The NBC News report about the potential discovery doesn’t name the private investigator who found what superficially looks like part of the horizontal stabiliser of the Malayasia Airlines Boeing 777-200ER.
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A piece of debris found along the eastern African coast between Mozambique and Madagascar may be from the tail section of the Malaysia Airlines plane that disappeared two years ago, NBC News reported on Wednesday.
“It is therefore, with the heaviest heart and deepest sorrow that, on behalf of the government of Malaysia, we officially declare Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 an accident”, said the director general of Malaysia’s Department of Civil Aviation, Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, in a statement in late January.
The debris was found on a sandbank in the Mozambique Channel by an American who has been blogging about the search for MH370, NBC said. “It is yet to be confirmed & verified” and Malaysian authorities are working with Australian counterparts to retrieve the debris, he said.
People who have handled the part, called a horizontal stabilizer, say it appears to be made of fiberglass composite on the outside, with aluminum honeycombing on the inside, the official said.
“I urge everyone to avoid undue speculation as we are not able to conclude that the debris belongs to MH370 at this time”, the transport minister said. The search has turned up some aircraft debris, but also false leads.
Investigators believe the plane was diverted and crashed in the southern Indian Ocean, but neither a crash site nor cause have been found so far though millions of dollars have been spent to scour the seas to recover the wreckage.
When the wing part from Flight 370 washed ashore, investigators reassessed where they were searching for the plane. There have been no traces of the 239 people on board, their luggage or even the life jackets that were supposed to float.
With the search tentatively scheduled to wrap up later this year, MH370 may become one of aviation’s great unsolved mysteries.
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Complicating the search for MH-370, the plane’s “black box” data recorder was equipped with an underwater locator beacon whose battery is created to last only 30 days.
