Does a plane wreck full of skeletons end MH370 riddle?

A flaperon was found on the coast of the island of Reunion. Picture: Getty

Police yesterday confirmed they had received reports of the discovery in thick jungle on the remote island of Sugbai.

An audio technician, Jamil Omar, phoned police in Malaysia to say his aunt, Siti Kayam, had stumbled upon the wreckage while she and others were hunting for birds.

Police commissioner Jalaludin Abdul Rahman, based in neighbouring Borneo, said the woman claimed she climbed into the smashed fuselage and saw skeletons.

He said: “Jamil claimed his aunt had entered the aircraft wreckage, which had many human skeletons and bones.

“She also found a Malaysian flag measuring 70 inches long and 35 inches wide.”

The report also claimed that the birdwatchers “found skeletal remains in the pilot’s chair with the seat belt fastened.”

Speculation grew that the wreckage could belong to the missing Malaysia Airlines flight that disappeared in March last year with 239 people on board.

Mr Jalaludin said Special Branch officers in the Borneo state of Sabah, where the telephone report was received, were planning to record a statement from Jamil, as details were still sparse.

Police yesterday remained reserved about the report, mindful of confirmation by French authorities that part of an aircraft wing – a flaperon – found on the island of Reunion in the west of the Indian Ocean earlier this year had been confirmed as being from MH370.

However, police are understood to have not dismissed the possibility that the flaperon could have broken off from the aircraft after it took off in March last year to fly from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, the missing part causing the pilots problems in handling the jet. Adding to the general mystery is a report by oil rig worker Mike McKay earlier this year that he saw an “aircraft on fire” as he stood at night on his rig off the southern tip of Vietnam.

For MH370 to have come down on remote Sugbai island, it would have had to divert from its north east course after takeoff and head due east towards the lower Philippines islands.

A catastrophic disaster, an explosion, a fire, or even a hijacking, could have resulted in it veering around the skies, experts have said.

Australian, Malaysian and Chinese authorities have been sharing information based on satellite signals that have resulted in an intensive search of waters south west of Australia in the southern Indian Ocean.

Despite high-tech scouring of the waters and the ocean floor, there has been no sign of the plane in that area, the only discovery confirmed as from the aircraft being the flaperon found earlier this year on Reunion.

A poll conducted by CNN last year found that one in ten Americans believe that “space aliens, time travellers or beings from another dimension” were involved in the plane’s disappearance. Not even the discovery of the Reunion debris has allayed suspicions.