If the missing Malaysian plane landed, it must have done so with the collusion of at least one government. The broadcast media is full this morning of ludicrous speculation that the plane has been landed in Afghanistan by the Taliban (the Uighurs having apparently gone out of fashion temporarily as Muslim scapegoats). They are trying to tell us that a Boeing 777 could hedge hop under military radar for thousands of miles with nobody noticing.
What on earth is the interest of the media in propagating this absolute guff? South East Asia is highly militarized. Radar is hardly cutting edge technology. The idea that a very large plane could overfly China, India or Pakistan without anybody being alerted is an absolute nonsense. Other countries in the region, such as Burma, Indonesia and the ex-Soviet countries, also have effective airspace surveillance.
If the plane indeed took the “northern corridor” it must have had government connivance. Otherwise, it took the southern corridor into the open sea and has gone down there. That last is by far the more likely scenario, and either progressive malfunction of some kind, or crew or staff suicide, the most likely causes.