( CNN ) -- Flight MH-370 may go down in history as one of most incredible aviation mysteries . The cruel reality is that even though we have a fair amount of information now , we still know so little . Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak informed the families of the victims that the plane had crashed into the remote south Indian Ocean , and all 239 people onboard are presumed dead . That tragic but not unexpected conclusion was based on data analysis by satellite company Inmarsat , which Malaysia now says was able to track Flight 370 until the signal ended very near where searchers are now hunting for plane wreckage . The location tells a lot about what might have happened to the doomed flight while telling us not a single detail about why it crashed . The presumed location of the wreckage makes it all but impossible for certain scenarios to have played out as many observers insisted they must have . The first thing to understand is altitude is everything . A turbofan powered jet like the Boeing 777-200ER relies on altitude to make good on its ultra long-range capabilities . At its normal cruising altitudes from around 35,000 to 40,000 feet , the 777 can fly very long distances , in excess of 11,000 miles . But it seldom flies long routes . Flight 370 search unites global community . On its trip from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing , the plane would have had , according to investigators ' projections , around seven hours of total endurance at a normal cruising speed of around 600 mph -- just enough to have flown its suspected flight path north for 40 minutes , west for around that much time again , and then south for many hours . At lower altitudes , turbofan engines like the Rolls-Royce engines on the Malaysia Airlines airplane , burn substantially more fuel than they do at typical cruise altitudes -- as much as twice depending on the altitudes one uses for comparison . The increase in fuel burn will greatly reduce range , making it impossible for Flight MH-370 to have reached the southern Indian Ocean at a low altitude . It would need to have flown at a much higher optimum altitude in order to make it that far . Pilots can reduce the power to cut back on fuel flow , of course , but that also reduces airspeed , which again reduces range . There 's no winning when it comes to flying a turbofan-powered airplane : If you want to fly far , you need to fly high . So the fuel required for MH-370 to have reached the presumed crash location around 1500 miles west of Perth , Australia , means that the airplane did not do a lot of climbing or descending after it deviated from its original planned route to Beijing while it was still an hour or so north of Kuala Lumpur . So if there was a struggle for control of the flight -- whether it was mechanical issues or a hijacker -- it could not have lasted long or involved great altitude deviations . This means it 's hard , though not impossible , to explain the disappearance as being the result of a mechanical or electrical failure . Such a scenario , as I 've been saying since the beginning of the mystery , would require a kind of mechanical magic bullet , an event that would have taken out the transponder and ACARS radio , as well as the voice communications radios . Why else would they not have communicated the emergency ? Pilot : How mechanical problem could have downed Flight 370 . Then one must accept that such a failure chain could then allow the crew -- or skilled intruder -- to be able to drive the airplane around the sky for a protracted period of time , eventually pointing it south , in the opposite direction from where the airplane was originally headed . Let 's remember , too , that the airplane would have to maintain an altitude sufficient to allow it to reach the southern Indian Ocean . All this must also have left the 777 in good enough shape to fly for another six hours or so before crashing . A failure of the pressurization system might account for the scenario , but only if the pilots completely mismanaged their response to the emergency . The 777 's backup and emergency oxygen systems are just as intelligently designed as the rest of the jet 's redundant systems . It 's also difficult , if not impossible , to explain how the jet could have made the turns it did if the crew were unconscious during that time . Were they desperately trying to find an airport before time ran out ? If so , they would have done two things they did n't do : They would have communicated the emergency and they would have descended . Neither of those things happened . While it 's horrific to imagine , a botched hijacking or failed pilot commandeering of the airplane are still the most likely scenarios . Only when searchers have located and recovered the wreckage , as we all desperately hope they do , will we have our first good clues to what have might have unfolded on Malaysia Airlines Flight MH-370 . The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Robert Goyer .
Robert Goyer : Flight 370 may be remembered as one of the biggest aviation mysteries . Goyer : Presumed location of the plane wreckage rules out certain scenarios . He says the best explanation is still a botched hijacking or failed pilot takeover of plane . Goyer : Mechanical or electrical failure can not alone account for what we know .