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Wreckage found in Thailand unlikely to be from MH370, experts say

Sunday, 24 Jan 2016 15:29:37

An aircraft part found on Reunion Island in July 2015 was confirmed to have been part of flight MH370. (AFP: Yannick Pitou)

A piece of suspected plane wreckage found off southern Thailand is unlikely to belong to Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, which vanished nearly two years ago, experts say.

A large piece of curved metal washed ashore in Nakhon Si Thammarat province, said Tanyapat Patthikongpan, head of the Pak Phanang district.

"Villagers found the wreckage, measuring about two metres wide and three metres long," he said, adding it "could have been under the sea for no more than a year, judging from barnacles on it".

The find fuelled speculation in the Thai media that the debris could belong to MH370, which disappeared with 239 people on board during a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing in March 2014.

A piece of the plane washed up on the French island of Reunion in the Indian Ocean in July 2015, but no further trace has been found.

However, experts said while powerful currents sweeping the Indian Ocean could deposit debris thousands of kilometres away, wreckage was extremely unlikely to have drifted across the equator into the northern hemisphere.

It just doesn't make any sense. I don't think there's any connection with MH370 whatsoever.

Aviation expert Geoffrey Thomas

The location of the debris in Thailand "would appear to be inconsistent with the drift models that appeared when MH370's flaperon was discovered in Reunion last July," said Greg Waldron from Flightglobal, an industry publication.

"The markings, engineering, and tooling apparent in this debris strongly suggest that it is aerospace-related.

"It will need to be carefully examined, however, to determine its exact origin."

Other possible sources of aerospace debris included the launching of space rockets by India eastwards over the Bay of Bengal, he said.

The fragment found in Thailand "just doesn't look like aircraft fuselage," aviation expert Geoffrey Thomas said.

"It just doesn't make any sense," he added.

"I don't think there's any connection with MH370 whatsoever."  

There has been no official confirmation from Thailand that the wreckage belongs even to a plane.

"Personally, I don't think it's MH370," Thai Government spokesman Sansern Kaewkamnerd said.

A spokesman for the Joint Agency Coordination Centre (JACC), the Canberra-based authority overseeing the international search for MH370, said it was "awaiting results of the official examination of the material".

Meanwhile, the Malaysian transport ministry is in contact with Thai authorities to verify the debris, a ministry spokesman said.

Reuters

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