Ratings.
The thing I don’t get about the pilot suicide/hijacking theory is this; why fly so close to Australia? Granted, the search area is still 600 miles off the coast, but that’s still relatively close when looking at a map of the Indian Ocean. It could have reached the middle of the ocean and been 2,500 miles away from any real land except for a few small islands. It seems pretty clear that the search area is at the maximum range of the aircraft so it probably flew until it ran out of fuel. Why fly 7 hours to almost make it to Australia before running out of fuel?
This case makes for a good mystery, but as a search and rescue operation, it hasn’t been perfect. The inexperience of the Malaysian authorities can account for some of that, as well as the culture of suspicion between countries in the area. But most of all, I think the bizarre nature of this case is what has led to a lot of the confusion. The NTSB would probably have made some of the same mistakes. It acts on what it’s learned from past incidents, and this case has absolutely no precedent.
And while it would be nice for us to get more information, it’s a criminal investigation as well, and the public has no right to that information just as in any other ongoing case. Not to mention that the families involved deserve some consideration too. In the meantime, all we can do is play armchair detectives based on what we do know. Or not, if one so chooses.
How long do sleeping pills last?
He couldn’t take a gun or a knife onboard, but he could take a few sleeping pills make his final way point and sit back and relax sleeping all the way to the end.
Why make the final waypoint Australia, or close to it, instead of the middle of the ocean?
He wanted to get away with it 
Any evidence that I’ve seen for pilot suicide has been slight and speculative. Lots of people go through family difficulties and political disappointment that the pilot was–if he actually was–but don’t lose all hope. The trouble is that other scenarios are even less plausible. There was no political statement or apparent goal behind the disappearance, and the possibility that some kind of malfunction killed or disabled everyone on board while the plane flew a deliberate, apparently evasive path for another seven hours is as remote as Godzilla eating it.
As weak as the pre-flight evidence is for suicide, what ultimately happened to the plane is what makes it the most likely motive. And it doesn’t necessarily have to have been the captain or co-pilot. It’s still possible, though less likely I think, that either or both were being forced by someone else.
Wind drift, perhaps, if the wind was from the west that night?
Only likely if they were navigating by dead reckoning.
I’m suggesting the crew turned the plane back toward the nearest airport (based on the trajectory) and were overcome prior to arrival and the plane continued until it ran out of fuel.
Doesn’t the current set of agreed facts include the path of the flight requiring several turns, flying between waypoints to avoid detection and tracking around Indonesian airspace entirely? I can’t keep up with the changing official story.
The current search is based on the satellite signals and not anything Malaysia has come up with. There’s no logic to a phantom flight path designed to lose a plane in the ocean without a trace.
Was it fire that overcame them and was then extinguished all by itself or were they overcome by smoke after 15 minutes of being on the masks?
if it was a fire then an event that cascaded beyond the control of the crew after they turned back. It’s not like cockpit is any different than the rest of the plane or the crew incapable of error. Hell, Asiana crews can’t land a plane with a check pilot on a clear day and the Air France crew failed to trim the plane in a timely manner. A UPS crew just drove into a hill not too long ago. We could do a whole thread on fatal crashes as a result of pilot error. Nobody has to go out on a limb to suggest shit happens in an emergency.
Again, either it was hijacked or there was a catastrophic event. There is no indication of a hijacking. There is a report of an airplane on fire at 90 degrees to the normal flight path which is consistent with a plane turning back. And the current location of the pings is directly in line with a turn back to the closest airport.
Logic is not required for a dastardly act to happen. What logic is there to bombing a marathon?
You’re trying to look at it from your perspective. It’s logical to the person committing the act.
We don’t have any indication of a hijacking at this point. It doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. It’s one of many possibilities.
Apparently this is what passes for logic.
As it stands now there is no indication that anyone intended to harm the plane.
at first i was hellbent on the idea this was of malicious intent and perhaps even the governments involved had much more information than was let on. for a while i was certain the plane had landed someplace.
after all this time and the trickle of mis/information, i am of the mind there was probably some kind of catastrophe and a series of failures that occurred in just the right manner to create a unalarming disaster. that is to say, things went wrong in a way that inhibited panic being relayed outside the plane. perhaps by the time anyone was alerted it was time to cry for help, it was already impossible.
this whole “hey man it doesn’t need to make sense because CRAZY people is CRAZY and there’s no way to predict it” nonsense is tantamount to the way paranormalists rationalize things.
until there is some credible doubt about the minds of the people involved, or some manifesto of intent, it’s simply a WAG.
i understand the scenarios for a slow, cascading catastrophe that prevented any alarm calls would require a very specific and hard to imagine group of events, but i also don’t see why that is any harder to believe than a very professional pilot up and decided to murder a ton of people in the most confusing and mysterious manner possible.
another thing is i just can’t imagine everything going so perfectly planned. i don’t believe the plane’s current location was the product of a flawlessly executed plan. how can someone be both unpredictably insane, murderous and blind with grief and yet still of sound enough mind to pull off one of the most flawless yet complicated disappearing acts of modern history?
no matter what the cause, there has to be a huge level of dumb luck lending to the plane’s impossible location.