Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/658018
maltatoday, SUNDAY, 27 MARCH 2016 9 News Brothers claim missing Malaysian airline debris visible on Google Earth TIM DIACONO TWO Maltese brothers believe they have located debris from the miss- ing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 through Google Earth. Raymond and Charles Coleiro told MaltaToday that they have been searching online for pieces of the elusive wreckage for months, ever since aircraft debris washed up on Réunion Island in July last year. MH370 went missing two years ago. Satellite images off the coast of Mozambique seen by MaltaToday are intriguing. One of the images, by the coast of the Matatuine district of the east Af- rican country, clearly shows a capital letter 'M'. The Coleiros believe that this could signal the location of the part of the plane where its registra- tion number – 9M-MRO – was written. Further south, the brothers spot- ted what appears to be an 's' next to what they believe to be a 'y' – cut off at the tip and bent in the style used by Malaysia Airlines. The Coleiros believe that the symbols next to it could be an 'a' and an 'l'. The stickers on the plane were a dark shade of blue, in contrast with the white letters seen on Google Earth. However, Charles Coleiro – a former manager at the Medavia aviation company – said that this anomaly could be explained through reflection. This is not the first sighting of the Malaysia Airlines plane on Google Earth; earlier this month, a UFO hunter claimed to have stumbled upon the body of the plane while searching for alien life off the coast of South Africa. Google has warned users not to rely on its satellite imagery for MH370-hunting, as the images are provided by third parties and are of- ten several weeks or months old. Yet the Coleiros' location is cer- tainly consistent with the recent discovery of debris that the Austral- ian government is "almost certain" originates from the missing Malaysia Airlines plane. Blaine Gibson, an American law- yer who had spent much of the last year on a solo quest to find the plane, stumbled upon a metre-long piece of metal on a sandbank in Mozam- bique on 27 February. Global cover- age of his find prompted South Af- rican teenager Liam Lotter to come forward with a similar piece of metal that he had found on a beach while on holiday in Mozambique. The two pieces of debris were sent to Canberra for examination, where they were found earlier this week to be consistent with panels from a Ma- laysia Airlines Boeing 777 aircraft. Prior to these finds, only a wing part that drifted on a beach on the Indian Ocean island of Réunion had been confirmed as originating from the missing plane. "That such debris has been found on the east coast of Africa is consist- ent with drift modelling performed by CSIRO and further affirms our search efforts in the southern Indian Ocean," Australian infrastructure minister Darren Chester said. "The search for MH370 continues. There are 25,000 square kilometres of the underwater search area still to be searched. We are focused on com- pleting this task and remain hopeful the aircraft will be found." The MH370 aeroplane vanished on 8 March 2014 during a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, with 239 passengers and crew on board. Australia is leading the search for the missing jet in the southern In- dian Ocean, where the plane is be- lieved to have crashed after diverting from its route. The alleged debris can be viewed on Google Earth and Google Maps by typing in the official coordi- nates: 26°32'00.3"S 32°54'58.2"E and 26°19'48.4"S 32°55'49.7"E. tdiacono@mediatoday.com.mt A Google Earth view of the alleged debris, clearly showing an 'M' shape Raymond Coleiro (left) and his brother Charles A Google Earth view of the alleged debris, clearly showing an 's' shape and what could be a cut off 'y'