Missing MH370: Aussies probe washed up debris for any link

Australian officials are checking what looks to be debris from an aircraft found on an island off the coast of South Australia to see if it may have come from the Malaysian aircraft MH370, which disappeared more than two years ago, a government spokeswoman said on Thursday.

“We’re waiting for further information and we’ll examine each component as it comes in. At this stage, there is nothing definitive and we’ll follow our normal procedure,” a spokeswom-an for the Australian transport safety bureau said.

“All we know is that there is wreckage.”

Australian television station Channel Seven reported that the debris was found by a someone searching for driftwood on Kan-garoo Island. Footage show-ed a fragment of white wre-ckage with a honeycomb symbol and printed words saying, “Caution no step”.

Flight MH370 disappeared in March 2014 with 239 passengers and crew on board shortly after taking off from Kuala Lumpur bound for Beijing, in what has become one of the world’s greatest aviation mysteries.

A first piece of the Boeing 777, a wing part known as a flaperon, washed up on the French Indian Ocean island of Reunion in July 2015. Malaysia and French auth-orities confirmed it was from the aircraft. Two pieces of debris discovered later in South Africa and the Mauritian island of Rodrigues were almost certainly from the jetliner, Malaysia’s transport ministry said last month.

Investigators believe someone may have deliberately switched off the plane’s transponder before diverting it thousands of miles off course over the Indian Ocean.