A retired fisherman claims he found a large piece of missing Malaysia Airlines plane MH370 off the coast of South Australia, resurfacing what remains one of the world’s most vexing aviation puzzles.
“I wish to Christ I’d never seen the thing … but there it is. It was a jet’s wing,” retired Australian fisherman Kit Olver said, in an interview with Sydney Morning Herald.
The airliner was en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014, when it vanished with 239 people on board. Massive searches in the years since have failed to locate the aircraft.
Olver has come forward saying that he believes that he found a wing of the commercial plane in September on October 2014, just months after the flight disappeared.
A young child watches the Malaysia Airlines planes on the tarmac hopefully for the return of the missing flight, MH370 in Kuala Lumpur International Airport, outside Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Tuesday, March 11, 2014. (Joshua Paul/NurPhoto/NurPhoto/Corbis via Getty Images)
“It was a bloody great wing of a big jet airliner,” Olver said.
Olver said that he discovered the piece of the plan during a deep-sea fishing expedition when his trawler pulled up what appeared to be a wing.
The now-retired fisherman said that he had kept quiet these past nine years but wanted to come forward with his story to help the families of those who were on board MH370.
Malaysian Minister of Transport, Anthony Loke (C) looks at the Wing flap found on Pemba Island, Tanzania which has been identified a missing part of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 through unique part numbers traced to 9M-MRO during a commemoration event to mark the 5th anniversary of the missing Malaysia Airlines MH370 flight in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on March 03, 2019. (Adli Ghazali/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)
George Currie, the only other surviving member of the trawler crew on the day of the discovery, said that the airplane wing was “incredibly heavy and awkward.”
“You’ve got no idea what trouble we had when we dragged up that wing,” Curie 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.”
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Currie said that once the team pulled it up, it was “obviously a wing” that came from a commercial plane.
“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,” Curie said. “It took us all day to get rid of it.”
The crew was forced to cut the $20,000 net after they were unable to get the plane piece onto their vessel.
A female passenger is seen as at the ticket counter of Malaysian Airlines at departure terminal of Kuala Lumpur International airport on January 23, 2017, in Sepang, Malaysia. (Rahman Roslan/Getty Images)
The 77-year-old said that he immediately contacted Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA), but they told him that he likely found part of a shipping container that had fallen from a Russian ship in the area.
He said that he told his story once again in hopes that the AMSA can search the area to provide closure for the families impacted by MH370.
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Malaysia, China and Australia ended a two-year underwater search in the southern Indian Ocean in January 2017 after finding no trace of the plane.
The search cost the countries $133 million.