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A large chunk of metal that could be from an aircraft washed ashore in southern Thailand, but Malaysian authorities Sunday cautioned against speculation of a link to a Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 missing almost 2 years. Flight MH370 lost communications before disappearing in March 2014. It is presumed to have crashed in the Indian Ocean, and only one piece of debris has been identified as coming from the plane, a slab of wing that washed ashore on Reunion Island in the western Indian Ocean last July. Malaysian transport minister Liow Tiong Lai said he instructed Malaysian civil aviation officials to contact Thailand about the newly found wreckage, a curved piece of metal measuring 6.5 feet by 10 feet with electrical wires hanging from it and numbers stamped on it in several places. Thailand's Transportation Ministry said 4 Malaysian officials and 2 Thai experts will visit the site Monday. <br/>

Qatar Airways' CE, Akbar al-Baker, said he does not support regional consolidation, and rejected any need for the Gulf region to join in the trend for mergers elsewhere in the world. Some industry experts doubt whether the Gulf region needs Qatar Airways and rivals Emirates and Etihad with their 3 big hub airports, all within a small geographic area. In other aviation markets, such as the US, the number of airlines has shrunk as carriers have consolidated, helping them become more profitable, so much so that US airlines now account for more than half of global earnings in the airline industry. But the CE of Qatar Airways said consolidation could be bad for consumers. "I don't agree with consolidation, always done to extract capacity and jack up prices," al-Baker said, pointing to US carriers as an example. <br/>