Breaking news this morning that the missing Malaysian airliner was far off course when it disappeared.
According to an anonymous source in the Malaysian Air Force, after the plane’s transponders stopped transmitting the plane made a wide u turn and was hundreds of miles off course when it vanished from radar. Of course we always want to take such reports with a grain of salt as they have not been officially confirmed.
From what I understand this could mean one of two things.
The obvious would be some sort of terrorist event in which they turned off the transponders and tried to fly the plane somewhere (at which point either they landed the plane or were overpowered but the plane went down).
The other option is that the plane suffered a power failure.
This would explain the lack of transponder signals and it could explain the lack of contact if the radios were also disabled. The plane could continue flying for about an hour after such a failure so the pilots could have been trying to reach an airport, and the plane did drop off radar about then.