They're all at the bottom of the sea otherwise somebody would of used their phone.

But how can a bloody great plane go into the sea and have no flotsam (nice post that) surface, when the eyes of the world are looking everywhere for anything bigger than a golf ball?

A really good controlled ditching.
US1549 springs to mind, this is how it is done, if you really have to do it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imDFSnklB0k

This less so;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ob8nE4f2ZWc

Ditching is not easy with bits hanging off the fuselage.

Aviator, what are your thoughts on this being a planned heist of the cargo?

Thunderball.

Anything is possible. I long ago stopped speculating on aircraft incidents. A lot of information is kept confidential and not made public until the reports are eventually published. Even then somethings are never published. There are a few theories that are unlikely, but one can never say until the investigation is complete.

There is a lot we don't know.

So now they're saying the ACAR was turned off before the last transmission, then the transponders went off, then the plane turned. So I reckon flaky pilot.

Because it's a big ocean, that arc they've drawn is huge, although you can narrow it based on how long the ACAR hook up was trying and how much fuel was on board. Like I said, if this was intentional, i.e. the guy was trying to commit suicide, he could have flown it down at high speed. That's not usually the case with say, a stalled aircraft, maximum impact velocity would be terminal velocity. This could have been like Flight 93 where it went in at much higher speed and left only a small crater.

Middle of the day on the Hudson would be the way to go most assuredly....I'm sure you've had to recreate this same thing yourself since in the sim...most have.

Do phones work mid-flight every flight every airlines these days? Probably not.

There is speculation on another thread that the pilots deprived the passengers of oxygen as part of an elaborate suicide scheme. Not a nice scenario.

So far the suggestion that the plane was hijacked to an unknown location for parts and/or valuable cargo sounds most plausible.

Mine was nearly into into the Adriatic.

One has to chuckle at all the speculation. From the trickle of information coming out there is no way to determine what happened. One guess is as good as another. It could be a crew issue, it might not. Comms going off can be a multitude of reasons.

Do you really believe that? The lack of evidence that anything happened to that plane other than it failed to complete it's flight makes me think it probably had an accident of some sort, possibly strayed off course and crashed somewhere. There is no evidence (I'm not counting rumours of gold) that there was anything but luggage and people on board, and you can buy airplane parts on the open market - a market under intense scrutiny long before this. Pilot goes mad and suicides with a full plane; possible. Airline pilots are rich but you can't buy happiness. Iranians not as innocent as advertised and crashed it; possible. If so totally independant and unusual for jihad with no claim of responsibility. Catastrophic malfunction causing plane to lose communication, drift off course and crash; possible. That it was hijacked and flown to a secret location for some unknown reason is also possible, but I consider that the most unlikely scenario - next to alien abduction, (even though there's equal evidence to support alien abduction). There are over 630 known runways that a 777 can land on in the area but I'm sure they've had satellite pics taken this week. There's one possible eye-witness, (so far the only one) that may have seen that plane and he said it was off course and burning.

Cargo relates to motive, and who knows whether there was any valuable cargo on the plane (other than evasive Malaysian authorities of course). The fact that plane parts are available on the market is irrelevant. Just ask any diamond thief!

The fact that the transponder and tracking system were switched off twenty minutes apart, and the the engines were pining a satellite for 4-5 hours is leading the media to believe that it wasn't a catastrophic failure but a planned sabotage. So much so that all the passengers and crew are now having their personal histories investigated.

So although it could be intentional or unintentional crash (or at the stretches of imagination and alien abduction) it seems more likely that it was flown somewhere for some reason.

I don't know any diamond thief around here, I know the odd oxygen thief though!

Diamonds are generally much smaller and easier to hide and transport than airliner parts and stolen diamonds can be re-cut and sold to customers for a variety of applications. Boeing 777 parts not so much. Land is worth money as well and there the similarity ends. Without knowledge of what was happening in the cockpit (video would be good) no-one can say for certain who turned what off or who (if anyone) flew the aircraft or if it just coasted un-manned until it hit the ocean. Without having the airplane and combing it for evidence hijacking is still a possible cause, but no more so than any other guess.
In the absence of facts the press puts out conjecture, not just in this but every news story.