The lost Malaysian airliner apparently did not crash in the search area; the pings detected from that area appear to have been a red herring.

The idea that the pilots flew the plane over remote ocean until it ran out of fuel has always seemed implausible to me, mainly because that does not fit with the calm way they seem to have diverted the flight. What motive could they have had for this? If the satellite tracking data is truly conclusive, that must be where it went. Otherwise, I suspect that they landed the flight somewhere in Asia.

Even if that is so, I doubt that the passengers are still alive. It seems unlikely that anyone who arranged the hijacking would be so principled as to keep the passengers alive as prisoners for months rather than killing them.