Missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 breakthrough as Australian fisherman makes deep-sea discovery
Missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 breakthrough as Australian fisherman makes deep-sea discovery
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A major breakthrough in the search for missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 may have been discovered after an Australian fisherman claims he has found part of plane in his net.
Kit Olver, 77, has claimed that he has pulled up a wing off the southeast coast of Australia in September or October 2014.
The fisherman said he told officials at the time but they insisted that it was a shipping container instead.
The MH370 flight crashed months earlier in March 2014. The ill-fated plane carried 227 and 12 crew on board when it disappeared from the skies almost a decade ago.
The plane carried 227 passengers and 12 crew
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Since it vanished, no wreckage has ever been discovered despite extensive searches.
Many believe that the aircraft came down in the southern Indian Ocean.
Almost 10 years later, Olver has come forward to reveal that his deep-sea-trawler pulled up part of the missing plane 55km of the south-east coast of South Australia.
The 77-year-old said he was certain it was a wing because he held a pilot’s license. He was also sure it came from a commercial jet, due to its size.
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“It was a bloody great wing of a big jet airliner,” said Olver to the Sydney Morning Herald.
“I’ve questioned myself; I've looked for a way out of this. I wish to Christ I'd never seen the thing... but there it is. It was a jet's wing,” he added.
Olver said he is happy to give authorities the coordinates of where he found the wing, believing it could help families of those onboard the doomed flight know the fate of their loved ones.
His former colleague, George Currie, who is the only other surviving member of the trawler crew, backed up Olver’s claim. He said: “It was incredibly heavy and awkward. It stretched out the net and ripped it. It was too big to get up on the deck.
The MH370 flight crashed months in March 2014
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“As soon as I saw it I knew what it was. It was obviously a wing, or a big part of it, from a commercial plane. It was white, and obviously not from a military jet or a little plane.”
The crew members had to cut $20,000 net after they were unable to get the jet’s wing onto their vessel.
They alerted authorities yet a few hours after making the call, an Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) official contacted Olver to tell him it was most probably a shipping container that had fallen from a Russian ship.
However, the AMSA said they never received a call.