Day 88 — 'I saw MH370 on fire'

A British woman sailing across the Indian Ocean in March claims that she may have seen the lost Malaysian Boeing 777 aircraft on fire.

Katherine Tee was sailing from Cochin (India) to Phuket (Thailand) with her husband, Marc Horn, when she saw what appeared to be a large aircraft crossing the night sky, trailing a plume of black smoke.

Ms Tee was on night-watch on the couple’s 40ft sloop on the night of March 7-8 when flight MH370 vanished.

The couple have since re-checked their sailing logs and believe they were near one of the projected flight paths for the aircraft, which went missing on 8 March.

They have now filed a report to the Joint Agency Coordination Centre (JACC), the Australian government agency running the search for the missing airliner, with the full track data for their voyage.

Tee claims there were also other planes visible that night. "There were two other planes well above it – moving the other way – at the time. They had normal navigation lights. I remember thinking that if it was a plane on fire that I was seeing, the other aircraft would report it."

MH370 was carrying a consignment of lithium-ion batteries with a "flammability hazard" warning on the packaging, but experts had previously ruled out fire as a cause for the disappearance.