Debris from an airplane found off the coast of Reunion Island, a French department in the western Indian Ocean, is being examined to see if it is connected to the 2014 disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, a member of the French Air Force in Reunion said Wednesday.A U.S. official reports that the debris does come from the same type of aircraft as MH370, but they have not yet been matched. The discovery of a piece of debris off the coast of Reunion Island is “a very significant development” in the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, but further analysis is necessary to determine whether it’s part of the missing aircraft, Australian Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss said Thursday. Authorities are treating it as “a major lead,” he said.
A U.S. official reports that the debris does come from the same type of aircraft as MH370, but they have not yet been matched.
Boeing’s initial assessment of the photographs suggest that the debris is consistent in appearance with a Boeing 777’s flaperon, which is a piece of the plane’s wing, a source close to the investigation tells CNN. The source said there is a unique element to the Boeing 777’s flaperon that observers believe they are seeing in photos as well, though the source would not disclose what that detail is.
The source stressed this is preliminary. The missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 was a Boeing 777.
There have only been five crashes or accidents of Boeing 777s ever. One was in London in 2008; the second was at the San Francisco airport in 2013; the third occurred after a cockpit fire at the Cairo airport in Egypt; the fourth was when MH370 disappeared; and the fifth occurred when MH17 was shot down in Ukraine last year. This is the only Boeing 777 to crash anywhere in the vicinity of where the debris was found, and the only to crash in the ocean.
The debris was found off the coast of St. Andre, a community on the island, according to Adjutant Christian Retournat. “It is way too soon to say whether or not it is MH370. We just found the debris this morning,” Retournat said.
He said the debris — what appears to be a wing flap — has been taken to the island, located about 380 nautical miles off the coast of Madagascar.
MH370 disappeared after taking off from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on March 8, 2014, bound for Beijing with 239 people aboard.
Authorities have said they still don’t know why it turned dramatically off course over the sea between Malaysia and Vietnam, or where exactly its errant journey finished.
An international team of experts used satellite data to calculate that the plane eventually went down in the southern Indian Ocean. Search teams have been combing a vast area of the seafloor in the southern Indian Ocean, hunting for traces of the passenger jet.
The Malaysian government eventually declared the loss of Malaysia Airlines flight 370 an accident and all of its passengers and crew presumed dead.
