There have been a number of reported ‘sightings’ of the MH370 wreckage on Google Maps over the years (Picture: EPA/Netflix/Google Maps)
In the decade since the disappearance of MH370, people have made numerous claims that they’ve spotted the plane’s wreckage on Google Maps.
Its regularly-updated satellite images and aerial photography provide us with an up-to-date view of our entire planet from our smartphones.
On March 8, 2014 Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing vanished, taking all of its 227 passengers and 12 crew with it.
The search, perhaps the most extensive in aviation history, failed to find the wreckage and sparked multiple conspiracy theories about its disappearance.
Malaysia is now pushing for a renewed search for the plane, giving new hope to the families of those on board.
As we approach the 10th anniversary of the MH370 disappearance, Metro.co.uk looks back at claims that the wreckage was found by amateur sleuths using Google Maps – and whether they could be believed.
March 2014
MH370 went missing in 2014 (Picture: EPA)
Within days of MH370 going missing, amateur sleuths started taking matters into their own hands and searched for the plane using Google Maps.
Google had to urge people not to use its software to try and find it after ‘several concerned citizens’ contacted The Malaysian Star to say they had ‘found’ the plane.
A spokesperson for Google Malaysia had to remind people that the images on Google Maps are not real-time satellite images, and could have been taken weeks or even months before appearing online.
They said: ‘These images which are captured would sometimes contain images of airplanes usually on its flight path and cannot be presumed as a possible crash site.’
2016
Some amateur investigators believe the plane crashed in the Cambodian jungle – but debris from MH370 has since washed up on a number of beaches (Picture: REUTERS)
Amateur investigator Ian Wilson claimed he’d spotted the MH370 wreckage in 2016 – and the image was still visible on Google Earth three years on.
He claims the wreckage is located deep in the Cambodian jungle, 62 miles north west of Phnom Penh.
Google told the Daily Star that the image is simply a plane captured in flight – but Ian said if this was the case, the map imaging should have been updated in three years, with the plane image removed.
Ian said: ‘I’m on Google Earth a lot, it’s part of my job, I’ve seen planes when I’m doing my own job and they are nothing like that.
‘You can’t go to a hill and go, oh look the plane is flying on a hill, it looks like it’s glued to the hill with its tail attached.’
March 2016
Scott C Waring, a self-described UFO hunter, said he might have accidentally found the wreckage of MH370 while hunting for UFOs.
He was scouring around the Cape of Good Hope, a South African peninsula, for an old UFO sighting in 2013 when he spotted a ‘shadow’ in the water which resembled a plane.
Scott said the Google Earth photo was dated July 2015, while MH370 disappeared in March 2014, so due to ‘powerful currents’ he reckoned it was possible the wreckage could have drifted that way.
But Yahoo! News did point out that Scott has previously seen objects ‘as diverse as a polar bear on Mars and a snail on Pluto’ – so his discovery should be taken with a pinch of salt.
March 2018
It was thought this could be the MH370 wreckage in the Indian Ocean (Picture: Google Maps)
Peter McMahon, an Australian mechanical engineer who said he worked in crash investigations for more than 25 years, believed he’d spotted the wreckage in the Indian Ocean.
Using both Google Maps and Nasa images, he believes the aircraft came down 10 miles south of islet Round Island, near Mauritius – an area which wasn’t included in the expert search operation.
He believes he spotted two sections of the cabin under the waves – and having sent his findings to the Australian Transport and Safety Bureau, he claimed they agreed that it could be the missing plane.
But speaking at the time, Peter leaned into the theory that the craft had been shot down, claiming authorities ‘do not want it found as it’s full of bullet holes, finding it will only open another inquiry’.
August 2018
It was also thought this could have been MH370 off the coast of Indonesia… (Picture: Google Maps)
… But the theorist admitted it could simply be an image of a plane flying over the water (Picture: Google Maps)
Another conspiracy theorist thought he’d spotted the wreckage underwater off the coast of Indonesia – before then admitting that it could simply be an image of a plane flying across the water.
The anonymous poster undertook a Google Earth search of waters off the coast of Padang – about an hour’s flight from where MH370 took off from Kuala Lumpur.
According to The Mirror, the searcher said: ‘Some will say it’s just an aircraft coming in for landing caught on satellite, some may say this is just a bogus post.
‘But just imagine the aircraft came in for a slow soft water landing, in calm waters which is below the radar and they knew it was there for a rescue job.’
October 2018
It was thought the plane may have crashed in the Cambodian jungle (Picture: Google Maps)
Geologist John Guo believed he’d found the MH370 wreckage after pinpointing a 600-metre stretch of ‘ruined trees’ leading to a jet which appears on Google Map’s satellite view.
His theory seemed to back up Ian Wilson’s theory about the plane going down in the Cambodian jungle, two years after Ian first posed his theory in 2016.
He reckoned the ‘crush zone’ was about 45 metres wide and dismissed naysayers, telling the Express that ‘there is obvious ground (forest) evidence to support that the aeroplane in Cambodia is not the result of overlapped fly-over aeroplane in the region’.
In a YouTube video where he discusses his theory, John said: ‘The aeroplane chopped the tops of the trees along its crush path.
‘The chopped trees form a crushing zone obviously lower than the adjacent forest trees.
‘The landing crush zone is about 400-600m long and 35-45m wide. Aeroplane crushing (landing) direction is from west to east.’
What has been found of the missing MH370 plane?
This white debris was spotted in the South China Sea and it was thought it could belong to MH370 (Picture: Leon McGowran)
Over the years a number of pieces of debris have been washed up on shores around the Indian Ocean, and serial numbers and other identifying features confirmed they belonged to MH370.
The first confirmed piece of debris was found washed up on the beach on Réunion island in July 2015. It was identified as a flaperon, part of a plane’s wing used to increase drag for takeoff and landing.
A few months later, in December 2015, a metre-long piece of metal, thought to be a flap track fairing segment, was found in Xai Xai, Mozambique.
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In February 2016 a horizontal stabiliser panel segment was found washed up in Vilankulo, also in Mozambique.
One month later, a piece of Rolls-Royce engine cowling segment was found in Mossel Bay, South Africa, and a piece of the main cabin’s interior panel was found on Rodrigues Island in Mauritius.
In June 2016 a large piece of the wing flap was found on Pemba Island in Zanzibar, while in September 2016 panels washed up in Sainte-Luce, Madagascar, were found but not confirmed to have come from MH370.
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