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 Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai said investigators on the French
island of Reunion had collected more aircraft debris, including a
plane window and aluminum foil, but there was no confirmation they
also belonged to the missing plane.
With the first trace of the plane now confirmed, Malaysia has asked
the governments of neighboring Mauritius and Madagascar to help
widen the search area, he told reporters.
Earlier, Prime Minister Najib Razak confirmed that the piece of
debris was from the Boeing 777 airliner that was bound for Beijing
from Kuala Lumpur with 239 passengers and crew on board when it went
missing.
"Today, 515 days since the plane disappeared, it is with a heavy
heart that I must tell you that an international team of experts
have conclusively confirmed that the aircraft debris found on
Reunion Island is indeed from MH370," Najib said in a televised
address.
The airline described the find as "a major breakthrough".
The first piece of direct evidence that the plane crashed in the
ocean closed a chapter in one of the biggest mysteries in aviation
history.
But exactly what happened remains unknown and Najib's announcement
did not appear to represent any kind of resolution for the families
of those on board, most of whom were Chinese.
The fragment of wing known as a flaperon was flown to mainland
France after being found last week covered in barnacles on a beach
on Reunion.
Despite the Malaysian confirmation, prosecutors in France stopped
short of declaring they were certain, saying only that there was a
"very strong presumption".
Paris Prosecutor Serge Mackowiak said this was based on technical
data supplied by both the manufacturer and airline but gave no
indication that experts had discovered a serial number or unique
markings that would put the link beyond doubt.
Representatives of manufacturer Boeing confirmed that the flaperon
came from a 777 jet, he said, and Malaysia Airlines provided
documentation of the missing aircraft.
Mackowiak told reporters in Paris more analysis would be carried out
on Thursday, and a fragment of luggage also found in Reunion would
be examined by French police.
"We appreciate the French team and their support and respect their
decision to continue with the verification," Liow said, adding that
Malaysian experts were convinced the flaperon was from MH370 because
a seal on the part matched a maintenance record and the paint was
the same color.
SEARCH FOR CLUES
A group of families from China said French investigators and Boeing
must also say definitively the wing piece was from the plane.
"We are not living in denial ... but we owe it to our loved ones not
to declare them lost without 100 percent certainty!" the families
said on their microblog.
Families in Malaysia and Australia expressed similar sentiments.
China's foreign ministry urged Malaysia to keep investigating and to
"safeguard the legitimate rights and interests" of the relatives.
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Investigators looking at the wing flap are likely to start by
putting thin slices of metal under a high-powered microscope, to see
clues in its crystal structure about how it deformed on impact, said
Hans Weber, president of TECOP International, Inc., an aerospace
technology consulting firm.
Investigators would probably then clean it and "do a full physical
examination, using ultrasonic analysis before they open it up to see
if there's any internal damage", Weber said. "That might take quite
a while. A month or months."
John Goglia, a former board member of the U.S. National
Transportation Safety Board, told Reuters much could be learned from
examining the metal and how the brackets that held the flaperon in
place had broken.
However, other experts cautioned that the cause of the disaster may
remain beyond the reach of investigators until other debris or data
and cockpit voice recorders are recovered.
Greg Waldron, Asia managing editor at industry publication
Flightglobal, said the amount of time that has elapsed and the
dearth of debris made it harder.
"The real key to finding out what, exactly, happened to MH370 is
finding the debris field in the seas west of Australia ... Debris
such as the flaperon can only increase our understanding of the last
seconds of the flight," he said.
Officials from Malaysia, the United States, Australia, China,
Britain, Singapore, and Boeing are on hand for the examination at an
aeronautical test facility in the French city of Toulouse.
Flight MH370 disappeared on March 8, 2014, and is believed to have
crashed in the Indian Ocean, about 3,700 km (2,300 miles) east of
Reunion.
Investigators believe that someone may have deliberately switched
off the aircraft's transponder, diverted it off course and
deliberately crashed into the sea.
An initial search of a 60,000 sq km (23,000 sq miles) patch of sea
floor has been extended to another 60,000 sq km.
(Additional reporting by Tim Hepher, Siva Govindasamy, Praveen
Menon, Emmanuel Jarry, Ebrahim Harris, Alwyn Scott, Michael Martina
and Lincoln Feast; Writing by Paul Tait and John Chalmers; Editing
by Raju Gopalakrishnan and Robert Birsel)
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