my theory, first the pilots took the plane to 45000 ft, verified, no one would really notice this. Pilots put on oxygen masks, pilot then depressurizes cabin, yes they can do that manually. At 45000 ft passengers would be unconscious in seconds, level flight 4 minutes, all passengers deceased. This is why there are no cell phone calls, texts or e-mails. The pilot then descends to 5000 ft and flies to one of the several hundred runways within the planes flight range, verified. The plane will be fully fueled and WMD will be added, then it will be flown on a suicide mission to some area as a political statement.
I will answer some questions before asked, and there are several members on here with enough experience to back them up, contrary to what is being reported by "experts" on TV.
777's are not certified to fly above 43,500 ft. it would fall apart. Planes fly within a flight envelope, Boeing is VERY conservative on this, if they say 43,500 is safe it will probably fly at 50,000 without incidence. you can not fly a 777 at 5000 ft, A pilot with 18,000 flight hours is capable of flying that airplane at 500 ft all day long.
The U.S. knows where the plane is, it can not say that because that would let the world know our spying capabilities along with tipping of the hijackers. When I was still involved with aircraft 20 yrs ago we could see a dime on the ground from 40,000 ft and tell if it was heads or tails.
JAGS what are your thoughts?? A couple of E2C's, EA6B's and an S2 tracker find it by morning.