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Someone mentioned the crew and passengers being deprived of oxygen if the fuselage developed a hole in it. The pressurization system on those aircraft works by allowing air to escape at a predetermined rate to prevent the aircraft from "popping" at higher altitudes. If there was a smaller hole, the outflow valve(s), would just close some more to compensate and maintain the scheduled pressure. Considering how much air the environmental control system (heat/airconditioning) pumps into a big bird like the 777, it would have to be one big ol' hole to make that happen...which would cause much bigger problems, IMHO.

As an aircraft mechanic, it bothers me a lot that this plane has vanished like that. The 777 is a great aircraft. Its rated to fly quite a distance away from land on only one engine if one went out (and those engines have a very high mean time between failure), most of the systems that control things are redundant (meaning they have backups that automatically kick in), and even if it went down, there is a beacon that should be going off. Also, its very rare that something happens to an aircraft during cruise; most problems are on take-off or landing. It would have to be catastrophic indeed for this situation to have occurred. My hopes and prayers go out for the folks on that aircraft, and their friends and family.