[BuffaloJack]

No matter who stole it or why.
Any 777 entering a country’s airspace will receive severe scrutiny for at least the next 6 months or so.

[Delta Dawn]

I would imagine that there are few places that a 777 could land at in that part of the world that is not an international airport. It should not be difficult to search any place that could handle such a landing in the next month or so.

If this plane is going to be used in a terrorist attack, it will happen in the next week or so.

[chrisser]

Any 777 entering a country’s airspace will receive severe scrutiny for at least the next 6 months or so.

I'm only asking because I don't know but...

How does air traffic control know what kind of plane it is?

I assume the transponders have something to do with it - can they be spoofed?

If the plane was stolen, it's a pretty impressive bit of logistics.

Here's a possible scenario.

Say a commercial flight takes off from the general area of where this plane is located, headed for the U.S. or another western country. The stolen plane takes off and intercepts somewhere along the route where radar is sparse.

Pilot of the commercial plane "accidently" turns off his tranponder and slows down or circles to kill time. Stolen plane turns on transponder and takes on identity of commercial plane and heads towards target armed with nuke, suicide pilot, whatever.

In the confusion at the target, commercial plane is able to redirect to another airport without anyone noticing the duplicate transponder in time for the pilot to slip away after landing.

I imagine if the target was something like the UK, incoming flights would be redirected elsewhere - possibly to the continent. Would airports in France notice that the same transponder that hit London was heading into Paris, for example?