Malaysia is «almost certain» that plane debris found on Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean is from a Boeing 777, the deputy transport minister said today, heightening the possibility it could be wreckage from missing flight MH370.
Malaysia Airlines was operating a Boeing 777 on the ill-fated flight, which vanished without a trace in March last year while en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing in one of the most baffling mysteries in aviation history. The plane was carrying 239 passengers and crew.
Search efforts led by Australia have focused on a broad expanse of the southern Indian Ocean off Australia, roughly 3,700 km (2,300 miles) from France’s Reunion Island.
There have been four serious accidents involving 777s in the 20 years since the widebody jet came into service. Only MH370 is thought to have crashed south of the equator.
French authorities said they were examining the debris, found washed up on Reunion Island east of Madagascar on Wednesday.
«No hypothesis can be ruled out, including that it would come from a Boeing 777,» the Reunion prefecture and the French Justice Ministry said in a joint statement on Thursday.
Aviation experts who have seen widely circulated pictures of the debris said it may be a moving wing surface known as a flaperon, situated close to the fuselage.
«It is almost certain that the flaperon is from a Boeing 777 aircraft. Our chief investigator here told me this,» Malaysian Deputy Transport Minister Abdul Aziz Kaprawi told reporters.
Abdul Aziz said a Malaysian team was heading to Reunion Island, about 600 km (370 miles) east of Madagascar.
Australia’s Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss said the object had a number stamped on it that might speed its verification.
«This kind of work is obviously going to take some time although the number may help to identify the aircraft parts, assuming that’s what they are, much more quickly than might otherwise be the case,» he said.
Investigators believe someone deliberately switched off MH370’s transponder before diverting it thousands of miles off course. Most of the passengers were Chinese, and Beijing said it was following developments closely.
For the families of those on board, lingering uncertainty surrounding the fate of the plane has been agony.
«Even if we find out that this piece of debris belongs to MH370, there is no way to prove that our people were with that plane,» said Jiang Hui, 41, whose father was on the flight.
Zhang Qihuai, a lawyer representing some of the passengers’ families, said a group of around 30 relatives had agreed they would proceed with a lawsuit against the airline if the debris was confirmed to be from MH370.
The plane piece is roughly 2-2.5 meters (6.5-8 ft) in length, according to photographs. It appeared fairly intact and did not have visible burn marks or signs of impact. Flaperons help pilots control an aircraft while in flight.
Oceanographers said vast, rotating currents sweeping the southern Indian Ocean could have deposited wreckage from MH370 thousands of kilometers from where the plane is thought to have crashed.
If confirmed to be from MH370, experts will try to retrace the debris drift back to where it could have come from. But they caution that the discovery was unlikely to provide any more precise information about the aircraft’s final resting place.
Source: Buenos Aires Herald