An overlooked eyewitness account from oil rig worker Mike McKay, who claimed to see Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 burning in the night sky the moment it vanished, is now reigniting debate and suspicion that investigators may have ignored the earliest — and most haunting — clue to the plane’s mysterious fate.

It has been more than a decade since Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 vanished on March 8, 2014, during its journey from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board.

Despite one of the largest and most expensive searches in aviation history, the aircraft’s final moments remain unknown.

But now, renewed attention is being drawn to a chilling account that many experts dismissed too quickly — the testimony of an oil rig worker stationed in the middle of the South China Sea, who claimed he saw a plane on fire the very night MH370 disappeared.

His name is Mike McKay, a New Zealander working on the Songa Mercur oil rig off the coast of Vietnam.

On that fateful night, at approximately 1:00 a. m.

local time, McKay said he looked up from his deck and noticed a “bright light in the sky,” moving from north to south, far away but unusually low.

At first, he thought it might have been a shooting star — until he realized it was moving steadily and trailing a long streak of flame.

In a detailed email later sent to his supervisors and Malaysian authorities, McKay wrote:“From my position on the rig, I observed the plane in flames, burning at high altitude, before it appeared to break apart and fall from the sky.

I believe I saw the plane that went missing.”

McKay’s observation was made around the same time MH370’s transponder signal vanished from radar — just minutes after its last known contact with air traffic controllers over the South China Sea.

His coordinates, near latitude 8°22’30” N and longitude 108°42’22” E, matched the plane’s last known flight path before it veered west across the Malaysian Peninsula, according to later radar data.

But despite his urgent report, McKay’s account was largely ignored.

Authorities from Malaysia, Vietnam, and Australia quickly shifted the search zone thousands of miles away, toward the Indian Ocean, after satellite “handshake” data suggested the aircraft had flown for hours after disappearing from radar.

McKay’s testimony — and his alleged sighting of burning wreckage — was quietly set aside.

Now, experts are revisiting his story with new interest.

In recent months, independent analysts, including former Australian Transport Safety Bureau members, have raised the possibility that multiple anomalies in MH370’s data logs could mean the plane experienced an onboard emergency earlier than previously believed — possibly an electrical fire or fuel event.

That possibility aligns eerily with McKay’s sighting.

“The timing, the description of flames, the position — it all fits the early phase of the flight, before the plane made that impossible turn back toward Malaysia,” said one aviation researcher familiar with the case.

“If McKay was right, then we’ve been looking in the wrong ocean for ten years.”

Other evidence adds to the intrigue.

Several local fishermen near Vietnam’s Tho Chu Island reported seeing a low-flying object and hearing loud booms on the same night.

Their statements, though also dismissed at the time, mirror aspects of McKay’s account — a bright fireball descending toward the horizon.

Still, skeptics remain.

Investigators note that satellite data from Inmarsat remains the strongest evidence placing MH370 far west of McKay’s location.

“The satellite handshakes don’t lie,” one official said.

“There’s no credible evidence the plane went down near Vietnam.”

Yet some aviation experts argue that both accounts could, in theory, be correct — if the plane suffered a fire or explosion before regaining altitude and continuing its ghostly journey westward.

In that scenario, McKay may have witnessed an early emergency event, not the final crash.

The mystery deepens further with new digital reconstructions of MH370’s potential flight path, suggesting brief bursts of communication between the aircraft and ground stations that may have occurred earlier than recorded.

If verified, it could reopen one of the most controversial aspects of the entire investigation: whether officials knew more in the early hours than they disclosed.

For McKay, who returned home to New Zealand years ago, the experience still haunts him.

In a later interview, he said:“I know what I saw.

It was an aircraft in flames.

And I’ve always believed it was MH370.

Maybe one day, someone will prove it.”

More than a decade later, his words echo with tragic resonance.

If true, his sighting might represent the last human eyes to witness the doomed plane in flight — a brief, fiery streak across the night sky before vanishing into the darkness.

As the search for truth continues, McKay’s testimony serves as both a warning and a reminder: sometimes, the simplest eyewitness account can be the one the world refuses to believe.