An Australian fisherman claimed that he and his crew found a jetliner’s wing just months after Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 went missing in 2014.
The passenger plane, which had more than 200 people on board, disappeared as it was traveling from Malaysia to China in March 2014. To this day, it’s not clear what happened to the plane or where it crashed, triggering intense speculation and years of oceanic exploration efforts.
Fisherman Kit Olver, 77, who works off the eastern coast of South Australia, told the Sydney Morning Herald that he was working months after the plane went missing and felt his net snag on something.
The fisherman said he did alert local authorities to his alleged finding but was told that it was likely just a piece of a shipping container. It’s not clear whether he tried to take a photo of the object.
“A couple of comments. I have trawled for 35 years and this was not a shipping container. Having over the years trawled up all sorts of objects, including aircraft, I am convinced this was an aircraft wing. Please feel free to contact me,” he wrote in an email to local Australian maritime officials that was shared with the Morning Herald. But he got no reply to the email, which was written in 2017.
George Currie, another member of the trawler crew who was there during the alleged discovery, said the fishermen attempted to pull up the piece, saying they went to great trouble to do so.
“It was incredibly heavy and awkward. It stretched out the net and ripped it. It was too big to get up on the deck,” he told the outlet. “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.”
Eventually, the crew cut the net and the object came to rest on the seafloor hundreds of feet beyond the northern portion of a deep underwater crater, according to the publication. Mr. Oliver said the area is located about 30 miles west of the South Australian town of Robe.
Most authorities have concluded that MH370 came down in the southern Indian Ocean. However, there has been no trace of where the plane crashed.
Officials with the Australian Maritime Safety Authority, meanwhile, have not responded to Mr. Olver’s claims.
Notably, more than 150 Chinese passengers were on the flight which vanished en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014. Malaysian investigators did not rule out the possibility that the aircraft had been deliberately taken off course, and debris confirmed or believed to be from the aircraft has washed up along the coast of Africa and on islands in the Indian Ocean.
In March, another group of relatives urged the Malaysian government to allow U.S. seabed exploration firm Ocean Infinity to mount a new search for the missing plane.
A report in 2018 said that the missing Boeing 777’s controls were likely deliberately manipulated to take it off course, but investigators were not able to determine who was responsible. The last communication from the plane was from Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah who signed off with “good night, Malaysian three seven zero,” as the plane left the Malaysian airspace and later turned off course.
“The answer can only be conclusive if the wreckage is found,” Kok Soo Chon, head of the MH370 safety investigation team, told reporters at the time.
