Malaysia’s transport ministry confirmed Sunday that the flaperon that was discovered has been recognized as being from a 777, saying it had been verified by French authorities along with Boeing, the U.S. Nationwide Transportation Security Board and a Malaysian group.
Advertisement
Four Malaysian officials including the head of civil aviation are in Paris together with officials from Malaysia Airlines for a meeting on Monday with three French magistrates and an official from France’s civil aviation investigating authority BEA.
Technical experts, including from US aerospace giant Boeing, will begin from Wednesday examining the wing component, which is likely to have come from the doomed Malaysia Airlines flight as no other such plane is known to have crashed in the area.
Flight 370 is the only missing 777.
Investigators probing missing flight MH370 collected more debris on an Indian Ocean island Sunday as Malaysia urged authorities in the region to be on alert for wreckage washing up on their shores.
Meanwhile, a senior Malaysian official says that an object found on the same island was “a domestic ladder” and not a plane part, amid media reports that a new piece of plane debris was found on the island.
This comes less than a week after a piece of a wing was found on the French territory east of Madagascar.
The flaperon is being examined in a military laboratory in the southwestern French city of Toulouse that specialises in plane crash investigations, with results expected from Wednesday afternoon.
The flaperon will be analysed using physical and chemical methods including “a scanning electron microscope that can magnify up to 100,000 times” to understand how it was damaged, said Pierre Bascary, former director of the tests at France’s General Directorate for Armament.
A fevered hunt for more wreckage from missing flight MH370 on La Reunion island turned up no new clues Sunday as authorities said metallic debris found by locals did not come from an airplane.
About two-thirds of those aboard Flight 370 were Chinese.
“One is in the United States, one in Ukraine, and this one in the Indian Ocean“, he said.
Malaysian Transport Minister, Liow Lai, said the appeal was to allow the experts to conduct more substantive analysis, in the event that more materials suspected to be debris of the missing aircraft is washed ashore.
Advertisement
Investigators believe someone on board MH370 may have switched off its transponder, which allows it to be located, before flying it thousands of miles away from its intended course. “We will make an announcement once the verification process has been completed”.
