“I still think it is a sub.”
Could be. The search is being expanded to the western portion of the Indian Ocean. But, why would high jackets bother to fly five hours west just to dive it I to the ocean? What hasn’t had much press in the past couple of days are the passengers. Having traveled extensively and lived a couple of years in that part of the world and having made a bunch of those sort of flights I have a pretty good idea of what the profile of those passengers might be. I would guess that the passengers were predominately male, between about mid 20’s to mid 50’s, intelligent and well educated professionals. So, assuming the pilots are the or part of the high jackets there almost certainly were two or more armed co-conspirators in the cabin maintaining control of those passengers. Otherwise, after a short period of time some of the passengers would figure out that there was a high jacking underway and would have probably crashed the cockpit door so to over take the pilots. I’m guessing that if it is indeed a sub it’s because the plane ran out of fuel before it reached its destination. My impression of the Indian military is that it’s pretty good. And, I would assume that includes their defense system. So, it will be interesting to learn if they’ve picked up anything on their radar. I haven’t bothered to research this but I “think” India may even have some satellites.
I don't think they flew it to crash it. I think their fuel planning was inadequate, but it is also possible in their efforts to evade detection, that they caused an unusual attitude that, due to their inexperience, caused them to get vertigo and crash. The big black ocean some scattered lights and then nothing, vertigo city. Vertigo is easy to get, easy to not recognize at first, takes a good bit of experience to overcome once it has you, will crash an aircraft as fast as anything else.
I think it is entirely possible that the mission planning for this on the terrorist's side was a globe and a string. I think they waited too long to start, then wasted time with control measures within the aircraft and trying to avoid detection instead of getting on towards their destination. Their altitude selection probably didn't help. Fuel consumption changes with altitude, as it does when you aren't smooth on the throttle.