“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!
Unless you stopped unloaded valuable cargo and the figured out how to get plane back in air without a pilot