[Porsche-O-Phile]

Can't believe this hasn't been brought up yet, but maybe the plane just ran out of fuel. Most large airplanes don't just top off and go. It's very inefficient to lug around a lot of extra fuel (weight) that won't be needed. Typically the rule is that you're required to carry enough to go from your starting point to your intended destination plus one hour of reserve, or from starting point to your intended destination, then to your alternate plus one hour of reserve (if an alternate is required, and there are specific weather requirements at the destination that determine this). Long story short is this plane was going from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, which is (IIRC) about a four hour flight. They were about an hour in when all this happened. Assuming they had taken off with five, maybe six hours (max.) fuel on board, doesn't that limit the possible destinations somewhat? I have seen some maps / projections saying they could have been headed for Iraq, Kuwait, Georgia, etc. Nonsense unless the plane was carrying a LOT more fuel than it ordinarily would have been. Also if it were flying at 5,000' as has been alleged, the fuel burn rate would be a lot higher than at normal cruise altitude (FL360, thereabouts), reducing range more.

If it were intentional, past a certain point heading out in the no-man's-land of the southern Indian Ocean it was a one-way ticket. There's no place they could have made it to fuel-wise. Was it a suicide mission hoping to disappear into a part of the world they'd never be found? This whole thing is simply crazy and makes no sense unless (as I said before) the captain had an emotional meltdown over whatever was going on at home and decided to go out in a blaze of glory, or (more likely) something went horribly wrong (fire, mechanical). We may never know... I'm not convinced these bits of trash floating around in the ocean have anything to do with the missing aircraft. There's a staggering amount of junk floating around in the world's oceans nowadays.