Debris found on Australian beach could be MH370 wreckage: reports

CANBERRA - The Australian authorities will investigate if debris washed up on a South Australian beach belongs to missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, media reports said here Friday.

South Australian police have collected a piece of wreckage slightly larger than a shoebox after a man searching for driftwood on Kangaroo Island, 100 km from Adelaide, came across the debris.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) will now examine the item to determine whether it is from MH370.

A media spokeswoman from South Australia Police told Xinhua on Friday that a Kangaroo Island resident found the debris and called SA police. Police went to the island on Thursday afternoon and handed the item over to ATSB officials at the scene.

SA Police refused to comment further on the media reports.

CASA (Civil Aviation Safety Authority) is carrying out data matching from the civil aviation database.

Channel Seven News footage of the debris showed a white fragment with "caution no step" printed on it and honeycomb structured reinforcement, a common feature of planes.

Samuel Armstrong, the man who found the debris, told Seven News he just "stumbled across" the wreckage.

"I thought about planes that had gone down and wondered where it could have come from," Armstrong said on Thursday evening.

"I've found fruit along this coastline that's from overseas, it could've dropped off boats, stuff travels a long way."

Jochen Kaempf, an oceanographer from Flinders University in Adelaide, said currents in the southern Indian Ocean, where the search for MH370 is centered, meant it was possible that wreckage from the plane could have ended up in South Australia.

"The time scale of two years is just right, it could happen in that time scale," Kampf told Fairfax Media on Friday.

MH370 disappeared on March 8, 2014 with 239 passengers and crew aboard after the flight departed Kuala Lumpur for Beijing.

A wing part from a Boeing 777 which was confirmed to be from MH370 washed up on Reunion Island, 2, 000 km off the east coast of Africa in the Indian Ocean, in July 2015.