Man Finds What Look Like Plane Seats on Beach and the Internet Has Thoughts on Where They’re From (Exclusive)

A man has found a row of what look like airplane seats washed up on the Jersey shore – and his viral Tiktok video has followers theorizing what it might be made of.

Matthew Jacob was out checking for good surf conditions after a storm in Margate, NJ, on Dec. 19 when something caught his eye by the water, he tells PEOPLE. “I wasn’t sure what it was. At first I thought it was a tree branch. As I got closer, I realized I was looking at seats. The closer I got, they seemed to be airplane seats,” says the actor, who will soon appear in Al Pacino’s film Killing Castro.

He shared a video of his discovery on TikTok and Instagram, and the video quickly went viral, garnering more than 12 million views, one million likes and over 42,000 comments since it was posted on Wednesday.

courtesy of Matthew Jacob

He showed a close-up of the rusted seats that still had springs, although there was no fabric. Some of the seats had a metal handrail between them, looking similar to those on the plane, which led him to suspect that they might have come from an ill-fated flight.

courtesy of Matthew Jacob

“I was thinking about the Malaysia Airlines flight in my mind,” he says of his first thought after seeing the wreckage. But his TikTok commenters had other ideas.

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Matthew Jacob.

courtesy of Matthew Jacob

Several people speculated in his comments that the seats could be from the wreckage of TWA Flight 800, which crashed into the Atlantic Ocean about eight miles south of East Moriches, NY on Long Island on July 17, 1996.

MATT CAMPBELL/AFP via Getty

Witnesses at the time told the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) that they saw an explosion before burning debris fell into the ocean. All 230 people on board died.

After a lengthy investigation, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) determined that the cause of the accident was “a center wing fuel tank explosion, which resulted from the ignition of flammable fuel/air vapors in the tank.” However, conspiracies still exist. about what caused the disaster.

One top comment on Jacob’s TikTok said: “4 across means it has to be from a wide body plane. The TWA 800 had a 3-4-3 economy configuration, just saying.”

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Chip Somodevilla/Getty

Asked if he gives any weight to the theory, Jacob tells PEOPLE, “After reading a lot of the comments on TikTok, I’m not sure what to believe anymore.”

“Everyone seems to have a different theory,” he says. “I spoke to the officer when he took the seats. He was shocked. You can hear him in my TikTok video completely surprised.” Jacob posted several follow-up videos, including one showing police removing beach chairs from the back of a pickup truck.

Aviation expert and book author The New York Times best seller collision detectives, Christine Negroni estimated the likelihood that the seats could be from TWA Flight 800.

“I have a little difficulty connecting these to TWA for a couple of reasons,” she tells PEOPLE. “First, there are no armrests between each seat; the seats have armrests every two seats. However, four abreast would be correct for the center section of the 747-100 that was TWA 800.”

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He also notes that Flight 800 exploded in 1996, and the wreckage Jacob found “doesn’t look like it’s been submerged in salt water for 28 years.”

A mockup of Flight 800 as it was reassembled during the crash investigation shows that “not all the seats were returned,” she allows. “Some were apparently destroyed when the center wing tank exploded.”

The spring supports visible in the seats, however, seem to be Negroni’s death knell for the airplane theory. After consulting with the airline’s mechanics, she tells PEOPLE that the presence of metal springs all but rules out the possibility that the seats are from a commercial jet, according to experts.

However, something large enough to hold seats of that size ended up in the Atlantic and the question is what remains. Tiktok detectives are already working on the case and sharing theories on the platform.

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Looking for extra trash on a beach day in New Jersey might not be the best method, Negroni says.

It’s not particularly common for plane debris to wash up on beaches, she notes, but it happened quite often in the case of Malaysia Flight 370. “In that case, combers at several locations found parts of the plane,” she says.

The New Jersey State Police told Jacob they have detectives looking into what the seats might be made of, and he plans to notify those following the mystery on their social media accounts.

Categories: Trends
Source: HIS Education