An Australian veteran pilot claims that the search for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 could have been more successful if governments had not concealed the true location, suggesting a “cover-up” of a murder-suicide. An Australian fisherman, Kit Olver, reported finding a large wing from the missing plane in his net in September or October of 2014, around 55 kilometers (34 miles) off the coast of South Australia, in the Southern Indian Ocean. Mr. Olver has come forward with claims that the wing was larger than a private plane, describing it as a “bloody great wing of a big jet airliner.”
The 77-year-old reported his findings to the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) but was told it was a shipping container that had fallen from a nearby Russian ship. Ten years later, Mr. Olver decided to come forward because families of the missing passengers had a right to know the final resting place of their loved ones and that he could still provide officials with the information of his discovery. Meanwhile, George Currie, the only other surviving member of Mr. Olver’s crew present on the day of the findings, said the wing was “incredibly heavy and awkward.” “It stretched out the net and ripped it. It was too big to get up on the deck,” Mr. Currie, 69, told the Sydney Morning Herald.
“As soon as I saw it I knew what it was. It was obviously a wing from a commercial plane or a big part of it. It was white, and not from a military jet or a little plane.” The ill-fated plane disappeared on March 8, 2014, while flying from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to Beijing, China. Authorities have not been able to locate the MH370 wreckage, and the plane, 227 passengers and 12 crew members, including 153 from China and 38 from Malaysia, have never been found. Veteran commercial pilot Byron Bailey claims that the search failed because officials “deliberately avoided” a crucial location identified by “solid evidence” from the Inmarsat satellite.
The former Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) fighter pilot said the satellite showed the aircraft was passing 39’10 S,88’18E before it went missing. Mr. Bailey alleged the incident was “a cover-up by the Australian government.” He said, “They wanted to conceal the fact that the captain planned and murdered 238 people. It lies just south of latitude 39 south and that’s supported by all the evidence and the Australian government has just been absolutely silent about it.”
Mr. Bailey had refuted the “ghost flight theory” and argued that Captain Zaharie Shad had tried to land the plane on the water outside the search zone. “All the evidence points to the fact it was ditched,” he told Sky News in a 2019 documentary. When asked if the plane would be resurrected from the ocean, aviation expert Geoffrey Thomas said, “It would be challenging to get it off the ocean floor, not impossible, but I think they (the researchers) would respect its location and the fact it is a grave.”
Around 10 million commercial passengers fly every day, and the safety of the airline industry relies on finding the cause of MH70’s disappearance and every other aircraft accident.