[Shivetya]

in this day and age? Sure. With the technology behind the newer planes flying to day it would take an extraordinary event to down one without word.

So the thoughts that come to me are, flew into terrain (mountain), door opened causing decompression and deformation of airframe, airframe failure, bomb, or someone took over fast enough to silence communications.

What is the availability of communications to passengers in that area? Cell has to be pretty much far between?

[marcosdumay]

I don't think anybody can disable communications from inside the plane (but then, that's a guess, if anybody knows better, please tell so).

It would be compatible with some group kidnapping the plane, and changing the route to go over the ocean. But the plane would have already appeared somewhere, so I don't think that's likely.

Also, if it was a bomb, it would need to be quite a big one, to completely destroy the plane. Also unlikely.