Possible MH370 debris handed over to Transport Minister.
Family members of ill-fated flight victims hand over five pieces to minister
PUTRAJAYA: Family members of those on board the ill-fated MH370 have handed over five pieces of debris, believed to be from the missing plane, to the government.
The five items, found washed ashore in Madagascar, were handed to Transport Minister Anthony Loke at his ministry.
Grace Nathan, whose mother Anne Daisy was one of the passengers, urged the government not to stop searching for the aircraft.
“The fact that debris is still washing up ashore means the government should not stop looking for the plane. They should not turn a blind eye on new evidence that continue to emerge.
“Now that we have found several pieces here, we hope the authorities could find more clues as to what happened to MH370.
“If there are companies interested to search for the plane on a ‘no find, no fee’ basis, we hope the government will take it up,” she told reporters after handing over the items yesterday.
She said since locals stumbled upon many plane debris, the gov- ernment should also consider land search for clues to the missing plane.
Separately, Loke said the govern- ment had not totally shut down on the idea of resuming the search for MH370.
“If there are credible leads, we are open to resuming the search,” said Loke, adding that the debris would be given to investigators for verification.
The five pieces of debris were found by villagers and fishermen on three different locations in Madagascar between December 2016 and August this year.
Also present at the handover was amateur investigator Blaine Gibson, who has been conducting his own searches for clues relating to MH370.
Gibson said one of the significant pieces of debris was believed to be a floor panel of a Boeing 777 which was found last year near Sandravinany in southern Madagascar.
“I have consulted independent experts who said the piece was likely to be the passenger floor panel of a Boeing 777.
“The floor panel is important because it has numbers on it and it also shows that the floor of the cabin shattered,” said Gibson, adding that if the floor was fractured, the aircraft might not be intact.
Flight MH370 was on its way from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014, with 239 people on board, before it disappeared.
Investigators deduced that the aircraft had veered thousands of kilometres off-course from its route before plunging into the Indian Ocean.
In total, 27 pieces of aircraft parts have been found, but only three wing fragments have been confirmed to be from MH370.
A search led by Australia in the Indian Ocean had failed to locate the missing plane, causing it to be suspended in January last year.
US exploration firm Ocean Infinity resumed the search this year on a “no find, no fee” basis but was also not successful.