Confirmed: Tanzania debris is from vanished MH370

The debris, found on Pemba Island, part of the Zanzibar archipelago off the Tanzanian coast, is the latest piece of wreckage to be linked to the Malaysia Airlines jet, whose disappearance remains a mystery.

He added that a date stamp associated with one of the part numbers indicated manufacture on Jan 23, 2002, which is consistent with the May 31, 2002 delivery date for MH370.

Transport minister says the serial number and date stamp on the debris was confirmed by Boeing and its retailing manufacturer to belong to the ill-fated Boeing 777.

Flight MH370 disappeared on March 8, 2014, while en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 passengers and crew on board. The pilots last communicated with air traffic control 38 minutes after takeoff.

Gibson, who has been hunting for the aircraft for more than a year, said: “If they are confirmed as MH370 and if the fire was before the crash, this is significant evidence of what caused the plane’s demise”.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) report on the new wing flap said it “was confirmed as originating from the aircraft registered 9M-MRO and operating as MH370”.

The two-metre outboard flap is the fifth piece of the plane to be identified by experts in Canberra since the first bit of debris from MH370.

“As such, the experts have concluded that the debris, [is] an outboard flap, originat [ing] from the aircraft 9M-MRO, also known as MH370”, Liow said.

Experts believe the plane crashed in a remote part of the Southern Indian Ocean, but an Australian-led global search team has yet to locate the main wreckage.

The discovery, however, does not provide information that can be used to determine a specific location of the aircraft, said Chester.

The 120,000 square kilometers priority search zone in the south Indian Ocean has now been largely sonar scanned by deep sea cable dragged towfish, and subject to revisiting some possible blind spots using either tethered or autonomous underwater vehicles, should be completed by December.