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After the plane's disappearance in 2014, satellite company Inmarsat outlined several possible flight paths it could have taken.

It mapped those zones using a series of "handshakes" – automatic contacts made between planes and satellites as they fly – which were traced back to show the journey MH370 may have taken.

At 00:11 UTC on March 9 in 2014, hours after MH370 had taken off from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, it determined the last complete handshake took place on a radius zone that runs through Cambodia.

This could give hope to Ian Wilson, who claims he has spotted the plane on Google Maps 60 miles west of capital Phnom Penh.

Wilson told Daily Star Online: "Initially I thought it crashed into the sea.

"But then there's the northern and southern corridors. That seventh ping is almost exactly where the plane is."

Inmarsat said it believes the plane crashed in two possible zones, the northern and southern corridors.

The northern arc runs from southern China all the way through to Uzbekistan.

And the southern arc runs through the Indian Ocean.

It said the plane most likely crashed in one of these corridors.

The Malaysian government has also emphasised that the last handshake should not be interpreted as the final position of the aircraft.

But Wilson clings on to the hope that because his sighting falls within the radius released by Inmarsat, his sighting could well be the plane.

(Image: INMARSAT/GOOGLE)

Commenting on his Google spot, he told us: "I was up all night.

"I was having real trouble sleeping, and when I eventually came across that plane it was really surreal, the hairs stood on the back of my neck.

"From every angle possible, it’s laying up against the mountain, and you can view it at ground level.

"I can’t take talk of it being airborne seriously at all. As I say it’s a program I use all the time and I’ve seen many planes in flight.

"If I thought this could be one of them I wouldn’t have bothered arranging vaccinations and saving money to go and find it."

He is getting vaccinations this week, and will trek into the Cambodian jungle in the hope of unravelling the greatest aviation mystery of all time.

Handshakes are a series of automatic communications with the jet from the satellite.

If Inmarsat fails to hear from an aircraft for an hour, it sends off a ping and the aircraft automatically returns a short message indicating it is still logged on, known as the "handshake".

There were six completed handshakes after the ACARS, the aircraft's operational communications system, stopped sending messages.

Inmarsat then calculated the range of the aircraft from the satellite to generate its possible positions.

Wilson's sighting measures around 70 metres, slightly longer than the Boeing 777-200 but with a mysterious gap between the tail and body.

It also lies 60 miles west of Phnom Penh, an area air traffic controllers enquired about following its disappearance.

(Image: GOOGLE) (Image: SPACESAFETY)

And air traffic controllers were even told it was in Cambodian air space at one point, before this was later judged incorrect.

The MH370 Safety Investigation Report said radar and satellite analysis determined it flew back across the Malaysian peninsula, then towards the Indian Ocean.

They then conclude it ran out of fuel and crashed into the water west of Australia.

But investigators say they are not ruling out any possibilities, and conceded at the end of a 1,500-page report they do not know what happened to the plane.