Possible
Hijacking to an unknown location
ABC News reported that the plane's two communication systems were shutdown separately, citing U.S. officials, suggesting that the plane did not fall out of the sky due to an unknown catastrophic failure. Recent reports have also surfaced saying that someone on board the plane may have disabled the plane's communications systems, and it then followed acommonly-used navigational route headed into the Indian Ocean towards the Middle East and Europe, pinging satellites along the way for at least four hours. New data also suggest that the plane was flying erratically shortly after it turned westward — perhaps because of an "intentional diversion by a pilot or a hijacker." Was the plane hijacked and then taken to an undisclosed location — perhaps "with the intention of using it later for another purpose"? One senior American official says they had considered the possibility — but since dismissed it. But, former FBI Assistant Director James Kallstrom told CNN's Jake Tapper: "You draw that arc, and you look at countries like Pakistan, you know, and you get into your 'Superman' novels, and you see the plane landing somewhere and (people) repurposing it for some dastardly deed down the road."
Hijacking, accidental crash into the sea
Hijackers may have unintentionally flown the plane into the sea — perhaps running out of fuel on its way to an unreachable destiantion. New York City's 9/11 attacks are the best-known examples of this happening to a hijacked jetliner. Although if this were the case, there should be debris. "What we can say is we are looking at sabotage, with hijack still on the cards," Reutersreported a source saying. CNN thinks it may have gone down in the Indian Ocean.
Hijacking, intentional rapid descent into the sea
Recently-released data attributed to the plane's Rolls Royce engines show the plane descending "40,000 feet in the space of a minute" — a fall so quick that officials are ruling this possibility out as too fast. “A lot of stock cannot be put in the altitude data” sent from the engines, an officialtells the Times. “A lot of this doesn’t make sense.”
Pilot hijacking to an unknown location
Just last month the co-pilot of an Ethiopian Airlines flight hijacked his own plane by locking the pilot out of the cockpit. He then flew the plane to Geneva, seeking asylum. The plane had been headed for Rome. Ethiopian Airlines claimed the plane had been "forced to proceed" there. One of the pilots of Malaysia Airlines has raised questions of his behavior for inviting passengers into the cockpit in the past. Some observers also question why he had built a flight simulator in his home — was he practicing for something? If this were the case, surely the plane would have turned up by now. But it hasn’t.
Piracy to the Andaman Islands
Military data shows the plane tracking towards India's Andaman Islands.
A catastrophic series of events resulting in a crash near its last-known position
Curtis says the most likely scenario is that a catastrophic series of events made it impossible to fly the airplane. "Very soon after those events occurred, the aircraft crashed somewhere in the ocean near last recorded position," he says. This, of course, would mean we should soon find debris. But where?
A catastrophic series of events resulting in a crash far from its last-known position
There's a chance the cabin crew was dealing with an in-flight emergency and had no time to radio back their location. That "wouldn't be surprising," Curtis says. Pilots are taught to aviate, navigate, then communicate in emergency. Fly the plane, get somewhere safety, then tell the outside world of what happened. Perhaps the pilots on the Malaysia Airlines flight never got to step three of that process.
It's been reported — though the Malaysian government denies it — that the plane may have flown for hours after vanishing from radar. On Thursday, however, the White House seemed to support that conclusion when White House spokesperson Jay Carney said "an additional search area may be opened in the Indian Ocean."
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