Australian naval officer makes stunning claim about the search for missing MH370 – and why it hasn’t been found

An ex-Australian naval officer claims authorities searched the wrong area for the MH370 plane a year after the flight mysteriously disappeared.

Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 disappeared over the South China Sea while flying from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing, China, on March 8, 2014.

The puzzling case made headlines around the world when the plane, carrying 239 people, including six Australians, apparently disappeared without a trace.

Peter Waring was appointed deputy operations manager of the search in September 2014, but said he began to have “serious doubts” about the progress of the investigation in May 2015.

Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 disappeared over the South China Sea during a flight from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing, China, on March 8, 2014 (image)

“At various points we made it seem like we had a very good idea of ​​where it was, but that just wasn’t the case,” he told Sky News.

“We definitely had next to nothing.

“Over time, the operation became shrouded in bureaucracy, if you like, and that made it more difficult to change course.”

His comments come ahead of the release of the Sky News documentary MH370: ten years later on Tuesday evening.

Mr Waring, a former Navy lieutenant, said that despite indications that the plane may have been in another area, the search operation was unable to change course.

“In some ways we had been locked into this one specific area and had no flexibility to look elsewhere if there were indications that it might be somewhere else,” he said.

He said enough of the seabed had been covered by mid-2015 to reject the “leading assumption” that the plane had crashed in the Indian Ocean near an area known as the 7th Arc.

Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 disappeared over the South China Sea during a flight from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing, China, on March 8, 2014 (police are seen carrying wreckage of unidentified aircraft in the French Indian Ocean in July 2015 )

“If that assumption had been correct, we would have found the plane at that point,” he said.

Speaking to Sky News presenter Peter Stefanovic in the documentary, Mr Waring said there was no ‘plan B’ in the search and they were moving further away from areas where the plane was likely to be.

He also did not know why the Australian Transport Safety Bureau was chosen to lead the search operation.

‘But the question really has to be asked why the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, an aircraft investigation authority and not a search and rescue authority, not an organization with any experience in conducting searches, why they were put in charge of one of the largest and most expensive quests in human history,” he said in the documentary.

Mr Waring said the upcoming ten-year anniversary of MH370’s disappearance was just “another reminder of the failure” of the search mission.

“The fact that we are no closer to finding the plane now than we were when we spent millions and millions of dollars eight to 10 years ago,” he said.

The wreckage of MH370 has still not been found almost a decade later, despite its disappearance sparking the largest ever multinational search operation.

However, Australian fisherman Kit Olver, 77, claimed last year that his trawler caught the wing of a commercial plane in late 2014.

He claims he was fishing about 55km off the south-east coast of South Australia, in the Southern Ocean, when his net got snagged on something large.

“It was a bloody big wing of a big jet,” Mr. Olver said.

‘I’ve been questioning myself. I’ve been looking for a way out of this.

“I wish I’d never seen the thing… but there it is. It was the wing of a fighter jet.”

Because he had a pilot’s license, Mr. Olver was convinced the wing was larger than that of a typical private plane.

His discovery was supported by Mr Waring, who said it was ‘plausible’ that debris from the wreck could have been found in South Australia, as more than 20 pieces of possible debris have been discovered in Africa.