Search for missing MH370 leads to possible personal items

The first personal items of passengers aboard Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 may have been found in the waters off Madagascar in the Indian Ocean, a media report said on Monday as officials from Malaysia, Australia and China met here to chart the future direction of search operations for the missing plane.

It is the same area where Gibson found pieces of the plane’s wreckage June 6.

“They may have just fallen off a ship”, Gibson conceded to the BBC.

The flight disappeared on with 239 people on board en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing in March 2014.

The search for the Boeing 777 is in its final phase, with 15,000sq km yet to be covered, and is being delayed by winter weather.

A spokesman for the Australian government’s Joint Agency Coordination Centre, which is coordinating the search, said it was aware of the possible find and Malaysian authorities would be investigating.

MH 370-related items found so far include a section of wing called a flaperon, found on Reunion Island in July 2015 and confirmed as debris in September previous year; and a horizontal stabilizer from the tail section, found between Mozambique and Madagascar in December 2015.

The outcome of special tripartite talks at the officials’ level on MH370 held here for two days will be brought to the ministerial level between the three parties for a decision to be made, said Deputy Transport Minister Datuk Ab Aziz Kaprawi.

“For the general public, the winding down of the search conveys a crude message that financial considerations trump the flyer’s safety and security”.

Several pieces of debris have been found thousands of miles from the suspected crash area but they have so far shed no light on what caused the disaster.

“This task is too important to be left to some chance discovery by private citizens such as locals/tourists”.

“Precious clues or evidence in the form of debris are at risk of being tampered with by human hands or lost forever”.

“We need to solve this mystery”, said Gibson.