Curiosity

Man says he ‘found' missing Malaysia Airlines plane on Google Maps

A British man named Ian Wilson claims to have found the plane from Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, which mysteriously disappeared in 2014 with 239 people on board.

September 30, 2023

Photo: Google Maps screenshot shows the alleged plane in the middle of the Cambodian jungle

Here's what happened

Wilson believes he found the wreckage of the plane in the Cambodian jungle using Google Maps. He mentioned that he spent “hours searching for places where the plane could have crashed.”

When measuring the Google image (dated 2018), you can see about 69 meters (from the outline of the alleged aircraft), but there appears to be a gap between the tail and the rear of the plane. This makes (the entire equipment) only slightly larger, but this gap likely explains that.

The Bureau of Aircraft Investigations Archives, the agency that investigates aircraft accidents, does not rule out the possibility that the Google Maps image is indeed of the Malaysia Airlines plane, according to the newspaper.

Recalling the case

Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, en route from Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) to Beijing (China), disappeared with 239 people on board in 2014. According to the airline, Air Traffic Control lost contact with the aircraft less than an hour after takeoff. There was no emergency signal or message sent by the crew.

Since then, parts of the plane have been found in Tanzania, Madagascar, and the Indian Ocean, where the Malaysian government claimed to be “certain” that the aircraft crashed. However, these parts have not provided concrete evidence of what happened to the plane.

Investigators produced a report of over 1,500 pages with 60 theories about the plane's disappearance but did not reach any conclusions.