No the bigger question is absolutely whether it's even a suicide pilot.
Out of the context of my comments which were about hiding the plane.
But just to be clear, there are two suicide camps. The one that makes no sense has a distraught pilot maintaining his suicidal resolve for 8 hours and doing meticulous planning ahead of time. There's no indication from the investigation that he was having emotional suicidal tendencies despite the claims and projections of the politically motivated.
The other is the suicide bomber/martyr camp. Pilot willing to die in the act of theft/murder/hiding as a martyrr for a cause. No public statement but potential a huge cost of recovery and political embarassment for his (presumed) enemies.
Or possibly a hybrid from a terminal patient wanting to make a statement on the way out. Again no evidence. This kind of coincides with the idea of a desire to create an Amelia Earhart style legend.
Either way, deliberate action (aka Suicide) is being assumed because the terminal point is assumed to be SIO. It really is the most likely reason in that case. The mechanical failure, fire, and computer takeover theories so far are too shaky to explain the location and path.
If you view the BFO analysis as unquestionable, then motive is irrelevant to locating the plane. You find it based on the numbers. At best, you can decide if he tried to ditch or just crashed to fine tune the ending. Whether the pilot killed himself, martyred himself, was killed by someone else, died by accident, parachuted out, or sped away in a boat after ditching doesn't matter to finding the plane.
If you question the BFO, then all sorts of motives open back up. Even then, the BTO is considered credible by most people. The plane could be anywhere on the arc in fuel range. It could have landed at any of 30+ airports on the arc, or crashed in any remote area on the arc. The leading question there is why no radar tracks outside of the Thais?
The SIO theory explains the lack of radar nicely, except for the Indonesian radar, and they seem willing to dismiss their capabilities.