I happen to be a 777 captain for a major US airline. I was in Asia all last week, including Singapore, which is very near where all this happened.
First off, the talking heads of the media have put out a lot of inaccurate and incomplete information. Some of things they've talked about should not have been revealed on TV. There are certain technical details that the public has no need to know. That kind of information only helps those with evil intent. Entertaining and/or informing the public does not justify revealing strategic information that can be used against you.
Another thing: it seems to me that the "authorities" are wasting considerable time chasing certain "clues" that capture the public's interest just so it will look like they're doing something. For example, the captain's home flight simulator. That kind of thing is nothing more than a glorified video game and cannot be used to learn to actually fly or to practice some new maneuver you want to do in an actual airplane. I believe he had a gamer's control wheel, which resembles an airplane control wheel, but you'd have none of the feel and control pressures of the real plane. And you operate most of the controls and switches in the "simulator" in a much different way than in the airplane. Trying to train for a "mission" with that would actually be counterproductive, even negative training. A pilot of his experience wouldn't need his simulator to train for whatever happened on that plane anyway. I don't think he had any involvment whatsoever in the incident. Of course, I don't know what happened, but I'd be shocked if he had anything to do with it.
The media is also making much about the fact that the copilot had invited people into the cockpit in the past. That is against the rules, but he couldn't have done it without the consent of whoever his captain was that day, so it wasn't something he did just on his own. And I don't think it has anything at all to do with what happened last week. If, and this is a big IF, he had anything to do with this, his trying to impress a couple of pretty girls a while back is unrelated. I'd be much more interested in finding out if he had strong political or religious beliefs and had possibly been radicalized recently. While I think that is very unlikely, it is much more pertinent that his showing off for young women on occasion.
For what it's worth, I believe our government has far better surveillance capabilities than is publicly known. Probably other governments do too. I would not be surprised if they know exactly what happened to that plane and where it is, but cannot reveal that information without giving away just how extensive and far-reaching those capabilities are. It could be a similar situation to when the British and Americans had broken the German and Japanese codes during World War II but didn't act on any information gained that way unless it could also have been gotten from at least two other sources. It was that important to keep the secret. Makes you wonder...
