There is another important fact that has not as yet been spelled out by the media.

If one were to examine closely the flight path soon after the plane turned West towards the Strait of Malacca, and subsequently the location where the flight last appeared on Malaysian military radar at 2.15am – at that point the flight appeared to be going north towards the Andaman and Nicobar Islands – one cannot help but notice that, if the plane will be traced in the Indian Ocean (I am convinced it will), then the plane was deliberately avoiding flying over Indonesian territory. The flight path is such that it goes round the Indonesian island of Sumatra – without ever flying over it – and eventually it would have turned south into the Indian Ocean, that vast body of deep water.

This in my opinion strengthens the theory that whoever was deliberately in control of the plane wanted to avoid the plan being foiled.

I have no doubt that Indonesia would have sought to identify the plane while it was flying over its territory.

There is no way a plane can fly in a straight line from Kuala Lumpur towards the Indian Ocean without flying over Indonesia. If flight MH370 ended in the Indian Ocean where Australian specialists are now searching, then its flight path is a remarkable feat of stealthy flying.

I have been following this news item closely, and have sought to obtain my facts from the reliable, leading news sources such as CNN and BBC. Because of the location of the event, I used also other reliable Asia-Pacific sources, such as Singapore’s The Straits Times, The Malaysian Times (even if this seems to be pro-government), and the Australian newspapers.

I would never use Facebook as a source, which was the source for The Rakyat Post about that last minute pilot change. The sources I was following never even reported this claim.

Today I read somewhere that a woman travelling back from her Mecca trip claimed to have seen a plane in the waters next to the Andaman Islands, but who is going to take that claim seriously? And then the Indians have already checked the Andaman Islands.

And I am not yet convinced about the 30 days auto deletion of the flight simulator data. The main news channels did not report that.

Having said all this, it is clear that if there was deliberate action, which is what the Malaysian authorities have been claiming for some time now without contradicting themselves, then this had been very thoroughly planned.

I do not believe for a minute that Mr Anwar Ibrahim, the leader of the opposition in Malaysia, was involved in this case. However, I do suppose that his court hearing on 7 March was scheduled days, weeks or perhaps even months before, and the date of the hearing was probably public knowledge.

Incidentally, Marlowe’s link to The Malay Mail Online report of 17 March says that the pilots had been assigned to flight MH370 “a month in advance.” How strange, really: Mr. Ahmad Shah was assigned to the flight of 8 March on or around 7 February, deleted the data files on 3 February, and probably knew that Mr. Ibrahim would have his sentence on 7 March. Just a coincidence?

BBC was reporting today that it is believed that the flight down the Indian Ocean was on auto-pilot.

Actually, I have to swallow my words and concede this one to Ciccio. As I was googling for the reference, it turned out the story had been discounted; http://www.therakyatpost.com/news/2014/03/16/mh370-was-there-a-last-minute-pilot-switch/

http://www.themalaymailonline.com/malaysia/article/mas-official-denies-pilot-swap-in-mh370-roster

Why are we insisting on a scenario where the pilot would have stood there waiting for 7 hours before committing suicide?

There were 3 pilots in the cockpit: 2 Malaysian pilots and an auto-pilot.

A possible plunge into the Southern Indian Ocean in the area currently under search would have occurred when the plane ran out of fuel, not when a human pilot may have decided to make a nose-dive. By that time, the plane could have travelled for hours on auto-pilot.

A suicide of the person in control could have taken place earlier, after manouvring the plane to the Indian Ocean, beyond the Andaman Sea.

[Daphne – Well, the news that the pilot was a last-minute replacement for somebody else who couldn’t fly kind of blows that suicide theory out of the water, doesn’t it. It’s not as though he would have got into the cockpit, having replaced somebody else on that flight, and thought, hmmm, I think I’ll just wait an hour, turn this plane around, and let it fly until it runs out of fuel, because today I really feel like killing myself and murdering 238 people. Sorry, ciccio.]

Did you read about Silkair Flight 185 (1997) and EgyptAir Flight 990 (1999)?

Your sources, please.

He didn’t delete his files, the program itself deletes it’s own data registry after 30 days. Yet another thing that got lost in translation.

Yet another spoke in the wheel of this theory, the captain was only added to the flight at the last minute as a replacement. So much for premeditation.

Just add your mystery plane to the list: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-03-20/mapping-every-vanished-plane-1948

There are so many ‘mysteries’ floating around yet you are intrigued by the odd plane that’s caught your eye.

Tfal zghar. Ma jafu xejn. Jackie magazine u hekk.

“For a start, to sit about for seven hours waiting for a plane to crash, the pilot would have to kill the co-pilot first”.

In seven hours, he could also have changed his mind about suicide.

Sorry to come back to this argument, but I wish to address this comment:

“…Also, they do not sit in a plane for seven hours waiting to die, unmolested by their co-pilot, passengers or other crew members…”

If MH370 plunged into the Southern Indian Ocean at some time after 8.11am on Sunday 9 March, it probably did so because it ran out of fuel, and not because of any intervention by a pilot. Which would suggest that the plane was on auto pilot.