Plane part off Thai coast unlikely MH370鈥檚
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A piece of suspected plane wreckage found off the east coast of southern Thailand on Saturday was unlikely to belong to Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 which vanished nearly two years ago, said aviation experts and Thai officials.
A large piece of curved metal washed ashore in Nakhon Si Thammarat province, Tanyapat Patthikongpan, head of Pak Phanang district, told Reuters. Villagers reported it to authorities for identification, he said.
鈥淰illagers found the wreckage, measuring about 2 meters wide and 3 meters long,鈥 he said.
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 July 2015 but no further trace has been found.
Experts said that while powerful currents sweeping the Indian Ocean could deposit debris thousands of kilometers away, wreckage was extremely unlikely to have drifted across the equator into the northern hemisphere.
The location of the debris in Thailand 鈥渨ould appear to be inconsistent with the drift models that appeared when MH370鈥檚 flaperon was discovered in Reunion last July,鈥 said Greg Waldron, Asia managing editor at Flightglobal, an industry publication.
鈥淭he markings, engineering, and tooling apparent in this debris strongly suggest that it is aerospace related,鈥 said Waldron. 鈥淚t will need to be carefully examined to determine its exact origin.鈥
Other possible sources of aerospace debris included the launching of space rockets by India eastwards over the Bay of Bengal, he said.
There has been no official confirmation from Thailand that the wreckage belongs even to a plane, never mind the missing Malayasia jet.
鈥淧ersonally, I don鈥檛 think it鈥檚 MH370,鈥 Thai government spokesman Sansern Kaewkamnerd said
Tanyapat said the debris 鈥渃ould have been under the sea for no more than a year, judging from barnacles on it.鈥
A spokesman for the Joint Agency Coordination Centre, the Canberra-based authority which is overseeing the international search for MH370, said it was 鈥渁waiting results of the official examination of the material.鈥
Malaysia鈥檚 transport ministry said it is in contact with Thai authorities to verify the debris.
Investigators believe someone may have deliberately switched off MH370鈥檚 transponder before diverting it thousands of miles off course. Most of the passengers were Chinese.
The fragment found in Thailand 鈥渏ust doesn鈥檛 look like aircraft fuselage,鈥 said aviation expert Geoffrey Thomas.
鈥淚 don鈥檛 think there鈥檚 any connection with MH370 whatsoever,鈥 he said from near Perth.
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