A South African archaeologist has found a piece of debris with part of an aircraft engine manufacturer’s logo and Malaysia’s transport minister said Tuesday that authorities will examine it to see if it is from the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.
“Based on early reports, there is a possibility of the piece originating from an inlet cowling of an aircraft engine,” but a further examination and analysis are needed to verify whether it belongs to Flight 370, said Malaysian Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai. A team will be dispatched to retrieve the debris, Liow said in a statement.
On South Africa’s southern coast, Neels Kruger was walking along a lagoon on Monday afternoon, near the town of Mossel Bay when he spotted something that did not seem to suit the natural surroundings.
“Being an archaeologist I’m always looking for things with my nose to the ground,” said the 35-year-old. He recognized the brown honeycomb structure from photos of other pieces of debris believed to part of the missing aircraft.
“When I flipped it around, I didn’t know immediately what it was but just thought, ‘Oh my word!'” he told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. On the other side, Kruger said he recognized what remains of the black Rolls Royce logo, the manufacturer of aircraft engines. The piece is about 70 centimeters by 70 centimeters (27.56 inches by 27.56 inches) “with chunks gone from the side,” said Kruger.
The white surface, with the partial logo, has peeled away to reveal a dark metallic grey covering, a photograph showed. Kruger took photos and sent it to a friend who is a pilot, who in turn passed it on to other pilots, who all quickly became convinced that this was part of an airplane engine. Kruger alerted the South African Civil Aviation Authority who told him to sit tight until further instruction.
Wondering what to do next, he sent a message via Facebook to Liam Lotter, the South African teenager who also found a piece of aircraft debris. In December last year, the 18-year-old found what he believes could be the wing of the missing plane on a beach in neighboring in Mozambique. Lotter, who announced his discovery earlier this month, passed along the contact details of the Australian authorities tasked with leading the investigation into the missing plane.
“They said it was a very interesting piece and they need it sent to them,” said Kruger, adding that the Australian aviation authorities would not confirm that this was a piece of the missing plane. Kruger was instructed to bubble-wrap the piece and keep it safe until aviation authorities collect it.
The Malaysia Airlines jet disappeared on March 8, 2014, with 239 people on board while flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. The plane remains one of the biggest mysteries in modern aviation.
An Australian-led underwater search in the southern Indian Ocean, where the plane is believed to have crashed, has found no trace of it so far. A piece from one of the plane’s wings was found washed ashore on France’s Reunion Island last July.
Two more possible pieces of debris which were discovered recently in Mozambique, by the South African teen and an American adventurer, are being examined by an international investigation team in Australia.
Investigators have said the search will end by June unless fresh clues are found.
The Associated Press contributed to this article.
They won’t find any part of that plane for it is my theory that it was flown into the center of an active volcano by a jihad pilot.
That’s about as solid an argument as those folk that say 9-11 was a conspiracy because jet fuel doesn’t reach the melting temperature of steel.
1) The bird had a chronic rudder problem.
2) The pilots were inadequelty trained to deal with extreme attitude changes an unreliable control surface can cause.
3) It’s last known position was over the middle of the ocean–no volcanoes about.
My problem with this is the probability that a piece of this aircraft would float for this long. My problem with 9/11 is with the wind blowing through the towers it turns into a blast furnace that could and did raise temperatures that would melt steel. The other problem is how did not one but both towers come straight down without the help of well placed demolition packs. I still think every very tall building already has explosives in place to minimize damage to just this kind of attack.
(1) Parts of the cowl structure are composite honeycomb they float. period.
(2) No ! wind blowing through the building could not and did not create ” blast furnace” conditions. More than a hundred people transited the impact area via the stairways and connecting hallways None of them got burned At most they encountered only scattered pockets of fire. Hence the conclusion there was no significant heating in most of the core. Yet the entire core failed catastrophically and suddenly which means explosives
(3) no buildings are not pre loaded with explosives unless they are planned to be demolished. PERIOD
John b-
As to your point 2 above, yep; i’ve seen photos of some of the central columns with diagonal, melted slices in them. No plane fire did that. My final trump card, though, to those who stupidly echo the government’s bs theory is this: “Ok, explain how large amounts of molten steel were found under the debris that showed on aerial infrared photography for WEEKS after the towers collapsed, then.”
To date, no one has ever come up with any idea that comes close to corroborating the gov’t lie they tried to foist on Idiot Americans.
You are so correct. Those buildings were secure.
Well, MY theory is that Klingons used a tractor beam setting that was too high, and caused the plane to explode.
C’mon…volcano, really?
Seriously, though, my plan is to let the experts first determine if the wreckage found is indeed from the Malaysian plane. If it isn’t, story over. If it is, then ocean current patterns will likely be analyzed and a more focused search done, perhaps even finding the black box.
Even the police and fire fighters said there had to be bombs in there.
MH370 was bound for Diego Garcia and the US shot it down.