Originally Posted by
CaptianO
So someone definitely stole this plane right?
They may have tried, but they probably didn't succeed. There is no point in keeping the plane. If they intended to use it as a WMD they would have done so immediately (within a day or so) before somebody wised up. They're not going to sit around some jungle airstrip with a hot 777 waiting to act out their lead role in the next navy seal movie.
Originally Posted by
CaptianO
Unless it plunged face down into the ocean and nothing broke apart.
It could have landed intact in the ocean, floated for three days, sank and odds are they still wouldn't have spotted it. It was days before they even had an idea in which direction it went.
The ocean is incredibly vast, most folks can't even seem to grasp how vast and satellite resources are extremely limited by comparison.
Most likely there was a debris field and even an oil slick, but in any normal open-ocean conditions it would have dispersed within hours or a day or two at most. The ocean is very dynamic and is full of miscellaneous debris...especially in that part of the world.