Chilling Google Maps image set brothers on quest to solve the case of missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370
A haunting Google Maps photo seems to have convinced two brothers that they have found the debris for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.
Brothers Ian and Jackie Wilson were on a late night wander through the depths of Google Maps when they made a discovery so harrowing, they wanted to embark on a journey to solve one of the world's biggest mysteries.
Back in 2016, Ian was on his laptop as he struggled to sleep, stumbling across something that looked like a while outline in Cambodia.
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The tech expert spoke to the Daily Star at the time, saying: "I was up all night. I was having real trouble sleeping, and when I eventually came across that plane it was really surreal, the hairs stood on the back of my neck."
What he found was enough for him to be convinced that he had solved the mystery around flight MH370, which saw the disappearance of a flight during its route from Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur to Chinese capital Beijing on 8 March, 2014.
The plane mysteriously veered off course, disappearing without a trace along with the 239 people onboard - who are all presumed dead.
Though the aircraft sent no distress calls with the plane never being heard from again, the search for the Boeing 777 is on-going today, with experts hopeful with the help of new technology to find out what really happened.
But Ian himself thought he had done it despite governments and companies spending millions looking for the wreckage.
Upon finding the wreckage in Cambodia, he copied and pasted the co-ordinates in Google Earth, switching to 3D ground view.
From here, it looked like the plane was lying on the side of a mountain at a 45-degree angle, according to Ian - who then measured it on the app to find it to be about 70 metres long, only a bit longer than the Boeing 777-200 used for the MH370, with a gap between the tail and fuselage.
According to the Malaysia Transport Ministry, air traffic controllers enquired about the jet disappearing during a handover between Malaysia and Vietnam.
A private investigator of military tech company Unicorn Aerospace said that Ian's findings were 'significant' and 'clearly a match', though he later said it was a plane caught mid-flight, which the Aviation Safety Network agreed with.
Debris of the plane was found in the Indian Ocean though, which disproves the brothers' theory further.
But the pair still made their way to Cambodia to see it for themselves, and the trip ended up being more costly than planned.
Ian explained: "From every angle possible, it’s laying up against the mountain, and you can view it at ground level.
"I can’t take talk of it being airborne seriously at all. As I say it’s a program I use all the time and I’ve seen many planes in flight. If I thought this could be one of them I wouldn’t have bothered arranging vaccinations and saving money to go and find it."
Jackie accompanied him on the trip, where they had to venture through punishing conditions in the depths of the rainforest.
Ian further said in 2019: "It was so dangerous, every time we came to a river, where the waterfall would be crossing, it might only be 10 metres the other side but you've got no idea how deep it is, it's about a foot deep and it goes up past your thighs."
He stated that he wanted to go back, but money was the only thing stopping him.
Jackie then said in 2020 that he would 'definitely' visit the site again on Instagram.
Chinese satellite firm Chang Guang Satellite Technology Co Ltd reportedly assembled 10 satellites to investigate the area Ian identified, but found no signs of wreckage.
Following a $200million+ (£157 million) international search effort stretching over the years since the crash, the plane wreckage was never found, though debris has been found in the sea by Mauritius, Madagascar, Tanzania and South Africa.
Topics: MH370, Google Maps, Technology, Travel
Joshua Nair