If it didn’t explode into little pieces, the plane wouldn’t just disappear from the radar screen if the transponder were disabled. The passive image would still be trackable. This revelation only says that many people have been lying about the mystery from the first announcement. If this report is true, millions of dollars and days of time have been spent looking for wreckage in places that important people have known from the beginning were false leads. Why?
Malaysia airlines is a done deal. Over and done with.
Passive systems might not have been strong enough to see it.
When I was in CAP, and thinking about a pilots license, one older pilot (former Air Force) said that his transponder went out one time while flying near White Sands in his private plan. The tower went NUTS when he called out for a heading (as he was supposed to do) while approaching the area.
They didn’t see his little Cessna.