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Keen-eyed amateur sleuth John Barnsley, from Liverpool, spotted the anomaly on Google Satellite view, which appeared to show a large aircraft in jungle 50 miles south of the city of Ranong, in the north of Malaysia. Mr Barnsley, from Liverpool, said: “It gives me the chills when I saw it.

“This is a large plane where it should not be.”

However, Express.co.uk was subsequently contacted by technology company SOAR, which is aiming to rival Google Maps by building a decentralised global super-map of the world built on blockchain technology.

It's rare but the Earth is a big place and sometimes when a satellite is capturing an area it just so happens that a plane is flying beneath it at cruising altitude Chris Lowe

Chris Lowe, the company’s lead blockchain scientist, said of the missing Malaysia Airlines fight: “It's rare but the Earth is a big place and sometimes when a satellite is capturing an area it just so happens that a plane is flying beneath it at cruising altitude. “When this happens the plane appears to be on the ground because the Satellite is so far away and effectively has an infinite focal length. “For an analogy consider someone holding a toy plane at the opposite end of a football field and then taking a step backwards. “From your perspective the plane is about the same size your eyes focus on it the same way.

The plane, as seen on Google Satellite View by Mr Barnsley

“This is how people mistake these kinds of images as being planes on the ground. “To completely disprove this claim it is the missing MH370 we simply use the Soar platform to view that exact area using different satellite passes.” Mr Lowe provided two photographs, one from Google Maps and one produced using his software, which he said proved the location of the plane to be an optical illusion.



He also said a real crash site would cause massive structural damage to the aircraft not present in the plane featured in the Google images.

Soars' analysis (right) shows the image on the left is an optical illusion

He also supplied a video showing a similar analysis of images purporting to show a plane in the Cambodian jungle which conspiracy theorists have also claimed is MH370.



Mr Lowe added: “Our company was very heavily involved in the search for MH370 using remote sensing technology in the days and weeks following the disappearance.”



Flight MH370 was carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew when went missing four years ago during a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.



An exhaustive search of the Indian Ocean’s seabed followed.



There were exhaustive searches after the disappearance of MH370

MH370 went missing four years ago