Experts following the disappearance of MH370 say it is likely that a new piece of debris found on a Mozambique beach came from the missing plane.
A reader contacted the BBC on Thursday to say he recently found the fragment on the Macaneta peninsula. The authorities have been notified. The piece must be examined by the official investigation team in Australia.
Experts say it is consistent with where previous pieces of debris from the missing plane have been found. The reader said the pieces were “reasonably light, did not have metal on the outside and looked extremely similar to photos posted on the Internet of other pieces of debris from airplanes”.
MH370, flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, had 239 people on board when it vanished in March 2014. It is presumed to have crashed into the southern Indian Ocean after veering off course.
Don Thompson, a British engineer who is part of an informal international group investigating MH370, said the piece found by the reader “does look like it’s part of Boeing 777”, most like a leading or trailing edge closing panel from the wing or tail.
“It’s in the right area where debris is expected to wash up,” he told the BBC, saying it indicated the accuracy of drift models that show how debris might have moved from the crash site. Five fragments have so far been confirmed as being definitely or probably from MH370.
On 27 May Australia’s Transport Minister Darren Chester said two more fragments found recently in Mauritius and one in Mozambique were “of interest”.
The Australian Transport Safety Bureau, which is coordinating the ocean search, said the latest finder had since contacted them about the debris. They said that having seen the photographs, the piece was “certainly of interest” but it was now up to the Malaysian authorities to decide whether to organize retrieval and further analysis.
