Calls for an investigation into the mysterious disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 have increased after a fisherman’s shocking claims of finding one of the wings of the doomed plane resurfaced last month.
Peter Waring, an expert in underwater surveys and seabed mapping, heard Kit Olver’s claims about him fishing for a dismembered airplane wing, was intrigued, and repeated his desire to reinvestigate the mysterious missing plane.
Waring, a former Australian naval officer, served as deputy director of operations for the Australian Transport Safety Board during the initial search in 2014.
He was also part of the team in 2015, when the first set of remains, a wing flaperon, was discovered after it washed ashore on the French island of Réunion.
The Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777 disappeared while flying over the Indian Ocean after taking off from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, bound for Beijing on March 8, 2014 with 227 passengers and 12 crew members on board.
“Even at the time of the search, we had conversations about it, and we certainly weren’t closed to the possibility of something turning up in Australia,” Waring told the Sydney Morning Herald. “And if it turned up somewhere in Australia, it was more likely to be in Tasmania, or if it turned around, somewhere off southern Australia.”
Retired fisherman Kit Olver claimed he ripped off what he believes is one of the wings from the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 in September or October 2014.
Waring told the newspaper that if the fisherman could pinpoint the location of his discovery, a search could be initiated and completed within days.
Fortunately for Waring, Olver knows where he stopped the wing, about 34 miles west of the coastal town of Robe in South Australia, and about 5,000 miles east of Reunion.
Olver described his discovery as “a big bloody wing of a big airliner,” when his deep-sea trawler stopped the white part of the plane between September and October 2014, in a place he called his secret fishing treasure.
Peter Waring hopes Olver can pinpoint the exact location where he found the wing so the investigation into the missing plane can be reopened.
The original search spanned an area of 1.7 million square miles in the South India Sea, according to the Joint Agency Coordination Centre, the Australian government agency formed with Malaysian and Chinese authorities after the plane disappeared.
Unfortunately for Olver and his crew, the wing was too big for their boat and they were forced to cut the catch before seeing it disappear underwater.
The now-retired fisherman said he reported his find to authorities once his boat returned to port, but was largely ignored.
Researchers from Malaysia and Australia examine a piece of debris found on Pemba Island, off the coast of Tanzania, believed to be part of the wreckage of MH370. AFP/Getty Images The estimated flight path of MH370 from Kuala Lumpur to where it disappeared over the Indian Ocean on March 8, 2014.
He reported it again three years later, only to be met with the same results: nothing.
Waring blamed the lack of discovery of the plane on officials relying too much on a drift modeling theory that is an “inexact science.”
“Something as large as a wing would have had a distinctly different drift pattern than the smaller debris,” Waring said, adding that it is not unreasonable to assume that some of the debris could have floated east after the strong storms that hit. the area after the crash.
Aviation experts joined Waring’s assessment that a reopened investigation could be completed in a short time thanks to new technologies.
Aerospace expert Jean-Luc Marchand and retired pilot Patrick Blelly, two men who believe the doomed plane was hijacked by an experienced pilot, called for the search to be reopened during a conference at the Royal Aeronautical Society in London.
“We have done our homework. We have a proposal… the area is small and, considering new capacities, it will take 10 days,” Marchand said.
“It could be something quick. Until the wreckage of MH370 is found, no one knows (what happened). But this is a plausible trajectory.”
A Royal Australian Air Force crew conducts a search mission for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight over the waters of the southern Indian Ocean on March 22, 2014. AP
Marchand and Blelly also urged the Australian Transport Safety Authority and the Malaysian government to join US marine robotics company Ocean Infinity in the search, using new subnautical search technology.
With post cables
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Source: vtt.edu.vn