Canberra, April 29 (IANS): An Australian exploration firm has claimed sighting wreckage from the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, a media report said Tuesday.
"We identified chemical elements and materials that make up a Boeing 777. These are aluminium, titanium, copper, steel alloys and other materials," Pavel Kursa, spokesman for Adelaide-based exploration company GeoResonance, told 7News.
The company surveyed over 2,000,000 sq.km of the probable crash zone, using images obtained from satellites and aircraft.
The possible wreckage was found in the Bay of Bengal, 5,000 km away from the current search location in the southern Indian Ocean off Perth.
GeoResonance started its own search March 10 by using top technologies.
"The technology that we use was originally designed to find nuclear warheads and submarines. Our team in Ukraine decided we should try and help," another company spokesman, David Pope, was quoted as saying.
Pope said they had on March 5 taken images of the site they are searching now and what they are claiming to have found now wasn't there earlier. The MH370 diappeared March 8.
"We’re not trying to say that it definitely is MH370. However, it is a lead we feel should be followed up," Pope added.
New York pilot Michael Hoebel, 60, believes that he has also found an image of the wreckage.
After spending hours looking at images on TomNod, a crowd-sourcing website that has been sharing online satellite imagery in the hope of finding clues, he found an image spotting debris he believes perfectly matched the dimensions of the missing plane.
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said Monday that the seabed search would be expanded to a much larger area and would involve commercial contractors specialised in deep ocean search and may take six to eight months if weather conditions permit.
Autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) Bluefin-21 would continue its mission in adjacent areas.
Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 vanished mysteriously about an hour after taking off for Beijing from Kuala Lumpur shortly after midnight March 8.
The Boeing 777-200ER was scheduled to land in Beijing the same morning. The 227 passengers on board included five Indians, 154 Chinese and 38 Malaysians.