[Hordriss]

Also, given the incredible / downright implausible difficulty of faking the plane crash, I am still holding out hopes that both sides are baselessly accusing each other, and in fact the plane slipped through from another time dimension Donnie Darko-wise (which I still consider a more elegant solution than towing an old Boeing to the mid-Pacific and stuffing it with stolen cadavers). One thing that does suggest a more obscure solution is the fact, as Murgatroyd points out, that the pilot corpse did appear to be the pilot, save for his lack of a ring (but please, please, don't let it be clones. That would be too cheesily SF...).