I’m not for one instant suggesting that I support this theory at all but let’s explore for a few second all this talk of hijacking.
Why a hijack? Either to ransom the passengers or to use the aeroplane for something else. If for passengers, you could go any old where. If you want to reuse the plane, you need a 6000ft runway, fuel and a hangar big enough for a 777 so that satellites can’t see it.
Why hijack that flight? It departs after midnight from Kuala Lumpur. If you’re planned destination is to the west, you can do the entire flight at night, over water (those of you who have flow to Europe from Asia know that if you leave after midnight you land at, like, 5am. It’s laden with fuel for 7 and a half hours plus all of the reserves, so you have a good 8 hours of fuel on board. Maybe it’s possible that security on a Beijing bound flight isn’t as tight as on a Europe bound flight, though it would be easier to take over the Europe bound flight. Or, for whatever reason, the hijacker would not be allowed to enter Europe so could never board a European flight. Or, if it’s one of the pilots, they simply are never rostered to fly to Europe.
Where could you fly? Assuming you want to take-off again and not just use the hostages, you would need to fly somewhere that is either so poorly defended that they’d never see you landing first thing in the morning or somewhere that is sympathetic to your aims. It needs to be within about 7 hours of KL, bearing in mind you set off initially in the ‘wrong’ direction. It makes it doubly essential to have a hangar because the places that are sympathetic to your aims must also be the ones that the Americans are watching most closely with their satellites! If I were to hazard a guess, I might be aiming for either Yemen or Somalia. Right direction; about the right flying time; no ground-based radar (or not much), 6000ft airfields. I just don’t know whether they have hangars.
Why could it have crashed en-route? Some hijackers aren’t as smart as they think they are – see Ethiopian flight 961 for some dumb hijackers. The assumption could be that the aircraft ran out of fuel. Why would it? Well, those reports of it being at below 30,000ft for a start. A plane can’t fly at 29500ft for as long as it can fly at 35000ft (the air is more dense the lower you get, so you get more air resistance – or ‘drag’ – at lower altitudes, so you either go less far or you burn more fuel for the same distance). A professional pilot wouldn’t have made this mistake.
Why don’t I think this is credible? Well, I don’t know about the hangars for a start. There are elements that only work if it was one of the pilots that took over the plane. There are other elements that only work if someone with some knowledge – but not quite enough - of aeroplanes took over. The ‘big picture’ kind of works but the details don’t quite add up. If a 777 suddenly appeared in the Andamans, surely to God someone would notice it. It’s bigger than some of the islands!