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This plane has pretty good short field capability anyway and we have
see plenty of accidental landings on fields theoretically too short
for the plane.

WNYC prepared a map of all airstrips/airports within range that could
accommodate a 777:

http://www.thedailystar.net/600-pote...-to-land-15819

Any halfway decent pilot could set this down on a good sized road if
he had to.

Could they take off again from such a short runway? I haven't found anyone
who could answer that question - yet.

The trick is finding a route to that road that stays out of range of
radar.

I wonder how many countries actually pay close attention to their radar
scans. Malaysia certainly appears not to have done so.

There may be a corridor in western China or Eastern India that
is out of range of radar but I doubt it. That is a politically
volatile area.

Which makes me pretty surprised that the Malaysians didn't scramble any
fighters to check out the blips they saw. I suspect some heads are going to
roll for that.

I suppose it might be possible for them to have set up the transponder
to emulate some benign flight but I am not sure what that would be.

If their target was crashing into something in China their best bet was to
keep flying toward Beijing. This is, as my boss used to say, an RFM - real
fu&ing mystery.

Were they near another flight that they could have "tail gated" into
another area?

That would be similar to what happened with KAL007 and the AF fuel tanker
whose tracks merged as they approached Russia. I still think that was an
attempt to analyze Russia air defense systems and their readiness. That
"test" went terribly bad and was based on the assumption the Sovs would
never shoot down a passenger jet - even one that strayed over highly
sensitive military targets. Bad assumption, obviously.

I am still betting they just flew out to very deep water and went in
vertical. A few floaty things may wash up on a beach somewhere but
nothing that will help much.

Why go all that way to ditch when they could have done it at any time
earlier in the flight? Even the voice recorder, if found, won't be much
assistance with the two hour overwrite "feature" likely obliterating the
important moments just after takeoff. The pieces of the wreckage won't tell
us much since it's obvious this wasn't a bomb. AFM for sure.

--
Bobby G.