You could assume with a high probability it crashed for 2 reasons: #1 noone came out with hostage demands (imagine cost of keeping alive and fed 250 people, for

You could assume with a high probability it crashed for 2 reasons: #1 noone came out with hostage demands (imagine cost of keeping alive and fed 250 people, for 3 weeks), or claimed terrorist responsibility. #2. NSA has a multitude of sophisticated satellites in the space (recently they lunch a new one that costed over a billion of dollars! -- payload: top secret) and its been known on the record that technologically less developed countries like Russia could spy and listen on foreign countries via satellites in late 70s, some 40 years ago. NSA knew from minute one what happened with this plane. The "problem" is that revealing to the public that the plane crashed and where it is buried has sadly no value and does not come close to over-weighing the benefit of keeping secret that they can see everything around the world up to a minute. If you would have a def con raised, all military personnel pulled back for duty, then it would be smart to assume the plane went to Afghanistan, or somewhere else where it could be re-branded into a nuclear missile, or something. Since there was nothing like this happening, there was no explanation other than it crashed and everyone is dead.