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British man claims to have found MH370 on Google Earth

Author
NZ Herald,
Publish Date
Fri, 7 Sep 2018, 9:11pm
The tech expert claims there is a visible gap between the tail and the back of the plane. (Photo / Google Earth)
The tech expert claims there is a visible gap between the tail and the back of the plane. (Photo / Google Earth)

British man claims to have found MH370 on Google Earth

Author
NZ Herald,
Publish Date
Fri, 7 Sep 2018, 9:11pm

A British tech sleuth believes he has found the wreckage of the missing MH370 plane on Google Maps.

Ian Wilson says he has pinpointed the plane's remains lying in the mountainous terrain in the Cambodian jungle.

While many believe the image could simply be an aircraft flying directly below the satellite which photographed it, the tech expert claims there is a visible gap between the tail and the back of the plane.

He told the Daily Star: "Measuring the Google sighting, you're looking at around 69 metres, but there looks to be a gap between the tail and the back of the plane.

"It's just slightly bigger, but there's a gap that would probably account for that."

Flight MH370 went missing as it flew from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing in March 2014 with 239 people on board but a definitive explanation of the Boeing 777's fate has never been delivered.

Wilson now plans to fly a helicopter to the site believing he feels authorities need to take his potential discovery seriously.

Ian Wilson says he has pinpointed the plane's remains lying in the mountainous terrain in the Cambodian jungle. Photo / Google Earth

Ian Wilson says he has pinpointed the plane's remains lying in the mountainous terrain in the Cambodian jungle. Photo / Google Earth

He said: "I just thought I'd have a wander through. I work in digital video so I'm on Google Earth all the time.

"So I was on there, a few hours here, a few hours there. If you added it up I spent hours searching for places a plane could have gone down.

"And in the end, as you can see the place where the plane is. It is literally the greenest, darkest part you can see."

While many have laughed off Wilson's claims, the tech expert said "worst case scenario I'm wrong and I've wasted my time and some money".

A month ago France reopened its investigation into the fate of missing Malaysia Airlines flight 370 after Malaysia's long-awaited "final report" failed to provide an explanation for the aircraft's disappearance.

French newspaper Le Parisien reports that investigators are keen to verify data from Inmarsat — the British operator of a global satellite network — which tracked the aircraft's pings to the southern Indian Ocean off Western Australia, where it is believed to have crashed.

In response, relatives of those on board MH370 issued a statement urging the Malaysian government to release all data, including military radar data, for review and analysis by independent experts.

Malaysia's 449-page report into MH370's disappearance, released on June 30, was universally condemned and sparked accusations by victims' families of a cover-up at worst and incompetence at best.

They were particularly critical of the decision to rule out a sophisticated murder suicide plot by the chief pilot, Captain Zaharie Shah, despite evidence showing someone intentionally disabled the plane's communication systems before manually rerouting it.

Now the Gendarmerie of Air Transport (GTA) has launched its own probe into the mysterious disappearance, according to Le Parisien.

It said the presence of four French victims on board the doomed flight, which vanished on March 8, 2014 en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 along with 239 passengers and crew, allowed the GTA to conduct its own investigations.

The most significant piece of suspected MH370 debris to be located so far — a barnacle-encrusted wing part known as a flaperon — was found on the French-owned island of Reunion in the Indian Ocean in 2015.

 

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