Wreckage found in Mozambique last year but Liam Lotter only made the connection with missing jet after news of other debris

A piece of wreckage found on a beach by a South African teenager is to be sent to Australia for testing to see if it comes from the Malaysia Airlines plane which disappeared two years ago and was presumed lost over the Indian Ocean.

Liam Lotter, 18, found the metre-long chunk while on holiday in Mozambique and took it home. He only made the connection with flight MH370, which vanished with 239 passengers and crew on board, after reports last week that other debris washed up in Mozambique could be from the plane.

The South African Civil Aviation Authority said it would send Lotter’s find to Australia, where the other item from Mozambique is already being tested. “We are arranging for collection of the part, which will then be sent to Australia as they are the ones appointed by Malaysia to identify parts found,” a spokesman for the authority, Kabelo Ledwaba, was quoted as saying by Reuters.

Lotter’s father, Casper, told Associated Press that the teenager found the item, which has a five-digit number on it, on 30 December on a beach in southern Mozambique near the resort of Xai Xai.

Lotter Sr said he initially dismissed the find as a “piece of rubbish” from a boat, but his son believed it came from a plane and so took it home.

“He was adamant he wanted to bring it home because it had a number on it,” he said. “It just grabbed him for some weird reason.”

The teenager told South Africa’s East Coast Radio about the find: “We picked it up and I turned it around and it had like a curve to it. You could see where it’d been pop-riveted almost, like there’s holes on the side.”

The family contacted Australian authorities after reading about the other find in Mozambique.

Malaysia’s transport minister, Liow Tiong Lai, has warned against “undue speculation” about the earlier find, a metre-long piece of metal discovered on the Paluma sandbank in the channel between the African mainland and Madagascar last weekend, but said there was a “high possibility” it came from a Boeing 777.

The Malaysia Airlines plane disappeared on 8 March 2014 shortly after taking off from Kuala Lumpur on a flight to Beijing. Investigators are still examining a number of possible causes connected to the profiles of the flight crew, the aircraft’s cargo and why MH370 diverted from its planned flight path.



Debris found on the shore of Réunion island in the Indian Ocean last year was later definitively identified as part of a wing from the plane.

The part, known as a flaperon, was discovered on 29 July. Malaysian authorities have said that paint colour and maintenance record matches prove it came from the missing aircraft.