An Australian fisherman’s stunning find could be key to solving the missing MH370 tragedy – as calls for a new search are renewed

An Australian fisherman who claimed to have discovered the wing of missing flight MH370 has renewed calls for a new search, almost a decade after the plane disappeared.

The Malaysia Airlines flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing made headlines around the world when it disappeared mid-flight on March 8, 2014 with 239 people on board.

Despite extensive multinational searches in the southern Indian Ocean, authorities have been unable to recover the remains of the victims.

Fisherman Kit Olver recently revealed a strange find in his fishing net, seven months after the plane disappeared, which could prove searchers were looking in the wrong place.

The 78-year-old told reporters late last year that he had found a large commercial aircraft wing about 55km off the southeast coast of South Australia in September or October 2014, when the piece of debris became stuck in the net of his fishing boat.

Mr. Olver told it 60 minutesIn an episode broadcast on Sunday evening, he was absolutely certain that what he had seen was the wing of MH370, but had to put it back in the water because of its weight.

“It was the wing of a bloody plane,” he told the programme.

‘If it’s not from MH370, what is it?’

He was adamant when asked whether it occurred to him at the time that the wing probably belonged to MH370.

“As soon as we saw it, we thought so. Of course we did,” he said.

“We’ve gotten a pretty good idea of ​​it.”

Mr Olver added that he reported his find to authorities at the time.

News of the discovery has revived desperate calls from the victims’ families for a fresh search for the wreckage of MH370.

One of those calls is from Jacquie Gonzales, whose husband Patrick Gomes was the chief steward on the flight.

“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 researcher Peter Waring, who was deputy operations manager on the initial search for MH370 before it ended in 2017, believes the Malaysian government should fund the new search.

“To me, it would feel like we’ve finally completed something we started so long ago. It always felt like an open book. “I would like nothing more than to see it finished,” he said.

He also claimed the mission was doomed from the start when the Australian Transport Safety Bureau was put in charge.

“The Australian government has made a fundamental error in assuming that a transport investigation authority could conduct a search. And not just any search, but the greatest search in human history,” Waring told the program.

“The ATSB, despite being full of well-meaning people, was not the right agency to conduct the search.”

Mr Waring said the original search parameters were likely outside the plane’s landing site.

This is based on the theory that someone was still in control of the plane when it crashed into the ocean.

Mr Waring believes Mr Olver’s story is ‘absolutely plausible’ and urged authorities to investigate the reported discovery.

“If there’s someone in the driver’s seat until the end, then the search area is very, very different than the area we actually looked at,” he said.

“I don’t believe that scenario has ever been adequately considered, certainly not by the Australian government.”

Aerospace engineer Richard Godfrey says the Malaysian government failed to act on his analysis, which captured the flight path of MH370 before it crashed into the Indian Ocean, creating a search radius of 30km.

However, ATSB Commissioner Angus Mitchell said that while the potential investigators were not searching the correct area for the aircraft, 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 “missed the plane, or because you were looking in the wrong place”, 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 could indicate that part of the place we were looking was not the right place.‘

While Mr Mitchell acknowledged that the current investigation into the plane’s disappearance was ‘excessive’ [the ATSB’s] capabilities,” he said future searches would be subject to Australian government approval.

While it could “co-sponsor a new search” and “put some pressure” on the Malaysian government, he did not believe a new investigation would be dependent on the foreign government’s approval.

“We’ve started something and I think most Australians would agree that once you start something you should try to finish it,” he said.