and ditch the Shangri-La abduction theory for starters.
A pilot gets tempted to score big and uses his know how to abduct a plane and set it down on an obscure landing strip. To manage the ground scene and subsequent plan he would need accomplices with guns and a large food supply. Objective: after the search cools down demand a ransom and somehow disappear. This is getting to be the simplest scenario. Procuring or selling a plane to terrorists and slaughtering all those people seems too complicated. Once authorities can reason to a likely hijacking that jig is up. And then you are still left with ransoming.
I think they are waiting to see if the location is discovered. If so a highly dangerous plan B can go into effect with the plane rigged with explosives and the ground team having to escape with the loot. They likely made their own landing strip in some obscure location and by now have camouflaged everything. If they do find it the smart thing would be to be quiet, but the chaos of the search makes that very difficult. Nevertheless the hijackers should not wait too long.
Feeding 239 people after the plane supplies run out and then waiting so long massive numbers of civilians and and armies start wandering around, I would think negotiations will have to begin in the next few days- if they haven't begun already.
With no single entity running the search, coordinating a sneaky plan to trap or misinform seems already blown as an opportunity.
Other scenarios I can imagine are too complicated, have already failed, or have absurd goals and motivations. Ditching the plane or anything else seems ludicrous for all the effort that went into this.
How often has my spectacular logic delivered the goods? Not more often than raw luck would have it and sometimes less. I hope I am right because chances are good the passengers will survive.
They are also likely soon to pinpoint the individual most likely to be the rogue pilot, most likely a member of the flight crew.
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