Blown up over the ocean? sunk to the bottom of the ocean? stollen or hijacked?

Probably best to confine yourself to the facts. Imaginations run riot. Maybe Elvis,( of course he's not dead,) flew it to the moon.

Do you honestly think an unidentified passenger jet would be able to fly into a nuclear reactor without being brought down by a missile defence system?

Most of the passengers are Chinese. Why would Putin want to antagonise the one member of the security council that didn't vote to censure Russia over Crimea?

I think it's unlikely the plane was hijacked.

Here's what I think happened: Shortly after the last regular contact, the plane had some kind of drastic mechanical/structural failure which disabled the communications antennas (as well as other systems probably). The pilots immediately turned the airplane back towards their origin so that they wouldn't enter foreign airspace without communications and be shot down. This accounts for the rapid change of direction back toward Malaysia. Somehow in the confusion they got the plane into a steep climb and went to 45k feet (reported by radar) before losing consciousness. At that point all passengers and crew were incapacitated and the airplane put itself into stable flight, returned to cruising altitude and began powering down various mechanical systems (including environment) to keep itself flying (apparently this is what 777's are programmed to do under certain conditions). After that point it proceeded as a ghost-plane back across Malaysia and into the indian ocean where it ran out of fuel in the ocean somewhere south of Sri Lanka.

If any of the passengers had been conscious when the plane crossed land someone would have made a phone call. And we haven't heard anything about cell phone activity, so that pretty much guarantees that everyone on the plane was unconscious. I can't imagine any level of hijack takeover which could prevent over 200 desperate people from activating a cell phone, and I also can't see any reason for a well planned hijacking to take an airplane straight into the Indian Ocean just to let it run out of fuel. Makes no sense.

I'll probably be proven completely wrong tomorrow, but that's the most sense I can make out of the vague and conflicting evidence presented by public media so far.

Well that makes more sense than most of the wild conspiracy theories. (Except for my one about Elvis obviously.)

How much fuel does this person think that plane holds on board?! It's long since run out of fuel. Also, even if it did find a way to refuel, as soon as it enters any major country's airspace it's going to be picked up by their respective national airspace radar. This plane was a regular jet not some sort of stealth bomber. And it would be really obvious if a plane that size tried to fly under the radar.

Even for a Hollywood thriller, those ideas have some massive plot holes. A bit too convoluted to come true.

You're assumption about Elvis is clearly the correct one!

did I say Putin?

It's a jet, not a glider.

Without fuel ... it was over a long time ago. Whatever "it" turns out to be.

Who else would want to distract from the situation in Crimea?

the aircraft flew for 7 hours without communication of any kind, transponder was shut off and not even one cell phone call by any of the 239 passengers!

good point!

enough for a seven hour flight

Alien abduction, anyone?

I'm sticking with lithium battery fire.
The fire in the cargo hold disables the communication system and fills the cabin and cockpit with smoke.
Pilots manage to get the plane turned and climb to 40-45,000 feet in order to starve the fire on any oxygen.
Unfortunately, the oxygen delivery system for passengers and crew fails right about that same time.
Ghost plane descends to 24,000, all on board are unconscious or dead.
Plane flies until runs out of fuel.

Joe(maybe)Nation

Sounds plausible.

Part of the problem with this case is all the unconfirmed and bogus data that keeps coming out. Someone recently reported that the plane was flown below 5000 feet and flew between mountains to avoid radar. But they don't say how they know this and the "sources" all refuse to be named. So for the moment, I'm calling bullshit on that claim. But in the end, who knows.

If we knew which pieces of data were actually factual and confirmed and which ones were just speculation this might all become clearer.

So? Dontcha think we're WAY past that seven hour flight? Because only in bad action movies do we see airplanes find an unmarked/unmapped landing strip on an uncharted island in the middle of the ocean where it can refuel and return to the airspace to fulfill its dastardly duty.

Ergo, doesn't that fact alone rule out any goofy and unfounded conspiracy theory in your initial thread posting?

Very plausible and very similar to that personal jet plane owned/chartered by that progolfer(?) a half a dozen years ago in which the case was explosive decompression that killed everyone on board but still the plane went on its course via autopilot until it ran out of fuel.

You're just channeling JTT now. Not very healthy...

Please don't accuse me of that. JTT is on ignore.

It's my understanding that the airplane's black box will send out a signal if the airplane is destroyed. But no such signal has been detected.

I would like to know if the airplane needs to be destroyed before the black box starts signaling, or if it will begin signaling due to power loss or other unplanned conditions.

Could the plane have done a soft landing in the ocean before running out of fuel and sunk and not triggered the black box transmitter?