Earlier, Malaysian Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai said in New York his government had sent a team to examine the find, while also cautioning against jumping to conclusions.
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MH370 disappeared on March 8, 2014 with 239 people, including six Australians, on board while travelling from Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia to Beijing.
“We have been on the roller coaster many times and have managed to settle, but now this”, said Jacquita Gonzales, whose husband Patrick Gomes was the flight’s cabin crew supervisor.
Schiavo points out that there have been only five accidents involving Boeing 777s, and the disappearance of MH370 is the only one where debris hasn’t been recovered.
Estimates on how far the plane could have flown vary, but some experts believe it could have travelled as far as Madagascar, some 500 miles past Reunion.
In the meantime the global news is heading towards the tropical volcanic tourism hotspot Reunion, a French Department in the Southern Indian Ocean and part of the Vanilla Island Tourism Group. It appeared fairly intact and did not have visible burn marks or signs of impact. The object is believed to be a flaperon, a moving part that is found on the wing and helps to control the aircraft’s rolling.
Ms Weeks said if the wreckage were found to be part of the jetliner it would give the family some closure, but the question of where the rest of the plane and her husband was would remain.
A wing flap that washed up on the shore of the island of Réunion, in the Indian Ocean, could be the first piece of debris confirmed to be from missing Malaysian Flight 370 – but it has limited value to search teams.
Whether it was MH370 was not clear, he said.
However US media has been told by unofficial sources in Boeing that the available images of the object are consistent with it being a flaperon forming part of the trailing edge of a Boeing 777 wing.
“We do know that it’s credible that wreckage could have reached the area”.
Even after intense search for the missing Malaysian Airlines which lost contact in March 2014, there was no trace until yesterday.
Robin Robertson, an oceanographer at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, said the timing and location of the debris made it “very plausible” that it came from the wreckage of MH370, given what was known about Indian Ocean currents.
The Transport Ministry said it would be premature to speculate at this juncture until there was tangible and irrefutable evidence that the flaperon belonged to the missing aircraft.
“That was the first drift model analysis”, a spokesperson for the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) told IHS Maritime on 30 July.
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Despite the modeling, no one had been searching in that area, he said, because of the vast nature of the Indian Ocean and the multitude of factors that meant that finding anything would be matter of luck and time.
