Question Everything: That missing airliner....

So far, we're hearing how ships and planes are scouring the over-water sections of the plane's planned flight path, and finding nothing. The search is also extending to possible other parts of the oceans around there.

But if the communications on it were purposely deactivated, and it was obviously being controlled by other than its normal crew, with other than its normally expected destination, are they looking at its possible destinations? It's unlikely that someone would take control of a $261-million-dollar aircraft simply to fly it out over the ocean and crash it into the sea.

Let's assume these hijackers expected to live a little longer than the seven and a half hours worth of fuel on board, and let's assume that they had a destination chosen for that flight. Are the searchers looking at all the possible emergency landing sites and old and perhaps now unused military landing strips in that region? These hijackers, whoever they are, may have had others prepare such a landing site for them at some 'forgotten' location not now being actively used, and that aircraft may be sitting on the ground at that site, being prepared for some other mission.

If its automatic reporting devices were pinging a satellite seven hours after its departure, and it only had seven and a half hours of fuel on board at takeoff, then it was either sitting on the ground by then, or it was sufficiently intact for its systems to continue operating its reporting system. If it was sitting on the ground somewhere, and someone was unable to deactivate the automatic reporting devices until between seven and eight hours after takeoff, until they perhaps realized the way to do that would be to cut the power to them, this may mean the aircraft could still be more or less OK and on the ground somewhere in an area not normally receiving a lot of attention from visitors.
Are they investigating that possibility, and if so, are they making any progress?