that they have been...disposed of, in some way or another.

The worst case scenario I can think of in my mind right now is that they seek to slip this 777 into a commercial route, posing as another aircraft, and then either crash it somewhere populated...or detonate it over somewhere populated...possibly with a payload of some sort, chemical, biological or nuclear.

I pray to any and all deities that I am wrong.

If you are correct, this has the potential to be the biggest and most effective 'dirty' bomb yet.

It seems to me that if you were going to use the plane for some nefarious purpose, you may as well do it while you're still airborne, and the Malaysian officials are stumbling and bumbling about, and no-one's yet expecting a stray plane thousands of miles from where it was last seen. Why would you then land it? Then only explanation would be to refuel (which would then require more people in on it...) or to add something else to the plane (like explosives?) But again, why wait a week? There was an unexpected window of opportunity in the confusion of the first days after the disappearance to carry out an attack. It's fading now, although I worry about cases of mistaken identity. Woe on any civilian plane with an innocent transponder failure now.

So this doesn't really seem to make sense - unless, there was a hijacking with an intended target or an intended passenger ransom but an unforseen event causing a crash into the ocean or parts unknown. That's what I'd put money on at the moment - though that may be hopelessly out of date by tomorrow.

Probably a planned terrorist attack against China, but that plane is crashed, not landed somewhere. I think the passengers may have fought back..

This just in:
http://www.ctvnews.ca/world/malaysia...rate-1.1730508

The plane being taken was always my first thought, but could not say why, just gut feeling.

There are two locations that come to mind, Iran and Somalia. Both have runways long enough to handle a 777 within range for the missing aircraft.

In Iran's case, it's a military airfield that also has hangers large enough to conceal the craft from surveillance.

For Somalia, there is a 11K ft runway in Mogadishu. My gut says Somalia, ship hijackings have been made more difficult and the "War Lords" may have decided to expand their market.

That's what I'm thinking. Well, I don't even know if they fought back, but somehow I'm just skeptical that it actually landed somewhere intact. And as I said before, somehow I just don't think that whoever did this was after just stealing an aircraft, or something aboard.

That said, the important conclusion from this is that whoever did this seems to have known what they were doing.

Mogadishu isn't exactly a wild wasteland of some sort. That airport (along with the rest of the town) is under government control and guarded by Kenyan soldiers, and has regular airline service across Africa. Turkish Airlines flies there as well. Not exactly somewhere that one could just hide a 777. There also weren't any Somalis aboard, and I've never heard of a Somali pirate hijacking conducted entirely by foreigners. Besides, it's probably worth pointing out that if that were the case, a classic method of air piracy would work. They wouldn't need to hide their position or stay silent - not like someone would shoot them out of the sky, especially over ocean - and they'd make demands pretty quickly.