1. It was definitely hijacked or pirated.
2. Somebody who knew about how to evade radar was flying it, at least for some of the flight.
3. They also knew that our regular satellites don't track aircraft at night very well, which is probably why they did it at night.
4. That somebody should also have known the fuel limit of 5 hours at low altitude vs 8 hours at 30,000 feet, and planned accordingly. They could go farther if they dumped the passengers and baggage out.
5. They took the plane up to 42,000 feet at one point, which is the highest it can go. No idea why, but if they depressurized the passenger compartment anywhere over 10,000 feet for a while, the passengers will all be dead and no threat to the hijackers.
6. It either landed at some airfield, landed in the water, crashed in the ocean, or crashed in some jungle. If it crashed, we'd have found it already.
45% chance the terrorists have it hidden. 45% chance they landed in the ocean and it sank. 10% chance it crashed somewhere. Every nation on the planet has a good reason to want to know where this thing is, or confirm it's crashed or sunk. The fact that nobody has said it crashed or sank may mean they know it was successfully taken and we might be seeing it used as a weapon delivery platform in the near future.
If I were a Muslim terrorist with a stolen big body jet hidden away, I know what my target would be (Probably Tel Aviv or Jerusalem) The question then is what kind of a weapon would they be putting in it? Chemical, biological, nuclear, or radiological?
Of course I have no idea how this relates to tractors, unless you're using one to tow stolen airplanes around some undeveloped airfield in the middle of nowhere.
