Muslim country, unattended airfield. Maldives island complex has three (3) airfields capable of landing a 777, and 2 that can take off with full load.
Maldives ping.
From Telegraph article comments:
Chris Goodfellow, a pilot with 20 years experience, has the following theory:
Opinion
What I think happened is the flight crew was overcome by smoke and the plane continued on the heading, probably on George (autopilot), until it ran out of fuel or the fire destroyed the control surfaces and it crashed. You will find it along that route–looking elsewhere is pointless.
His suggestion is that there was a fire onboard, and that the pilot tried to double back to the nearest safe runway to land.
He adds maps and past case studies to back up his theory.