US pilot claims to have found MH370

After six weeks of search for the missing MH370, a US pilot claims to have found the Boeing 777-200ER in the Gulf of Thailand.

PETALING JAYA: A US pilot believes he has found an image of the wreckage of missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370.

After six weeks of extensive search, authorities are now combing through the wild Indian Ocean where the plane carrying 239 passengers and crew was suspected to have ended its journey.

Todate they have failed to locate any wreckage of the plane which went missing on March 8, on a routine flight from the Kuala Lumpur International Airport to Beijing, China.

The jetliner went missing from the civilian radar while flying over the South China Sea but was picked up by the Malaysian military radar on the western side of peninsula Malaysia, flying towards the Bay of Bengal.

Australian 7News said New York pilot Michael Hoebel, 60, believes he found an image of what appears to be the wreck of the missing passenger jet in the Gulf of Thailand, which is where the Boeing 777 made its last communication with air traffic authorities on the morning ofMarch 8.

“I was taken aback because I couldn’t believe I would find this,” Hoebel told a local TV news channel after spotting debris he believes perfectly matches the dimensions of the missing plane.

7News quoted Hoebel as saying that he spent hours trawling through thousands of images on TomNod, a crowd-sourcing website that has been sharing online satellite imagery in the hope of finding clues.

When he was asked whether it could have been an image of a shark, Hoebel responded:

“That’s a 210ft shark.”

Exploration company’s discovery

Meanwhile the same news station yesterday reported that an exploration company believed that it may have found the missing jetliner.

The development comes as an Adelaide-based exploration company announced that it may have located the wreckage of the plane 5,000km away from where authorities have been looking.

The company surveyed over 2,000,000 square kilometres of the possible crash zone, using images obtained from satellites and aircraft.

Scientists focused their efforts north of the flight’s last known location, using over 20 technologies to analyse the data including a nuclear reactor.

They could not believe what they found in the Bay of Bengal.

“Our team was very excited when we found what we believe to be the wreckage of a commercial airliner,” David Pope from GeoResonance said.

Pavel Kursa from GeoResonance told 7News: “We identified chemical elements and materials that make up a Boeing 777… these are aluminium, titanium, copper, steel alloys and other materials.”

An initial report was sent to authorities while the black box still had two weeks of battery power.

The team then verified its findings by analysing images from the same area on March 5, three days before the plane disappeared.

“The wreckage wasn’t there prior to the disappearance of MH370,” the company said.

The full report was delivered on April 15.

“We’re not trying to say that it definitely is MH370, however it is a lead we feel should be followed up.”

Malaysian investigators say they have yet to received the information by the company.

Source from:http://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/nation/2014/04/29