A possible sixth debris from the ill-fated and still missing Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 was said to have been discovered off the coast of Tanzania last week.
Australian Transport Minister Darren Chester made the announcement of the new discovery on June 24. He, however, added that they are still awaiting confirmation if indeed the debris belongs to the Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370.
The aircraft debris was found on Pemba Island off the coast of the East African country of Tanzania and a team from the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) is now probing the authenticity of the debris, cites Reuters.
Malaysian Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai said that they will send a team to Tanzania once it is confirmed that the newly discovered debris, which is said to be quite huge, really belongs to Flight MH370.
A few weeks ago, a plane debris was also found on Kangaroo Island in South Australia but on June 22, the ATSB confirmed that it was not from Flight MH370, reports the International Business Times.
ATSB said that it has examined the part discovered in Kangaroo Island in collaboration with Malaysian authorities and representatives of Boeing, the aircraft manufacturer. They said that the information received from Boeing clearly indicated that the item is not consistent with the manufacturing specifications of a Boeing commercial aircraft
The ATSB will also employ the same approach in determining whether the new debris found off Tanzania is indeed part of the Flight MH370. Once it is confirmed, subsequent and deeper investigation will likely ensue.
Continuing the search
Meanwhile, in a tripartite meeting held on June 20 to 21, officials of Australia, China, and Malaysia have agreed to the decision to search the 120,000 square kilometers area in the southern Indian Ocean by August.
During the meeting, it was also agreed upon that the search will no longer extend beyond the already expanded search zone especially if investigators do not find credible information as regards the probable location of the plane.
Investigators believe that someone may have deliberately switched off the plane’s transponder before diverting it thousands of miles off course over the Indian Ocean.
Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 disappeared on March 8, 2014 laden with 239 passengers and crew shortly after taking off from Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia bound for Beijing in China.
Under the helm of a conscious pilot
All the five plane parts of Flight MH370 found so far came from the right side of the aircraft, making a number of investigators deduce that Flight MH370 may have changed course under the control of a conscious pilot before going down and crashing.
The latest theory goes against the previous theory made early this year that Flight MH370 might have suffered from a hypoxia event before it crashed, meaning the pilot was unconscious at the controls.
It was ATSB Chief Martin Dolan who confirmed recently that they are making a last-ditch attempt to re-analyze and rework the assessments on how far Flight MH370 could have flown before coming to a tragic end.
Accordingly, the search zone was calculated from the last automatic signal sent by the ill-fated plane’s engines to a satellite before it disappeared.
The signal revealed that the satellite system had been reset which means that there was a power failure that could be an indication that the plane was running out of fuel.
ATSB also said that the signal did not indicate location data. But a careful review of the time it took the transmission to go back and forth from the satellite has prompted investigators to settle on a 400-mile arc in the Indian Ocean as the crash site of Flight MH370.
After over two years, the full wreckage of the Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 has yet to be found and continues to baffle not only the search teams and investigators but the rest of the world.