The Paris prosecutor’s office says there is no new airplane debris from the French island of Reunion, contradicting reports from the Malaysian government.
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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.
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. Malaysia’s transport minister Liow Tiong Lai said “many items” are being investigated for a link to Flight 370, which went missing in March 2014. “I can only ascertain that it’s plane debris“.
Searching the beach at Reunion. Well guys, Malyasian Prime Minister Najib Razak initially said that the wing fragment discovered on Reunion Island was confirmed to be from missing flight MH370.
He said Thursday the paint color on the flaperon also matches with the airline’s records.
“We appreciate the French team and their support and respect their decision to continue with the verification”, Mr Liow said.
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. “The expert team strongly feel and confirm that it is MH370”. It is more than likely that the French officials are just being careful with their wording on confirming the wing piece.
China’s Foreign Ministry has reacted to Malaysia’s confirmation by saying that the result points to a conclusion that the flight crashed.
In a statement Thursday, Malaysia Airlines described the developments as “a major breakthrough” in unraveling what happened to Flight 370. From the beginning they have left us in the dark. Of course, the rescue work has to be continued. “We owe it to the traveling public who obviously want to be confident of their safety in the air”.
“But in Beijing, about 20 passengers’ family members protested outside the office of Malaysia Airlines, saying they didn’t believe any of it”. After several hours, the group was invited into a closed-door talk with airline officials.
Privately, however, there were questions about why Najib had moved forward with the statement before all officials had agreed.
Jiang Hui, whose mother was on board, said there was still a lack of evidence to prove that the plane crashed as was announced by Malaysian officials previous year.
However, for many relatives, any potential certainty was diluted by the word from Paris, where Deputy Prosecutor Serge Mackowiak said the “very strong conjectures” that the wing part was from the missing Boeing 777 still needed to be “confirmed by complementary analysis” that would begin later Thursday. “Why not wait and get everybody on the same page so the families don’t need to go through this turmoil”.
The Australian Transport Safety Bureau, which has led a search of almost 60,000 square kilometers (23,000 square miles) of the seabed southwest of Australia, said it won’t alter its plans.
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Chinese relatives of passengers who were aboard MH370 have reacted with grief and anger at Malaysia’s statement that the flaperon found in the island of Reunion conclusively belongs to the missing aircraft.
