KUALA LUMPUR, March 24 – The Australian government has confirmed that the debris recovered from Mozambique is highly likely to have originated from Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370. Australia’s Infrastructure and Transport Minister Darren Chester said in a statement that the Malaysian Investigation Team for MH370 had found that both pieces of debris were consistent with the panels from a Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 aircraft.
“The examination of the debris had been completed. The analysis has concluded the debris is almost certainly from MH370. That such debris has been found on the east coast of Africa is consistent with the drift modelling performed by CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation) and further affirms our search efforts in the southern Indian Ocean,” he said in the statement, which was uploaded at http://minister.infrastructure.gov.au/.
Chester also acknowledged the work undertaken by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, Geoscience Australia, Boeing and Australian National University which assisted the Malaysian Investigation Team with their examination of the debris. He said the search for the ill-fated plane continued and there were 25,000 square kilometres of the underwater search area still to be searched.
He said they are focused on completing this task and remain hopeful the aircraft will be found. The aircraft with 239 people on board vanished from the radar during a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014. Currently, search efforts are conducted in the southern Indian Ocean where Flight MH370’s final flight path was believed to have ended.
