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This from a very long thread:

http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/20fnuz/nyt_malaysian_military_radar_data_shows_missing/

Can a Boeing 777 even make it to 45,000 feet?

Edit: After many attempts on my flight simulator, I got to about 43,000 feet before I stalled the jet.

Edit 2: I tried to build speed by diving the plane. A 20 degree dive from 35,000 feet to 30,000 feet didn’t create enough airspeed to successfully get to 45,000 feet using 15, 20, and 25 degree up angle climbs. I stalled miserably around 39,000 feet.

Edit 3: After dumping all but 24,000 lb of fuel (roughly one hour’s worth) and getting rid of 33,000 lbs of passengers, the plane stalled at 46,000 feet! It wasn’t easy. It took me 10 minutes of careful flying to climb the last 5,000 feet. I know this scenareo is unlikely but I wanted to see what a skinny 777 could do.

Edit 4: It took me 1 minute and 15 seconds to lose 40,000 feet of altitude from a starting altitude of 43,000 feet by doing a 60 degree dive. By the time the plane pulled out of the dive and leveled off at 2,000 feet, it was doing mach 1.117 (769 mph)(1,239 kph). It took me around 3 attempts to successfully do this test. Pulling out of the dive too hard will result in structure over-G and a wing coming off. The plane in this test did not dump fuel and it did have all of it’s passengers. I did fully throttle down during the dive. I let gravity do the work.

American official is right, a lot of this doesn’t make any sense.

REQUEST: If you have a flight simulator, please try to recreate the tests I have done and post the results.

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http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/17/world/asia/malaysia-plane-up-to-speed/

To demonstrate how this BS got going:

Report: Plane flew low to avoid radar

Malaysian officials on Monday denied knowledge of a newspaper report that the plane may have dropped to an altitude of 5,000 feet to defeat commercial radar coverage. “We are not aware of that report, and that’s a thing the investigative team has to look into. It does not come from us,” Malaysia Airlines CEO Ahmad Jauhari Yahya told reporters in Kuala Lumpur. CNN could not immediately confirm the newspaper’s account.

The report, published Monday by Malaysia’s New Straits Times, said the flight dropped to 5,000 feet after turning back from its Kuala Lumpur-Beijing route on March 8 and quoted unnamed officials as saying “it’s possible that the aircraft had hugged the terrain in some areas that are mountainous to avoid radar detection.” New Straits Times Editor Farrah Naz Karim told CNN’s “New Day” that the newspaper spoke to sources close to the investigation and asked how flying at that altitude could be done. She added that this is one aspect that investigators could be looking into but it’s all speculation at this point.