I think you’re correct. Lets assume everyone died on board and this thing was just flying on autopilot for thousands of miles. Eventually it runs out of gas, and basically comes down nose first. I can’t imagine any piece 50+ feet long would be left.
If it WAS an attempted water landing the obvious question is... why would anyone fly a plane thousands of miles over open ocean when they knew they couldn’t reach land? Nothing about this makes sense.
I thought I read on some other thread the transmitter on the ‘black box’ data recorder is only activated by reaching a G-force threshold. In other words, there’d need to be an explosion, or a hard crash for it to activate.
If the pilot(person in control) executed a wave top landing, maybe that’d minimize the experienced G-force, and the transmitter wouldn’t activate.
Take that info with a grain of salt. Hopefully anyone with more knowledge on the subject can correct me if I’m incorrect.
Also it’s still hard for me to believe this is what happened.
“If it WAS an attempted water landing the obvious question is... why would anyone fly a plane thousands of miles over open ocean when they knew they couldn’t reach land? Nothing about this makes sense.”
My point exactly! Wheter it be suicide or terrorism, why fly it way out into the remote Southern Ocean to do it? If it was a plane load of dead people - a la the unfortunate Payne Stewart - how does any piece larger than a car hood survive when the jet fuel runs out and it makes its final plunge? Also, there would have been a second course change from heading to the island airport to heading to the remote Southern Ocean, right? Why would the Captain or whoever change course a second time - presumably at cruising altitude as the fuel would have run out much sooner at lower altitude - to a very different heading if he was making for the nearest long runway airport? Why not descend on the second heading? None of it adds up!