An ex-n naval officer claims authorities were searching for the MH370 aircraft in the wrong area a year after the flight mysteriously disappeared.
Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 vanished over the South China Sea during its journey from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing, China, on March 8, 2014.
The puzzling case made headlines across the world as the plane, which had 239 people on board including six ns, seemingly 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 how the investigation was being carried out in May 2015.
Former naval officer, Peter Waring, was appointed deputy operations manager of the search in September, 2014, but said he began to have ‘serious doubts’ about how the investigation was being carried out in May 2015
Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 vanished over the South China Sea during a flight from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia , to Beijing , China, on March 8, 2014 (stock image)
‘At various points we made it seem as though we have a very good sense of where it was, but that just wasn’t the case,’ he told Sky News.
‘We had absolutely, more or less, next to nothing.
‘Over time, the operation was wrapped in an armature of bureaucracy, if you will, and that made it more difficult to change course.’
His comments come ahead of Sky News releasing its documentary MH370: Ten Years On on Tuesday night.
Mr Waring, a former navy lieutenant, said despite evidence suggesting the aircraft may be in another area, the search operation was unable to change its course.
‘In some ways we had shackled ourselves to this one particular area and weren’t flexible to look elsewhere when there was evidence to suggest perhaps it was elsewhere,’ he said.
He said by mid-2015, enough of the sea floor had been covered to discount the ‘leading assumption’ that the aircraft had crashed into the Indian Ocean near an area known as the 7th Arc.
Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 vanished over the South China Sea during a flight from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia , to Beijing , China, on March 8, 2014 (police are seen carrying debris from unidentified aircraft in the French Indian Ocean in July, 2015)
‘If that assumption had been correct we would have found the aircraft 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 airplane was likely to be.
He was also at a loss as to why the n Transport Safety Bureau was chosen to lead the search operation.
‘But the question really needs to be asked why the n Transport Safety Bureau, which is an aircraft investigation authority, not a search and rescue authority, not an organisation that has any experience of conducting a search, why they were put in charge of one of the largest and most expensive searches in human history,’ he said in the documentary.
Mr Waring said the upcoming ten-year anniversary of the disappearance of MH370 was just ‘another reminder of the failure’ in the search mission.
‘The fact we are now no closer to finding the aircraft than we were when we were spending millions and millions of dollars eight to ten years ago,’ he said.
The wreckage of MH370 has still not been found almost a decade later despite its disappearance triggering the largest ever air-sea multinational search.
However, an n fisherman Kit Olver, 77, claimed last year that his trawler pulled up what appeared to be the wing of a commercial airliner in late, 2014.
He claims he was fishing some 55km off the southeast coast of South , in the Southern Ocean, when his net snagged on something large.
‘It was a bloody great wing of a big jet airliner,’ Mr Olver said.
‘I’ve questioned myself. I’ve looked for a way out of this.
‘I wish to Christ I’d never seen the thing… but there it is. It was a jet’s wing.’
As he had held a pilot’s licence, Mr Olver was confident the wing was larger than any on a typical private plane.
His discovery was backed-up by Mr Waring who said it was ‘plausible’ for debris from the wreckage to be found in southern , considering more than 20 pieces of possible debris have been discovered in Africa.