Reading your post made me emotional. It fits.
What if the twenty were going to Beijing to help fix China up the same way they had just fixed Malaysia up in Kuala Lumpur.
What exactly did that team do?
I saw a case depicted on TV about a specialist (computer or ??? engineer of some kind), an American who was murdered because of some secret info he uncovered or figured out. I believe this was in China (maybe not but Asia for sure) and his business people and police said he committed suicide. He had been stressed out over his job (that he loved at one time) and was returning home for good in nine days iirc. His parents and two brothers didn't believe that he committed suicide and when they went to his apartment to clear it out, his mom found a hard drive that was left on a window sill iirc. It was a fluke that she placed the hard drive in her suitcase unaware it contained evidence. There's a lot more to the story, but,
my point is, having certain information can be dangerous when competition is steep and potential gold mines are at risk.
This theory, if played out, wouldn't involve the pilots as the responsible parties. It would have to have been a third party who took over the plane. On the other hand, maybe not, because it was what the pilot said (we don't know for certain it was the pilot though) that made me remember this true story/case. Why would one of the pilots be willing to kill himself though over something like this?