Philippines/Aircraft Wreckage on Sugbai Island
Aircraft Wreckage on Sugbai Island, Philippines
In October 2015 a story emerged relating to aircraft wreckage seen on Sugbai Island in the Philippines.
The report of the apparent sighting was lodged, not in the Philippines, but at Sandakan police station in the Malaysian state of Sabah.
The claim was investigated by Philippines authorities. The wreckage was not located.
This article shows how the incident developed, with a conclusion that the wreckage, if any, was not MH370.
Date
Original 'sighting' September 2015. Reported to police 10 October 2015.
Location
Sugbai (or Subay) is a small Philippine island in the Sulu Archipelago between the Sulu Sea and the Celebes Sea. It is in the South Ubian municipality of Tawi-Tawi province. There is a fishing village on its southern shore. [1]
Approximate location of Sugbai Island, Philippines
Source: Google Maps
Details
The report of an aircraft wreckage with human remains inside was made at the Sandakan police station on 10 October 2015, as reported by The Straits Times:-
KOTA KINABALU (THE STAR/ASIA NEWS NETWORK) - The police in the Malaysian state of Sabah have received a report claiming that an aircraft wreckage with the Malaysian flag painted on it was found on a southern Philippines island.
The report was made by a man who said the wreckage with human remains inside was spotted by his nephew, from the southern Philippine island of Tawi Tawi, at Ubian Island in southern Phillippines several days ago.
State Commissioner Jalaluddin Abdul Rahman said the man made the report at the Sandakan police station on Saturday (Oct 10).
"This matter is being investigated," he told The Star in a text message.
In the report the man, an audio visual technician in his 40s, said his nephew and a few others were hunting for birds when they spotted the wreckage on the island.
They managed to get near the wreckage where they found human bones. They also found skeletal remains in the pilot's chair with the seat belt fastened.
Before leaving the area, they took a flag they found in the wreckage.
Source: Sabah police gets report claiming plane wreck with Malaysian flag found on Philippine island, The Straits Times TSTSG-583
Investigation
The Sydney Morning Herald and SBSNews provided some details of the investigation by Philippine authorities:-
...Captain Giovanni Carlo Bacordo, the commander of Naval Task Force 61 in the Philippines, told Malaysia's The Star Online that suggestions that the wreckage may have been from MH370 were not true.
"We deployed a gunboat there because of the news. We interviewed the people at the Sugbay Island, the fishermen, but they have no knowledge about it," he said.
"Even the people residing in the island for the longest time have no knowledge of this."
Source: Plane wreck in Philippines 'containing skeleton' not MH370, authorities say, The Sydney Morning Herald SMHAU-585
The Sydney Morning Herald article also revealed the name of the man who made the report -Jamil Omar. Mr Omar's nephew has not been named.
Philippine authorities said on Tuesday that no plane wreckage had been found, and questioned the credibility of the apparent police witness.
"I sent people to the site where it (the plane wreck) was supposedly seen and the results were negative," the deputy police director of Tawi-Tawi, Superintendent Glenn Roy Gabor, told AFP by phone on Tuesday.
"There was someone who was spreading that story, but it has no truth to it and the person spreading it has disappeared."
Gabor said that if a big plane had crashed on Sagbay island, as the man reportedly claimed to Malaysian police, local residents would definitely have noticed.
"We interviewed the local people and they didn't see anything. That is a small area. It is impossible they wouldn't see something like that," he said.
Tawi-Tawi governor Nurbert Sahali also released a statement saying no wreckage had been found.
Source: No MH370 wreckage found: Philippines, SBSNews SBSAU-585
Comments
The Philippine government response is commendable but no-one seems to have spoken with Mr Omar's nephew. Consequently, no investigator actually saw what may have been hidden on the island.
Instead, authorities went there looking for evidence of a crashed Boeing 777, confirmed that local residents neither heard nor saw an aircraft of that magnitude, or any wreckage, and consequently (and correctly) dismissed the report as not relevant to the search for MH370. Also, it was known by October 2015 that a flaperon, believed to be from MH370, had been found on Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean.
It is possible that what was seen by the bird hunters was the remnants of a World War II aircraft, covered by the forest and not observable from above.
- ↑ Source: Sugbai, Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugbai