THE Kiwi oil rig worker who claimed to have seen missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 burst into flames the morning it disappeared has been fired for his report to authorities.

New Zealander Mike McKay, who was working on an oil rig operating in the Gulf of Thailand, was so certain he saw the ill-fated flight on fire that he emailed his employers, urging them to forward the information on to authorities.

Unsure of whether the information was passed on, Mr McKay also emailed Vietnamese authorities and the NZ Embassy a few days later about what could have been the last chilling sighting of the missing jetliner.

“Gentlemen. I believe I saw the Malaysian Airlines flight come down. The timing is right,” he wrote.

“I observed (the plane?) burning at high altitude at a compass bearing of 265* to 275*”

Mr McKay said that after his incident report was leaked to the media, his contractor and rig owner, Songa Offshore, was inundated with calls which blocked their communications.

“This became intolerable for them and I was removed from the rig and not invited back,” he told the Sunday Star Times.

The drilling fluids consultant, who had worked in Vietnamese waters since 2008, said he was released from the rig five days early — but did get his full pay.

“Contracts meant little in the oilfield,” he reportedly said. “The oil patch is a rough, unforgiving game.”

McKay also made a statement to New Zealand Police for Interpol when he got home, the Sunday Star Times reports.

In his email to his employers on March 12 he claims he saw flames in the sky which quickly extinguished.

“From when I first saw the burning (plane) until the flames went out (still at high altitude) was 10-15 seconds. There was no lateral movement, so it was either coming toward our location, stationary, or going away from our location,” he wrote.

“The general position of the observation was perpendicular/south west of the normal flight paths.”

Mr McKay said the plane, if that is what it was, appeared to be in one piece.

“It is very difficult to judge the distance but I would say 50 to 70 kms along the compass bearing 260-277,” he wrote.

“The sea surface current at our location is 2-2.3 knots in the direction of 225-230.

“The wind direction has been E-ENE averaging 15-20 knots.

“(We see the con trails every day) and at a lower altitude than the normal flight paths or on the compass bearing 265 to 275 intersecting the normal flight paths at normal altitude but further away.”

Vietnamese naval officer Le Minh Thanh told America’s ABC News that Vietnamese officials sent a plane to the area to investigate the man’s claims, but the search was fruitless.

Mr McKay’s report was brought back into the media focus last week after a sailor said she saw a burning Boeing 777 near Thailand the morning MH370 disappeared.

Katherine Tee said she was sailing across the Indian Ocean in March when she saw what she believes was the missing Malaysia Airlines plane MH370, billowing black smoke across the night sky.

The British woman was sailing from Kochi, India, to Phuket, Thailand, with her husband, Marc Horn, when she saw what appeared to be a large aircraft on fire.

“I thought I saw a burning plane cross behind our stern from port to starboard, which would have been approximately north to south,” Ms Tee wrote on sailing website, Cruisers’ Forum.

“Since that’s not something you see every day, I questioned my mind. I was looking at what appeared to be an elongate plane glowing bright orange, with a trail of black smoke behind it. It did occur to me that it might be a meteorite. But I thought it was more likely that I was going insane.”