Would they not have made a radio call if the above were true. It appears the aircraft flew normally and was not damaged or in distress.
Perhaps, but perhaps not if their radios comms were damaged. I think there are lots of gaps that investigators are filling in with assumptions, simply because they don't know. This can be a blessing and an Achilles heel in their investigative process.
These highly ranked officials coming out and making claims about what happened is really poor showing in my mind. They stuffed up the sonar pings and they were so Gung-ho confident prior to that. It appears they haven't even confirmed the source of the so called false pings. Thus were they really false? when prior they were extremely confident.
Deputy PM now claims the plane was likely on auto pilot. He could be right but that's not a proven fact. What if they used GPS navigation? I think the officials should only be reporting facts, but I guess they have few to go on so they are filling in the gaps, however given the errors they have already made, it's difficult to have confidence.