"Agreed, I would expect the base(s) in the region to be on some escalated level of alert as soon as the plane went missing in "9-11" style transponders off. Like a disturbed wasps nest some interceptors would be up and anchored navy ships put to sea. Based on past events if it showed up on defense radar they would have at least 2 interceptors."

Agree and all relevant data would be sent to threat assessment. First piece TSPX ceases to respond between goodnight KL and hello HCM -TA personnel do not believe in coincidence, threat level goes up, available spook sats are tasked to locate a commair traveling sans ident. If they learn the bird turned left to 263, threat level is up another notch and if they pick up on the second turn (and especially if they pick up even a suspicion of an attempt to shadow another plane) the code red alarm bell goes off -need we draw pictures as to where they would go from here...

I would hope and presume that by now the authorities have a clear picture of which passengers were sitting where - and who up front near the cockpit in particular - and their backgrounds are being checked too ?

My sincere apologies for posting as I am neither a pilot nor a communications expert...Hence, the feelings of guilt!
I have been reading this forum since the day of the incident and have found it more useful than the news :)
I have but one point (that was mentioned a few 1000 posts back!) and I hope smarter people than me may have some insights:
How and could the fires on the Melbourne to Abu Dhabi flight in Feb relate to MH370??
Could fires such as what happened be used to create a diversion, allowing a hijack take-over??.
I guess the one thing against that would be that I would have thought that someone would have notified ATC about any fire.....
It just seems suspicious to me that multiple fires occur on a 777 and a month later a 777 goes missing....Both were night flights...

I agree with Passenger 389

Most likely scenario so far is that a disgruntled pilot with a psychological imbalance has tragically decided to exit with an enormous splash.

The fact that the final ping is recorded extremely close to the temporal fuel endurance of the aircraft might strongly suggest the aircraft was flown until the fuel ran out. It is also easy to speculate methods in which the only person on board who was alive for the 6-7 hours was the 'hijacker'! That being the case it is not a huge leap to speculate that the intention has always been to make the wreckage of this aircraft as difficult to find as it is possible to imagine. That also explains the erratic flight path. I am so sorry to say this, but perhaps this aircraft will never be found.

Truly terrifying 'terrorism' indeed! Cruel. Evil.

So if you wanted to 'hide' the end, would you take MH370 over land, or over thousands of miles of remote, deep ocean? (7400m in places!) Where surface debris has already had a week to drift unnoticed.

Of course, the intention could have just been to show up the talking head idiots, for precisely what they are! And my goodness haven't we had plenty on this one!!!

Finally. If this is just a one off, it's bad enough. It also makes a total mockery of security checks for pilots, since they are the only ones on board who don't NEED a 'weapon' (read nail file!!) to take over the controls! Better to give pilots more psychological checks. Perhaps akin to the screening received in Israel before every flight.

However if this isn't a 'standalone', another hijack, using a related method could have a similarly devastating effect on aviation as Sep 11th!

Worrying times for all.

Sincere condolences to all concerned.

Also China has denied the aircraft ever entered its airspace. Given the tensions with Russia/Japan/North Korea/Tibet (and even grumblings from the US and Australia about politics) etc, I'm betting China's radar/operations WOULD have picked up any anomalies and been straight onto them.

BARKINGMAD

Yes - and a LOT has changed since then. I can personally recall hearing two air intercept events whilst flying in European airspace, and shared a rather somber beer with the captain of one of those aircraft, who had missed the fact that he had flown out of French CTA and into somebody else's with his VHF 1 inadvertently flipped to a previous frequency!
Bearing in mind they were following their flight planned routes and transponding appropriately, what do you think would have happened if they suddenly went OFF flight plan, disabling TX and ID kit, and dropped low level?
This is the very raison d'être of aviation security bodies and airforce fighter/interceptor "assets".

Not unusual to tanker fuel up to the mainland Chinese ports. Ideally, sufficient fuel to get there and back but limited by landing weight etc.
ES

Malaysia is an major oil producer. The national carrier can almost certainly negotiate a discount on its fuel prices at home. If it then needs to buy less fuel in Beijing, then it makes more money on the round trip.

Australian JORN OTH Radar
 

Here is the Fact Sheet for Jindalee.

The Laverton site could have picked up MH370 if it went south. JORN may not have been switched on however.

Obviously, I have not read every post. But could someone tell what evidence has come to light that has so many pointing the finger at one of the pilots? I've seen nothing that leads me to believe one of the pilots (to descend into the vernacular) 'went rogue'. In fact, the erratic altitude readouts not long after the diversion would appear to give some credence to either a struggle for control or someone at the controls having difficulty flying the aircraft.

Anyone who has flown as a line pilot or cabin crew for any length of time would not find it difficult to believe that, despite locked doors and security procedures in place since 2001, (and particularly given the position of the toilets on the 777), intruders could gain access to the cockpit with relative ease.

Neither should anyone be surprised that there might be someone out here with the engineering (and perhaps flying) expertise apparently displayed here whose skills could not either be bought - or just as likely, made available willingly by a committed believer of a cause.

I also find quite strange that after having lost a plane, ATC didn't actively attempt to contact it.

Re the "mysterious" extra fuel: what was the designated (filed) alternate for Beijing? Depending upon how far away that alternate was would dictate how much extra fuel was carried.

They did. A post from a pilot on frequency at the time (see 32656 posts ago) said that Ho Chi Minh ATC Quote "was going nuts on 121.5" trying to contact it.

The key point is that the hostages have an intrinsic value as hostages. If one of my loved ones were on this flight today's news would have given me optimism. I don't think that the sale of organs makes much sense. Easier to kidnap low-value 'invisible' folk from the bottom tier of society, not somewhere near the top.

It could be that having landed intact (albeit perhaps not in an airworthy condition) the hostages may be on their way to some safe secluded place where their life needs are met with no means of escape or communication. Meanwhile, the hijackers make their way to some other place and make whatever demands they wish. They will promise to give the location of the hostages when their demands are met.

Provided the demands are of a political nature, they could get away with it.

BBC News have just interviewed another "expert" (worked on the 777, now runs a Flight Safety company). Some of what he said lines up more with where I've got to on this if you give the crew the benefit of some doubt:

- as they coast out ACARS fails for whatever reason but unknown to crew
- catastrophic event at IGARI, takes out most other comms / electronics including transponders
- perhaps an explosive decompression
- maybe flying controls degraded too so are using differential power perhaps explaining altitude changes and jinks in heading, either way they now have their hands full
- aircraft barely flyable so they try their best to get back to base, explains left turn if primary radar signal really is MH370
- then in trying to fly / navigate and with no comms it just all gets too much (with / without oxygen) and they're left heading out to sea on whatever heading and altitude they'd managed to get it to but their efforts are all in vain and it goes down, somewhere deep, west of Malaysia.

Something like this still seems plausible to me, more than suicide / heists / bullion / terrorism.

Given that the Malay PM has now put it on record that transponder and ACARS on MH 370 were disabled deliberately the disappearance of this aircraft and passengers now becomes a crime.
When police investigate crimes they may put some info out to the public and appeal for help but they never put all the cards on the table. ('keep the powder dry')
Of course there will be info about MH370 that authorities know which we don't (yet).
It is like trying to complete a jigsaw without all the pieces.
Thanks to posters here who are trying to make sense of the pieces we have.

Edit:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/...-disabled.html

Previous hourly pings
 

It would be interesting, for example, to see if the arcs of the prior pings were evenly spaced apart, indicating some steady speed and heading.

There was a suggestion in some of the material being leaked from Washington that there was perhaps data indicating a re-fuelling stop before the final ping.

Is it turned off at night? Wouldn't make any sense, even if there is no-one physically there watching blank screens, it should be running on "auto" and recording 24x7 for subsequent evaluation.

The one thing that strikes me odd about all the talk of hijack (either to destroy the plane in flight or take it intact) is that no-one has claimed responsibility. If you were a terrorist mastermind and wanted to gain from having pulled off this undertaking, would you not be phoning the local media and making it known by now?

With the way the internet is used on a daily basis to broadcast everyones opinion, not one reference has appears in any news broadcast regarding "we did it"!

They must continue searching the South China Sea they don't have enough evidence to not stop. They need to get the CVR and the FDR. I'm afraid if the stop searching near the point of Transponder SSR loss we will never find it and maybe something will wash up on a shoreline in Kuching or Vung Tau or like wise years from now. But it will be too late for any valuable data.
They need to run a test flight with B777 on their suspected turn back scenario with all ground stations radar etc checking their data, to eliminate or confirm their assumptions. Because at the moment they are assumptions only.
I hope the Chinese and Vietnamese keep searching the South China Sea we should support them as much as possible.