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A retired fisherman claims he has 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 puzzling aviation mysteries.
“I wish to God I’d never seen that thing… but there it is. It was the wing of a jet,” retired Australian fisherman Kit Olver said in an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald.
The plane was en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014, when it disappeared with 239 people on board. During extensive searches in the following years, the aircraft could not be found.
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Olver has spoken out and said he believes he found a wing of the airliner in September 2014, just months after the flight disappeared.
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A young child watches Malaysia Airlines planes on the tarmac hoping for the return of missing flight MH370 at Kuala Lumpur International Airport outside Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Tuesday, March 11, 2014. (Joshua Paul/NurPhoto/NurPhoto/Corbis via Getty Images)
“It was a big-ass wing of a big airliner,” Olver said.
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Olver said he discovered the part of the plan during a deep-sea fishing expedition when his trawler pulled up what looked like a wing.
The now-retired fisherman said he had remained silent for the past nine years but wanted to tell his story to help the families of those on board MH370.
Malaysian Transport Minister Anthony Loke (center) looks at the wing flap found on Pemba Island, Tanzania, identified as a missing part of Malaysia Airlines during a commemoration ceremony to mark the 5th -Flight MH370 was identified on the anniversary of the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on March 3, 2019. (Adli Ghazali/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)
George Currie, the only other surviving member of the trawler's crew on the day of the discovery, said the plane's wing was “incredibly heavy and unwieldy.”
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“You have no idea what problems we had putting that wing up,” Curie said. “It was incredibly difficult and awkward. It reached out and tore the net. It was too big to climb onto the deck.”
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Currie said when the team pulled it up, it was “obviously a wing” that came from a commercial aircraft.
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“As soon as I saw it, I knew what it was. It was obviously a wing or a large part of it from an airliner. “It was white and obviously not from a military jet or a small aircraft,” Curie said. “It took us all day to get rid of it.”
The crew was forced to cut the $20,000 net because they were unable to get the aircraft piece onto their ship.
A female passenger is seen at the Malaysian Airlines ticket counter at the departure terminal of Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Sepang, Malaysia on January 23, 2017. (Rahman Roslan/Getty Images)
The 77-year-old said he immediately contacted the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA), but they told him they had likely found part of a shipping container that had fallen from a Russian ship in the area.
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He said he told his story again in the hope that AMSA could search the area to provide lockdown for the families affected 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.
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The search cost the countries $133 million.