That also sounds like Hollywood since the plane's failure would have occurred right when it was changing airspaces, flew a route that not heavily monitored by radar to the Indian ocean, and then headed south east without likely overflying Indonesia.

It is possible that a lot of data of the planes route may be wrong and a U-turn was made instead of a left turn but then the plane would have likely crossed into Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, and/or Indonesian airspace and would have likely been detected by radar.

Also all communications systems (transponder, ACARS, and voice) quit working but still the plane was able to fly itself for 7 hours seems very Hollywood. Therefore in this scenario, a catastrophic failure occurred that damaged all communications and killed all the people but didn't damage the flying capabilities seems highly unlikely.

Sorry, my description was incomplete. The scenario as described assumes nefarious interference in the navigation of the plane from "Goodnight" to when it turned southwards after being seen by Malaysian radar 200 miles northwest of Penang Island off Malaysia's west coast.

Under that scenario it is hard to see any other probable explanation than suicide, with the plane pointed to an area where finding it would be extremely challenging when it came down; failed theft/ ransom would be a back-up explanation, with the flight crew battling with hijacker and all of them dead or incapacitated.

Suicide or hijacking started seeming implausible and that was why I started thinking that the plane might have had a catastrophic failure and crashed someplace around Malaysia. To believe that, I would have to assume that the ARARS pings were probably from some unknown plane and misinterpreted to try to determine it's position.

If the debris off of Perth is not from MH370, then I'd lean back to the possibility of a catastrophic failure with the plane crashed somewhere near Malaysia.

What about the data stream from the engines going back to RR. They know what engines those came from, and what aircraft they were fitted to.

One theory that's a load of crap, is that MH 370 got close to another Plane, so as it could follow in its shadow so as to obsure it's own Radar Blip.

If that was the case, the Collision Avoidance Radar on the other Plane would have alerted its Pilots to the presence of MH 370.

Aren't those the ACARS protocol layer communications or are there 3 types of data communications coming from the plane (transponder, ACARS, and RR engine pings)?

Yah, that one was definitely made up by someone who watched too many Hollywood movies.

RR engine data streams direct to RR via a company in London. The engines stream data as long as they have power going to them. There are a standalone system.

Too bad that they didn't put in the GPS coordinates in the stream. That probably could have been done for less than $10 per plane.

After more than two years, the title of this thread has, in recent days, taken on a more literal meaning than I think any of us ever foresaw.
How the hëll could you "lose" a commercial jet and both its engi ....... Oh! Nevermind.

I read somewhere recently that Inmarsat are claiming the data pointed to south west of Oz all along and don't know why Malaysia insisted it crashed nearby to home.

Well, I only started the thread as a Piss-Take, because some Grumpy Member had complained about the thread "Trainspotting"

After the debris was located off of Perth, CNN showed plotting points indicating that the plane was flying in a southerly direction and the debris off of Perth was in line with those plotting points. Although it was indicated that the plane could have gone north, several days ago most of the search effort was in the south Indian ocean so maybe it was because of those plotting points.

However nobody explained how those plotting points were derived.

TCAS receives information from the transponders of other aircraft - which is why a commercial aircraft could easily run into a GA aircraft. If the transponder was off, TCAS wouldn't have had a clue it was there.

I agree it didn't happen - but it IS possible.

I agree it is possible. Some think that when the North Koreans shot down that South Korean airliner, a US spy plane may have been hiding behind the South Korean airliner.

However that may have been an intentional act by the US military but for the pilot of MH370 to navigate and find the Singapore Airlines airplane in the Indian ocean and then hide would seem highly improbable.