Malaysian government: Debris found in Thailand not from MH370

Malaysian officials confirm metal paneling found on
Friday not from missing passenger jet
No sign of the plane since wreckage was found on
Reunion Island last year
— Debris found in Thailand last week is not from
missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, officials said
Tuesday.
A large piece of curved metal paneling was found on
Friday by a fisherman on the coast of Nakhon Si
Thammarat province, leading many to speculate that it
might be further evidence of the passenger jet that
disappeared on March 8, 2014 with 239 people on
board.
"From seeing the pictures in local news, this is
definitely not a piece from military aircraft, but it looks
like a section from a big commercial aircraft in my
personal opinion," Royal Thai air force spokesman
Pongsak Semachai told CNN on Sunday .
However, after inspecting the debris in conjunction with
Thai officials, Malaysian investigators said that the
metal does not belong to a B777 9M-MRO aircraft and
so could not be connected to MH370.
No repeat of Reunion
In September, French investigators confirmed that
aircraft debris found on Reunion Island in July was
from the missing Malaysia Airlines plane.
However, despite global excitement that the mystery of
the plane might finally be solved, little has come from
the discovery and the search continues.
Earlier this month, searchers uncovered a shipwreck
from the 1800s , the second such discovery made by
boats scanning the relatively unknown depths of the
Indian Ocean.
In the southern Indian Ocean, where the search is being
focused, around 80,000 square kilometers (nearly
31,000 square miles) of ocean floor have currently been
searched, with another 40,000 square kilometers far off
the west coast of Australia still to go. At present, no
sign of the missing plane has been found.
The "towfish" underwater sonar rig that the search
crews were using to scan the seabed was recently lost
after striking an underwater volcano in the southern
Indian Ocean.
So what was the Thai debris?
Malaysian aviation consultant Gerry Soetjatman told
The world on Sunday that the debris was almost certainly
not from a plane.
"It is obvious to me that it isn't a plane or MH370, but
it's too early to tell what it is yet," he said.
Soetjatman said the raised rivets seen on the debris are
"much more typical of what you find on a rocket." For
example, he said, Japan has launched rockets in the
past two years that could be the source of the debris