Air safety investigators are almost certain that aircraft debris found in the Indian Ocean is of a wing component unique to the Boeing 777, the model of the MH370 plane which disappeared last year.
The components were found on the French island of Réunion in the western Indian Ocean as a “flaperon” from the trailing edge of a 777 wing, a US official confirmed.
Given that there were no other missing aircrafts of Boeing 777 make yet to be found, the piece could certainly have belonged to Malaysian Airlines Flight 370, which disappeared on March 8, 2014, with 239 people on board while on route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur.
“It is almost certain that the flaperon is from a Boeing 777 aircraft. Our chief investigator here told me this,” Malaysia’s Deputy Transport Minister Abdul Aziz Kaprawi said on Thursday.
Prevailing belief based on satellite data also suggests the plane turned south into the Indian Ocean after vanishing from radar. A discovery of debris from the missing plane would confirm this belief and put to rest other theories.
The piece could also help investigators in determing how the plane actually crashed.