That’s what I thought, that if something horrible is happening on board mechanically, they wouldn’t even bother to do this, they would take the plane to the nearest airport, not bother punching in some fly path
Yeah ... and so, we can see that it was a very well planned event by someone (or several) who knew exactly how to fly the plane and knew very well how the systems worked.
And all that leads me to conclude that they did not fly the southern route (because there’s nothing but ocean there) - but took the northern route.
As to what the purpose of this planned event was (or is to be) - there’s not “any” information (i.e., facts related to this flight) on that - that I’ve seen in any article so far.