[Izzy Dunne]

wouldn’t they have yanked out the black box and voice recorder and dumped them somehow

The FDR and CVR (from my understanding) are located in the plane's tail, both to improve crash survivability and to prevent the scenario you describe.

[Principled]

thanks I didn’t know if them being able to do all that technical stuff wrt transponders etc would be indicative of a similar technical expertise to dump the box and the recorder...