A former naval officer has called for a new investigation into missing flight MH370 after a fisherman made a shocking claim about the doomed plane.
Kit Oliver, 77, claimed that he pulled up a wing of the Malaysian Airlines vessel off the southeast coast of Australia in September or October 2014.
The MH370 flight crashed months earlier in March 2014. The ill-fated plane carried 227 passengers and 12 crew on board when it disappeared from the skies almost a decade ago.
Since it vanished, no wreckage has ever been discovered despite extensive searches, though many believe that the aircraft came down in the southern Indian Ocean.
MH370 disappeared in March 2014
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Peter Waring, an expert in underwater surveying who was brought in to help with the initial search in 2014, heard Olver’s claim and said it was “plausible” that the fisherman uncovered some of the wreckage.
He has called for a new investigation to find the ill-fated plane.
“An entire wing is large and would have had a far different drift profile than the pieces of debris that turned up in Africa … so it’s plausible,” said Waring to the Sydney Morning Herald.
Waring has admitted that the joint search effort between the Australian government with Chinese and Malaysian authorities had made a huge error.
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MH370 went missing in March 2014Getty
Peter Waring was brought in to help with the initial search in 2014
He said that he believes the flight deliberately crashed into a never-explored area deep in the Indian Ocean, so the authorities were searching in the wrong areas.
The former naval officer said Olver’s claim could fit in with some theories about where the fuselage could be.
“Even at the time of the search, we had conversations about it, and we were certainly not closed off to the possibility of things washing up in Australia,” Waring said.
“And if did in wash up somewhere in Australia, it was more likely to be in Tasmania, or if it circled back around, somewhere off South Australia.”
Olver said he told officials at the time about his discovery but they insisted that it was a shipping container instead.
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.
Fisherman who 'found wing' of missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 was 'snubbed' by authoritiesGetty“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.
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.