New piece in Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 puzzle?
Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappeared almost two years ago with 239 people onboard. To date, only one confirmed piece of the aircraft has been found; a wing part discovered on a French island more than 1,000 miles away from what now appears to be a likley second find.
The new aircraft part in question, a suspected piece of a Boeing 777 tail stabilizer found last weekend, is now being moved from Mozambique to Australia, where Boeing officials are to examine it.
Flight 370 is the world's only known missing Boeing 777, and sources tell CBS News correspondent Kris Van Cleave that investigators are fairly confident the triangular piece came from the missing Malaysian jet.
The piece found in Mozambique measures more than three feet-long and has the words "NO STEP" printed clearly on it.
It was plucked off the coast Mozambique's Indian Ocean coast, in southeast Africa.
Blaine Alan Gibson, one of the men who found it, told CNN he knew when he saw it "that it possibly could be, and it was, important to get it into the hands of the local authority and the authorities in Australia who are doing the search."
U.S. investigators have analyzed pictures of the debris from Mozambique and believe it shows a portion of the "horizontal stabilizer" -- a wing-like part of the tail section from a Boeing 777.
Flight 370 disappeared on March 8, 2014, on its way from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
Australian officials have been leading the deep-water search and recovery operation, covering a 46,000-square-mile area in the Indian Ocean off the west coast of Australia.
The only confirmed section of MH370 that's been found, a section of wing known as a flaperon, was recovered last July on the French island of Reunion.
While the Malaysian Transport Minister tweeted about the "high possibility" the debris belongs to a Boeing 777, his Australian counterpart Darren Chester was more cautious as he briefed parliament Thursday, saying it was still "too early to speculate on the origin of the debris."
Oceanographers have long predicted that any parts carried away by the ocean currents would likely end up somewhere along or near the east coast of Africa.
One expert, Charitha Pattiaratchi, from the University of Western Australia, told The Associated Press he met Gibson in 2015 and suggested he focus his search off the coast of Mozambique.
That, Gibson says, is where he found the suspected tail piece now on its way to Australia.
But Van Cleave notes that, just days from the anniversary of its disappearance, the latest clue is a reminder that one of the world's greatest aviation mysteries remains unsolved.
"I don't think we are any closer -- and perhaps even more confused -- than when this thing actually went down almost two years ago," said CBS News contributor Mark Rosenker, a former Chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board.