MH370 A 35-year-old South African archeologist said yesterday he is waiting to hand over a piece of aircraft debris suspected of belonging to missing flight MH370 that he recovered on the country’s southern coast.

Nelius Kruger told dpa he was walking along a lagoon on a beach outside of the town of Mossel Bay on Monday afternoon when he spotted a piece of “weird looking material”.

“When I saw the piece, I knew it is not a regular ocean waste,” he said.

“I saw a honeycomb structure in the core of it and metal piece on top. I turned it around and noticed the left bottom lines of the Rolls Royce emblem.

“I am an aviation enthusiast and this is an emblem I have seen many times on plane engines.”

Kruger took photographs of the piece and emailed them to the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB), which is leading the underwater search for MH370 in the southern Indian Ocean.

Officials at the ATSB asked Kruger to keep the debris preserved in bubble wrap until they arrive in South Africa to take possession of it.

Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 disappeared on March 8, 2014, less than an hour after it took off from the KL International Airport with 239 people aboard.

Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai said yesterday that a team will be dispatched to retrieve the debris.

“Preliminary reports revealed that there is a possibility of the piece originating from an ‘Inlet Cowling’ of an aircraft engine,” Liow said in a statement.

On Monday, Australia confirmed receiving two pieces of debris discovered in Mozambique that may have belonged to flight MH370.

A flaperon which was confirmed to be from the missing flight was recovered on French Reunion Island last year.

The Australian-led international search team has yet to locate the missing airliner, which is thought to have crashed in the southern Indian Ocean.

- dpa