Sheet metal with rivets that washed ashore in Western Australia is NOT wreckage from missing flight MH370, officials confirm



Material washed ashore six miles east of Augusta in Western Australia

Australian Transport Safety Bureau had been examining photographs

Material appeared to be sheet metal with rivets - and is not from MH370



Augusta is near Australia's south-western tip about 190 miles from Perth

Malaysia Airlines flight vanished on March 8 with 239 people on board



Unidentified material that washed ashore in Australia and is being examined for any link to the lost Malaysian plane is unlikely to have come from the jet, an official revealed today.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau had been scrutinising photos of the object, which washed ashore six miles east of Augusta in Western Australia state.

But Martin Dolan, chief commissioner of the bureau, said an initial analysis of the material - which appeared to be sheet metal with rivets - suggested it was not from Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.

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Location: The Australian Transport Safety Bureau had been scrutinising photos of the object, which washed ashore six miles east of Augusta in Western Australia state

Mr Dolan said: ‘We do not consider this likely to be of use to our search for MH370. At this stage, we are not getting excited.’ He added that the analysis of the material would likely be completed overnight and a formal statement issued tomorrow. RELATED ARTICLES Previous

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Next Five stranded people winched off tiny island after writing... Holiday beach cordoned off as Second World War bomb is blown... Share this article Share Augusta is near Australia's south-western tip, about 190 miles from Perth, where the search has been headquartered. Meanwhile, Australia's prime minister said today that failure to find any clue in the most likely crash site of the lost jet would not spell the end of the search. This was because officials plan soon to bring in more powerful sonar equipment that can delve deeper beneath the Indian Ocean. Objects washed up east of Augusta (pictured) were being looked at to see if they were from the missing flight Looking: Captain Flt Lt Tim McAlevey of the Royal New Zealand Air Force flying a P-3 Orion during a search trying to locate missing Malaysia Airways Flight MH370 over the Indian Ocean The search coordination centre said a robotic submarine, the U.S. Navy's Bluefin 21, had scanned more than 80 per cent of the 120-sq mile seabed search zone off the Australian west coast, creating a three-dimensional sonar map of the ocean floor. Nothing of interest had been found. 'We do not consider this likely to be of use to our search for MH370. At this stage, we are not getting excited' Martin Dolan, Australian Transport Safety Bureau chief commissioner The 2.8-mile deep search area is a circle 12 miles wide around an area where sonar equipment picked up a signal on April 8 consistent with a plane's black boxes. But the batteries powering those signals are now believed dead. Defence minister David Johnston said Australia was consulting with Malaysia, China and the US on the next phase of the search for the plane, which disappeared on March 8. Details on the next phase are likely to be announced next week. Mr Johnston said more powerful towed side-scan commercial sonar equipment would probably be deployed, similar to the remote-controlled subs that found RMS Titanic 12,500f under the Atlantic Ocean in 1985 and the Australian WWII wreck HMAS Sydney in the Indian Ocean off the Australian coast, north of the current search area, in 2008.

Chinese relatives of passengers on the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 rest during a meeting ‘The next phase, I think, is that we step up with potentially a more powerful, more capable side-scan sonar to do deeper water,’ Mr Johnston said. 'The next phase, I think, is that we step up with potentially a more powerful, more capable side-scan sonar to do deeper water' David Johnston, defence minister While the Bluefin had less than one-fifth of the seabed search area to complete, Mr Johnston estimated that task would take another two weeks. Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said the airliner's probable impact zone was 430 miles long and 50 miles wide. A new search strategy would be adopted if nothing is found in the current seabed search zone. ‘If at the end of that period we find nothing, we are not going to abandon the search, we may well rethink the search, but we will not rest until we have done everything we can to solve this mystery,’ Mr Abbott told reporters.

Reflective: A man stands in front of a billboard as Chinese relatives of passengers on the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 have a meeting at the Metro Park Hotel in Beijing

Map: A handout image released by the Australian Maritime Safety Authority in Canberra, Australia, shows the current planned search areas in the Indian Ocean, west of Australia ‘We owe it to the families of the 239 people on board, we owe it to the hundreds of millions - indeed billions - of people who travel by air to try to get to the bottom of this. 'We will not rest until we have done everything we can to solve this mystery' Tony Abbott, Australian Prime Minister ‘The only way we can get to the bottom of this is to keep searching the probable impact zone until we find something or until we have searched it as thoroughly as human ingenuity allows at this time.’ The focus of the next search phase will be decided by continuing analysis of information including flight data and sound detections of the suspected beacons, Mr Johnston said. ‘A lot of this seabed has not even been hydrographically surveyed before - some of it has - but we're flying blind,’ he said, adding that the seabed in the vicinity of the search was up to four miles deep.

Anger: A Chinese relative of a passenger on missing flight at a meeting at Metro Park Hotel in Beijing