Charred cockpit debris may help solve mystery

New Wreckage believed to be from Flight MH370 showing evidence of an intense onboard fire is being suggested as a potential breakthrough in the mystery of the missing Malaysia Airlines jet.

The wreckage, thought to be internal cockpit wall panels from a Boeing 777, was recovered from Madagascar last week by Blaine Gibson, an American lawyer who has previously found 12 pieces of confirmed and suspected wreckage from the airliner, which vanished in March 2014.

The new find has attracted much attention from the aviation industry because scorch marks on the panel suggest that there was a fierce fire aboard the aircraft, which was carrying 239 passengers and crew on an overnight flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

Yesterday Gibson passed five pieces of potential debris to the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB), which is coordinating the hunt for MH370. It is now the world’s costliest search, having passed £100 million (NZ$181m).

The find was announced on the aviation website AirlineRatings.com, which said that the scorched parts ‘‘appear to be sections of an internal wall panel which has been burnt, quite likely by a flash fire’’.

The website said that the wreckage bore a remarkable resemblance to panelling from the Boeing 777 avionics bay, which is behind and below the cockpit under the main cabin floor.

The panel was found by three men from the town of Sainte Luce on Madagascar’s southeast coast. It is the first of the 27 pieces of debris confirmed or suspected to be from MH370 to show evidence of fire before the aircraft crashed into the Indian Ocean after running out of fuel.

The possibility of a fire in or near the cockpit before the plane suddenly changed course and flew south has long been put forward as a potential cause for the crash.