I've been following this Thread and its predecessor closely from first post on.
@mm43:
When I look at the likely crash location you determined last September and comparing it to the location they are now searching in detail it is absolutely striking how good that matches !!!
It seems your research bettered all the experts of BEA and those directly involved in the Search. Amazing !
Maybe they should have listened more to pprune and especially to you!
What remains a bit of a mystery to me is how they could have come that far from the last known position and hit the surface with very little forward speed. And all that after a hard 180° turn.
Normally such a hard turn would cause speed bleed.
If you calculate the time/distance between last known position and actual search location this would require ~ 500kts average speed point to point even without considering turn (speed loss and longer actual flight path) and deep stall (forward airspeed <<100 kts).
Maybe there is indeed some merit to the flameout scenario...