Debris found off Tanzania part of missing MH370 plane

The piece of debris discovered on an island off Tanzania in June this year has been confirmed as belonging to the Boeing 777 plane of Malaysia Airlines MH370 flight, authorities said on Thursday.

Several part numbers, along with physical appearance, dimensions, and construction confirm the debris to be an inboard section of a Boeing 777 outboard flap, while a date stamp of January 23, 2002 on one of the part numbers was consistent with the delivery date for MH370, Xinhua news agency cited Malaysia's Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai as saying in a statement.

In addition, the Italian part manufacturer has confirmed that all numbers on the discovered object relate to the same serial number outboard flap that was shipped to Boeing as line number 404, which was consistent with the part used on the plane delivered to Malaysia Airlines, registered as 9M-MRO, which was deployed on flight MH370.

The conclusion was based on the examination by experts from the Australian Transport Safety Bureau and the MH370 Safety Investigation Team, according to Liow.

Liow said further examination of the debris will continue so as to uncover further evidence which may provide insight into the circumstances of Flight MH370.

Previously, a piece of debris found on the French island of Reunion in July 2015 was confirmed to be part of MH370.

MH370 was a scheduled international passenger flight operated by Malaysia Airlines that disappeared on March 8, 2014 while flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing in China.

The governments of Malaysia, Australia and China announced in July that the search for Flight MH370 would be suspended upon completion of the current search area, but promised to resume search if new evidence emerged.

--IANS

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