The officials in that country now say they believe one or both pilots did this and the plane could have continued to fly for seven hours.
I. I think the pilot was likely the main “actor”. A man he supports heavily is in opposition to that government and was arrested the day before the plane left, for being a homosexual which is against the law in that country. I suspect the opposition man was aware he was going to be arrested and the pilot knew it, too. Also, the pilot's family moved out of their house the day before the plane left. The pilot is heavily into helping other people so I want to think he wouldn't kill the passengers. I'm not sure about his religion but the copilot is a Muslim who attends his mosque regularly.
A bit ago I saw an article on FR and the source showed over 600 airports within the range of that plane with enough runway the plane could have landed at any one of them.
Based on the above I am hoping the plane was landed and the people are alive. However, if that is what happened, that plane is going to be used for something or else why take it? Evidently this was planned, so the plane landed with enough fuel to go to the final destination. What grudge against whom does one or both pilots have? If it is the government in power there, then perhaps the plane is going back to that country to crash into a government facility and the passengers were left where the plane landed. The plan could have also failed due to a bad error of the pilots in this frame of mind, and the plane could have crashed.
II. If this was the plan of only the copilot, perhaps he murdered the pilot and then due to his state of mind, made a fatal mistake and the plane crashed. Perhaps he did make it to the landing place and his Arab killer friends will use him and the plane to destroy something including people. If that is what happened, the passengers may have been killed at the high altitude or by the militant Arabs when they landed.
Again, I don't think the pilot would have killed the passengers on purpose by going to that altitude to deprive them of oxygen. That is not how he lived as he was a giver of money and time to those less fortunate.
What mitigates against a crash is the ELTs not going off.... they would have gone off in the event of a wreck.
Yeesh, that’s exceedingly naive. Bin Laden himself gave to Muslim charities. The key word, Muslim. They love Muslims and hate everyone else. Not to mention, they’re instructed to act as outwardly good and normal citizens in order to not raise suspicion about their real plans.
What is to stop Al Queda from training sleeper agents to become licensed pilots, who will one day be able to fly their planes into a target or into the ground as an act of terrorism, without requiring any hijacking? A sane country would never allow Muslims to become licensed pilots as long as Islamist terror remains a reality in the world.
It seems to me in this incident, the passengers had to have remained unaware there was a problem, since no phone calls were made at any time. I’m not sure if phone calls are always possible from these locations, but it seems like the plane was close to land at many times. To me that indicates the pilot(s) had to be the ones who “hijacked” the plane. Either that or other terrorists were able to incapacitate everyone on board, which seems impossible.
I haven’t heard about this “homosexual” in opposition to the ruling party in Malaysia. Came across this though from Huffpo, teens designated as “effeminate” in Malaysia are sent to Masculinity Training. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/19/malaysia-gay-counseling_n_850883.html