Sherm -
this article has an explaination of how the "system" in question works.
the proverbial "they" are not - for what reason, please?.... - permitted to talk specifics of this flight, but with some minor amount of thinking, one can reach one's own conclusions.
http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/17/world...lane-identity-flight-370/index.html?hpt=hp_t1
it's a system that cannot be "shut down" by the flight crew.
the whole situation reeks to high heaven. the Malaysian official releases have been totally misleading/false/fake/pick-a-word
"terrorism:"
terrorist groups are seldom reluctant to claim their successes.
no claims.
so, it was really small group, they were all were on the plane, and they all perished.
"landed safely:"
there's a really limited number of places a 777 can land in the search area.
safely landing a 777 on a dirt road in the middle of the jungle? not going to happen.
unsafely landing a 777 anywhere would have set off the "crash beacon" - no beacon reported; reserved: they are all lying.
a controlled landing / ditching at sea would possibly set off the crash beacon. no beacon.
a violent nose down crash into the sea - all the busted pieces sink and no beacon transmission works from under water. that's a distinct possibility.
"being saved for a later use:"
assumes
(a) it's landed safely
(b) somewhere no one knows / sees / can find
(c) all passenger communication incapacitated
too many ifs....
"the pilots did it:"
hmmm, first this involves a really dedicated suicide pact between the pilot and all of the flight deck crew.
or, the crazy flight deck dude killed everybody else and took over.
pilots are permitted to carry fire arms - that can't be ruled out....
or, the pilot(s) may be heros -
consider some wacko 'hijacks' the aircraft with evil intentions to crash into the (pick something...)
the pilot(s) - having established that acceding to the demands, all on board are dead comma anyway.
so the pilots intentionally fool the wacko and put the aircraft on a course of no-return.
consider the southern Indian Ocean route possibility - there's _NOTHING_ there.... except empty fuel tanks.
so while all the chatter is the plane must have been under skilled pilot control, consider that skilled flying was quite intentional - but absolutely "unwilling":
"we dead - cooperate or wacko shoots us, nobody to fly the plane, it crashes.
fool the wacko, mis-route the plane, the least of the evils is to not kill rafts of people at the target"
read the above article - if the aircraft was in VHF radio range (essentially 'over land') that's how the signal would transmit.
the signals went to the satellite(s) - the "plural" case is, for locating, important - so one can rule out the issue of it having landed "somewhere"
a single satellite can only pin-point the "angle of reception" - you have to go a-thinking in three dimensions here... - a cone shaped projection on the earth surface.
"once an hour" pings creates concentric circles (geostationary satellite...)
however comma and furthermore, if the ping is picked up by two satellites, now you have two intersecting cones/circles on the earth surface.
two circles intersect at two points.....oh dear, does this explain the 'it flew north to India' and the 'it flew south over the Indian Ocean to nowhere' thing?
yes, it does.
three circular satellite receptions would make for one point, two circular receptions, two points.
bottom line:
signals went to satellite, plane not withing land based VHF range = at sea
black boxes got sonar pingers that'll continue for 30+/- days.
you can bet there's a raft of submarines combing the area. for submarines, the deep briny blue is their element. and given the physics of "sound transmission through water" - they are the best resource.
BUT no military is going to 'reveal' the position of their attack or boomer subs.
so, _if_ the underwater pings are "suddenly found" you can bet yer bottom Davie Jones silver dollar the information will come from mysterious unidentified and "classified" sources.