Aussie fisherman’s stunning find could be the key to solving missing MH370 tragedy – as calls for another 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 its disappearance.

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.

However, Australian fisherman Kit Olver recently revealed that a strange find in his fishing net could prove that 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 in September or October 2014 about 55km off the southeast coast of South Australia.

Mr. Olver told it 60 minutesIn an episode broadcast on Sunday, 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 said.

When asked when it occurred to him that the wing was probably from MH370, Mr Olver said: ‘As soon as we saw it, we thought so. Of course we did.

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

Olver’s discovery has reignited 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 went missing during the tragedy.

“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 worked on the search for MH370 in 2015, believes the Malaysian government should fund the new 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 it is likely that the original search parameters were outside the plane’s landing site (photo: an artist’s impression of the MH370 crash)

Underwater researcher Peter Waring, who joined the search for MH370 in 2015, believes Mr Olver’s claim is plausible (photo: a map of key MH370 events)

“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.‘

Jacquie Gonzales (pictured) lost her husband Patrick Gomes on MH370 and has called for a new search

Mr Olver (photo) is certain that he caught the wing of a commercial aircraft in his fishing nets in 2014

While Mr Mitchell acknowledged that current investigations into the plane’s disappearance were “beyond the capabilities of the ATSB”, 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.