Flight MH370

Malaysia asks Indian Ocean islands around Reunion to search for plane debris after wing part confirmed from Boeing 777.

The wing flap was found on Wednesday on the French island of La Reunion [AP]

by Al Jazeera

Malaysia will seek help from territories near the Indian Ocean island where a suspected wing part from the missing Malaysia Airlines jet was discovered in an attempt to find more plane debris.

A new piece of debris, meanwhile, found on Sunday on the French island of Reunion did not belong to a plane, Malaysian Director General of Civil Aviation Azharuddin Abdul Rahman told news agencies AP and AFP, amid reports that a new part was found.

Rahman, who is in France for the analysis of the wing part, told AFP one item “was actually from a domestic ladder. It is not a door”.

And a source close to the investigation in Paris said “no object or debris likely to come from a plane” had been placed into evidence on Sunday.

Identified as from Boeing 777

Malaysian Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai told AFP that civil aviation authorities were reaching out to their counterparts in other Indian Ocean territories to be on the lookout for further debris that could provide “more clues to the missing aircraft”.

He had confirmed in a statement that the wing part had been “officially identified” as from a Boeing 777 – making it likely that it was from the missing Malaysia Airlines flight, as MH370 is the only missing Boeing 777.

The identification was verified by French authorities together with Boeing, the US National Transportation Safety Board and a Malaysian team.

The wing flap was found on Wednesday on Reunion. It arrived on Saturday at a French military testing facility for analysis by experts.

Experts will try to establish whether the part comes specifically from Flight 370, which disappeared on March 8, 2014, while en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board, about two-thirds of whom were Chinese.

The experts are expected to start their inquiry on Wednesday. On Monday, an investigating judge will meet with Malaysian authorities and representatives of the French aviation investigative agency, known as the BEA.

Liow said Malaysia’s Department of Civil Aviation was reaching out to authorities in territories near Reunion to allow experts “to conduct more substantive analysis should there be more debris coming on to land, providing us [with] more clues to the missing aircraft”.

“I urge all parties to allow this crucial investigation process to take its course. I reiterate this is for the sake of the next of kin of the loved ones of MH370 who would be anxiously awaiting news and have suffered much over this time,” Liow said. “We will make an announcement once the verification process has been completed.”

Possible wreckage from missing Malaysia Airlines jet to be sent to French military laboratory near Toulouse for checks.

Satellite and other data has allowed investigators to narrow search to an arc of the remote southern Indian Ocean west of Australia [EPA]

by Al Jazeera

Plane debris washed up on the French island of Reunion in the Indian Ocean is almost certainly part of a Boeing 777, a Malaysian official and aviation experts have said, potentially the biggest breakthrough in the search for missing Flight MH370.

Malaysian investigators are expected in Reunion on Friday and the object, identified by aviation experts as part of a wing, would then be sent to a French military laboratory near Toulouse for checks, French police sources said.

National carrier Malaysia Airlines was operating a Boeing 777 when the flight disappeared in March last year en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, creating one of the most baffling mysteries in aviation history.

It was carrying 239 passengers and crew.

The plane piece was found on Wednesday washed up on Reunion, a volcanic island of 850,000 people that is a full part of France, located in the Indian Ocean near Madagascar.

Reunion is roughly 3,700km from the broad expanse of the southern Indian Ocean off Australia where search efforts have focused, but officials and experts said currents could have carried wreckage that way, thousands of kilometres from where the plane is thought to have crashed.

‘Fanciful theories’

An minister from Australia, which has been leading the hunt for the missing plane, said on Friday that he was confident the search for the missing plane was being conducted in the right area.

“We remain confident that we’re searching in the right place, and if in fact the plane parts found on Reunion Island are linked to MH370, that would rather strengthen the case that we are in the right area,” Transport and Infrastructure Minister Warren Truss said.

“It’s not positive proof, but the fact that this wreckage was sighted on the northern part of the Reunion Island is consistent with the current movements, it’s consistent with what we might expect to happen in these
circumstance.”

Satellite and other data has allowed investigators to narrow their search to an arc of the remote southern Indian Ocean west of Australia, with ships scouring more than 50,000 square kilometres of deep ocean floor without success.

Authorities are planning to search a total of 120,000 square kilometres.

Truss said that if the two-metre long piece of wreckage found on the French territory was indeed from MH370 it would eliminate some of the “rather fanciful theories” about what happened to the plane.

“[If proven] It establishes really beyond any doubt that the aircraft is resting in the Indian Ocean and not secretly parked in some hidden place on the land in another part of the world,” he said.

“So it removes some of those theories but it doesn’t provide a great deal of help in specifically identifying where the aircraft is at the present time.

“We are confident, on the basis of continuing refinement, continuing assessment of the satellite data, that the search area is correct.”

Malaysia seeks help to widen MH370 search

French army scientists to analyse possible MH370 debris

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