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
• She 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

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 the jet disappeared.
Her comments come 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.
The Kuala Lumpur wife is so convinced about what she saw at 2.30 in the afternoon of March 8, several hours after MH370 had been reported missing, that she has filed an official report with police.

And she admitted that 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.

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

Ignored: Mrs Latife Dalelah said that she alerted an air stewardess about her sighting, but was told to get some sleep

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.

A map showing the possible routes MH370 could have taken after it vanished from radar on March 8

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.'
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.
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.'
He said the suspected debris may well have sunk.