Source: How Foo Yeen / Getty
A wing part that washed up on an island in the western Indian Ocean may be from Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, the plane that mysteriously vanished nearly a year and a half ago. On Thursday Malaysia’s prime minister said the debris found on the French island of Reunion will be sent to the French city of Toulouse for investigation.
According to air safety investigators the component that was found is a “flaperon” from the trailing edge of a Boeing 777 wing. Officials say that Flight 370, which disappeared March 8, 2014, with 239 people on board, is the only 777 known to be missing.
Australian Transport Minister Warren Truss, whose country is leading the search for the plane in a remote patch of ocean far off Australia’s west coast, said “It’s the first real evidence that there is a possibility that a part of the aircraft may have been found. It’s too early to make that judgment, but clearly we are treating this as a major lead.”
Even though Flight 370 had been traveling from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, based on satellite data investigators believe that the plane turned south into the Indian Ocean after vanishing from radar. If the flaperon is from the Malaysian plane, it would support that theory.
Flaperons are about 2 meters long and located on the rear edge of both wings, about midway between the fuselage and the tips. When the plane is banking, the flaperon on one wing tilts up and the other tilts down, which makes the plane roll to the left or right as it turns.
A number on the part has been discovered by investigators, however the number is being ruled out as being a serial or registration number. According to Truss the number could be a maintenance number, which may help investigators confirm what plane it belongs to.
The piece could help investigators discover how the plane crashed, but whether it will help search crews pinpoint the rest of the wreckage is unclear due to the complexity of the currents in the southern Indian Ocean and the time that has elapsed since the plane disappeared.
John Goglia, a former member of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board said “It’s going to be hard to say with any certainty where the source of this was. It just confirms that the airplane is in the water and hasn’t been hijacked to some remote place and is waiting to be used for some other purpose. … We haven’t lost any 777s anywhere else.”
An aviation professor at the University of New South Wales in Sydney named Jason Middleton says he feels that if the part belongs to Flight 370, it could provide valuable clues to investigators trying to figure out what caused the aircraft to vanish in the first place and how long it’s been there.
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