I think we'll know for sure by tomorrow, I find it hard to believe that they cant further analyse the satellite pings to workout which direction the plane went.If he heads south over ocean then he's commitng suicide, if he/they are heading North over land then he/they are landing.
I still think it's been shot down. I'm fairly certain they don't just "lose" aircraft, even if the transponder flips off. You can bet as soon as they lost contact with that plane, that alarms were sent up all over the intel nets, and sattelite images were used to track that plane wherever it went. THey know exactly what happened, they're just not telling us.
Thats not even getting into the GPS tracking devices that are used to tell ATC towers exactly where these planes are at all times now. It's not the 60's, the Transponders aren't the only way to keep track of a place.
The Russian report seems to support my thoughts. It headed towards a military base.. if they think the fly by wire system could be taken over by the US military, I could see them flying it to Diego Garcia and having a operator team waiting for it to touch down.
Or just saying hell with it, blowing it up, and then shrugging their shoulders and saying "We don't know what happened!" rather than explaining to the families of foreign nationals why the US shot down a plane rather than trying to negotiate or forcing it down.
Who knows, they could have flown it over Diego Garcia and tried to force the hijackers to land it, and when they refused blown it up. Any one of dozens of scenarios. But it being shot down is far more plausible to me than it flying extremely low over several countries with no radar signature and no one noticing a fucking Boeing 777 flying nap of the earth.