A piece of a Boeing 777 picked up on a beach by a KwaZulu-Natal teenager - the biggest chunk found so far - has led Australian investigators to believe it comes from the doomed Malaysian flight MH370 that disappeared without trace exactly two years ago.
And it seems almost certain that the plane crashed into the sea at high speed and disintegrated on impact.
The plane was en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing when it disappeared with 239 people on board on March 8, 2014.
Relatives filed law suits against the airline and followed various leads in the multimillion-dollar air and sea search for the downed craft, covering an area of about 56 000km.
This latest find - referred to in the Australian media as the fourth piece - makes it seem unlikely that the pilot tried to make a controlled landing, as was previously thought.
Kabelo Ledwaba, spokesman for the SA Civil Aviation Authority, confirmed that its accident and incident investigations division would be sending an official to Wartburg, near Pietermaritzburg, to pick up the piece, before passing it on to international investigators looking into the disappearance of the plane.
And the metre-long fibre-glass and honeycombed under section of a right wing, with the serial number 676EB stamped on it, may never have surfaced were it not for the teen’s curiosity over the debris he found on the beach while on holiday in December. He was determined to hang on to it, despite his mother’s insistence that it be thrown away.
Liam Lotter, 18, and his cousin Calvin Demont, 21, spotted the light grey object while walking on the beach near Inhambane in northern Mozambique on December 27.
“Calvin is interested in planes and said it was from a plane, and I wanted to take it, but he said ‘no’, and walked off. I don’t know what made me do it, but I picked it up and had to drag it up the dune back to the beach house,” said Liam.
It stayed on the veranda until they packed up to go home on January 4. His mother, Candace Lotter, told him it was not going into her house at home, but he tossed it into the rubber duckie and it was transported all the way home, more than 1 000km away.
It was dumped in the study with other fishing gear, and was almost thrown out a few weeks ago when she wanted the study cleared out. Liam pleaded with his mum that he keep it, and the item remained.
It was only when Liam’s grandmother, Merle Field, saw an article in the Daily News this week that a similar piece had been found in the Mozambican channel by blogger and amateur investigator Blaine Gibson, that the family realised they may have something rather significant.
With the help of East Coast Radio, Mrs Lotter made contact with the civil aviation authority, and later investigators in Australia, including Joe Hattley.
“He was very excited, and wanted photographs of the piece, and asked us many questions about where it was found, whether it was covered with marine life, and so on,” she said.
In an e-mail, he implored her to ensure its safety until it was in his hands: “In the meantime, can I please request that you treat it as important evidence, with minimal handling from now on? There may be minute traces of material on the panel that can be easily lost through handling.”
Initially, a local aviation official planned to send a courier company to fetch the piece, but on Hattley’s advice, Mrs Lotter convinced officials that it had to be fetched by them in person.
“He called the other night and told me that, based on the serial number, it was from a Boeing 777. He said there was no other 777 reported to have gone down in that area, and it was almost certainly from the missing Malaysian plane,” she said.
Liam, who is in Grade 12 at Wartburg High School, got a Facebook request from Blaine Gibson, who found the piece further up the coast, and they started exchanging pictures and details of their individual finds, further deepening the family’s interest in the air disaster.
Investigators, based on military radar tracking, believe the plane deviated from its flight path, turned southward near the island of Sumatra, and headed over the southern Indian Ocean. It would have exhausted its fuel within five hours, they estimated.
These finds mean that more debris could be found – even further south on the South African coastline, carried by tidal drifts and the Mozambican current.
Liam’s find now joins three other significant finds:
- July 29, last year flaperon found on Reunion Island.
- December 27 underwing section found at Inhambane.
- March 2 part of a horizontal stabiliser found in Mozambican Channel.
- March 7 debris with grey and blue markings found on Reunion Island.
Liam believes fate led him to find it, and to hold on to it, so that the mystery could be solved.
“I feel really good about my find, that it may offer some closure for the families.
“Just to help them find out what happened and why it happened, because the pain of not knowing must be so terrible.
“Perhaps this will lead to further investigation and, eventually, the discovery of the craft,” he said.
Sunday Tribune