I did my own research in the first few days, and kept no record, so this is from memory
As soon as we heard that the communications had been switched off and the plane had changed direction, I thought kidnapped plane.
Next thought was why and where did it go.?
To terrorise the West and Kidnap a crowd of people from variious Countries? For extorting money for their return or even a change in politics towards the terrorists ideals in exchange for the hostages? Just thoughts, but I worked on that
On GEarth I mapped out where MK 730 could reach. I looked in a great arc from north to west to south. I must admit that I never thought that it could get as far as the current search area., so didn't look that far. I had very limited time and looked for remote places with long runways.
We had the location of the plane flying over Palau Parek island and from there,
Great CoCo Island was the first my eye settled on. It has a runway about 1350 metres long and also a big and, as far as I am aware, empty large jail / compound. It is miles from anywhere ... very remote
And I thought, what is an island with fewer than 250 houses on it, so a small population and little else but coconut trees, doing with such a long runway ?
Anyway I abandoned that island becos I think the runway is rather too short for landing the plane. Lightly loaded it might just be feasible.
Later with all the talk of the Southern Indian Ocean, I was thinking that the plane landed, unloaded its human cargo, imprisoned them, refuelled and flew off again.
If such a plane were taken into the air, could the pilot set in on course then bail out? Dunno.
I then looked at Sumatra. There is a place there called
Medan which is less than 200 miles away from where the plane was known (tracked) to have been over the island of Palau Parek
This place is known for its terrorist / rebel groups and has a runway plenty long enough for the plane ... but I know little more about it.
I looked farther afield, but could find nothing better than these two places. Seems that my basic flying distance was too short anyway, but I found nothing better within that range. Was, and am, still very limited for time. Almost certainly my research is wrong, but thought that I would share it.
One thing that should be born in mind, imo, is the time zones.
The plane, I believe took off in the dark at just after midnight. Had it continued flying towards Beijing it would have been a short night as it was flying East towards the rising dawn sun. However flying west, the night darkness period would have been considerably lengthened.
Seems to me that an ideal time to land, had it done so, would have been at about 1am - 3am local time. My brain is too harrassed atm to work out where it could have landed in that time slot (local time}
Given that it would have had to have been unloaded and refuelled, if wanting to lose it towards the Antartic, then it would have had to take off again before about 4 -5 am [local time]. I think. To escape anyone being about and able to identifying it.
Only thoughts and probably all wrong. Tear them to bits, ignore them ... or build on them as you wish.
