SYDNEY (AP) — Malaysia's confirmation on Thursday that debris found in South Africa and an island off Mauritius came from missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 brings to five the number of parts that have been recovered from the aircraft that vanished two years ago.
Johnny Begue, who lives on the French island of Reunion in the western Indian Ocean, was collecting stones on one of the island's beaches last July when he saw a two-meter (6-foot) long piece of an airplane wing lying on the sand.
After consulting experts on ocean currents and traveling throughout the region looking for any trace of the plane, Gibson asked a boat operator to take him to a sandbar in Mozambique named Paluma.
FIRST CABIN DEBRIS
[...] that point, all the debris that had washed ashore had come from the plane's exterior.
Though the floating bits of debris that have washed up on coastlines bolster authorities' assertion that the plane crashed somewhere in the Indian Ocean, they offer no clues about why and where it crashed.
[...] hopes are dwindling that the wreckage will be found; search crews have already scoured 105,000 square kilometers (40,000 square miles) of the 120,000 square kilometer (46,000-square-mile) search zone to no avail, and there are no plans to expand the search area further.
