RYCEY Rolls Royce Holdings PLC (PK)

SINGAPORE—Aircraft debris found earlier this year in South Africa and Mauritius "almost certainly" came from missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, Malaysia's Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai said on Thursday.

The team investigating the mysterious disappearance of Flight 370 has examined two pieces of debris found in South Africa and Mauritius and have concluded that both are consistent with panels of a Malaysia Airlines Boeing Co. 777 jet, the type of aircraft that operated the flight that went missing more than two years ago.

Four pieces of recovered aircraft debris are so far believed by experts to have belonged to Flight 370, though the main wreckage and its black boxes still remain missing despite intensive searches costing millions of dollars by an Australia-led team.

A part of a wing, called a flaperon, was discovered on French La Ré union Island in July last year, and was later confirmed to have come from the missing plane.

In March this year, a piece of an engine cowling that showed a portion of the logo of engine manufacturer Rolls-Royce Holdings PLC was found washed ashore in South Africa. Later, an interior panel piece was found on the Mauritian island of Rodrigues.

A separate piece of debris discovered in Mozambique by an amateur sleuth earlier this year is also believed to have come from the plane, according to the Australian government.

Mr. Liow said the governments of Malaysia, Australia and China remain committed to the search for Flight 370 and have so far scoured over 105,000 square kilometers of ocean floor for the missing plane. The current phase of the search is expected to end this summer.

Flight 370 disappeared from radar in the early hours of March 8, 2014, while on a routine flight to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur.

The plane didn't send out a distress signal and all communication with it was lost, baffling aviation experts because modern passenger jets have several systems that ensure near-constant communication. Flight 370's disappearance has prompted calls for closer tracking of planes and regulators are working on new rules.

Investigators analyzed satellite data to conclude that the plane flew thousands of miles off-course to a remote part of the Southern Indian Ocean before it possibly ran out of fuel and crashed.

The families of the 239 passengers and crew of Flight 370 are still waiting for answers and have demanded that the search for the missing plane continue.

Write to Gaurav Raghuvanshi at gaurav.raghuvanshi@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

May 11, 2016 23:25 ET (03:25 GMT)

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