Malaysian woman claims to have seen missing MH370 in the water near Andaman Islands on day it disappeared

Latife Dalelah said she saw aircraft-shaped object on Kuala Lumpur flight

S he told an air stewardess what she'd seen, but was told to get some sleep

A pilot said she would have been too high up to identify a plane in water

Aircraft and ships renew their search for MH370 in the Andaman Sea

Dalelah's sighting made five days before search expanded to its location



As aircraft and ships continued to search for debris which might be that of the missing flight MH370 on Friday a Malaysian woman on a flight across the Indian Ocean claimed to have seen an aircraft in the water near the Andaman Islands on the day the jet disappeared.

The Kuala Lumpur wife was so convinced about what she saw at 2.30pm on March 8, several hours after MH370 vanished, that she filed an official report with police that very day - a full five days before the search for the plane was expanded to the area around the Andaman Islands.



News of her apparent sighting came as a blank was drawn after two days of searching in the Indian Ocean for two objects deemed by experts as possibly being from the missing plane.

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Shocked: Raja Dalelah Raja Latife said she was alarmed when she saw what looked like a plane in the water as she flew to Kuala Lumpur Location: The Andaman Islands are far north of the debris that's been sighted by a U.S satellite

Revealed: The final 54 minutes of communication between the flight deck on board the missing plane and air traffic controllers has today been revealed

JUST HOW CREDIBLE ARE MRS DALELAH'S CLAIMS?

Many will warn against dismissing Mrs Dalelah's claims too quickly. The islands do lie across a route MH370 could have taken after radar contact was lost and it would easily have been able to reach them before Mrs Dalelah's sighting at 2.30pm.

After its transponder was turned off at 1.21am on March 8 the plane, with enough fuel to last 2,500 miles, turned west, following an established route towards India.

An ephemeral satellite ping registered at 8.11am suggested the plane was heading in one of two directions - south to where the potential debris was spotted, or north into China and central Asia. The Andaman Islands lie 890 miles to the north-west of Kuala Lumpur, well within range. Officials still haven't ruled out MH370 being found in a northerly location, with aircraft and ships renewing their search in the Andaman Sea between India and Thailand on Friday.

Her account will be seen by many as having credibility as the islands lie within the northern corridor officials speculated that the plane might have travelled along after radar contact was lost.

However, Mrs Dalelah said she had received scorn about her account, including from a pilot who said the aircraft she was on would have been too high for her to have seen anything on the ocean below.

But mother of 10 Mrs Latife Dalelah, 53, insisted she saw a silver object in the shape of an aircraft on the water as she was flying from Jeddah to Kuala Lumpur. It was about an hour after her aircraft had flown past the southern Indian city of Chennai.



'Throughout the journey I was staring out of the window of the aircraft as I couldn't sleep during the flight,' she told the New Straits Times.



The in-flight monitor showed that her plane was crossing the Indian Ocean and she had seen several shipping liners and islands - before she saw the silvery object.



'I took a closer look and was shocked to see what looked like the tail and wing of an aircraft on the water,' she said.



'I woke my friends on the flight but they laughed me off,' she added.

Strange: A former pilot said the plane's sharp westwards turn, as radar contact was lost, came as air traffic controllers in Malaysia handed over to their Vietnamese colleagues. Stephen Buzdygan said that is moment he would choose if he were to steal a plane

The same reaction has come from a pilot who questioned how anyone flying at about seven miles above sea level could see anything like a boat or ship from so high up.



But Mrs Dalelah insisted to the paper: 'I know what I saw. I am convinced that I saw the aircraft. I will not lie. I had just returned from my pilgrimage.'



A large part of what she thought was an aircraft was submerged, she said. When she tried to tell an air stewardess what she had seen, she was told to get some sleep.



When her plane landed at Kuala Lumpur at about 4pm on that Saturday she told her children what she had seen. 'That is when they told me that MH370 had gone missing,' she told the paper.



'My son-in-law, a policeman, was convinced that I had seen an aircraft and asked me to lodge a police report the same day.



'Many of my friends on the flight doubted me at first, but they are beginning to believe me now that we know the plane (MH370) turned back and entered the Indian Ocean.'

INDIA DOESN'T WANT CHINESE SHIPS 'SNIFFING ROUND' TERRITORY India has refused China's offer to send four warships to aid the hunt for MH370 near the Andaman and Nicobar archipelago. Officials said China's request to enter Indian territorial waters had been 'politely turned down' because Indian warships and aircraft were already searching the area. One official told The Times of India: 'The A&N command is our military outpost in the region, which overlooks the Malacca Strait and dominates the Six-Degree Channel. 'We don't want Chinese warships sniffing around in the area on the pretext of hunting for the missing jetliner or anti-piracy patrols.'



Many will warn against dismissing Mrs Dalelah's claims too quickly.

The islands do lie across a route MH370 could have taken after radar contact was lost and it would easily have been able to reach them before Mrs Dalelah's sighting at 2.30pm.



After its transponder was turned off at 1.21am on March 8 the plane, with enough fuel to last 2,500 miles, turned west, following an established route towards India.



An ephemeral satellite ping registered at 8.11am suggested the plane was heading in one of two directions - south to where the potential debris was spotted, or north into China and central Asia.

The Andaman Islands lie 890 miles to the north-west of Kuala Lumpur, well within range.

Officials still haven't ruled out MH370 being found in a northerly location, with aircraft and ships renewing their search in the Andaman Sea between India and Thailand on Friday.

Several MailOnline readers, including qualified pilots, have left comments backing Mrs Dalelah.

Chivers49, from Hertfordshire, said: 'The captain is being arrogant. An aircraft flying at 35,000ft is quite clear in the sky, so why should it have been "impossible" for her to see a similar image on the sea?' And Zen, from Perth, Australia, said: 'You never know they should check everything out and not dismiss anything.'

Zeppelinpilot, from Montreal in Canada, said: 'Being a pilot for the past 25 years and having flown in this area a few years ago, this appears to be the best lead received so far. According to the pilot incapacitation theory, this seems to the most logical place to look for MH370. We should give full credibility to this eyewitness account and investigate further on this location.'



Ships and aircraft have renewed the search for MH370 around the Andaman Islands

Meanwhile, the agency co-ordinating the exhaustive search operation for MH370 still holds out hope of finding people alive, as authorities scramble to cover the massive 600,000 square-kilometre (230,000 square-mile) search area.

The Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) revealed on Friday that they were preparing for the remote possibility of a human rescue mission, should the two large objects spotted by satellite some 2,500 kilometres (1,500 miles) off the coast of Perth be related to the missing Malaysian Airlines flight.

John Young, the general manager of AMSA's Emergency Response Division, said the focus of the massive search operation - which now includes 29 planes, 21 ships and six helicopters from more than 20 contributor countries - was first and foremost on trying to locate the large pieces of debris, one up to 24 metres (78ft) in length, the other five metres (16 feet).



'We want to find these objects because they might be the best lead to where we might find people to be rescued,' Mr Young said.

'We have done some work on that area and we're still focused on that task, to find people to be rescued.

Scouring: Royal Australian Air Force pilot Russell Adams searches an area some 2,500 kilometres southwest of Perth for debris possibly from MH370

'It is a very large team effort... with the international community providing technical support and information and we're all very grateful for that.'

The two objects are in one of the most remote areas of the world - about the same distance from Perth as London is from Moscow - which means that aircraft only have a limited time to conduct searches.

And it takes them four hours to get there.



What's more, the area is renowned for shipping debris - so much so that it's dubbed 'the maritime dustbin'.

There is a strong chance, therefore, that the objects in fact fell off a ship.

Inmarsat's remote black box will replace traditional black box technology that has used physical onboard recorders (illustrated above)

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, who announced news of the objects on Thursday, warned: 'It could just be a container that has fallen off a ship. We just don't know.'

Treacherous weather hampered Thursday's search effort, but the operation resumed on Friday in much clearer weather, with planes scouring an area slightly to the north of the zone that was combed initially.

This is because strong currents may have moved the objects.



'It's about the most inaccessible spot that you can imagine on the face of the earth, but if there is anything down there, we will find it,' Mr Abbott told reporters in Papua New Guineau, where he is on a visit.

'We owe it to the families of those people (on board) to do no less.'

The pilot from the first RAAF P3 Orion to return from its second sweep of the search area told a press gathering at Pearce RAAF air base: 'We've got a lot of hope.'

'We got out there and had really good weather,' he said.

'Compared to yesterday the visibility was great, more than 10km visibility, we had a really opportunity to see.

'There are more aircraft out there, still searching, and with any luck we'll find something shortly. We've got a lot of hope.'

Warren Truss, who is acting prime minister while Tony Abbott is in Papua New Guinea, said: 'The last report I have is that nothing of particular significance has been identified in the search today [Friday] but the work will continue.'