One of the pieces, an interior door panel, was found in Rodrigues Island, Mauritius, while an engine covering carrying the Rolls-Royce insignia was discovered in the same month in Mossel Bay on South Africa’s Western Cape.

The comment from officials is the most recent development in solving the fate of the aircraft - which went missing in March 2014 while flying between Kuala Lumpur and Beijing.

There were 239 people onboard.

Three search ships are currently scouring a 120,000sq km region of the Indian Ocean but have yet to find substantial traces of the plane.

So far, authorities have confirmed five pieces of debris as most likely coming from the plane.

Fragments are being examined by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau along with other aviation experts, with teams using marine ecology to determine if the debris belongs to the missing Boeing 777 - the first aircraft of its kind to crash in the southern hemisphere.

Malaysia’s transport minister Liow Tiong Lai said today (May 12) that they had "confirmed that both pieces of debris from South Africa and Rodrigues Island are almost certainly from MH370".

Australian, Malaysian and Chinese teams are involved in the search but due to the lack of "credible new information" have decided to end the operation by the middle of the year.