The discovery of a third piece of debris thought to have come from Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 has raised hopes of more discoveries that could help to solve modern aviation’s greatest mystery.
The Boeing 777 disappeared en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 passengers and crew on board two years ago today. A piece of wing discovered eight months ago on the French territory of Réunion in the Indian Ocean has been confirmed as belonging to MH370.
Last week an American adventurer who has travelled the world trying to solve the mystery of MH370 found debris on a sandbank off the coast of Mozambique. Blaine Gibson, a lawyer from Seattle, handed it over to Malaysian officials and it will be sent to Australia.
On Sunday another potential piece of debris was found on Réunion by Johnny Bègue, the foreman of the island’s foreshore cleaning team who also found the only confirmed piece of MH370, a large wing control surface known as a flaperon, last July.
His latest find appears, from photographs, to be of similar construction to the debris recovered in Mozambique, which is thought to be part of the tail.
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An independent group of experts monitoring the search for MH370 said the discovery suggests that wreckage from the aircraft was flung across the Indian Ocean but was missed by the huge aerial search. Duncan Steel, a British physicist and spokesman for the group, said it now appeared that the aircraft did leave a debris field when it came down.
“It would seem that the discovery of the latest (yet to be confirmed) items from MH370 — and, presumably, there will be more to follow — comprise evidence that such a floating debris field must have existed at some stage following the crash, with later (and ongoing) dispersal,” Mr Steel wrote on the group’s website.
“The question then arises: why was such a debris field not detected from the patrol aircraft sent out over the Indian Ocean for just this reason?”
Military aircraft from Australia, the United States, New Zealand, Japan and China scoured the Indian Ocean but found no debris confirmed to have come from MH370.
Ab Aziz Kaprawi, the Malaysian deputy transport minister, said yesterday that the latest debris to be found may have come from the missing flight.
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“We can expect this, because by the calculations of the drift of all debris, it should be around that area,” he said.
It is likely that Sunday’s find on Réunion will be taken to France for inspection in the same defence laboratory in Toulouse that is holding the flaperon found last July.
The Malaysian government will mark today’s anniversary by releasing a report into the mystery. It will update the interim findings of the Malaysian government and international investigators and may provide new information as to the possible involvement of the flight crew in bringing down the aircraft.
Last month the Australian official overseeing the hunt for MH370 told The Times that if the aircraft was not found in the current search area covering 46,000 sq miles he was prepared to revisit the theory that someone remained in control of the aircraft after it came off course. The underwater search for MH370 has so far cost about £90 million.