I'm with you on this one, Jazzbag, (post 6033)
Aim: To Hijack a 777
Method:
To make the aircraft vanish thereby presume crashed into the sea... the only thing they overlooked was that the engines kept talking to the satellite even though the ACARS was disabled.
-one or both pilots? or trained pax assisted by maybe one pax (the engineer?) depressurise the aircraft just 15 mins before the change over point.They could be wearing Oxygen masks which explains the garbled transmission with background noise.. Maintain altitude to starve the oxygen from the pax systems which last 15 mins ..(the pilots would last 30 mins or more) Intent is to disable all passengers who would notice the change in course and may try to storm the cockpit.
-the attendants with the mobile oxygen may have realised something wrong and try to break down the cockpit door.. so the pilot/s decide to climb to 45000 to disable these brave guys. When this works successfully the aircraft is descended to level 295 below RVSM and in between semi circular FLs.
-Now the plane is flown to a remote airfield maybe in South Central Asia.
What you've not mentioned is that having depressurised the aircraft for 20 minutes or so (air-conditioning packs off, outflow valve open), the pilot(s) or whoever was in the flight deck then closes the outflow valve and turns the packs back on. The OAT was likely -50ºC so the aircraft would be getting mighty cold. You would need to get back to a warm, oxygen-rich environment as quickly as possible. It could be that some mobile phones were left on (there always will be and lack of O2 won't affect them), but no one to make any calls at any stage thereafter.
Now that it's just "you' on board, the carefully thought-out plan can commence. And for all those 1000s of people reading this blog who don't imagine there was a plan, the precedent is 9/11. The complete creativity of that plan caught the whole world by surprise. I admit it does need a brave step of imagination but so it did back in 2001. I believe that General McInery's thoughts concerning a safe landing in Pakistan are to be taken seriously. He did ask the interviewer not to push him on some of his sources which had obviously been agreed prior to the interview (
Lt. Gen. McInerney: Flight 370 Could Have Landed in Pakistan | Fox News Insider).