New debris not linked to MH370

Expectations were high on Sunday after authorities revealed they had found another suspected piece of the missing MH370 aircraft on Reunion Island in the Western Indian Ocean.

The Boeing 777 airplane disappeared on March 8, 2014, while on its way from Beijing to Kuala Lumpur. Two hundred and thirty nine passengers were on board the plane which vanished without a trace.

The debris located on Sunday turned out to be a "domestic ladder" and did not belong to a plane, the Malaysian Director General of Civil Aviation, Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, told the Associated Press news agency.

"I'm the one leading the investigation in France for the analysis of the piece brought back," Rahman told journalists, referring to a wing part that had been discovered on Saturday and sent to Balme, near Toulouse, for examination. "But I checked with the Civil Aviation Authority, and people on the ground in Reunion, and it [the new piece] was just a domestic ladder," he added.

The search continues

Officials in Malaysia were also reaching out to their counterparts in Indian Ocean territories to be on the lookout for debris.

"This is to allow the experts to conduct more substantive analysis should there be more debris coming onto land, providing us more clues to the missing aircraft," Liow Tiong Lai, Malaysia's transport minister, told reporters.

Liow's ministry also confirmed on Sunday that the wing portion or the flaperon that was found a day earlier was part of a Boeing 777 and would be examined by French authorities, along with Boeing, the US National Transportation Safety Board and a Malaysian team.

The discovery comes after 16 months of grueling searches for the missing aircraft. Scientists believe ocean currents could have carried the plane's destroyed portions far away from where it is believed to have crashed between Kuala Lumpur and Beijing.

Speculations have abounded as to the cause of the plane's disappearance and have focused on hijacking, a terror plot or rogue pilot action.

mg/jlw (AFP, AP)