Debris Found on Pemba Has Numbers Matching Missing MH370 Plane

The numbers and dimensions of the latest found debris suspected to come from the disappeared Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 match the aircraft, Malaysian Transport Minister Datuk Liow Tiong Lai said.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) – "A date stamp indicated that it was manufactured on Jan 23, 2002, and consistent with the May 31, 2002, delivery date for MH370," Liow said on Thursday, as quoted by The Star newspaper on Friday. He added that "all identification stamps have a second ‘OL’ number which are unique identifiers relating to the part."

According to the transport minister, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) and the MH370 Safety Investigation Team have both verified that the numbers, appearance and dimensions of the debris, found on Pemba Island of the Zanzibar Archipelago in June, match those of an outboard flap section of the Boeing 777 aircraft.

Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, disappeared from radar screens on March 8, 2014, less than an hour after takeoff. There were 227 passengers and 12 crew members on board the Boeing 777 aircraft.

According to the Malaysian transport minister, the search for the missing aircraft will continue until the entire search area of 120,000 square kilometers (over 46,000 square miles) defined by experts has been covered. So far, several pieces of debris suspected to come from the aircraft have been found at different locations, including in Mozambique, South Africa and the French island of Reunion.