Just curious. Is it even a realistic possibility at this point that the MH370 plane was landed and the passengers are in captivity?
Any realistic chance that that the missing plane landed safely & all the passengers are still alive?
Realistically I have no idea, but I hope the plane landed safely and the passengers will be eventually be released. But who the hell knows?
There was that school bus of kids kidnapped and held. There’d have to be an organized group in on it unless the passengers aren’t meant to remain alive. Otherwise they need feeding, water and all the necessities of life plus the great odds many will try to escape. Now, if there was a refueling plane in on this, could they still be in the air - that’s my question.
The main thing is that if it did happen, it would be unprecedented. I’m fairly certain that there has never been an incident of a plane completely disappearing and later being discovered with the passengers safe but taken prisoner. So we would have to calculate the probability based on a current rate of 0%. That doesn’t mean that this couldn’t be the first time, but it seems unlikely.
This refers to the Chowchilla kidnapping. The bus was then buried in a gravel quarry in another city about two hours drive away (Livermore).
Picture burying a modern jetliner in a gravel quarry. 
ETA: Okay, reading that Wiki, it seems that the bus wasn’t buried. The kids and driver were transferred to another vehicle that was buried (apparently ahead of time).
There aren’t many places you can land a 777 without anyone noticing.
Passenger airliners cannot refuel in the air.
It’s pretty darn close to inconceivable (“you keep using that word”) that they could have found anywhere to land safely. The very best hope would have been ditching in shallow water, nearby land.
I’d suggest that is the best case scenario. 
A week without a ransom demand?
Who is going to feed 240 people for a week without saying anything? I don’t think even North Korea is that far out of touch (Dennis Rodman not withstanding)
Yes. This is exactly what my boyfriend and me were discussing. I can’t think of any place where this could have happened. A small plane? Sure, definitely quite possible.
The question is how many airfields exist where a plane that size could land safely. Bonus points if the plane being able to take off again isn’t that important. Did a quick Google earlier today and the short version is that the Boeing 777 needs around 3,000-6,000 feet of stopping distance to land (depending on weather, runway conditions, weight of the plane, etc. etc. etc.) If any of those places have large aircraft hangers where the plane could quickly be hidden from sight, it’d be pretty much impossible to find if nobody not in on the secret saw it land.
For comparison, the Class A Airfields, built for the RAF during WWII, included runways of a minimum length of 6,000 feet, and some more googling suggests that a minimum landing roll of 3,000 feet was common for the Boeing B-17 (much smaller than the 777, I can only assume the 777 has much more effective brakes).
What makes you think any ransom demand would be made public?
Couldn’t you land one on a large enough hunk of flat grassland? If you didn’t feel the need to be able to fly it again and all you wanted were the passengers for whatever reason. Fly it north to some steppes/tundra, land it and cover it with camo netting while hauling the passengers away [or Bataan death marching them] somewhere to hold them.
Or film the next season of Lost … could go either way. Maybe … Aliens!
There seems to be a low probability of this occurring.
Why?
[ol]
[li]The plane’s size would make it visible to people for miles around - Even if you had a remote abandoned airfield, you’d have to fly over populated areas to get there. Since Asia is the most populated region on Earth, it seems that someone would have seen the aircraft flying overhead or descending.[/li][li]How do you control 239 people? - Assuming that this wasn’t the work of a state level actor or a large terrorist group, how could you control such a large group for at least a week?[/li][li]Communication devices - At least some of teh passengers would find a method to retain their communication devices (cell phones,sat phones,tablets,etc) Why haven’t they tried to communicate if they were alive?[/li][li]**Why would any group bother? **- Malaysia is not a wealthy country and China does not seem to be a nation which would indulge terrorists by paying a ransom or ransoms for its citizens. Even if a group COULD take such a large number of people and an airplane captive, what would they expect to gain?[/li][/ol]
Unfortunately, as time passes it seems clear that this will ultimately be the recovery of the airframe or its recording devices from the sea floor, rather than a hostage situation.
For that matter, ditch in shallow water somewhere either deserted or where another plane outline wouldn’t be noticed among others (old planes used as artificial reefs) and hide in plain sight. Passengers herded into smallish boats, smaller groups being easier to control.
But this is all supposing that the threat of killing less than 300 people would be enough to move money or power from one group to another. Killing that many people (even civilians, some of the children) doesn’t cause a long-term widespread outrage these days, awfully enough.
I’m in the camp that there’s no way the plane landed safely; if it crashed and they’re alive that would be stunning to me after 9 days now.
Most dedicated runways for heavy aircraft operations will have runway surfaces between 10 inches and 4 feet thick (including the rock that gets laid down underneath the pavement to act as a foundation). Granted, a lot of that is due to the repeated wear-and-tear that a major airport might have, so grassland might work once if you don’t mind the risk of hitting a pothole at a few hundred miles an hour.
Doper dgrdfd posted this link in another thread. post 521
No chance.
Don’t worry, Uri Geller’s on the case.
It’s possible. It’s difficult to determine because the media reports have been, literally, all over the place. This could have been a trial run for future hijackings. Being able to make a plane vanish from sight is terrorizing and not being able to locate any plane wreckage, even more so.
The plane could also be repainted and electronic signatures changed in order to slip it into the normal or expected flight plan of an existing MH370 route. The plane could be used to later carry any kind of dangerous or explosive cargo to a future point of impact.
Or it crashed into the sea.
China seems to offering up several red herrings about it’s possible location. Maybe China has it?