It was a US lawyer funding his own independent investigation into the whereabouts of MH370 wreckage, that led to the finding of what might be a piece of the plane off Mozambique this week.
US lawyer and blogger Blaine Alan Gibson has spent the last 12 months travelling to remote islands around the Indian Ocean, in search for pieces of missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, which vanished almost two years ago with 239 people on board.
Gibson discovered a piece measuring 130 centimetres by 55 centimetres this week with a local fisherman, found on a sandbank of the Mozambique Channel which separates Mozambique from Madagascar. He handed the piece to Mozambique authorities after reporting the discovery, chairman of the Institute of Civil Aviation of Mozambique commander Joao de Abreu Martins told CNN.
An unnamed US official has said that the piece is a part of the aircraft’s tail that is horizontal as the plane flies.
According to Stuff, Gibson has been blogging about his own investigation, writing how he has been, “combing beaches for a year to find anything that looks like it could be possibly ... from an airplane”.
One entry describes a visit to Bird Island off the coast of Myanmar, where debris often washed ashore and remained untouched.
“We anchored the speedboat ... and I swam ashore,” he wrote, before writing about the finding of two items found interesting to him.
He is pictured wearing a t-shirt with the image of a plane and the words, “MH370 Search ON”.
