An Australian fisherman who claimed to have discovered the wing of missing flight MH370 has renewed calls for another search, almost 10 years after it disappeared.
The Malaysia Airlines flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing made headlines around the world when it disappeared mid-flight with 239 people on board on March 8, 2014.
Despite extensive multinational searches in the southern Indian Ocean, authorities have been unable to recover the remains of any of the victims.
However, Australian fisherman Kit Olver recently revealed that a strange find in his fishing net could prove that searchers were looking in the wrong place.
The 78-year-old told reporters late last year that he found the wing of a large commercial airliner about 55 kilometers off the southeast coast of South Australia in September or October 2014.
Australian fisherman Kit Olver (pictured), 78, claims to have found a wing from MH370 in late 2014.
Mr. Olver said 60 minutesIn an episode broadcast on Sunday, he was absolutely sure what he had seen was the wing of MH370, but had to return it to the water due to its weight.
“It was the wing of a damn airplane,” he said.
Asked when it occurred to him that the wing probably belonged to MH370, Olver said: “Pretty much as soon as we saw it, we thought about it. Of course we did.
“We’ve seen it pretty well.”
Olver’s discovery has revived desperate calls from victims’ families to search again for the remains of MH370.
One of those calls is from Jacquie Gonzales, whose husband Patrick Gomes disappeared in the tragedy.
“I thought we would have answers much sooner,” 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 Waring, the original search parameters were likely outside of where the plane landed.
This is based on the theory that someone was still in control of the plane when it crashed into the ocean.
Waring believes it is likely that the original search parameters were outside where the plane landed (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 is someone at the controls all the way, then the search area is very, very different than what we actually saw,” he said.
“I don’t think that scenario was ever adequately considered; it certainly wasn’t by the Australian government.”
Aerospace engineer Richard Godfrey says the Malaysian government has failed to act on his analysis that pinpoints the flight path of MH370 before it plunged into the Indian Ocean, creating a search radius of 30 kilometers.
However, ATSB commissioner Angus Mitchell said that while there was a possibility that investigators were not searching for the plane in the correct area, there was currently “no new evidence to suggest that what we assessed at the time was incorrect.” .
When asked if the original search failed because search teams “didn’t find the plane or were looking in the wrong place,” Mitchell said it was “probably a combination.”
“Part of the resolution of that search area had a high degree of precision and we didn’t find it there,” he said.
—That would suggest that part of the place we are looking at was not correct.‘
Jacquie Gonzales (pictured) lost her husband Patrick Gomes on MH370 and has called for a new search
Olver (pictured) is sure he lifted the wing of a commercial airliner in his fishnet stockings in 2014.
While Mitchell acknowledged that the current investigations into the plane’s disappearance were “beyond [the ATSB’s] capabilities,” he said future searches would depend on Australian government approval.
While he could “co-sponsor a new search” and “put some pressure” on the Malaysian government, he did not believe a new investigation would depend on foreign government approval.
“We started something and I think most Australians would agree that once you start something you should try to finish it,” he said.