Relatives, governments await tests on Reunion plane debris
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Bangkok (dpa) - The focus of a nearly 17-month hunt for a missing Malaysian airliner moved to the French mainland Friday, as relatives, governments and investigators awaited news of whether a piece of debris that washed up off the east African coast was f
If positively identified, it would be the first confirmed trace of the airliner, which disappeared on its way to Beijing on March 8, 2014, with 239 people on board.
"The aircraft part is almost certainly a small piece of the wing of a Boeing 777, and MH370 was in fact conducted on a Boeing 777," Australian Transport Minister Warren Truss told reporters on Friday.
Experts from France's civil aviation authority BEA in the southern city of Toulouse are set to examine the 2-metre-long piece, found on the French island of Reunion, east of Madagascar, on Wednesday.
Malaysia's Deputy Transport Minister Abdul Aziz Kaprawi said Thursday it would take "about two days" to know whether piece came from the Malaysia Airlines plane.
Experts say the piece is a flaperon from a Boeing 777, a moveable part on the trailing edge of a wing.
Chinese relatives of the passengers, who are all presumed to have died when the plane came down, said in a social media posting that they wanted to be "100 per cent certain" of what happened, in light of the discovery of the debris.
Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said Thursday the location where the debris was found was consistent with a drift analysis provided to the Malaysian investigation team, which showed a route from the southern Indian Ocean - where satellite data suggested the plane had crashed - to Africa.
The Australian-led search for the main body of the aeroplane on the Indian Ocean seabed would continue as normal, Truss said.
