Would someone refresh my memory - haven't we seen a scene with Lapidus watching TV news of the fake Oceanic flight? Was Lapidus supposed to be the pilot on that flight? Why was he watching it and (if memory serves correctly) crying?

Since we saw Daniel Faraday doing similarly last night, I suspect a link there.

Speculating ... maybe Oceanic really does go down (eventually) in the Indian Ocean after it doesn't go down on the island due to Jughead being used to not create the eventual 'failure to punch buttons' event many years later.

Jeez it's difficult to query/speculate about things that might happen as a consequence of what happens when things that did happen do not happen after all.

We did see a scene of Lapidus watching the news of the fake flight, but he wasn't crying. It looked like (IIRC) that he was in the Florida Keys or someplace Jimmy Buffet-ish when he saw the news. His comment was that he knew the wreckage was faked when he saw the "pilot's" body & knew it wasn't his friend's body.