An American who discovered an aircraft part in Mozambique that may be from Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 says he initially thought it was part of a much smaller plane.
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Transport minister Darren Chester of Australia, which is leading a vast oceanic search for wreckage, said the debris would be transferred to Australia to be examined by officials and experts, including from Boeing.
The fragment of suspected aircraft wreckage will be tested by investigators in Australia with help from Malaysian authorities and representatives of Boeing, the manufacturer of the aircraft that went missing almost two years ago.
De Abreu said Malaysia and Australia, which have led the search for the plane, had been informed about the debris, but no decision had been made about where it would be taken.
“It’s important to keep it in perspective”, Gibson said of his find.
“I’ve been very involved in the search for Malaysia 370, just out of personal interest and in a private group – not in a for-profit way or journalistic way”, said Gibson. The company’s vice-president of R&D, Jared Young, said that that the fastener was not exclusive to a Boeing 777 but could be from several varieties of Boeing planes.
Also, the part appears to be flat and barnacles need something to grip.
MH370 was carrying 239 passengers and crew when it went missing from radar screens while on a flight to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur on March 8, 2014.
The debris found on a Mozambican beach is a piece of metal of about one metre in length.
Meanwhile, Australia’s transport minister said Thursday that the location where the metal piece was found is “consistent with drift modeling commissioned by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau”. MH370 is the only known missing 777.
In July, a wing fragment was found washed ashore on the Indian Ocean island of Reunion, which experts later determined came from MH370, the only confirmed evidence of the plane’s fate so far. Malaysia Airlines said it was “too speculative at this point” to offer comment.
Investigators in the United States, Malaysia and Australia have had access to the object’s pictures.
Days after, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak announced that the flaperon was from MH370, and that the flight had indeed ended in the Indian Ocean. JACC says it hopes to complete the search by mid-2016.
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As the two years’ anniversary of the MH370 incident is approaching, Liow said that an interim statement will be issued by the investigation team on March 8 according to the rules of the ICAO, which is expected to look into the cause of the accident.
