An Australian fisherman who claimed to have discovered the wing from missing flight MH370 has renewed calls for another search, almost 10 years on from its disappearance.
The Malaysia Airlines flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing made headlines around the world when it disappeared mid-flight with 239 people aboard on March 8, 2014.
Despite extensive multinational searches through the South Indian Ocean, authorities have been unable to recover any of the victims’ remains.
However, Australian fisherman Kit Olver recently revealed a strange find in his fishnet could prove searchers were looking in the wrong place.
The 78-year-old late last year told reporters he found a large commercial airplane wing about 55km off the south-east coast of South Australia in September or October 2014.
Australian fisherman Kit Olver (pictured), 78, claims he found a wing off MH370 in late 2014
Mr Olver told 60 Minutes, in an episode aired on Sunday, he was absolutely sure what he’d seen was the wing of MH370, but had to return it to the water due to its weight.
‘It was the wing off a bloody aircraft,’ he said.
When asked when it occurred to him the wing likely belonged to MH370, Mr Olver said: ‘Pretty much as soon as we saw it, we thought it. Of course we did.
‘We got a pretty fair look at it.’
Mr Olver’s discovery has reignited desperate calls from the victims’ families for another search for the wreckage of MH370.
One of those calls is from Jacquie Gonzales, whose husband Patrick Gomes went missing in the tragedy.
‘I thought we would have answers way, way earlier,’ she said through tears.
‘He’s not coming back so we have to accept it, but we still need to know exactly where he is and how it happened.’
Underwater surveyor Peter Waring, who worked on the search for MH370 in 2015, believes the Malaysian government should fund the new search.
According to Mr Waring, it’s likely the original search parameters were outside of where the plane descended.
This is based on the theory someone was still in control of the plane when it crashed into the ocean.
Mr Waring believes it’s likely the original search parameters were outside of where the plane descended (pictured, an artist’s impression of the MH370 crash)
Underwater surveyor Peter Waring, who worked on the search for MH370 in 2015, believes Mr Olver’s claim is plausible (pictured: a map of key MH370 events)
‘If there’s someone at the controls all the way to the end, then the search area is very, very different than the one we actually looked at,’ he said.
‘That scenario, I don’t believe, has ever adequately been considered – certainly wasn’t by the Australian government.’
Aerospace engineer Richard Godfrey says the Malaysian government have not acted on his analysis which pinpoints the flight path of the MH370 before it plunged into the Indian Ocean, creating a search radius of 30km.
However, ATSB commissioner Angus Mitchell said that while there was the potential investigators weren’t looking for the plane in the correct area, there was currently no ‘new evidence to suggest that what we assessed at the time was incorrect’.
Asked whether the original search failed because search crews either ‘missed the aircraft, or you were looking in the wrong spot’, Mr Mitchell said it was ‘probably a combination’.
‘Some of the resolution of that search area was with a high degree of accuracy and we didn’t find it there,’ he said.
‘So that would suggest that some of where we’re looking wasn’t the right spot.‘
Jacquie Gonzales (pictured) lost her husband Patrick Gomes on MH370 and has called for a new search
Mr Olver (pictured) is certain he pulled a commercial airplane wing up in his fishnets in 2014
While Mr Mitchell acknowledged that current investigations into the disappearance of the aircraft were ‘beyond [the ATSB’s] capabilities’, he said future searches would be dependent on sign-off from the Australian government.
While it could ‘co-sponsor a new search’ and ‘put some pressure’ on the Malaysian government, he didn’t believe a new investigation would be dependent on the foreign government’s approval.
‘We started something and I think most Australians would agree that once you start something, you should try and finish it,’ he said.
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