Just to inform this issue.
An aircraft at 35-40kft will rise above the visible horizon of a sea level observer at a surface range of some 230-240 miles or so. You can add a few tens of miles for the height above sea level of an observer on a rig platform. So, the aircraft would be theoretically visible from a range of about 250 miles. It'll be extremely low to the horizon at that stage however, and very difficult to see until closer.
So the rig's 370 miles displacement from the aircraft's last reported position certainly presents a problem, but it's nothing like as big a discrepancy as most people would imagine based on their experience of viewing objects at and from ground or sea level, in which case the horizon is only a few miles away. Also, bear in mind that if MH370 did indeed come to grief over the Gulf of Thailand, it is unlikely to have done so at its last reported position and its normal flight path would have been carrying it generally toward the rig.
Unfortunately, the rig worker didn't specify the precise time of his observation, and I for one have rather lost the plot in terms of the confirmed time various events and positions occurred or were reported in reading this utterly unwieldy and rambling thread in which rumours and misunderstandings are frequently being promulgated repeatedly as unswervingly reliable facts.
"Send three and fourpence, we're going to a dance" about covers it, for those above a certain age...
The supposed oil-rig workers observation still makes no sense. If you read his email, he says
"I observed the burning (plane?) at high altitude"
So - even if he
was able to see this aircraft from
more than 350 miles away, it would not appear "at high altitude." All he would have been able to see,
if anything, is a bright light on the
HORIZON.
He would not have seen a plane at high altitude, could not have seen that it was "on fire" or "all in one piece."
it is either a hoax or he simply saw something else.
Can we please stop with the nonsense that someone 350 miles away saw a plane "up in the sky on fire?"