Flight MH370 mystery: Man ‘spotted’ plane on Google Maps
Video producer Ian Wilson claims he has found the wreckage of the doomed aircraft using Google Maps, as exclusively revealed by Daily Star Online.
Tech expert Ian Wilson has exclusively shown Daily Star Online where he believes a plane is lying in a high-altitude jungle.
His earth-shattering discovery is a potentially massive breakthrough in what has become the world’s greatest missing plane mystery in the history of aviation. And what makes our exclusive even more startling is the clues stack up to suggest Wilson HAS found the doomed airliner which vanished four years ago.
According to measurements of the plane he has found on Google Earth, it is close to the length of MH370’s Boeing 777-200. The body is around 70 metres in length – slightly larger than a Boeing 777’s official 63.7m measurement – but it has a mysterious gap between the tail and the body.
It lies around 60 miles west of capital Phnom Penh, an area air traffic controllers enquired about following its disappearance. And at 70 metres it measures close to the 63.7m of MH370‘s Boeing 777-200, with a mysterious gap between the body and tail.
Following his game-changing spot, a Chinese firm reportedly assembled 10 satellites to zoom in on the area pinpointed by Wilson. Chang Guang Satellite Technology Co Ltd said there have been no signs of the wreckage so far. However, Chinese newspaper Global Times reports that the company has still called for a ground search team to explore the spot.
Its article reads: “Wang Ya’nan, chief editor of Aerospace Knowledge magazine, told the Global Times on Thursday that the company will help to verify Wilson’s claim.
“However, satellite photos alone will not be conclusive, and it will take a professional search team on the ground to lay the claim to rest, Wang said.”
Satellite images taken so far showed 76% cloud cover, making it “difficult for optimal imaging satellites to observe what was on the ground”. The company said it will take more images to get to the bottom of Wilson’s claim. Private investigator Andre Milne – founder of military technology firm Unicorn Aerospace – has urged Google to explain the image.
He believes the plane has been caught mid-flight – a theory also held by the Aviation Safety Network – but wants the tech giant to re-examine the snap.
The search for the missing airplane, which became the most costly of aviation history, emphasized initially the South China and Andaman seas, before analysis of the aircraft’s automated communications with an Inmarsat satellite identified a possible crash site somewhere in the southern Indian Ocean. The lack of official information in the days immediately after the disappearance prompted fierce criticism from the Chinese public, particularly from relatives of the passengers; most on board Flight 370 were of Chinese origin. Several pieces of marine debris confirmed to be from the aircraft were washed ashore in the western Indian Ocean during 2015 and 2016. After a three-year search across 120,000 km2 (46,000 sq mi) of ocean failed to locate the aircraft, the Joint Agency Coordination Centre heading the operation suspended their activities in January 2017. A second search launched in January 2018 by the private contractor Ocean Infinity also ended without success after six months.
The disappearance of Flight 370 has been dubbed one of the greatest aviation mysteries of all time. Relying mostly on analysis of data from the Inmarsat satellite with which the aircraft last communicated, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau proposed initially that a hypoxia event was the most likely cause given the available evidence, although there has not been any consensus concerning this theory among investigators. At various stages of the investigation, possible hijacking scenarios were considered, including crew involvement, and suspicion of the airplane’s cargo manifest; many unofficial theories have also been proposed by the media. In the absence of a definitive cause of the disappearance, safety recommendations and regulations of the air transport industry, citing Flight 370, have been intended mostly to prevent a repetition of the circumstances associated with the loss. These include increased battery life on underwater locator beacons, lengthening of recording times on flight data recorders and cockpit voice recorders, and new standards for aircraft position reporting over open ocean.
The final report from the Malaysian Ministry of Transport on the disappearance was released on 30 July 2018. It did not provide new information concerning the fate of the airplane, but did indicate errors made by Malaysian air traffic controllers in their limited efforts in attempting to communicate with the aircraft. Following the reports of air traffic controllers failings, the Chairman of the Civil Aviation Authority of Malaysia, Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, resigned on 31 July 2018.
Source : DailyStar
