Featured Image Credit: Instagram/@deepbluedivecenter / Getty/JIWEI QU
Submerged deep under the water, off the coast of Jordan in the Middle East, an old passenger jet lies on the seabed gathering rust and coral across its fuselage.
Now, new footage released by a diver depicts the eerie interior of the abandoned plane, complete with seats, cockpit, and galleys.
But if you think you’re looking at the remains of a crash, don’t panic.
The plane – a Lockheed Martin L1011 Tristar – was in fact dropped to the bottom of the ocean intentionally in 2019.
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The reason? To provide a unique and interesting artefact for divers and adventurers to explore.
The 400-seater jet had previously sat abandoned at King Hussein International Airport, before being bought by Aqaba Special Economic Zone and sunk to boost tourism.
Divers must travel up to 28 meters deep to visit the wreck, which also forms an artificial reef providing a home to coral and other sea life.
And despite lying at the bottom of the sea, the aircraft remains mostly in one piece, including its engines, tail fin, and interior fittings.
However, despite already being a popular tourist attraction, the sunken plane went viral last year for an even stranger reason.
A now-deleted post on social media prompted intense speculation that the drowned plane was in fact the wreck of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which went missing in 2014.
The photos of the coral-covered fuselage had a caption which read: "Malaysia Airplane MH370 that disappeared 9 year ago has been found under ocean with no human skeleton.
The plane had 239 passengers on board," as reported by USA Today and The Mirror.
However, despite internet sleuths thinking they’d solved the mystery of the missing plane , and had found photos that – apparently – no government or news site had managed to get their hands on, fact-checkers quickly pointed out that the pictures actually showed the Tristar wreck off the coast of Jordan.
Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 left Kuala Lumpa Airport in the early hours of Saturday 8 March, 2014, scheduled to arrive in Beijing later that day.
However, only 40 minutes into the flight, ground control lost contact with the aircraft as radar showed the plane drifting far away from its flight path.
The plane then completely disappeared, presumed to have crashed somewhere in the Indian Ocean – a long way away from the Red Sea.
With the loss of all 239 people on board, its disappearance prompted the most expensive search in the history of aviation and triggered speculation about its fate.
The vanished plane fuels conspiracy theories to this day, including speculation that the pilot crashed the plane himself and even claims that it was the work of aliens.
