The first officer of Egypt Air 990 didn't bother to hide it.... you're right, none of this makes sense.
Not if the purpose is stealing the aircraft. Sounds crazy and probably is, but a 727 was stolen in 2003.
If the point was to hijack the plane to meet demands and not just because they need a plane for future plans.
It might be that any potential hijackers were hoping the story would die and it just be written off as a loss over water. The world is a big place, and not all of it covered by radar. There are lots of islands out there. If I were a terrorist who wanted a plane as a weapon, I would hijack a plane in an out of the way part of the world, try to fake a crash, and replace passengers with extra fuel for the 777 to extend its range. On last nights episode of VICE, we see huge amounts of fuel that was supposed to go into power plants just standing there. I would put as much fuel on board, and try to disguise the plane as a standard airliner under a different name. Keep that second set of passengers (if any) down, and fly to New York as normal--then divert at the last moment--no hijacking mid-flight in that would be a giveaway. Early nukes were complicated affairs. A big airliner could hold a primitive gun-style device no problem
I think that "there's a plane here that has no business being here" would be a dead give away and get you shot down,
I do so wish the news channels would all just shut the hell up until they actually had something to report. It's all just wild speculation, blathering on about all the possible answers, all the rumors and conspiracy theories, when they really have no fucking idea at all. Whatever happened to waiting for FACTS before going on the air?
As pointed out above you need roughly a kilometer of runway at minimum to land a 777 on (high altitude, wet, heavier load of passengers and fuel) and more run way is going to be needed. That runway is going to also need to support the weight of an aircraft that with passengers, luggage, cargo and fuel is in the vicinity of 200 tonnes. Not something you're going to find on a small island.
It's the curse of 24/7 news cycles. Sure, there are other things happening, but that's not IMPORTANT news like they must have on the air all the time. But, in a half hour they will exhaust all the confirmed information leaving 23 and 1/2 hours to fill. I long ago took to just turning the news on for a half hour or so in the evening and wait till tomorrow, as most of the rest is just all too much speculation and blather.
Me, too, except I do my half-hour in the morning, and have found it helps if it is spent watching either BBC News or Al Jazeera America rather than the "infotainment" BS that CNN, MSNBC, and Faux provide.
Yeah I actually thought of that afterwards. Then there's the infrastructure to support it get stuff in and out of the aircraft, refuel it (those suckers can carry in excess of 100,000 litres of fuel), fix any problems (say blown tires from landing on a short runway).
I've seen members here and in other forums questioning why passengers aboard the missing flight didn't use their cell phones or couldn't be tracked by the phone's GPS functions. The GPS function is receive only. All capability of someone/something else determining where the phone is located is dependent on the digital cell link. Those things are pretty low powered and need to be within a few miles of a cell tower. Remember that with airliners often operating five or six miles above the ground straight line range above the cell tower becomes an issue well before there are issues of the phone and tower being beyond each others horizon. Obviously there aren't any towers over large bodies of water unless the plane is equipped with a relay system (which could be turned off with the other communication systems).
But why didn't the passengers of the plane text/call when they turned around and flew over land? Plus the plane had to be flying low to stay off the radar, so when it was low over land why didn't anyone text?
Because at the time the were over land they might not have realised that something was wrong. Secondly as already pointed cell phones have to be within a few miles of a tower. When on an aircraft you're got to factor in both horizontal and vertical distances. Normal cruise altitude for an jetline is between 30 and 40,000 feet so call it 10kilometres or 6 miles. That's why even when aircraft are over land they need a unit to boast cell phone signals. Or to given you an example. I was flying in Vancouver one time and some-one had left their cellphone on because a message came through. Now perhaps it received moments after being sent or it had been waiting for the phone to reconnect to the network. Something despite being over land it couldn't do until we were low enough (the phone went off while the plane as on final approach).
Yeah, at cruising altitude your phone is well above the range of the towers on the ground (and if I understand the latest reports correctly at times this plane was flying over even its own designed ceiling.) which are designed to handle signals on, well, the ground. If you're on a plane and look at your phone more-than-likely it will display some "Out of Network" message or whatever it displays when it is not able to get a signal. Any incoming messages will flood into the phone once it reaches a certain point. This includes the GPS system which depends on ground cell-towers to get their information. On a recent flight I was doing something on my phone in the air, probably checking a note or playing a game or something stored on it, and must have activated a speedometer app I have. This app has an adjustable warning on it when the speed exceeds a certain point. (I think I have it set at 100 or something.) Anyway, I'm sitting there and as the plane is on final-approach at one point I hear my phone suddenly buzzing and making an alarm noise? What was it? The phone had finally locked in with nearby towers, was able to get GPS data and alert me that I was traveling at a couple hundred miles an hour. In-flight people on the plane wouldn't have had any phone capabilities or GPS capabilities. The phone calls made on 9/11 from planes were done at lower altitudes and lower speeds where evidentially phone coverage was possible. A jet, at altitude, and especially over the ocean or large unpopulated areas isn't in a place to give people cell-phone coverage for phone-based GPS or calls to work. Remember, that device in your hand isn't communicating with a satellite. It's communicating with a tower probably just a few hundred yards away. And THAT tower is connected to a system that eventually leads to a dish and THAT is what talks to a satellite.