Given that the engines seemed to have transmitted data for 3 more hours suggests youare right. I think someone who knew much about flying, flying with celestial navigation and that particular airplane. They may have hijacked it to islands off of southern India or the west coast of Malaysia..

They dumped fuel to support a theory of a plane crash. Hence the two 6 mile long strips of oil slick.

What they didn't know when they sut off the transponders, was that the engines woud be sending in flight operating data back to GE.

This is not a plane one could land in a rice paddy. Somebody onthe ground built or aquired a landing strip big enough to let it down. How do you hide something like that from our satilites?