Malaysian MH370 Missing Since Last Year Discovered

Flaperon from Boeing 777 found on Indian Ocean beach is from missing Malaysia Airlines flight, confirms
The wing part found on France's Indian Ocean island of Reunion last week is from the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, it has been confirmed.

In the first real breakthrough in the search for the plane that disappeared 17 months ago, Najib Razak, Malaysia's prime minister, said that experts have determined that the wing fragment is from the missing flight MH370.

"The international team of experts have conclusively confirmed that the aircraft debris found on Reunion Island is indeed from MH370," Najib said in a televised statement.

Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 disappeared in March last year enroute from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 passengers and crew on board.


France and Malaysia officials have been inspecting the wing fragment that washed up on an Indian Ocean beach, hoping to determine whether it comes from the jetliner.

The examination of the part is being carried out under the direction of a judge at an aeronautical test facility run by the French military at Balma, a suburb of the southwestern city of Toulouse.

Malaysian officials who are leading an international air crash investigation were due to witness the inspection of the part, which was flown to the French mainland at the weekend.

Officials from the United States and manufacturer Boeing were also on hand to advise whether the piece can be tied to Flight MH370, which went missing on March 8 last year while en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board.

The airliner is believed to have crashed in the southern Indian Ocean, about 2,300 miles from Reunion.

But the question of why the aircraft vanished may be clearer only if the main debris field is found, and its flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder have been recovered.

"A wing's moving surfaces give you far fewer clues than bigger structures like the rudder, for example. As a single piece of evidence, it is likely to reveal quite little other than it comes from MH370," a former investigator said.

The Balma test centre specialises in metal analysis and is equipped with a scanning electron microscope capable of 100,000 times magnification. It was used to store and analyse debris from an Air France jet which crashed in the Atlantic in 2009.

Investigators will examine the barnacled part for numbers that could tie it too the missing jet or other forensic clues.

The Boeing 777 was minutes into its scheduled flight when it disappeared from civil radars. Investigators believe that someone deliberately switched off the aircraft's transponder, diverted it thousands of miles off course, and deliberately crashed into the ocean off Australia.

In January, Malaysia Airlines officially declared the disappearance an accident, clearing the way for the carrier to pay compensation to relatives while the search goes on.

A $90 million hunt along a rugged 23,000 sq mile patch of sea floor 1,000 miles west of the Australian city of Perth has yielded nothing.

The search has being extended to another 23,000 sq miles and Malaysian and Australian authorities say this will cover 95 percent of MH370's flight path.