[fingpilot]

Jyl.

You're not behind. the INMARSAT pings have not been repudiated. A VERY small item has not been realized yet. The Boeing Aircraft Health System 'pinger' is not on an essential bus. Meaning any catastrophic electrical system shutdown would have taken it out. Not having purchased this system, a Malaysian Airways System pilot would not be trained on it, or even be aware of it's operation.

Conclusions? The aircraft electrical system was operating normally. That now-famous red arc describes the last 'pinged' position after six HOURLY pings; the A/C is ON that red arc at last ping, 0830AM Sunday morning. See why the fire/damaged scenario is low probability? The 'ghost ship' scenario is shot down by the maneuvers the airplane did while being tracked now by TWO military radars, Thai and Malay.

Shutting the ACARS down? Turn the VHF #3 off. It is used by the ACARS box to xmit data back thru ground data stations. Shutting the SAT-COM system down takes out the seat-back phones in Business and First class and the ACARS access to SAT-COM. HF radios, the same, turn them off. Transponders? Turn them off. Never having done this myself, I'd bet the TCAS system MIGHT still be working in receive mode only (giving the cockpit very high resolution traffic info around themselves, for 'shadowing' if need be.) All of this do-able from the cockpit. Pressurization system to manual, open the valve, even at FL350, with or without the cabin O2 mask/generators on, everyone will be asleep shortly. The FL450 might have been 'insurance', it worked. No 'Lets' Roll' calls.

The bad guys watching CNN have filled in their blank lines in the bad guy books.

Everything that happened to that aircraft was commanded by someone in the cockpit, even the need to go to the EE compartment is not required.

My bet? On the bottom of the Southern Indian Ocean.

Israel thinks otherwise, but anyone that has ever flown OUT of Israel knows how fanatical they are in their screening.