“In any case, it is definitely not from MH370, which was equipped with a modern ‘orange brick’-style flight data recorder,” said an ATSB spokesman. “It’s worth noting that the MH370 flight data recorder would not float, so it is highly unlikely that it will be found on any coastline.”
The spokesman said the black box found washed ashore on the Somalian beach was older, from 1960s or 1970s, and could even be from a ship, not necessarily a plane. It appears to be some sort of data recorder, according to experts quoted by the UK newspaper. However, they have also ruled out the item being from MH370.
Local businessman Gaashaanle Ciiraale, identified by Somalia’s Jariiban News Network on Thursday, posed with the orange, spherical object in his Facebook page. He found it on a beach near Gara’ad, a town along the coast.
Mohamed Mire Fahie, reportedly a friend of Ciiraale, was quoted in The Rakyat Post on Sunday as claiming that the item had been handed to a reporter. It’s not known whether the police have since recovered the object from the reporter.
The only possibly MH370-related item still being examined by experts was debris found in Mauritius in the Indian Ocean, east of Africa, in April. It may be from an aeroplane.
Earlier, American blogger Blaine Alan Gibson and South African teenager Liam Lotter also found separate items on separate beaches in Mozambique. The nearest that experts have confirmed is that both items “almost certainly” are from the missing MH370, a Boeing 777-200ER.
The findings are consistent with the drift effect in the Indian Ocean from the search area in its southern stretch.
MH370, with 239 passengers and crew on board, went missing on a routine flight on March 8, 2014 from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Most of the passengers were from China. There were also six Australian nationals on board.
A search mission led by Australia, and including Malaysia and China as well, hope to search the last patch of 15,000 sq km of the search area in the southern Indian Ocean off southwestern Australia by July. The hunt has so far covered 150,000 sq km in a fruitless search.
The fear is that the missing plane may never be found.