British woman who ‘saw flight MH370 on fire’ shared exactly what she witnessed

Olivia Burke
2026-02-07T16:57:29.415Z
News

Katherine Tee said she thought she 'was going insane' when she saw an ominous glow and black smoke in the Indian Ocean

The mystery surrounding the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 remains unsolved nearly 12 years on - but a British sailor reckoned she might have spotted the wreckage of it on fire.

Katherine Tee suspects the 'bright orange' flames and the 'trail of black smoke' she saw in the Indian Ocean may have been the remnants of the plane that vanished while carrying 239 people.

More than a decade ago, 227 passengers and 12 crew members climbed on board the Boeing 777-200ER in Kuala Lumpur to head to Beijing, China.

But just 40 minutes into the flight on 8 March 2014, the plane disappeared from radar. It has still never been found.

Those on board have been presumed dead, while the disappearance of flight MH370 is regarded as one of the greatest aviation mysteries in history.

The Malaysia Airlines plane carrying 239 people vanished 40 minutes after takeoff (Greg Wood - Pool/Getty Images)

Various theories have been put forward about what might have happened to the passenger jet, while several searches have been conducted in efforts to track it down.

Sadly, these have yielded nothing more than bits of debris, which washed up along the coast of Africa and on islands in the Indian Ocean.

Experts believe that the aircraft may have deviated from its planned route, flying west for several hours before it disappeared.

British sailor Katherine Tee previously claimed that she suspected she might have seen the lost plane ablaze in the Indian Ocean.

On the fateful day that flight MH370 vanished, she was sailing from Cochin, India, to Phuket, Thailand, with her husband Marc Horn.

Tee detailed exactly what she saw while speaking to the Phuket Gazette back in 2014 - but explained she didn't report it sooner as she thought she 'was going insane'.

Various searches for the wreckage of the plane have been carried out in the Indian Ocean (Peter D. Blair/U.S. Navy via Getty Images)

Recalling what she allegedly witnessed, she said: "I thought I saw a burning plane cross behind our stern from port to starboard, which would have been approximately north to south.

"Since that’s not something you see every day, I questioned my mind. I was looking at what appeared to be an elongated 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.

"It caught my attention because I had never seen a plane with orange lights before so I wondered what they were. I could see the outline of the plane, it looked longer than planes usually do."

Tee said she had seen another aircraft in the sky in the area and believed that if there was an emergency unfolding, the pilot of this aircraft would report it.

"I wondered again why it had such bright orange lights," she continued. "They reminded me of sodium lights. I thought it could be some anomaly or just a meteor."

Investigators have only found debris despite extensive searches over the last 12 years (Adli Ghazali/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

She and Marc continued their voyage to Phuket and ultimately arrived two days later, which is when they heard 'everyone talking about the missing plane'.

As she 'doubted' what she had seen, Tee said she didn't voice what she had witnessed in the Indian Ocean, adding: "Besides, I thought they’d find it."

But the experienced sailor, from Liverpool, later sifted back through the GPS logs of her journey.

"Lo and behold, what we saw was consistent with the confirmed contact which the authorities had from MH370," Tee continued.

"This is what convinced me to file a report with the full track data for our voyage to the relevant authorities."

It is unclear whether or not Tee's sighting was ever investigated after she reported it to the Joint Agency Coordination Centre (JACC) in June 2014.