As with a lot of things on this hamster wheel, they have been discussed before. There were a lot of assumptions made to come up with a flight profile based on claims (unverified) that military radar had seen climbs to 45,000ft and the aircraft was flying low level in radar shadow to avoid alerting the Thai's, etc etc. All this is assumption based on partial reports from military radars that have a vested interest in ensuring that nobody knows the bottom of their cover or their height finding capabilities. Whether these people have been more forthcoming to the various boards of inquiry as long as their reports are kept secure - we do not know. However, what we do know is that the aircraft was airborne until the last 'partial ping'/'SATCOM logon attempt. Therefore, we should discount the 30 minutes of aerobatics and then the flight low level in radar shadow, it is more likely that the aircraft maintained level for the zig zag transit to the Malacca straits and then around Indonesia before flying South. If it _didn't_ fly like that it is not easy to come up with a flight path that would cross the range rings from the INMARSAT satellite at the right times within the error bounds of the tracking methodology. So until there is a better idea, the search is on the ring of the partial ping out to the West of Perth.