The news resurrects the possibility that the aircraft might have landed safely. Captain Ross Aimer, an aviation consultant who was formerly an instructor for the 777, told TIME that a pilot with “considerable skill and experience” could land the aircraft in as little as 3,000 ft (900 m) of space. “It’s conceivable that if this was a calculated set-up they may have an old military field somewhere in the middle of some jungle,” he said. “You could even land it on a beach or small strip of land.”

A missing Malaysian airliner was apparently deliberately diverted and flown for hours after vanishing from radar, Prime Minister Najib Razak said Saturday, in an announcement that stopped short of confirming a hijack but took the "excruciating" jet drama into uncharted new territory.

Najib said investigators believed "with a high degree of certainty" that Malaysia Airlines flight 370's communications systems were manually switched off, and that the plane veered westward in a fashion "consistent with deliberate action" after dropping off primary radar.

But he told a highly anticipated press conference watched around the world that he could not confirm rising suspicions that the plane had been forcibly taken over.

"Despite media reports that the plane was hijacked, I wish to be very clear: we are still investigating all possibilities as to what caused MH370 to deviate from its original flight path," he said.

The pilot seems to have been denied Landing rights by the wife. And he decided to do what he knows best, land the real plane where nobody else could disturb him, and 'land' on all women on board. Landing is the word...