I would concede that it's not entirely impossible but extremely unlikely in the dark and I would have thought that it would need to be under control at the time. If manual control the why no contact, unless it was a deliberate act, but why fly all that way and then try to survive. In these circumstances surely others aboard would have been able to evacuate. Perhaps the pros could tell us whether the escape chutes/flotation rafts have EPIRB locators?