A researcher claims to have found the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, which vanished eight years ago with 239 people on board.
The plane was flying to Kuala Lumpur from Beijing on 8 March 2014, when it disappeared while over the South Indian Ocean.
The plane performed a U-turn after being in the air for less than an hour, and was travelling in the opposite direction of where it should have been headed when communication suddenly cut out.
An explanation has never been found for the disappearance, but several theories have emerged over the years.
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The mystery is now the subject of a new three-part Netflix documentary, MH370: The Plane That Disappeared, which dropped yesterday (Wednesday, 8 March).
In the series, we hear from Cyndi Hendry, a volunteer satellite researcher who claims the plane may have crashed thousands of miles from the main search area.
Hendry, who worked for the now-defunct satellite imagery company Tomnod, found what she believes is ‘evidence’ of plane debris in the South China Sea just days after the disappearance - saying her wild discovery was ignored at the time, as many felt it had crashed in the Indian Ocean.
She said: “When I saw the anguish on the faces of these family members, I thought I had to do something.
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“It just tugged on my heartstrings. My hobby is photography, so I have an eye for detail.
“I thought I could be a great person to help look for this plane from the satellite images.”
Hendry, from Florida, said she found the letter ‘M’ on a piece of wreckage while surveying the area by satellite, believing the shape to be an ‘almost perfect match’ to part of the lettering that would have been on the Malaysia Airlines plane.
“The satellite images were empty. It was just the blackness of the sea. Then you press next, more black scans. So much black. And then finally, there's something white,” she said.
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Hendry thinks she saw an area of white debris in the sea near Vietnam - not far from where the plane disappeared from sight.
She continued: “I pulled the schematics off the internet for a Boeing 777. And I was able to identify a piece as the nose cone.
“That's when I started saying, 'Holy crap! There's a piece of debris. There's the airplane'.
“And then I started seeing more pieces. Something that looked like the fuselage. Something that looked like the tail. I got goosebumps.”
Hendry claimed her ideas were ignored by official investigators and Malaysia Airlines, but is adamant she knows that she had ‘evidence in the South China Sea’.
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“The more I searched, the more debris I found,” she said in the documentary.
“I feel certain that this is where MH370 ended up, off of Vietnam.
“At that point, I already had contacted Malaysia Airlines. I tried to reach out to so many people to tell them that this debris exists. Nobody was listening to me.”
Watch MH370: The Plane That Disappeared on Netflix now.
Topics: Netflix, Documentaries
Jess Hardiman