Ian Wilson, an enthusiastic truth-seeker who claims to have spotted the crash site of the missing Malaysian Airlines Boeing on Google Maps, has abandoned his search mission, claiming that completing the endeavor would be too dangerous.
Wilson, a British-based video producer, embarked on a five-mile journey through Cambodian jungle together with his brother Jack last week. According to the volunteer explorers, the suspected site was four miles north of Cambodia's tallest peak, Phnom Aoral, with the route to it running through wild and dense tropical forests full of waterfalls and boulders.
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They enlisted the help of local guides to make their way to the truth, who helped the Britons crawl through the jungle, cross waterfalls, and climb enormous boulders, which left them "battered and bruised." But at some point, the guides indicated that they couldn't go any further, prompting the MH370 hunters to give up on their efforts to solve the missing Boeing mystery.
"We've picked up injuries, many falls and climbs that were really painful. My feet are destroyed, I have knee sprains. But I'm really proud of Jack," Wilson told the Daily Star. "Both of us had to cross around 20 waterfalls, we fell most of the time and we were lucky to not kill ourselves on the boulders and get swept away in the current."
He earlier claimed that he had found the MH370 after spending hours scouring Google Maps. He is adamant about his theory, despite it being disputed by many experts. They argue that what Wilson claims to be the lost MH370 jet lying on the ground could be an image of a random in-flight plane accidentally photographed by a satellite.
However, Google Maps has recently updated its images of the Cambodian region where the alleged crash site is allegedly located. What is believed to be the wreckage has remained at the same location on satellite pics dating from 2017 and 2015 (according to Google Maps data). This has confirmed Wilson's theory, leading him to rebut the criticism and argue that the remains of the plane he thinks he spotted remain in place.
Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 with 239 passengers and crew on board disappeared from radar screens on March 8, 2014 on its way from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing during a handover from Malaysian to Vietnamese air traffic controllers. Only a few pieces of debris, thought to be parts of the wreckage, have been discovered at different locations, including the French island of Reunion in the Indian Ocean, as well as in South Africa and Mozambique.
After years of unsuccessfully trying to locate the airplane's remains, Malaysian authorities admitted in July 2018 that they did not know what happened to the plane. The Malaysian government's chief investigator, Kok Soo Chon, said that the plane was switched to manual control before disappearing from the radars, fueling the theory that the plane was taken over remotely by hackers or intentionally flown into the ocean by one of the pilots in an act of murder-suicide.