Investigators are trying to determine whether a piece of airplane debris found on a French Indian Ocean island is part of MH370, the Malaysia Airlines jet that mysteriously vanished in March 2014.
The approximately two meter-long fragment, which appears to be a wing component known as a flaperon, was discovered Wednesday on a beach on Reunion Island near Madagascar, over 3,500 kilometers from where the Boeing 777 was last heard from.
French aviation officials are examining the material but say it is too early to determine whether the fragment belongs to the missing jet. If it does, the discovery could represent a key step toward solving one of modern aviation’s greatest mysteries.
Debris could be from Boeing 777
The discovery was made this week by workers who were cleaning a beach on Reunion Island. They passed the photos on to French aviation expert Xavier Tytelman, who tells VOA he is confident the plane parts belong to a Boeing 777.
“We only found one match: it was with the flaperon of the Boeing 777,” Tytleman told VOA via phone. “It was not only the shape that matched, but also the holes for the connections in it.”
Australian Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss, who has been leading the search for the plane off the southwest coast of Australia, called the discovery a potential breakthrough.
“It won’t be all that helpful in pinpointing precisely where the aircraft might be located,” Truss said. “But if this wreckage is linked to MH370, it’ll certainly confirm that the aircraft has gone into the water in the Indian Ocean.”
It is not implausible that wreckage from MH370 made its way to Reunion Island from the location where officials believe the plane went down, according to Erik van Sebille, an oceanographer at Imperial College London.
Ocean currents to find crash site
Van Sebille, who studies how debris travels across the ocean, says that investigators may be able to use ocean currents and wind patterns to determine a rough location for the crash site.
“It’s not an easy task to do because over 17 months, the ocean is so chaotic and there is so much turbulence,” Sebille tells VOA. “If you start somewhere and you backtrack where the plane might have hit the water, you end up with an area that is probably a few hundred miles in diameter.”
But such projections would take a significant amount of time.
“Computers may be able to calculate ocean currents, time and distances to trace back a reasonable point of origin–if possible, this will take time–and then deep sea searching must start all over again,” said the aviation website Leeham News in a post late Wednesday.
Australian Deputy Prime Minister Truss on Thursday insisted that authorities still believe the plane is somewhere within the current search area, and said the discovery of the debris is not likely to lead to any change in the search strategy for now.
The Malaysia Airlines flight, which was carrying 239 people, took off from Kuala Lumpur on March 8, 2014, on its way to Beijing. It vanished from radar more than a hour later, somewhere over the South China Sea.
Malaysian investigators have said they believe someone with knowledge of aircraft deliberately turned off the plane’s tracking devices and diverted the plane, but an investigation has turned up few clues.
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