KUALA LUMPUR, July 20 — Plane debris found off a Madagascar island that may be from the missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 has been handed over to a Malaysian investigation team, the Department of Civil Aviation (DCA) said today.
The debris was found by an independent MH370 investigator Blaine Gibson and passed to the International Civil Aviation Organisation Annex Safety Investigation Team for MH370 from Malaysia yesterday, the DCA added.
“The debris will be sent for examination and analysis to determine if they originated from flight MH370,” the DCA said in a statememt.
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.
The DCA said it will provide an update once it can confirm the material source of the latest debris.
Blaine Gibson, who has been conducting a one-man search for the missing plane, had discovered the debris off Madagascar on June 10 this year.
MH370 disappeared from civilian radars shortly after taking off from Kuala Lumpur en route to Beijing on March 8, 2014, with 239 people on board.
Several debris have been reported to have been collected off the African coast, while a search operation is still ongoing in the southern Indian Ocean.
The transport ministers of Malaysia, Australia and China are scheduled to hold a tripartite meeting this Friday to discuss the next step as mounting costs weigh on the two-year-long search for the missing plane.
