I suspect crew incapacitation of some sort as being more likely than terror. Fire might explain the lost XPDR if electrical systems were involved. Decompression would not explain the XPDR. Unless the crew inadvertently turned it off while switching to 7700. Or maybe they simply flew out of range of secondary radar in the area?

Somewhere in the chain of what happened is going to be one highly-improbable link...one that will have occurred non-the less. Once that link is identified and proven to a reasonable degree everything else will make sense.

100% agree with you. When I studied abroad in Japan, that was the real eye-opener. I stopped listening to American news after that.

When the earthquake happened in March I would watch japanese news stations/NHK reporting on the event, but then I would call my parents and hear a completely different story that was being told on the American news.

Not to mention, the Sum Ting Wong incident just further exemplified it...

Malaysian 777 missing
 

Thank you Evamodel, for understanding. Спасибо

How about China Southern?

Malaysian 777 missing
 

Did this plane have wifi capabilities? If it did, you would think that they could triangulate the position of the signal.
Also, with over 250 people on board, someone had a cellphone. Even with the phone off...the iphone has a backend way to find its location and it's still powered to retain internal memory. You would think some guru at Apple could code a hack to do this.
I find it hard to believe that a couple of hijackers could get all the passengers to not transmit some sort of a message.
Everyone is looking for the plane to transmit something, they need to focus on the people and what sort of devices they own. With the new era of technology, they have more options.

Way more likely than someone stealing it. You can't just land a 777 somewhere and pull it into a hangar without someone seeing it. A government would have to be behind something like that to pull it off and I think that is very unlikely. Since the engine data news, I've also thought about the crew being incapacitated and the plane flying on autopilot. Remember Payne Stewart a few years back?

Now CNN is reporting the plane may have flown for 'hours' towards the Indian Ocean...

OK; hijacked or incapacitated crew?

It was a few years back anyway. I was in a group that studied the area's implementation of ADS-B and I remember a number of those routes are beyond radar for various short distances. They'd use time and altitude separation at fixes like BITOD though you'd still stay on VHF as usual, and when you got into range the next facility would re-identify you. A lot of gaps are small enough you don't need to give time estimates, but technically they're using procedural/non-radar control there.

Maybe they planned to land it in a country without a government, such as Somalia? If it's true the aircraft took a hard left back over Malaysia, the course looks like it was headed straight toward... Somalia. (dun dun DUN!)

Yep. Keep in mind you usually don't get "unbiased" news, but it is just biased from a significantly different perspective. It used to be one of my favorite things to watch foreign news when traveling. It is interesting to get the whole vibe of America as the "rich obnoxious uncle trying unsuccessfully to meddle in your personal life."

The Malaysia airline incident is simultaneously tragic and fascinating. I hope it does not remain an unsolved mystery forever.