MH17 passenger ‘predicted plane crash tragedy’ in chilling final Facebook message posted as he boarded the doomed jet
AN MH17 passenger chillingly "predicted" the plane crash tragedy in a final Facebook message posted just as he boarded the doomed plane.
Cor Pan, of Volendam , in North Holland, uploaded a photo of the aircraft with the eerily prophetic caption: "If he disappears, this is what he looks like."
The comment is believed to have been a reference to Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 which went missing while flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing just months earlier.
Hours later he was dead after his flight with the same airline was blown out of the skies by Russian rebels as it flew over Ukraine.
A multi-national investigation later revealed it was obliterated after being hit by a Russian-made Buk surface-to-air missile.
The dead included ten Brits, 193 Dutch, 38 Australians and 43 Malaysians. Eighty of the victims were children.
The packed passenger jet left Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport at 12.31pm local time on July 17, 2014 and was due to arrive at Kuala Lumpur International Airport at 6.10am Malaysian time.
As he boarded the plane with his girlfriend Neeltje Tol, Cor took the photograph of the Boeing 777-200ER on the tarmac.
It's believed to be one of the last photographs of the plane before it was targeted.
After seeing the photo friends initially went along with his dark joke and wished him a good trip, but their messages quickly became frantic when news of the crash emerged.
The ten Brits killed in the MH17 atrocity
Lawyer John Allen, 44, was on board the Malaysia Airlines jet with wife Sandra and sons Christopher, Julian, and Ian, who are believed to be of Dutch nationality.
He worked for international law firm NautaDutilh and was described by colleagues at the time of the tragedy as “kind, down-to-earth and humorous”.
Andrew Hoare was also named along with students Richard Mayne and Ben Pocock, footie fans Liam Sweeney and John Alder, pilot Cameron Dalziel, UN health worker Glenn Thomas, dog breeder Richard Ayley and RAF man Stephen Anderson.
His cousin later posted the flight number underneath the picture and wrote: "Turns out our cousin Cor was on this plane."
Friends and family members then began to leave touching tributes to the couple with one moving post reading "rest in peace".
Another wrote: "Terrible and unfair. Rest in peace Cor and Neeltje."
Last week, four suspects were charged with mass murder over the shooting down of flight MH17.
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Three Russians and a Ukrainian were named by a Dutch-led Joint Investigation Team (JIT) after a five-year probe on the plane crash.
News of the charges came as the team said they had new evidence the missile launcher used in the cowardly attack was provided by the Russian Federation.
Those leading the investigation are now probing the "chain of command" in Russia to determine exactly how the weapon ended up with the suspects.
