Large metal chunk investigated after washing onto Thai beach

Investigation… a Malaysian official takes pictures of a piece of debris after it was found by fishermen on a beach in the southern province of Nakhon Si Thammarat.

Yesterday, Transport Minister Datuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai instructed DCA director-general Datuk Azharuddin Abdul Rahman to contact the Thai authorities on the latest suspected plane wreckage.

MH370 disappeared on March 8, 2014 after it departed from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia going to Beijing, China and was carrying 239 people, passengers and crew members.

Malaysian and French authorities said previous year that an aircraft flaperon found on the French Indian Ocean island of La Reunion belonged to the missing plane.

The confirmation came a day after Mitsubishi Heavy Industries said the piece was likely part of a rocket launched by Japan.

Children write messages of hope for passengers of missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 at Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) outside Kuala Lumpur June 14, 2014.

Malaysia’s government has said that a piece of debris found on Thailand’s southern coast was not from missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.

Officials earlier said the piece of suspected plane wreckage, found off the east coast of southern Thailand, was unlikely to belong to MH370.

The placement of bolts and the numbers etched on the debris resemble the honeycomb launch fairing of a Japanese H-IIA rocket, a liquid fuelled launch system used to transport satellites and space probes, according to VOA news.

Nothing has been found since the Reunion discovery, despite a search which has so far covered more than 80,000 square kilometres (30,888 square miles) of the seabed.

The Fugro Discovery, one of three ships conducting the search, towed its side-scan sonar into a mud volcano that rose 2,200 meters (7,200 feet) from the sea floor on Sunday, the bureau said in a statement.

He said it may be debris from a rocket launch by India, but expert analysis is awaited.

Thailand’s Transportation Ministry said four Malaysian officials and two Thai experts will visit the site Monday.

That was west of the search zone in the Indian Ocean, but consistent with the Australian team’s estimates of the affect of currents.

But Malaysian aviation consultant Gerry Soetjatman said the debris doesn’t look like it’s from a jet.