Here comes another twist in the bizarre MH 370 story. From the Wall Street Journal:
U.S. investigators suspect that Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 stayed in the air for about four hours past the time it reached its last confirmed location, according to two people familiar with the details, raising the possibility that the plane could have flown on for hundreds of additional miles under conditions that remain murky.
Aviation investigators and national security officials believe the plane flew for a total of five hours based on data automatically downloaded and sent to the ground from the Boeing Co. BA 777's engines as part of a routine maintenance and monitoring program...
U.S. counterterrorism officials are pursuing the possibility that a pilot or someone else on board the plane may have diverted it toward an undisclosed location after intentionally turning off the jetliner's transponders to avoid radar detection, according to one person tracking the probe.
But the huge uncertainty about where the plane was headed, and why it apparently continued flying so long without working transponders, has raised theories among investigators that the aircraft may have been commandeered for a reason that appears unclear to U.S. authorities. Some of those theories have been laid out to national security officials and senior personnel from various U.S. agencies, according to one person familiar with the matter.
No way the Chinese satellite photographs can be Flight 370 debris as the plane was most likely over 1,000 miles from the point of ATC loss of contact based upon the engine data that was automatically sent to Boeing. Further, I heard an interview with the commander of one of the US ships and he stated that they were moving west, not east towards the China satellite photo debris location.
The situation is completely fluid at this point in time. Still.