I think ten MIRV warheads are a far greater surprise than an airliner, no matter what you load it with :-) If you want to start a war, you strike first, and as hard as you can. Spy games cannot guarantee that it will be you who will make the key move.
Besides, an airplane of this level of design cannot be flown again, under a different identity, because nobody outside of a group of equipment manufacturers can tell all the ways, obvious and not so much, that the airplane uses to talk to the ground.
Exactly. I don’t see how this airline figures in.