Wing Piece that was found!
Pat of suitcase also found ...maybe from plane
Malaysia has sent a team to the French island of Reunion to investigate whether wreckage found there could be from the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 plane which disappeared last year.
Malaysia has sent a team to the French island of Reunion to investigate whether wreckage found there could be from the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 plane which disappeared last year.
Last night investigators confirmed the debris, discovered near to the island of Reunion in the Indian Ocean, is that of a Boeing 777.
The Malaysia Airlines jet - also a Boeing 777 - is thought to have come down in the same ocean on March 8 last year.
There have been four serious accidents involving 777s in the 20 years since the jet came into service. Only MH370 is thought to have crashed south of the equator.
"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 today.
"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 Reuters.
New pictures of the luggage recovered on Reunion have been released.
A suitcase was found by workers on a Reunion beach - close to the site where an aircraft part believed to be from missing flight MH370 was discovered.
Johnny Begue, the head of a cleaning team, found aircraft debris that looks increasingly likely to be from the Malaysia Airlines flight that has been missing since March 8, 2014.
Malaysia's Prime Minister Najib Razak has announced that plane debris washed up on Reunion island in the Indian Ocean will be shipped to French authorities in Toulouse to verify if it came for Flight MH370.
"The location is consistent with the drift analysis provided to the Malaysian investigation team, which showed a route from the southern Indian Ocean to Africa," Najib said in a statement.
Najib said the object found on Reunion, a French overseas department in the southern Indian Ocean east of Madagascar, would be sent to the nearest office of France's crash investigation agency, the BEA, in Toulouse.
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.
Reunion island - where wreckage from a Boeing 777 is believed to have been found - is a 40-mile long island around 4,000 miles from where doomed flight MH370 was last seen.
The island, off the coast of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean is also more than 3,000 miles from the search area investigators have been trawling off the coast of Australia.
Reunion is a French island with a population of around 800,000 and is officially the outermost region of the European Union.
Wreckage from what is 'almost certainly' from a Boeing 777 was discovered washed up on the west coast of the island near Saint-Andre last night.
The barnacles seen in pictures of the aircraft part believed to be from missing Air Malaysia flight MH370 are likely to have been growing there for a year, an expert has said.
This would roughly correspond with the date the passenger jet carrying 239 passengers and crew went missing - March last year.
Newspaper Journal de l'Ile de la Reunion showed the pictures of shellfish attached to the aircraft part found on the shore of Saint-Andre in Reunion to a marine biology researcher from the Naval School of Brest.
Joseph Poupin said the animals belong to the species Lepas Anatifera, which live in temperate or warm waters.
Wind and ocean current maps suggest plane wreckage found off the coast of Africa could be missing Malaysia Airlines plane MH370.
An historic NASA video shows how the Indian Ocean currents generally operate in an anti-clockwise direction.
In theory, the debris could have been swept from a crash site south west of Australia, northwards, before being spat out onto La Reunion island.
In fact, oceanographers created a chart a year ago which predicted MH370 debris could end up in a similar area.
Oceanographers from the University of Western Australia (UWA) say the location of the aircraft debris is"'entirely consistent" with a graphic they created 12 months ago showing the potential drift patterns of the missing plane.
A suitcase was found by workers on a Reunion beach - close to the site where an aircraft part believed to be from missing flight MH370 was discovered.
Johnny Begue, the head of a cleaning team, found aircraft debris that looks increasingly likely to be from the Malaysia Airlines flight that has been missing since March 8, 2014.
This morning, he again went to the scene and found the remains of a suitcase on wheels, in the same area as the aircraft debris, reportsLe Journal de la Reunion.
Wife of American victim speaks of turmoil
Sarah Bajc, an American who lost her partner, IBM executive Philip Wood, told CNN: "My heart has been in my throat for most of the day.
"If ultimately this is the piece of the wing, then that little thread of hope that I have been holding on to will have to break. And reality will have to take over.
"But, yeah, up until now, I and most of the family members have continued to believe that until we have a body ... we can't give up hoping they will still come back."
Could barnacles on the wreckage be vital clue?
Barnacles on the plane part could help investigators discover how long it has been in the water, according to Australian officials.
Yannick Pitou, a journalist on Reunion told the BBC World Service that a piece of the debris had been sent to France for analysis.
He said: "The debris is made of metal and is two metres by two metres, and as soon as they discovered it, the local workers of the beach called the police and the air transport officials were alerted.
"The whole situation around this mysterious object developed quickly after that.
"The debris was taken out of the water and was brought to the local airport in Sainte-Marie to a secure location and a piece of it has been sent to France for further analysis and to confirm if it is aeroplane debris – although there is little doubt of that."
What is a flaperon?
Experts from aircraft manufacturer Boeing and Malaysian aviation experts are all but certain that the debris is from a 777- the same model as missing flight MH370.
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.
A flaperon is a type of aircraft control surface used to control the banking, or roll, of the aircraft.
Flaperons combine aspects of both flaps and ailerons, which are located on the wing and control the flow of air over it to change direction.
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