Kuala Lumpur, April 30 – A pilot from New York claims to have finally put together the pieces of the jigsaw that is the disappearance of Malaysia Airline Flight 370 (MH370).
Michael Hoebel, 60, believes that the ill-fated flight crashed off the coast of Thailand. He says he reached the conclusion after searching thousands of satellite images online and spending hours trawlling through images made available to the public on a crowd-sourcing website, TomNod.com, before coming across what he believes is the doomed plane.
A pilot for recreation, Hoebel says he was shocked to discover that the aircraft, which vanished less than an hour after taking off from Kuala Lumpur on March 8, appeared to be in one piece. “It is located beneath the water off the northeast coast of Malaysia, just west of Songkhla in Thailand,” he says. “The image was taken days after the crash.”
On why he thought it was the missing airliner, Hoebel says, “The lighter skin. Where the wing attaches to the fuselage, you see that lighter skin.” Asked if the shadow could be a shark, Hoebel said, “That’s a 210-foot shark.”
To help investigate the crash, TomNod allows people to go through millions of satellite pictures. It also allows other users to rate if they agree with another user’s theory. Hoebel claims that no one has disagreed with his theory, so far.
Hoebel says that he has contacted the FBI with what he has found, but they have not replied to him. Hoebel’s claim comes close on the heels of Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott saying that surface search efforts for the plane have been scaled back because it was ‘highly unlikely’ clues would be found on the surface. “Instead, the search will enter a new phase with the focus on the ocean floor,” the Australian PM had said. 239 people were on board the Malaysian Airline flight when it went missing 52 days ago.
-India Today
