About one-third of the wing piece was protruding from the sea, he said, so the effect of wind and waves would have been greater than on the second and third finds, which were flat. The curved piece of debris is about 3.3 feet (one meter) long, and about half that length wide, with a five-digit number on it, Casper Lotter said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press.
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The father said he dismissed it as a “piece of rubbish” that was probably debris from a boat, but 18-year-old Liam insisted on bringing it back to South Africa, convinced that it was part of a plane.
The print was clearly seen on the photos furnished by the Lotter family.
The discovery of a flaperon from MH370 on a La Reunion beach in July showed searchers were looking in the right place, he said, and would be reinforced if two further pieces of possible wreckage discovered on the same island and on a sandbar in Mozambique earlier this month were proved to be from the plane.
Flight MH370 disappeared on March 8, 2014, en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board, majority were Chinese nationals.
The family has since handed over the object to the South African authorities, who in turn will pass it to the same Australian team which is now examining the first debris found in Mozambique.
Australian authorities contacted South African counterparts to arrange to have the new part taken from his home in the town of Wartburg in KwaZulu-Natal, according to South African officials.
A South African Civil Aviation Authority spokesman said they will send the part to Australia to be examined. The piece Gibson found had “NO STEP” written on it.
Mozambican authorities on Monday had handed over the debris to Malaysian experts after it was found washed up on a sandbar by an American amateur investigator.
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He said he would be pleased “just for them to know that we’re finding evidence, finding out how it happened, where it happened, just to give them some closure”.
