US Adventurer Who May Have Found Part of MH370 Would Be 'Lucky'

An American adventurer says it would be a "very lucky discovery" if the piece of aircraft he found on a sandbank off the coast of Mozambique is confirmed to be from the Malaysia Airlines jet that vanished two years ago. Blaine Gibson, who says he's been searching for Flight 370 over the last year, tells the AP that he had wanted no publicity about his Feb. 27 discovery until after the piece was assessed by investigators, but that news of the finding leaked. He says he is cautious about the possibility that the part is from the missing Boeing 777 because three large jets had crashed in the area before. Regardless, Gibson says he hopes his finding will encourage more people in the area to comb beaches for clues and to hand over any items they think could be passenger belongings or plane debris.

The new piece of debris is now in the hands of Mozambique civil aviation authorities and is expected to be sent to Australia this coming week to be examined. The Malaysian transport minister says there is a "high" probability that the part found off Mozambique is from a Boeing 777. Flight 370 is the only missing 777. And Australia's transport minister says the location of the debris matches investigators' drift modeling. Gibson says he decided to look for plane debris after a week of sightseeing in Mozambique. A tour guide told him the sandbank was where fishermen went to look for rope that washed up from the open ocean. He says the tour guide spotted the piece of debris after about half an hour of searching. (More Flight 370 stories.)