Malaysia's military believes the airliner missing for almost four days with 239 people on board flew for more than an hour after vanishing from air traffic control.
Air force chief Rodzali Daud has been quoted as saying the plane was tracked flying over the Strait of Malacca, on the other side of the country to where it disappeared from civilian radar
Malaysian authorities have previously said flight MH370 disappeared about an hour after it took off from Kuala Lumpur for the Chinese capital Beijing.
At the time it was roughly midway between Malaysia's east coast town of Kota Bharu and the southern tip of Vietnam, flying at 35,000 ft (10,670 metres).


Today however, Malaysia's Berita Harian newspaper quoted air force chief Daud as saying the Malaysia Airlines plane was last detected by military radar at 2:40 a.m. on Saturday, near the island of Pulau Perak at the northern end of the Strait of Malacca.
It was flying at a height of about 9,000 metres (29,500 ft), he was quoted as saying.
'The last time the flight was detected close to Pulau Perak, in the Melaka Straits, at 2.40 a.m. by the control tower before the signal was lost,' the paper quoted Rodzali as saying.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2578199/Military-tracked-missing-plane-100-miles-vanished-civilian-radar-sure-Malacca-Strait-Malaysian-source-reveals.html#ixzz2vfBqRucl

That's worrisome. They really don't know where MH370 flew.

They're going to have to find some wreckage before this is resolved. That may take some time. The search area is huge.

Where could they have possibly landed within their flight range?

I don't think hijacking can be ruled out at this point.

What flying altitude would have allowed them to have avoided radar detection?

I'm guessing that it wouldn't be too hard to avoid prying eyes if you have a plan and know how to reset transponders.

It's hard to believe that any other explanation other than hijacking fits this sighting, but they cannot really be certain that this is the plane.

They've been looking for this plane more or less along its flight path for three days and now somebody comes along with, "Oh yeah, we saw that thing hundreds of miles in the opposite direction over the Straits of Mallacca." I knew there was a reason I am afraid to fly.

The 777 is a BIG airplane. One cannot just set it down just anywhere. If it had landed that would be reported already. We'd all know.

I am afraid that it did not land safely.

I agree about high jacking. Cannot rule it out. Nor can we rule out mechanical problems.

But we can be pretty sure that everybody on that plane died in a crash. It's just a matter of time before they find the wreckage.

And one doesn't fly a 777 a distance at low altitude. That would be insane.

Question is, could it be done.

The heading in the graphic above could put it on a flight path to the African coast. They had ample fuel.

Any hostile countries over there that could accomodate a landing?

At this time, why make things up?

Let the story resolve itself. It may take some time.

My only assumption is that it very much looks like MN370 went down. That's what the airline is saying, and everybody else involved in the search. But I suppose it could be safe somewhere. Not likely, though.

I'm not 'making things up'.

Their fuel efficiency at low altitude would have been next to nothing -- So there isn't anywhere near as much useable range as you'd think...

And competently flying a 777 in that manner takes a considerable degree of skill -- No amount of MS Flight Sim X can prepare someone for that...

Why would they be carrying that much excess fuel?

Were they planning on landing in Beijing with that?

My mind keeps going to the idea of a weapon's delivery system. I can see a plan for delivery of some form of WMD that would be very, very difficult to protect against.

Okham's razor gives your WMD scenario a big shave.

I'm all for KISS until there is reason to doubt the simple scenario, that this plane got into trouble, either by intent or accident, and has crashed. At this time there's no need to go beyond that.

...no sign of debris.

And though you are disregarding it, the aircraft looks to be hundreds of miles off course. That doesn't happen by accident.

Hijacking for hostages is less likely IMO than to obtain the aircraft.

Why would you need a civilian aircraft?

The plane was flying non-stop to Beijing. At that distance in a western direction it could have made it to most parts of India.

not think hijacking.

There is no confirmation that the late radar sighting was MH370.

The stolen passports look to be innocuous.

There are too many questions here.

catastrophic, one-in-a-million electrical systems failure and they were forced try hand-flying back to their airport of origin...

Not very likely, but at this point it's just as valid as the "hijacking" hysteria...

Not quite the same thing as detecting that particular aircraft. Primary targets can be lots of things, including birds, other aircraft and the like.

However, it's certainly possible that they turned off their transponder and flew....somewhere. With the information available so far, it can't be ruled out.

The 777 has so much redundancy in its systems that if it was still in the air that long and that far off course, it's hard to come up with a scenario where it was unintentional.

If that is the case and the airplane landed somewhere or crashed on land, it will eventually be found. If it went into the ocean hundreds of miles off course, it may never be found.

This is shaping up to be a real mystery.

this means a whole lot of ships, planes and helicopters wasted many, many hours and loads of fuel looking in the wrong areas.

If I were in charge of the search, I'd demand to know why the military kept quiet.

Corporatists are everywhere my friend.

They could have hijacked the plane turned off the radar/transponders then were attempting to fly it somewhere then something went wrong.. perhaps the crew or passengers stormed the cockpit and in the battle the plane may have flown straight into the ocean without breaking up.. so little to no debris. That would pretty much explain all the oddities of this situation.

If the pilots had a death wish, they could have ditched the plane at the point the transponder shut off.

Likewise, if a terrorist wanted to crash the plane, why wait an hour?

It seems the 777 has backup power (batteries?) that allow flight for about an hour. And that seems to be about how long the thing flew after the transponder went silent. That suggests a massive power failure. That begs the question why the pilots didn't try to get to an airport in Vietnam, which was a lot closer than turning back.

If we assume they had no ability to use the radio, no landing lights, and limited or no instruments, they very well may have decided to try to get back to Kuala Lampur. Perhaps they were a lot more familiar with that airport and thought that was their best chance.

At this point pilot insanity is as good an explanation as any, but power failure doesn't fit the events.

http://www.angelfire.com/ct3/ctenning/electrical_essays/777elecpwr/777_design.html

I suppose it's possible to sabotage the plane so that the electrical lines are destroyed, which would make I think the backup power unusable. But if so, I doubt they would still be flying an hour later.

I hope they find this plane soon - this is torture for the families. The only thing we can be certain of is that it's down somewhere.

As odd as it sounds, the best explanation I can figure is that one of the cockpit crew shut off the transponder and hijacked the plane. The contact seems to have been lost about at the handover point, which seems too suspicious to be accidental or consistent with a delayed bomb, and makes one suspect that a cockpit attack is less likely. It seems like the Malaysian investigation is going that route based on some of the comments about checking for individuals with large debts or other red flags.

There is more precedent for that scenario than any other.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/hero-jetblue-passenger-put-unruly-pilot-chokehold/story?id=16013298
http://www.torontosun.com/2013/06/05/flight-diverted-after-pilot-screams-for-help

Note the links above are discussing two separate incidents in two years in North America.

Or so I have heard. I have heard there are several different communication facilities and it is possible that the only one available would have such a limited range that it wouldn't reach anybody while they were 50 miles out over water.

If the pilots were not familiar with the VietNam airports and had no useful radio communication, I could definitely see them deciding to turn back to Kuala Lampur. They didn't take a straight route. That might have been a loss of navigation equipment flying at night or it might have been because they wanted to avoid mountains if they didn't have instruments they could trust.

It could be all the other scenarios, but this one makes perfectly good sense to me and doesn't really have nay big question marks that I see. All the other scenarios seem to have a really big flaw, like why would they fly an extra hour after whatever happened?

Maybe a meteor strike or a bomb placed so as to knock out the cable compartment could do it, but then it could not fly either.

I don't know what happened and probably only finding the plane gives us any chance of discovering what did happen. We don't really know that the plane was in the air an hour later. It seems perhaps an explanation as to why they cannot find the debris, but on the other hand they were very high, and if they could even glide, they could get pretty far.

This is a very, very tragic accident, and not knowing must make the family members suffer even more.

I don't know that he's right because I am not an aviation expert. However, he was adamant that the 777, when running on battery power can fly for about an hour and has only the shortest range radio system available.

I would also point out that the absence of a large debris field increases the probability that the pilot was able to set the plane down in water in one piece, and that it subsequently sank.

None of the facts I have seen point in any way to a terrorist operation. They all point to a catastrophic power failure and a desperate attempt by the pilot to get back to the airport he was most familiar with. And he wasn't too far from making it. Only about 10-15 minutes short and a heading straight to Kuala Lampur. He had his bearings by crossing over land and turning left into the strait. It seems the pilot was in control and following a pattern that is consistent with trying to save a badly incapacitated ship.