MH370 - Debris on beach not from missing MH370

April 24, 2014 - 12:57PM

Aleisha Orr

Reporter, WA Today

The debris found on a beach in Western Australia is not connected to missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau says.

ATSB spokesman Martin Dolan told ABC radio on Thursday he was satisfied it was not from the plane.

The item was found washed up on a beach 10 kilometres east of Augusta, near Margaret River, on the south-west coast of Western Australia.

The shadow of a Royal New Zealand Air Force P-3 Orion aircraft is seen on low cloud cover while it searches for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 in the southern Indian Ocean. Photo: AP

"We've carefully examined detailed photographs that were taken for us by the police and we're satisfied that it's not a lead in the search for MH370," Mr Dolan said.

"From our point of view, we're ruling it out. We'll get some further details just to be sure but at this stage we're not seeing anything in this that would lead us to believe that it comes from a Boeing aircraft."

The Joint Agency Coordination Centre (JACC), which is overseeing the search for the plane that disappeared on March 8, said on Wednesday that Western Australian police had taken possession of the debris.

It was reported that the person who found the object initially kept it for a day or two before taking it to the Busselton Regional Airport for inspection.

The object was taken to Busselton Police Station on Wednesday.

Senior Sergeant Steve Principe at Busselton Police Station told The Busselton-Dunsborough Mail the object was about 2.4 metres high, half a metre wide and was of an alloy type of metal.

The object did not have any identifiable writing on it, Senior Sergeant Principe told the news outlet.

Up to 11 military aircraft and 11 ships are planned to assist in the continued search effort on Thursday.

Rough seas and poor visibility may hamper the search.

Before any of the aircraft take off, an assessment of current weather conditions will be made as ex-tropical cyclone Jack moves south.

The day's visual search area totals approximately 49,567 square kilometres.

The centre of the search area lies approximately 1584 kilometres north-west of Perth.

The autonomous under water vehicle, Bluefin-21 AUV, is completing mission 12 in the underwater search area.

It has now completed more than 90 per cent of the focused underwater search area and no contacts of interest have been found.