Fact check: Did MH370 crash in Cambodian jungle as viral reports claim?

A latest conspiracy theory about the disappearance of MH370 has claimed that the Malaysian Airlines-operated plane has been found in the dense forests of Cambodia. Over the weekend, British tabloidspublished a video producer's claimsthat he found a plane in the Pursat Province of the East Asian nation while scanning through satellite imagery on Google Maps.

The man, identified as Ian Wilson, believes the remains of the plane bound for Beijing from Kuala Lumpur lie in this forest, adding that he made the discovery using Google Earth in a few hours.

"Measuring the Google sighting, you're looking at around 69 metres, but there looks to be a gap between the tail and the back of the plane. It's just slightly bigger, but there's a gap that would probably account for that," he was quoted as saying by Daily Mirror.

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"I was on there [Google Earth], a few hours here, a few hours there. If you added it up, I spent hours searching for places a plane could have gone down—and in the end, as you can see the place where the plane is. It is literally the greenest, darkest part you can see."

Notably, under one of the posts on X (formerly known as Twitter), carrying British media Wilson's version, a community post said: "It is important to emphasize that this 'news' is not new, it has been in circulation since 2018. To date, there is no real evidence that corroborates this hypothesis."

A few of the netizens were quick to debunk the claims made by Wilson as well. While some said it was old news that had been previously debunked, others added that it could not have been possible to see the entire plane 'intact' in such a condition, especially in a forest, a decade after crashing.

"Why is this in the news again The plane on Google images is not MH370. It's a random plane the satellite happened to catch flying over Cambodia. A crashed plane in the jungle would not be that in tact, nor would you see it that well through the trees ESPECIALLY after a decade," X user @TwighlightWolf250 stated.

What happened to MH370?

Nine years ago on 8 March 2014, MH370, a Boeing 777 aircraft, vanished in thin air with 239 people on board, leaving authorities and the public across the globe in a mystery.

Officials said the plane's transponder was turned off over the South China Sea by either the pilot or the co-pilot. A military radar still tracked it. According to data, it took a sudden diversion from the route and, leaving its northeastern course, started heading west towards the Malay peninsula.

Watch | Malaysian MH370 Missing: Was MH370 deliberately downed by Pilot? Debris offers new clues

Malaysia, China, and Australia called off a two-year, underwater search in the southern Indian Ocean in January 2017 after finding no traces of the aircraft.

The final report by the Malaysian Ministry of Transport, published in July 2018, concluded that investigators did not know what happened to the plane. While it identified mistakes by air traffic controllers, the report did not rule out "unlawful interference."

(With inputs from agencies)

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