_SeanFlynn

I haven't locked on to one, because none of them makes complete sense. My best guess--with the caveat that this is mostly through elimination until we get to the least unlikely--is a hijacking that went wrong.

I think that's what happens when officials aren't transparent from the beginning: they encourage conspiracy theories. As for that particular one, it's on the very low-end of the probability scale. What's the motive for Malaysia to down one of it's own civilian airliners, what's the motive of the US to cover up that fact (I'd think the State Department would instead be screaming at us to avoid Malaysian airliners). Too many people would know, and they couldn't all be forced to keep quiet. And, not for nothing, if it's such a closely held secret, how come everyone knows?

That is an excellent question. The search area, despite being pretty impressively narrowed down, is still enormous. It's akin to scanning West Virginia if the Appalachians were buried under three miles of water. So it's going to be extremely difficult to find under the best of circumstances. How long can the expense be justified? The only answer I got from Martin Dolan, the head of the ATSB, is that if the plane isn't found by the time the primary search area is covered in May, the respective governments will have "a very expensive problem."

None of the theories makes sense. Pilot suicide? There's no evidence that either the pilot or co-pilot was the malevolent or psychotic, and while there have been other pilot murder/suicides, none has flown for eight hours into the middle of nowhere first. A catastrophe severe enough to disable all communications but allow the aircraft to keep flying would be of a sort never before encountered. Hijacking or attempted hijacking? Typically, we'd expect someone to take credit (even spuriously).

The ones I spoke with, yes, they were still hopeful -- but not delusional. They fully understand the odds are vaporously thin that anyone is still alive. But until they know for certain that it crashed, there's always going to be a tiny sliver to hang on to.