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The piece of debris, which appears to be part of an aircraft wing, was discovered on the French island of Réunion in the Indian Ocean Guardian

MH370: aircraft debris in Réunion almost certainly from a Boeing 777

This article is more than 8 years old

Aircraft wing section found on island in Indian Ocean being shipped to France for verification, raising hopes of discovering fate of missing Malaysia Airlines jet

An aircraft wing section washed up on the French island of Réunion in the Indian ocean is very likely to be wreckage from a Boeing 777, Malaysia’s prime minister, Najib Razak, has said, adding it was still too early to speculate whether it was from missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.

MH370, which disappeared almost 17 months ago, is the only unaccounted-for 777 in the world. Malaysia has sent a team to Réunion to examine the area where the debris was found.

Flaperon

Najib said the flaperon – a two metre-long moveable part on the trailing edge of the wing – would be shipped to Toulouse in France for verification by the BEA, the French authority responsible for civil aviation accident investigations. A separate team of investigators from Malaysia was on its way there, he said.

A mechanic from the Réunion-based airline Air Austral told journalists he had studied the debris with French military officials and concluded with 99.9% certainty that it originated from a Boeing 777. He said the debris was stamped with the serial number 657-BB. The local newspaper, Le Journal de l’île de La Réunion, published a picture that it said was the inside of the debris, showing the number.

Photo du numéro de série de la pièce Boeing 657-BB #MH370 (via @Clicanoore ) #ReunionIsland #LaReunion pic.twitter.com/DDHNpbI2h4

— Julien Delarue (@delarue_julien) July 30, 2015

Aviation website AirLive.net reported that “657-BB” matches the serial number in Boeing’s maintenance manual for a section of a 777 flaperon.

Warren Truss, Australia’s deputy prime minister, said the discovery was being treated as a “major lead” in the hunt for MH370, which went missing with 239 people on board on 8 March 2014 on a trip from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

Réunion lies on the extreme western edge of a huge search area in the Indian Ocean identified by investigators as the likely crash site, based on the last satellite pings from the aircraft.

Australian deputy prime minister Warren Truss says barnacles on debris could confirm it is from missing plane Guardian

Truss said the flaperon, which was said by a witness to be “covered in shells”, was “not inconsistent with a Boeing 777”. Truss cited a different number stamped on the debris – BB670 – from that reported by the French mechanic. Truss said: “This obviously is a very important development and if it is indeed wreckage from MH370, it starts to provide some closure for the families of the people on board.

Plane debris found on Réunion

“The Réunion islands are a very long way from the search area, but it is consistent with the work that has been done in identifying the current search area, the satellite interpretations of the route path that the aircraft is expected to have taken. So a discovery of wreckage in that area would not be inconsistent with that advice.”

The identifying number found on the flaperon should, in theory, allow investigators to quickly confirm whether the part did originate from a 777. The number is normally stamped on a small metal plate attached to a large aeroplane part. It should register not only the generic part number, but an individual serial number allowing the history of that particular part to be traced. That should tally with the records held by the manufacturer and the airline. Individual parts could have been swapped since the plane’s original construction, and are labelled to allow aircraft engineers to track if and when they need maintenance or replacement.

That simple record check means investigators, Malaysia Airlines and Boeing should already be confident whether the numbered part could have come from flight MH370 – as long as they have been provided with a full and accurate serial number.

However, with the history of false starts and confusion in the long search for the missing airliner, few officials would want to confirm the lead before viewing the physical evidence on Réunion directly, experts say.

Debris flow map

David Gleave, an air accident investigator, said: “The serial number information should be fairly easily accessible – but we should be cautious. It’s not unknown for very strange things to occur during crash investigations, and you would want to eliminate all possiblilities. It’s a big international investigation – and it is possible to buy these parts should you wish to confuse things. You want to be able to track the complete history to establish that exact part came from that plane.

“A lot of aircraft parts look very similar to other aircraft parts, and these things take time to confirm – given the amount of grief we really must make sure.”

Relatives of many of the 153 Chinese passengers of MH370 said they wanted authorities to be completely certain the part was from the missing plane. A statement said: “We want [the information] to be 100% positive. We care more about where our families are rather than where the plane’s wreckage is.”

Cheng Liping, whose husband, Ju Kun, was on the flight, told the Guardian: “Personally, I don’t believe it. I don’t believe that they have found it. It’s been more than a year. If they were able to find it they would have already found it. Why now and why just a small piece of debris?”

Jack Song, whose sister Song Chunling was lost, agreed. “Nobody believes it. If it belongs to 370, where are the other things like the seats, the cargo?” he said.

Beijing said it was “closely observing the situation”, Xinhua, China’s official news agency, reported. “We have noticed the reports and are wasting no time in obtaining and checking the information,” Hong Lei, a foreign ministry spokesperson, said.

Sara Weeks, sister of passenger Paul Weeks, from New Zealand, said she was happy the debris was in the hands of French investigators in Réunion. “They [Malaysia] have just been incompetent, so at least it’s in the hands of someone else and we may get some answers a little bit quicker,” she said.

For the past 15 months the search has focused on a 46,000 sq mile (120,000 sq km) stretch of seabed nearly 1,250 miles (2,000km) south-west of Perth, Australia. Martin Dolan, the chief commissioner of the Australian team coordinating the search, said the surfacing of debris in Réunion “doesn’t rule out our current search area”.

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