Investigators in Australia are examining an aircraft wing flap found last month on Pemba Island in East Africa.
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Previously, the search for the Malaysia Airlines aircraft, which went missing on March 8, 2014 during a routine flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 passengers and crew on board, was conducted based on the aircraft’s fuel capacity – how far it could go with the load of fuel it was carrying.
Technical specialists from the bureau are working with Malaysian investigators to determine if it is from MH370.
The Bureau now is overseeing a sonar search of 120,000 square kilometres of Indian Ocean seabed in the hunt for Flight 370’s crash site.
Recent weather disruptions have delayed the projected 120,000 square kilometer search zone until August.
Sea sweeps of more than 100,000 kilometres have so far yielded no results.
On small as well as large scales, the search for the ill-fated flight is intense.
The items handed over were a stabiliser panel stenciled with the words “No Step”, an engine cowling bearing a Rolls Royce logo, and a fibreglass skin aluminium honeycomb cored panel. Pattiaratchi’s earlier advice had led Gibson to Mozambique where he found debris in February that experts later determined came from Flight 370.
On Tuesday, Channel NewsAsia reported that Gibson had handed over the debris he found in Madagascar to Malaysian officials themselves after authorities cancelled trips to collect the items.
The wing flap washed up near Tanzania in late June. He adds he has sent photographs of those effects to MH 370 family members and the Aircrash Support Group Australia (ASGA) for possible identification.
Gibson said he had been told by Malaysian officials that costs were the reason that a Malaysian investigator had twice canceled plans to fly to Madagascar to retrieve debris he had found.
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“To make matters worse, we then learned from reports that Malaysia’s Minister for Transport has already pronounced that the personal effects are not relevant to MH370”, they said.
