Or they were hijacking a plane to stuff it full of chemical weapons / radioactive material (think dirty bomb) with the intent of flying it over a major city and detonating it. It would be hard to do it in a western nation, but if you were aiming at a city near the "frontier" of India, Pakistan, etc. a bad actor could likely execute the plan before the jets they scramble could intercept the jet. There's a lot of bad stuff you could do with a flying metal tube capable of carrying 200,000 lbs of whatever you can get your hands on.
I don't think it was a state actor though. If it was a state actor, who would it have been? My bets are on Pakistan if it was a state actor; they're one of the only ones with a sophisticated enough intelligence organization to be able to hide a plane like this. In many cases, it's hard to tell where the ISI ends and the Taliban begins. Though the same could be said for Iran and Hezbollah, though the Iranian government has taken a reconciliatory tone with the west as of late and I don't think they'd risk it. It likely wasn't North Korea; the social engineering required would be too high and the North Koreans are largely incompetent at covert operations outside their borders due to their xenophobia. I don't think many other states with the capability to do something like this would risk it; the amount of publicity on this is too high.
If the plane was hijacked and successfully landed somewhere (and that's a big if -- IMO it's just as likely that it's at the bottom of the ocean and will never be found) it was probably a coordinated effort between a terrorist group and rogue elements within the Pakistani ISI. I don't think the older pilot was involved; there's been a lot made of his links to a controversial opposition leader in Malaysia, but his ideology doesn't align with any of the terror groups (Anwar Ibrahim is considered a liberal reformer) and all of the "controversy" around him is corruption-related -- not the type of thing that would cause someone to shift toward radical Islam.
Except your plan has one fatal flaw: assuming the plane was stolen to be used as a missile.
If this were ISI or a state level actor, the absolute riskiest part would be hijacking a plane in flight with passengers. You risk them uprising, getting the word out about the hijacking, and then you'd have to execute them once you land. Why not steal an empty plane at an airport or buy an older plane through an intermediary?
I don't think it was a state level actor. I think the most likely explanation in the event of a hijacking is rogue elements within the ISI (which is pretty common -- there are lots of factions within Pakistan, almost none of whose first loyalty is to the nation of Pakistan) providing cover and funding to a terrorist group. None of this would be unheard of; elements within the ISI protected bin Laden for years.
Stealing an empty plane from an airport would likely get you shot down before you made it 100 miles; air traffic is heavily controlled at passenger airports. If you want to break free of the air traffic system, you do it in the air over a sparsely populated and/or mountainous region. Older planes are expensive, especially large ones in working order with the range and cargo capabilities of a 777 (a working 777 would cost more than $200 million and be accompanied by a lot of paperwork.)
All of this is speculation anyway; we don't even know if it was hijacked or if it even landed if it was. It's just fun to play armchair intelligence analyst in the absence of good information.
Why steal a plane if you could just buy it (assuming state level actors can gain control over a shell company with an air operators' certificate; aircraft cost really isn't an issue when for scrap value you can get old 747s with plenty of range and capacity) or charter it (leaving you with only pilots to dispose of, probably on the ground, if you're looking to do something nefarious)?
The first rule of being an armchair intelligence analyst is to rule out the ridiculously silly, and "maybe they just wanted a 777-200" falls into that category along with "maybe those 9-11 planes were just a cover for a controlled demolition"
Why execute them when you can suffocate them at 45,000 feet? This is conspiracy theory gold even though I think it crashed.
My guess is that this bears the traits of the worst disasters, an unforeseeable and unique cascade of system failures that led to the pilots having some control of a crippled plane.
Stop creating FUD.
I don't really see why people have a way of connecting everything to Pakistan , To be honest you guys ISI more credit than it deserves. Their on ground "people intelligence" is good but they are not really that tech-savvy.
Also most of my family know about the aviation business ( father was a military Pilot then became a military ATCO now a Senior Civilian ATCO , Several relatives are Commercial Pilots for various Airlines) , And what they all think is that it was either {a fire and plane crashed in the ocean} or {the plane exploded in air} or {both}.
Seriously stop watching so much FOX.
If you steal a plane off the ground, it's a stolen plane. If you steal a plane out of the sky, it "obviously" crashed, just like we all thought for the first four or five days of this.
Anything they'd steal from within Pakistan is likely owned by people with strong ties to the Pakistani government. The kind of people who would have the connections to find out who did it and hold them personally accountable. You don't shit where you eat.
I don't think it was a state actor though. If it was a state actor, who would it have been? My bets are on Pakistan if it was a state actor; they're one of the only ones with a sophisticated enough intelligence organization to be able to hide a plane like this. In many cases, it's hard to tell where the ISI ends and the Taliban begins. Though the same could be said for Iran and Hezbollah, though the Iranian government has taken a reconciliatory tone with the west as of late and I don't think they'd risk it. It likely wasn't North Korea; the social engineering required would be too high and the North Koreans are largely incompetent at covert operations outside their borders due to their xenophobia. I don't think many other states with the capability to do something like this would risk it; the amount of publicity on this is too high.
If the plane was hijacked and successfully landed somewhere (and that's a big if -- IMO it's just as likely that it's at the bottom of the ocean and will never be found) it was probably a coordinated effort between a terrorist group and rogue elements within the Pakistani ISI. I don't think the older pilot was involved; there's been a lot made of his links to a controversial opposition leader in Malaysia, but his ideology doesn't align with any of the terror groups (Anwar Ibrahim is considered a liberal reformer) and all of the "controversy" around him is corruption-related -- not the type of thing that would cause someone to shift toward radical Islam.