An amateur sleuth with a taste for adventure and solving mysteries ended up finding more pieces of a missing aeroplane than anyone else on the planet. Retired lawyer and "debris hunter" Blaine Gibson set about on his travels to track down the doomed
Malaysia Airlines flight, after it vanished from the face of the Earth in March 2014. Using last known sightings and expert theories as a guide, Blaine scoured the coastlines and sandbanks of Mozambique, where he discovered a triangular metre-long section from the tail of the jet. It became known as the "No Step" piece because of the words of warning stencilled in black paint. Speaking in a : 'Why Planes Vanish: The Hunt for MH370,' which aired last week, Blaine said: "I got pulled deeper into Malaysia MH370 as the search went on and the plane was not found. "I love adventure and solving mysteries and I thought I could be out there looking for debris and maybe finding a piece of this plane could help lead to finding the truth and the rest of it." The
Boeing 777 disappeared en route from Kuala Lumpur to
Beijing with 239 passengers and crew on board. It sent no emergency distress calls, the aircraft was never heard from again, but startling evidence soon emerged that it had turned off its scheduled flight path and continued flying on for a further seven hours. Various theories emerged about the fate of the doomed jet, including one from experts who claim it was "made invisible" and by a "skilled pilot." A huge search was launched but after the plane's flaperon was found was found in 2015 on Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean, the trail went cold. So Blaine contacted oceanographers who confirmed that the coast of Mozambique is a likely location to find more debris from the plane. "I felt like I needed to get involved because I saw something that nobody was doing and needed to be done and realised that I could do it myself," he told the
BBC. Blaine decided to head to Mozambique and "ask around" to find out where people go to find things washed ashore. He was told there was a sandbank that local fishermen go to get nets from the open Indian Ocean. After walking around the sandbank for 20 minutes, Blaine found his first piece of debris, "No step." "It was the 'No Step' that I have seen written on airplanes that told me this was definitely from an aircraft and when I held it in my hands, I could feel that it was from the airplane I was looking for," he said. "It was not a feeling of happiness, however I did feel a sense of accomplishment." Blaine sent the piece to
Australian investigators for analysis who confirmed it's almost certainly part of the horizontal stabiliser on the tail of a Boeing 777. Blaine added: "After Mozambique I went to Madagasgar...and found three pieces of debris on that day. "The most moving to me is the monitor case which is the case around the television on the back of the seat in front of you in
economy class." Blane has collected more than half of all the floating debris that's believed to be from MH370. Some 18 of the 22 pieces he's located are included as evidence in the official report into the missing plane. "All of the pieces of debris that I have found and collected from local people say one thing to me - they say that this plane tragically shattered on impact." Blaine and the Australian investigation team believe the shattered debris is evidence the plane did not make a controlled ditching onto the water. "Nothing in the debris speaks as to who was flying the plane or why but debris tells us something about what happened to the plane - it crashed at high speed, and where - the Southern Indian Ocean." Despite a four-year, $200million international search effort covering more than 120,000sqm, the wreckage of the Malaysia Airlines plane has never been found, sparking the world's biggest aviation mystery. Only the discovery of the fuselage and black box data recorders can unlock the answers. *