Sydney, Kuala Lumpur: Wreckage found on the French island of Reunion in the Indian Ocean appears to be a part of the Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 that mysteriously disappeared in March 2014, reports said on Thursday.
Reunion, a French territory, is about 600 km east of Madagascar. The piece believed to be part of the missing MH370 is "almost certainly" from a Boeing 777 aircraft, Malaysian Deputy Transport Minister Abdul Aziz Kaprawi said.
"The flaperon is similar with that on a Boeing 777 aircraft. It's almost certain (that it is from a Boeing 777)," the minister told The Malaysian Star daily.
He said the ministry, however, still could not confirm it belonged to MH370, en-route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people onboard -- 227 passengers and 12 crew members -- when it vanished on March 8, 2014.
The Malaysian government has dispatched a team to Reunion Island to investigate the debris, Transportation Minister Liow Tiong Lai said in New York.
According to Kaprawi, if it was confirmed, it could either be sent back to Malaysia or to an International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO)-certified lab in Paris for further investigation.
"Once our team reaches there, they will decide at Reunion Island with our minister's Liow Tiong Lai) input," he said.
Xavier Tytelman, a former military pilot who now specialises in aviation security, was contacted on Wednesday by a man living on Reunion island.
The man sent Tytelman a series of photos showing the wreckage of a plane, which the Frenchman said could possibly be the missing MH370, The Telegraph reported.
"I've been studying hundreds of photos and speaking to colleagues," Tytelman said, adding "and we all think it is likely that the wing is that of a Boeing 777 -- the same plane as MH370".
Wing flap
Air safety investigators - one of them a Boeing investigator - have identified the component found on the French island of Reunion as a "flaperon" from the trailing edge of a Boeing 777 wing, a U.S. official said.
Flight MH370, which disappeared March 8, 2014, with 239 people on board, is the only 777 known to be missing.
"It's the first real evidence that there is a possibility that a part of the aircraft may have been found," said Australian Transport Minister Warren Truss, whose country is leading the search for the plane in a remote patch of ocean far off Australia's west coast. "It's too early to make that judgment, but clearly we are treating this as a major lead."
Flight 370 had been traveling from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, but investigators believe based on satellite data that the plane turned south into the Indian Ocean after vanishing from radar.
If the wing part is from the Malaysia plane, it would bolster that theory and put to rest others that it traveled north, or landed somewhere after being hijacked.
The wing piece is about 2 meters (6 feet) long. Investigators have found a number on the part, but it is not a serial or registration number, Truss said. It could be a maintenance number, which may help investigators figure out what plane it belongs to, he said.
The number found on the flaperon is 657BB, according to agency reports.
A French official close to an investigation of the debris confirmed Wednesday that French law enforcement is on Reunion to examine it. A French television network was airing video from its Reunion affiliate of the debris.
The torn suitcase supposedly found in the same area where the plane debris was found. (Twitter)
A suitcase has been found in the same spot as debris suspected to be from the missing Malaysian airliner on the French island of Reunion.
The same street cleaner who found Wednesday’s debris returned to the site on Thursday morning and found the suitcase at around 11.30am, reports Le Journal de L’ile de Reunion newspaper. Johnny Bègue, the head of the 3E clean-up found the remains of a rusted, closed suitcase on the shingle.
Reports say a suitcase found in the same place as debris in Reunion Island. But it cld also be a coincidence #MH370 pic.twitter.com/iiTSkwDp0L— Pearl Lee (@pearllee22) July 30, 2015
U.S. air safety investigators have a "high degree of confidence" that aircraft debris found in the Indian Ocean is of a wing component unique to the Boeing 777, the same model as the Malaysia Airlines plane that disappeared last year, a U.S. official said.
Air safety investigators - one of them a Boeing investigator -have identified the component as a "flaperon" from the trailing edge of a 777 wing, the U.S. official said.
A French official close to an investigation of the debris confirmed Wednesday that French law enforcement is on site to examine a piece of airplane wing found on the French island of Reunion, in the western Indian Ocean. A French television network was airing video from its Reunion affiliate of the debris. U.S. investigators are examining a photo of the debris.
The U.S. and French officials spoke on condition that they not be named because they aren't authorized to speak publicly.
The U.S. and French officials spoke on condition that they not be named because they aren't authorized to speak publicly.
Flaperon
Flaperons are located on the rear edge of both wings, about midway between the fuselage and the tips. When the plane is banking, the flaperon on one wing tilts up and the other tilts down, which makes the plane roll to the left or right as it turns.
The piece could help investigators figure out how the plane crashed, but whether it will help search crews pinpoint the rest of the wreckage is unclear, given the complexity of the currents in the southern Indian Ocean and the time that has elapsed since the plane disappeared.
A massive multinational search effort of the southern Indian Ocean, the China Sea and the Gulf of Thailand has turned up no trace of the plane.
The last primary radar contact with Flight 370 placed its position over the Andaman Sea about 370 kilometers (230 miles) northwest of the Malaysian city of Penang.
Reunion is about 5,600 kilometers (3,500 miles) southwest of Penang, and about 4,200 kilometers (2,600 miles) west of the current search area.
It was well understood after the aircraft disappeared that if there was any floating debris from the plane, Indian Ocean currents would eventually bring it to the east coast of Africa, said aviation safety expert John Goglia, a former member of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board.
Trace
But the debris is unlikely to provide much help in tracing the ocean currents back to the location of the main wreckage, he said.
"It's going to be hard to say with any certainty where the source of this was," he said. "It just confirms that the airplane is in the water and hasn't been hijacked to some remote place and is waiting to be used for some other purpose. ... We haven't lost any 777s anywhere else."
At the United Nations, Malaysian Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai told reporters that he has sent a team to verify the identity of the plane wreckage. "Whatever wreckage found needs to be further verified before we can ever confirm that it is belonged to MH370," he said.
The discovery is unlikely to alter the seabed search, said Australian Transport Safety Bureau Chief Commissioner Martin Dolan, who is heading up the hunt. If the find proved to be part of the missing aircraft, it would be consistent with the theory that the plane crashed within the 120,000-square-kilometer (46,000-square-mile) search area, 1,800 kilometers (1,100 miles) southwest of Australia, he said.
"It doesn't rule out our current search area if this were associated with MH370," Dolan told The Associated Press. "It is entirely possible that something could have drifted from our current search area to that island."
Dolan said search resources would be better spent continuing the seabed search with sonar and video for wreckage rather than reviving a surface search for debris if the part proved to be from Flight 370.
Precedent
Robin Beaman, a marine geologist at Australia's James Cook University, said there is precedence for large objects traveling vast distances across the Indian Ocean.
Last year, a man lost his boat off the Western Australia coast after it overturned in rough seas. Eight months later, the boat turned up off the French island of Mayotte, west of Madagascar - 7,400 kilometers (4,600 miles) from where it disappeared.
"I don't think we should rule anything out, that's for sure," Beaman said.
Beaman believes experts could analyze ocean currents to try to determine where the plane entered the water, though given the time that has elapsed and the vast distance the debris may have traveled, it would be very difficult.
If the part belongs to Flight MH370, it could provide valuable clues to investigators trying to figure out what caused the aircraft to vanish in the first place, said Jason Middleton, an aviation professor at the University of New South Wales in Sydney.
The nature of the damage to the debris could help indicate whether the plane broke up in the air or when it hit the water, and how violently it did so, he said.
The barnacles attached to the part could also help marine biologists determine roughly how long it has been in the water, he said.
A comprehensive report earlier this year into the plane's disappearance revealed that the battery of the locator beacon for the plane's flight data recorder had expired more than a year before the jet vanished. However, the report said the battery in the locator beacon of the cockpit voice recorder was working.
Investigators hope that if they can locate the two recorders they can get to the bottom of what has become one of aviation's biggest mysteries. The unsuccessful search for Flight 370 has raised concern worldwide about whether airliners should be required to transmit their locations continually via satellite, especially when flying long distances over the ocean.
Over the past 16 months, hopes have repeatedly been raised and then dashed that the plane, or parts of the plane, had been found: Objects spotted on satellite imagery, items found floating in the sea and washed ashore in Western Australia, oil slicks - in the end, none of them were from Flight 370.
The most infamous false lead came in April 2014, when Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said officials were "very confident" that a series of underwater signals search crews had picked up were coming from Flight 370's black boxes. The signals proved to be a dead end, with no trace of the devices or the wreckage found.
'Almost certainly from a B777'
Meanwhile, French authorities are studying a large piece of plane debris found on Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean to determine whether it came from Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, which vanished last year in one of the biggest mysteries in aviation history.
A person familiar with the matter told Reuters the part was almost certainly from a Boeing 777, the type of aircraft operated by Malaysia Airlines on the ill-fated flight, but that it had not yet been established if it was a piece of the missing plane.
France's BEA air crash investigation agency said it was examining the debris, found washed up on the French island east of Madagascar on Wednesday, in coordination with Malaysian and Australian authorities, but that it was too early to draw conclusions.
Nevertheless, the discovery could be the biggest breakthrough in the so-far fruitless search for MH370, which disappeared without a trace in March 2014 carrying 239 passengers and crew while en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
Most of the passengers were Chinese. 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.
The piece usually contains markings or part numbers that should allow it to be traced to an individual aircraft, the person familiar with the matter said.
There have been four serious accidents involving Boeing 777s in the 20 years since the widebody jet came into service. Only MH370 is thought to have crashed south of the equator.
Investigators believe someone deliberately switched off the plane's transponder before diverting it thousands of miles off course. 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 Reunion Island.
MH370 link 'very plausible'
Malaysia said it had sent a team to Reunion, about 600 km (370 miles) east of Madagascar, to verify whether the washed-up debris was from MH370. China said it was following developments closely.
The piece is roughly 2-2.5 metres (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.
"The part has not yet been identified and it is not possible at this hour to ascertain whether the part is from a B777 and/or from MH370," a BEA spokesman said in an email on Wednesday.
Greg Feith, an aviation safety consultant and former crash investigator at the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), said his sources at Boeing had told him the piece was from a 777.
Whether it was MH370 was not clear, he said.
"But we haven't lost any other 777s in that part of the world," Feith said.
Oceanographers said vast, rotating currents sweeping the southern Indian Ocean could have deposited wreckage from MH370 thousands of kilometres 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 is unlikely to provide any more precise information about the aircraft's final resting place.
"This wreckage has been in the water, if it is MH370, for well over a year so it could have moved so far that it's not going to be that helpful in pinpointing precisely where the aircraft is," Australian Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss told reporters.
Robin Robertson, an oceanographer at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, said the timing and location of the debris made it "very plausible" that it came from MH370, given what was known about Indian Ocean currents.
Malaysia Airlines said it was too early to speculate on the origin of the debris.
The Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) said it was working with Boeing and other officials.
Boeing declined to comment on the photos, referring questions to investigators.
John Goglia, a former NTSB member, said the search area for MH370 might need to be greatly expanded.
"It could still be a vast area," he said, because the piece could have floated a long distance. "It might move the search area further west." Aviation consultant Feith said that if the part was from MH370, the bulk of the plane likely sank, while the flaperon had air pockets that allowed it to float below the water's surface.
Finding the wreckage would involve reverse engineering the ocean currents over 18 months, Feith said. "It's going to take a lot of math and science to figure that out," he said.
Currents
Vast, rotating currents sweeping the southern Indian Ocean could have deposited wreckage from a missing Malaysia Airlines passenger jet near Africa, thousands of kilometres from where it is thought to have crashed, oceanographers said on Thursday.
France's air crash investigation agency is studying a piece of plane debris found on Reunion Island, off the east coast of Madagascar, to determine whether it came from Flight MH370, which disappeared without a trace 16 months ago with 239 passengers and crew on board.
If confirmed to be part of the missing Boeing 777, experts will try to model its drift to retrace where the debris could have come from, although they cautioned it was unlikely to help in narrowing down the plane's final resting place beyond the vast swathe of ocean off Australia that has been the focus of the search for months.
"This wreckage has been in the water, if it is MH370, for well over a year so it could have moved so far that its not going to be that helpful in pinpointing precisely where the aircraft is," Australian Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss told reporters.
"It certainly would suggest the search area is roughly in the right place."
Australia has been leading a search for the plane since analysis of a series of faint satellite "pings" from the aircraft led investigators to conclude that it crashed in the stormy southern Indian Ocean about 2,000 km southwest of Perth.
Ocean current models
Models of ocean currents were consistent with the potential discovery of debris in the tropics, roughly 3,700 km to the northwest, oceanographic experts said.
A huge, counter-clockwise current, called a gyre, covers much of the southern part of the 70.5 million sq km (27.2 million sq miles) Indian Ocean, running east along the Southern Ocean near Antarctica, up the west Australian coast and westward below the equator towards Reunion and Madagascar, before turning south.
"Our model results that we did last year predicted that within 18-24 months after the crash, it was a possibility that it would have ended up within that region," said Charitha Pattiaratchi, Professor of Coastal Oceanography at the University of Western Australia.
The point of origin "will definitely be in the Southern Hemisphere, it would be to the east, it would cover definitely the area of the physical search at the moment", he added.
That physical search, now halfway to being completed, covers 120,000 sq km of sea bed.
Pattiaratchi's modelling shows debris could drift as far west as Madagascar within two years but also as far east as Tasmania or beyond.
Barnacle clues
Dave Gallo, who co-led the search for Air France Flight 447 that crashed in the Atlantic Ocean in 2009, warned that retracing the debris' drift through sea-current models could lead investigators astray. "Retro-drifting" from wreckage found just five days after the Air France crash led to no breakthrough, he said.
"We spent two months in that area and found absolutely nothing. That brought mistrust from the industry," said Gallo, director of special projects at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
Looking at something that is 500 days old is going to be tough." Further clues might yet come from the debris. Experts can age the barnacles that attach themselves to flotsam, which would give an idea of how long it had been in the water. They may even be able to tell which part of the ocean it has come from by the species of barnacles attached.
The barnacles attached to the part could also help marine biologists determine roughly how long it has been in the water, he said. (www.clicanoo.re)
If confirmed to be from MH370, the discovery would be a significant boost for the search, helping rule out some of the more bizarre conspiracy theories and raising the prospect of more debris being found in the same area.
"When we first started there wasn't a single bit of tangible evidence that there was a plane there at all," said Gallo. "It could have been in the mountains -- It could have been any place."
Mysterious piece
A mysterious piece of plane debris washed up on the French Indian Ocean island of La Reunion on Wednesday, prompting some speculation it could be part of the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.
The two-metre-long piece of wreckage, which seemed to be part of a wing, was found by people cleaning up a beach.
“It was covered in shells, so one would say it had been in the water a long time,” said one witness.
French air transport officials have already opened a probe to investigate where the wreckage could have come from.
Xavier Tytelman, an expert in aviation security, said it could not be ruled out that the wreckage belonged to MH370, which vanished without trace in March last year.
No part of the wreckage has ever been found in one of aviation’s great mysteries and Malaysian authorities in January declared that all on board were presumed dead.
The plane disappeared en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board.
Tytelman noted that local media photos showed “incredible similarities between a #B777 flaperon and the debris found,” refering to a Boeing 777 - the type of plane that disappeared.
He also noted a reference on the wreckage: BB670.
“This code is not a plane’s registration number, nor serial number. However... it’s clear that this reference would allow a quick identification. In a few days, we will have a definitive answer,” Tytelman said.
Boeing said in a statement it remained “committed to supporting the MH370 investigation and the search for the airplane”.
“We continue to share our technical expertise and analysis. Our goal, along with the entire global aviation industry, continues to be not only to find the airplane, but also to determine what happened - and why,” said the US aviation giant.
