Conspiracy theory suggests MH370 flew to little lost island of Diego Garcia

Diego Garcia, a little island in the world's most remote locations, has been suggested as a possible location for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.

The island, which is 3600km from Africa's east coast and 4700km northwest of Australia, is home to 1700 military personnel and 1500 civilian contractors.

It has a large runway that can accommodate commercial aircraft, and because of its remoteness and runway, it is believed that Diego Garcia is a possible location for the jet, news.com.au reports.

According to the report, this theory was given some credibility when it was discovered that the island's landing strip was programmed into the home flight simulator of MH370's pilot, Captain Zaharie Shah.

The idea that MH370 landed in Diego Garcia has been claimed by American blogger Jim Stone, whose website gives a bewildering array of theories about major news events.

Stone has claimed that an American passenger, Philip Wood, on the fight managed to send a text from his iPhone stating that he was held hostage by unknown military personnel, along with GPS coordinates.

Those coordinates revealed a location a few kilometres away from Diego Garcia, Stone claimed.

However, contributors to the website Metabunk have argued that it is quite easy to fake a mobile phone's GPS coordinates.

Analysis of flight information, and the recent detection of underwater signals believed to have come from a black box flight recorder, point strongly to the theory that MH370 crashed in the waters of the southern Indian Ocean, the report added.