You have a great point, as wreckage should have floated up on beaches in the Indian ocean weeks ago if it broke up in the ocean and wasn’t ‘landed’ intact in the sea.
One other thought: It ‘is’ possible it crashed into the jungle somewhere, intentionally or otherwise, and might be waiting to be found. If there were no witnesses and no fire (fuel exhausted or dumped), a crash site would be as hard, if not harder, to find as wreckage in the vast Indian Ocean...
The whole thing stinks. And getting the Aussies involved for validity of the search (initially) seems to have only deepened the distrust at this point (IMHO).
China is a fascist state with total control of the media and its people. Malaysia is dysfunctional. There’s something embarrassing or sinister to the China government about this “missing” plane. Beijing knows what happened.
Just my $0.02.