Malaysian transport minister Liow Tiong Lai also confirmed in tweets about the discovery that it appears the debris may come from the missing plane. Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 is the only 777 to be missing in the region where the piece was found.
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“Photos of the debris appear to show the fixed leading edge of the right-hand tail section of a Boeing 777, said a USA official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak publicly”.
Aircraft wreckage uncovered by an American blogger on an independent search for MH370 has a “high possibility” of originating from the same type of plane as the doomed craft, according to Malaysian officials.
The location of the debris is consistent with some of the drift modeling, Australian authorities said.
Authorities in Mozambique are helping to comb the area where it was found for other possible debris.
Employees of environmental protection and coastal cleanup organisations look for debris from the ill-fated Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 on a beach on the French Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean, Aug. 10, 2015.
Last year, an aircraft flaperon was found on the island of La Reunion, which lies at the same corner of the Indian Ocean as Mozambique.
A Mozambican official said the fragment was handed over to authorities by blogger Blaine Gibson, who reported finding it earlier this week.
Australian officials have seen photographs of the part and have been in communication with Gibson, said Dan O’Malley, a spokesman for the Australian Transport Safety Bureau.
Debris found in Thailand in mid-January turned out to be unrelated.
The president of Mozambique’s civil aviation institute (IACM), Joao de Abreu, held up the triangular piece but insisted that speculation it belonged to the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 was premature.
It was being taken to Australia where it will be examined by worldwide specialists and officials from Malaysia.
An intensive search of the area finds no additional pieces of the plane.
With the search tentatively scheduled to wrap up later this year, MH370 may become one of aviation’s great unsolved mysteries.
The Boeing 777 vanished from radar March 8, 2014, while flying over the Indian Ocean en route from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, toBeijing. It is still not yet clear what exactly happened to the plane and its 239 passengers. Gibson also did not respond to requests for comment, the news service said. Réunion is to the east of the island nation of Madagascar, and it is roughly 1,500 miles from the coast of Mozambique.
The find comes just days before the March 8 two-year anniversary of the plane’s mysterious 2014 disappearance.
“Every step to envisage life without a loved one who was on board the flight has been agonizing and the festering wounds of loss and “not knowing” have made the task of initiating even the first steps towards “moving on” practically impossible for family members”, it said.
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Families and friends of people on board MH370 are planning a day of remembrance Sunday to mark two years since the disappearance of the flight.
