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An airline boss has claimed missing Flight MH370 might NOT be in the Indian Ocean after all.

Emirates Airlines president Sir Tim Clark also said he believes the jet, which disappeared on March 8 with 239 passengers and crew on board, was not on autopilot when it came down.

In an interview with German magazine Der Spiegel, Sir Tim, said: "Our experience tells us that in water incidents, where the aircraft has gone down, there is always something.

"We have not seen a single thing that suggests categorically that this aircraft is where they say it is, apart from this so-called electronic satellite 'handshake', which I question as well."

He added: "MH370 was, in my opinion, under control, probably until the very end.

Sir Tim's theory runs counter to current thinking that the Boeing 777 was on autopilot until it ran out of fuel and crashed into the southern Indian Ocean, having taken off from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia en route to Beijing, China.

Emirates operates 127 777s, more than any other airline, and Sir Tim said he was suspicious that no-one seems to know where the jet came down.

He told the magazine: "There hasn't been one over-water incident in the history of civil aviation - apart from Amelia Earhart in 1939 - that has not been at least 5 or 10% trackable.

"But MH370 has simply disappeared.

"For me, that raises a degree of suspicion.

"I'm totally dissatisfied with what has been coming out of all of this."

Sir Tim said the search for the missing plane - led by Australia - must continue but that the investigation into its disappearance must be more transparent.

"There is plenty of information out there, which we need to be far more forthright, transparent and candid about," he said.

"Every single second of that flight needs to be examined up until it, theoretically, ended up in the Indian Ocean - for which they still haven't found a trace, not even a seat cushion.

"MH370 remains one of the great aviation mysteries."

He added: "Personally, I have the concern that we will treat it as such and move on.

"At the most, it might then make an appearance on National Geographic as one of aviation's great mysteries," he said.

"We mustn't allow this to happen.

"We must know what caused that airplane to disappear."