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From that article: The final ping was sent from over water, at what one of these people called a normal cruising altitude. They added that it was unclear why the pings stopped. One of the people, an industry official, said it was possible that the system sending them had been disabled by someone on board.

Some observations that seem logical:

1. I doubt that the hijackers even knew about the component systems periodically automatically pinging satellites or if they did how to disable it. Because if they did know about it, then logically they would have disabled it hours earlier when they shut off the transponder.

2. Given the preceding point, the plane never made it beyond the flying radius from the last ping heard to when the next ping would have been heard. If the pings come every hour, then the plane crashed or landed within an hour of the last ping. This would eliminate possibilities such as flying on to Iran or Pakistan.

3. A plan to hijack a passenger airliner and land it somewhere in order to use it later as a weapon seems far too risky in terms of detection. They have to know that the moment authorities realize the plane has been hijacked in this post-9/11 environment there would be fighter jets scrambled after them from every nearby air force. Indeed, merely taking control of the airplane and immediately seeking to crash it into a target would be risky in terms of succeeding before being shot out of the sky or passengers storming the cockpit.

4. Given the preceding point, then hijackers taking control of the plane would then head directly for their target and try to crash it on their target as soon as possible, in order to minimize the time for air forces to intercept them.

5. Someone suggested that if they were going to crash it into a target, they would have done so on the Petronas towers in Kuala Lumpur. Huh? Why on earth would muzzie terrorists target a muzzie city?

6. The logical targets for muzzie terrorists crashing the plane would be India or a US base, in terms of their ideology and aims. However, the US base target would be quite risky in terms of being detected and shot down before impact.

7. So the most attractive target would be a major city in India. And, if the info in the press is accurate about the pings and the search zone, then it would appear that the plane was headed in the direction of India when the last satellite ping was detected.

8. To my mind, the most logical scenario is that the terrorists hijacked the plane and then headed for India to crash the plane as soon as possible, in order to accomplish this before being detected and shot down. And then one of two things happened: as they were approaching radar distance from India, the terrorists lowered the altitude to just over the water but ended up crashing into the sea or the passengers realized what was happening and stormed the cockpit, whereupon the terrorists crashed it into the sea.