For me, this event may only make sense in hindsight once more information is known. With the conflicting and sketchy information currently available, none of it makes sense in totality.
For those in the commercial aviation industry, how do you posit an entire planeload of people were kept under control for the length of time this A/C was apparently operational? This is what I cannot wrap my head around.
If one accepts the argument that the shut down of ACARS, then the transponder, followed by routine communication with ATC in a situation that demanded anything but routine communication is suggestive of deliberate disruption of the flight, then this mean that passengers and some flight crew were essentially hostage. If the dramatic changes in altitude are even close to accurate, people on that flight had to be aware very early on that something was wrong. Let's say that there were no dramatic changes in altitude because those reports were incorrect; wouldn't you expect one or more of the FA to notice something during that period of time when direction was reversed along with those waypoint crossings? As in, hey the water is supposed to be starboard, but now it's port?
What announcement could possibly be given to more than 200 people to ensure their complacency and/or cooperation for this number of hours? Well past the scheduled landing time of their flight, well past sunrise?
From what I can gather, if the A/C was operational at 08:11, this would not support some kind of situation where hypoxia was a factor, simply because oxygen supplies would not have been available for that length of time. My understanding is that O2 supplies for the flight crew should have been 2 hours and this does not reconcile with the almost 6 hours since the ACARS system stopped reporting. Can anyone confirm how much oxygen would have been required for the FD crew?
It would be helpful for authorized spokesmen to be more transparent with information, including releasing detailed info on the Inmarsat data transmissions.