What I want to know is this whole “Payne Stewart” theory, can this plane, with everyone on board dying from hypoxia, still fly, for five hours, and make those weird altitudes, and of course making turn after turn after turn.
Nope. Auto Pilot is completely ruled out.
I don’t know but it sounds like someone else other than the pilots were flying the plane when it jump up to 45,000, made the hard west turn, etc... Maybe a hi-jacker with some flying experience had control and thought they had enough fuel to get it across the Indian Ocean. Maybe passengers did not know what was going on at this point. (sleeping?) - Maybe they thought everything was fine or they were scared and trying to figure out how to storm the cockpit for those 3 to 4 hours. Some may have knew during those 3 to 4 hours that they were over water and that there no city lights in view, so they had time to figure out a plan to storm the cockpit.