MH370 Mistakenly Shot Down, New Conspiracy Theory Claims

In a bizarre new claim in the mystery surrounding the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, a private investigator said the jetliner was mistakenly shot by Malaysian military. Noel O’Gara, who has spent four years looking for answers as to what happened to the Boeing 777-200, said five people have claimed to have witnessed the final moments of the jet and their accounts can shed light into its whereabouts.

“Most likely, MH370 is still lying on the sea bed in that area,” O’Gara said. “Unless the Malaysian Government recovered it later...They would know exactly or within a few miles of where it had come down.”

According to News.com.au, one of the witnesses said he saw a plane on fire over his rig near Vietnam. New Zealand oil worker Mike McKay claimed the aircraft was “ascending rapidly in the struggle for control of the plane” and appeared to fall again. Another witness identified as Katherine Tee, an English sailor, told the official Australian search organisation she saw a burning plane on her way to Phuket in Thailand.

“Tee saw a plane go down and two smaller planes high overhead heading off in that area and at that time,” O’Gara said.

However, these claims cannot be independently confirmed. Meanwhile, O’Gara's claims of a government cover-up can also not be confirmed as there is no proof provided by him that the plane was shot down.

Flight MH370 went missing on March 8, 2014, with 239 people on board while on its way from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Since the plane's disappearance nearly five years ago, there have been several conspiracy theories that made the round about what happened to the jet. While some claimed the pilot of the plane planned a "murder-suicide," others said the plane was hijacked.

In July 2018, Malaysia released a report stating Flight MH370 deviated from its path "not because of anomalies in the mechanical system. The turn back was made not under autopilot but under manual control.” However, it added that a “third-party interference” couldn’t be ruled out.

The biggest lead in the investigation came when a plane flaperon was found by villagers on the French island of Réunion. Possible pieces of wreckage had also turned up on the shorelines of Africa, Mozambique and Mauritius, investigators said. Another report said 27 pieces of wreckage found were believed to be from MH370, though only three were confirmed as parts that actually belonged to the doomed jetliner.

However, there has been no evidence so far proving any of the conspiracy theories that have surfaced. In 2018, an oceanographer who found Air France flight 447 in the Atlantic Ocean, claimed the location where Flight MH370 went down was known to the governments.