Financial TimesFlight MH370: French lab to inspect debris found on La RéunionMalaysian officials expressed confidence that a piece of aircraft debris washed up on a beach on the Indian Ocean island of La Réunion is from a Boeing 777 jet, increasing the likelihood it comes from flight MH370, the Malaysia Airlines aircraft that disappeared 17 months ago without a trace.
Najib Razak, Malaysia’s prime minister, confirmed earlier comments by one of his ministers that the piece of wreckage was almost certainly from a Boeing 777 aircraft.
“Initial reports suggest that the debris is very likely to be from a Boeing 777, but we need to verify whether it is from flight MH370. At this stage it is too early to speculate,” Mr Najib wrote on his official blog.
If the part is from a 777 twin-engined jet, it is highly likely to be from MH370, since other known losses of the aircraft type — including last year’s shooting down of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 over Ukraine — have occurred over land.
Mr Najib said the piece of debris would be sent to a laboratory in Toulouse, France, for inspection by air crash investigators from the Bureau d’Enquêtes et d’Analyses. La Réunion is a French territory east of Madagascar, which under international law makes the BEA the lead investigative body.
Mr Najib said he had despatched two Malaysian teams of investigators — one to Toulouse and the other to the island. It is likely to take several days to identify the debris.
The Malaysians, Australians and Chinese have been conducting an extensive search for the aircraft off the west coast of Australia since it disappeared on March 8 2014. The jet was carrying 239 people on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
Warren Truss, Australia’s deputy prime minister, described the discovery of the debris as a very significant development. “It’s the first real evidence that there’s a possibility that part of the aircraft may have been found,” he said. But he cautioned: “It’s too early to make that judgment, but clearly we’re treating this as a major lead.”
There were also unconfirmed reports that a badly damaged piece of luggage has been found close to where the piece of the aircraft washed up on La Réunion. Journalist Julien Delarue, who works for a local newspaper, posted a photograph of the suitcase on Twitter. It is not known whether the luggage came from MH370.
The Australian Transport Safety Bureau said on Thursday that the discovery of the wreckage on the island was “not inconsistent with the current search location” which is 4,200km east of La Réunion.
The search teams are working on the theory that MH370s crashed within a 120,000 sq km area of the southern Indian Ocean, 1,800km south-west of Australia,
If the part is from the missing flight, it could provide critical clues to the fate of MH370: radar tracking showed the aircraft changed course to the west after heading north-east from Kuala Lumpur en route to Beijing without any further communication from the pilots.
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