A piece of plane debris found off Kangaroo Island off the coast of South Australia did not come from MH370, Australian officials have confirmed.
Discovered among a pile of seaweed and wood by a local man, Samuel Armstrong, on June 9, investigators took the piece for analysis, believing it could be part of the missing Malaysian Airlines plane.
On Wednesday, Australia’s Transportation Safety Bureau (ATSB) announced the debris had not come from the lost plane, which disappeared without a trace on March 8, 2014, vanished from radar during a trip from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 passengers and crew on board.
“Information received from the manufacturer indicates that the item is not consistent with the manufacturing specification of a Boeing commercial aircraft,” the ATSB said in a statement.
The bureau said Malaysian authorities and aircraft manufacturer Boeing had worked with Australian authorities to analyze the piece.
A number of pieces of debris confirmed to be from — or thought highly likely to be from — MH370 have been discovered around the Indian Ocean in the past year, including a flaperon encrusted with barnacles which was discovered on Reunion Island.
“The search must go on”
The announcement comes just days after debris hunter Blaine Gibson released pictures of more than 15 personal items, from computer cases to backpacks, which he said could belong to passengers on the missing plane.
“I took pictures of them, collected them and I turned the pictures over to family members so they could share among themselves and see if they recognized anything,” Gibson told CNN on Monday.
Gibson said he had five other pieces of plane debris he’d discovered, which Malaysian authorities have yet to pick up for examination.
“Until I or someone else finds the plane and the truth about what happened to it and the passengers (I won’t stop),” he said.
“The search must go on, it can’t stop when the present search area is exhausted. We have to solve this mystery and these, if they are from Malaysia 370, are important clues as to where it crashed and how it crashed.”