Possible Malaysian Airlines debris arrives in France
Digital Reporter
Saturday, August 1, 2015, 10:12 AM - A piece of debris recovered last week has arrived in France, where it will be investigated to see whether it came from the missing Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370.
The object, a part of a wing, was discovered on Wednesday on the shores of the French Indian Ocean territory of Reunion Island. It was flown Friday night to the French capital Paris, where it will then be shipped to a lab in Toulouse.
The missing plane, a Boeing 777 carrying 239 passengers and crew, was bound for Beijing from Kuala Lumpur when it vanished from radar screens soon after take off.
Since then, it's been the subject of a massive search of the southern Indian Ocean by ships and aircraft from several nations led by Australia, covering thousands of square kilometres with little to show for it.
The new piece of debris, a moveable part of a wing called a flaperon, is the first real sign of the plane's fate, and was actually found quite far away from the search zone, likely nudged there by west-bound ocean currents.
Even before the lab in Toulouse can look it over, Australian investigators are already confident it's from the missing plane.
"There is no other recorded case of a flaperon being lost from a Boeing 777," Martin Dolan, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau chief commissioner, told the BBC.
However, Dolan said the fragment on its own won't be able to tell investigators where the plane went down exactly.
"Over the last 16 or 17 months, any floating debris would have dispersed quite markedly across the Indian Ocean," he told AFP.
CNN reports analysis of the wing part will begin next week.
