I haven't kept up with every nuance of this event so forgive me if this has already been posed, but; is it possible that they crew did re-enter the world (not trying to be funny, just don't want to say anything speculative about their lack of contact) before reaching the destination, but ACT held them up and on heading because law enforcement was still concerned about terrorism?

If so, the story about a distracting conversation becomes much more believable. In my scenario, they were out of radio contact for some length of time (probably less than thirty minutes) which led to law enforcement becoming concerned about terrorism. The overfly and remainder of the flight we all see on flight trac was dictated by law enforcements concerns of another 9/11. All of which is reasonable.