Pilot suicide, terrorism and hijacking are some possibilities that are being theorized to the plane as the search area expanded to 7 million square miles. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said last week that “there are a number of possible scenarios that are being investigated as to what happened to the flight.”

Rick Mathews, of the National Center for Security & Preparedness at the Rockefeller College of Public Affairs & Policy of SUNY Albany, tells CBSDC that there is another theory that should be put into play: the missing flight is being held for ransom by a group of individuals, maybe including people from the flight crew.

“You want to most likely hide the plane so that it will not be seen and get these people away from there. You want a place to prove life, confirm the fact that they are alive without giving away their location,” Mathews told CBSDC, adding that this was an “internal hijacking” that might have been perpetrated by one or more members of the crew.