Australian officials confirm that debris washed ashore the Augusta Coast has been sent for testing for possible connection to missing Malaysia Flight MH370.
An individual walking along the Augusta coast in southwest Australia found three pieces of metal that may belong to the lost plane. Rivets dotted one of the pieces of metal, which was about the size of a car. Rivets are used to hold pieces of aircraft together.
The metallic debris was spotted days ago, but because of the Easter holiday, officials began processing the materials on April 23.
However, Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) Chief Commissioner Martin Dolan said that early analysis suggests that the metal pieces are not from Flight 370.
"We do not consider this likely to be of use to our search for MH370," he told The Associated Press. "At this stage, we are not getting excited."
Pictures of the debris were also sent to officials in Malaysia, who did not reference the finding during a news conference on April 23.
The next step in the search is to explore deeper in the Indian Ocean in hopes of finding evidence of the aircraft.
Australian officials plan to use powerful sonar equipment to search the water's depths for wreckage or evidence of a crash site. A timeline for the next phase of the search is expected to be announced next week.
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott made clear that if nothing is found in the next, deeper search of the ocean, they will not give up.
"We owe it to the families of the 239 people on board," he told reporters at a Wednesday press conference. "We owe it to the hundreds of millions—indeed billions—of people who travel by air to try to get to the bottom of this. The only way we can get to the bottom of this is to keep searching the probable impact zone until we find something or until we have searched it as thoroughly as human ingenuity allows at this time."
Flight 370 disappeared on March 8 while flying from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to Beijing, China. Neither a crash site nor confirmed wreckage have been discovered as of yet.
