Resurfacing one of the most perplexing aviation mysteries in the world, a retired fisherman claims to have discovered a significant portion of the missing Malaysia Airlines plane MH370 off the coast of South Australia.
“I would like to Christ Although I had never seen it before, it is there. Retired Australian fisherman Kit Olver told the Sydney Morning Herald, “It was a jet’s wing.”
On March 8, 2014, the airplane with 239 people on board disappeared when it was traveling from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. In the years since extensive searches have been unable to find the aircraft.
In September and October of 2014, just a few months after the flight vanished, Olver came forward and stated that he thought he found a wing of the commercial aircraft. “It was a bloody great wing of a big jet airliner,” Olver stated.
Olver claimed that while on a deep-sea fishing trip, he came upon the missing component of the idea when his boat caught what looked like a wing.
To support the families of those who were on board MH370, the now-retired fisherman stated that he had been silent for the previous nine years and that he now wanted to share his tale.
A member of the trawler crew until the day of the discovery, George Currie, described the airplane wing as “incredibly heavy and awkward.”
“You’ve got no idea what trouble we had when we dragged up that wing,” remarked Curie. It was hefty and ungainly. The net was extended and torn by it. It was too large to climb onto the deck.
Currie stated that upon retrieval, the team discovered that it was “obviously a wing” originating from a commercial aircraft.
“I recognized it immediately upon seeing it. It was a commercial plane’s wing or a significant portion of one. It was not from a little plane or a military jet because it was white, Curie said. “It took us all day to get rid of it.”
When the crew could not get the plane component onto their vessel, they were forced to cut the $20,000 net.
The 77-year-old claimed to have notified the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) right away, but they informed him that it was likely that he had discovered a piece of a cargo container that had fallen off a Russian ship nearby.
In an attempt to bring closure to the families affected by MH370, he said he repeated his account in the hopes that the AMSA would search the region.
In January 2017, Malaysia, China, and Australia called off their two-year underwater search for the jet in the southern Indian Ocean after it was discovered to be missing. The government had to pay $133 million for the hunt.