In another development, the Malaysian transport minister said more suspected plane debris had been found on Reunion, including window panes and seat cushions.
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In a statement, Malaysia Airlines also said the flaperon, the wing part, was confirmed to be of Flight 370 by the French agency that investigates air crashes, known as the BEA, the Malaysian investigation team, a technical representative from PRC and the Australian Transportation Safety Bureau in Toulouse, France.
The Boeing 777 disappeared after veering far off its planned northerly course from Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia to Beijing.
Malaysia today said the reason why it is confident that a piece of wreckage found on Reunion island belonged to the missing MH370 is based on a maintenance seal on the flaperon.
But later in the day, French deputy prosecutor Serge Mackowiak would not confirm the origins of the flaperon but said there were strong indications that it belonged to MH370.
The conflicting information has added yet another layer of confusion to an already chaotic situation for family members who have been agonizing for the past 17 months. However, French, U.S. and Australian authorities stopped…
US Secretary of State John Kerry said he also hoped that it would help narrow down the search area for the rest of the plane, which went missing under mysterious circumstances.
Hundreds of items of ocean debris can be found on the Reunion shoreline – metal fragments, sections of tire, bottles and cans – most of it from commercial ships. I think on this matter it is important that we care about their feelings, the struggle that they’re going through.
Authorities have mainly focused their search in the Indian Ocean near Australia.
Despite widespread efforts to recover the plane since the mysterious disappearance, the debris on Reunion Island are the first solid lead about what happened to the doomed flight.
Numerous Chinese relatives have consistently questioned the official view that the plane crashed.
“Why the hell do you have one confirm and one not?” said Sara Weeks, the sister of New Zealander Paul Weeks, who was on board.
Australian Transport Minister Warren Truss said Malaysia, which is in charge of the overall investigation, had the right to express its view.
“Let’s hope we can turn something up”, he said.
It was unclear whether the mix-up was a result of miscommunication between the two countries, or whether Malaysian officials were overeager to send out some definitive signal for relatives of the missing.
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Now investigators will reportedly turn their focus to the area around Reunion Island to determine if the remainder of the flight is buried somewhere beneath the Indian Ocean.
