WASHINGTON: The Malaysian prime minister’s telephone to his Pakistani counterpart on Tuesday, seeking help to trace a missing plane, has revived conspiracy theories blaming Pakistan.

The theories surfaced soon after the plane’s disappearance on March 8 but were pushed aside by daily official statements from 25 countries who are helping Malaysia trace the jetliner.

In their statements, officials highlighted possible flight paths that took the plane away from Pakistan, although they failed to pinpoint a particular area where the aircraft might have crashed or landed.

The fight paths comprised a wide region – from Australia to Kazakhstan – which allowed fertile minds around the world to engage in a guessing game.

And it were not just the ordinary people who were making these guesses. The conspiracy theorists also included well-connected people with access to the highest sources of information.

One of them was Strobe Talbott, who was deputy secretary of state in the Clinton administration. “Malaysia plane mystery: Direction, fuel load & range now lead some to suspect hijackers planned a 9/11-type attack on an Indian city,” Mr Talbott tweeted earlier this week.

Indian authorities, however, reacted promptly and rejected his theory as “very speculative.”

“We are looking into every possibility after various reports emerged that the plane may have flown near the Andamans or may have been hijacked and even flown to Kazakhstan and the Himalayas,” a senior Indian official told reporters in New Delhi.

“But it is very speculative at this stage to conclude that it was hijacked for 9/11-type attack on an Indian city,” he added.

Then came another theory, this time by a person who is not only well-connected but also owns one of the world’s largest media network, Rupert Murdoch.

“World seems transfixed by 777 disappearance. Maybe no crash but stolen, effectively hidden, perhaps in Northern Pakistan, like Bin Laden,” said Mr Murdoch.

While Mr Talbott and Mr Murdoch did not explain their theories, others were more imaginative.

Malaysian plane flew in another jet’s shadow: Keith Ledgerwod, a hobby pilot suggested that Flight 370 kept flying after its transponder was turned off and avoided detection by flying close enough to a Singapore Airlines plane that they showed up as a single blip on radar.

“After looking at all the details, it is my opinion that MH370 snuck out of the Bay of Bengal using SIA68 as the perfect cover. It entered radar coverage already in the radar shadow of the other 777, stayed there throughout coverage, and then exited SIA68’s shadow and then most likely landed in one of several land locations north of India and Afghanistan,” he wrote on an internet site.

Pilots became incapacitated: This theory, although also speculative, is not as wild as other theories.

A former commercial pilot, Chris Goodfellow, suggested in a post on Google Plus that Flight 370’s pilot was forced to attempt an emergency landing.

Tapping into every pilot’s knowledge of “the closest airport of safe harbour,” those in the cockpit of Flight 370 made a left turn toward the 13,000-foot runway on the Malaysian island of Pulau Langkawi. They never made it, Mr Goodfellow wrote.

“For me the loss of transponders and communications makes perfect sense if a fire. There was most likely a fire or electrical fire. In the case of fire the first response if to pull all the main busses and restore circuits one by one until you have isolated the bad one. ...What I think happened is that they were overcome by smoke and the plane just continued on the heading probably on George (autopilot) until either fuel exhaustion or fire destroyed the control surfaces and it crashed.”

The pilot committed suicide: Redditor FrequentFlyerPilot proposed a suicide plot orchestrated by Flight 370’s captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah. According to this theory, Mr Shah crashed plane in a place where it would be nearly impossible to find.

Mr Shah purposely took a circuitous route on his way to Diamantina Deep, a spot in the Indian Ocean where the water is almost 25,000 feet deep.

“After another approximately 5 hours of flight time, with Captain Shah alone with his thoughts in the cockpit, the flight reaches the destination he has so carefully planned. He begins his preparation to ditch the plane and have it sink into the deepest waters available to him, in a direction 180 degrees opposite from his original flight plan.”

The plane broke: Kurt Seidensticker, an aerospace engineer who once worked for NASA’s

Johnson Space Centre, cited a US Federal Aviation Authority paper on cracking in the lap joints of the Boeing 777. He used this paper to suggest that the cracks led to sudden cabin depressurisation, leaving the pilot unconscious and the plane in a free-fall. But it didn’t immediately crash.

“As the plane descended on its own, (without auto-pilot and unconscious pilots) it would continue to pick up speed to a point where the increasing speed creates more and more lift over the wings. When more and more lift is created, this force causes the plane to pitch up.

The plane may have descended to 23,000 feet before it began the pitch up manoeuvre. At that point, the aircraft is pitched up and begins a climb.

It will continue to climb until the atmosphere becomes thinner and thinner and less and less lift is produced over the wings. This would typically occur at 45,000 feet.

This roller coaster ride would continue between those two altitudes until the aircraft no longer has fuel to power the engines,” he wrote.

The pilot stole the plane: Another self-proclaimed expert, who identified himself as WalterWhiteRabbit, wrote that Flight 370’s pilot pulled off a plan to steal the Boeing 777 to use it later in a 9/11-style terrorist attack.

The pilot intentionally depressurised the cabin and ascended to 45,000 feet in order to kill the passengers. Then he landed in “Australia, Indonesia, or somewhere close.”

“After landing, the plane will be immediately painted over and ‘rebranded’ so to speak. The transponders will be swapped/updated, and the plane will essentially be ready to fly again with no links to MH370.”