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Wing Part May Shed Light on the Last Moments of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370
Debris Is From Lost Jetliner, Malaysia Says
(about 1 hour later)
SYDNEY, Australia — If the part of the trailing edge of a jet’s wing that washed up on the island of Réunion last week is from the Boeing 777 flying as Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, the authorities hope that it can tell them something more about the plane’s last moments before it descended into the Indian Ocean more than a year ago.
SYDNEY, Australia — Experts have determined that the aircraft part that washed up on the island of Réunion last week is definitely from Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, Prime Minister Najib Razak of Malaysia announced in the early hours of Thursday (Wednesday afternoon Eastern time).
The part, known as a flaperon, was flown from the French island of Réunion, near Madagascar, to a laboratory in Toulouse, France, where Malaysian, Australian and French officials have gathered to examine it, along with representatives from Boeing.
The part, known as a flaperon, was flown from Réunion, near Madagascar, to a laboratory in Toulouse, France, where Malaysian, Australian and French officials gathered on Wednesday to examine it, along with representatives from Boeing.
The office of the Paris prosecutor said it would hold a news conference at 8 p.m. local time (2 p.m. Eastern time) to discuss “analysis operations conducted today within the framework of the disappearance” of Flight 370. The prosecutor’s office is involved in the inquiry because four French citizens were among the 239 people on the plane when it disappeared on March 8, 2014.
The office of the Paris prosecutor said it would hold a news conference at 8 p.m. local time (2 p.m. Eastern time) to discuss “analysis operations conducted today within the framework of the disappearance” of Flight 370. The prosecutor’s office is involved in the inquiry because four French citizens were among the 239 people on the plane when it disappeared on March 8, 2014.
It was not clear whether any conclusions would be announced on Wednesday.
The prime minister’s announcement was released shortly before the news conference was scheduled to begin.
“Malaysian and French officials may be in a position to make a formal statement about the origin of the flaperon later this week,” Australia’s deputy prime minister, Warren Truss, said earlier in a statement.
Mr. Truss said an investigator from the country’s Transport Safety Bureau had traveled to Toulouse to take part in the examination. Australia is leading the underwater search for the plane, while the Malaysian authorities are conducting the broader investigation into the plane’s disappearance.
Mr. Truss said Australia’s national science agency, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, had confirmed that material from the search area could have been carried by ocean currents to Réunion thousands of miles west of the remote stretch of deep ocean where the plane is believed to have gone down.
Material could also have reached “other locations, as part of a progressive dispersal of floating debris through the action of ocean currents and wind,” Mr. Truss said in the statement. “For this reason, thorough and methodical search efforts will continue to be focused on the defined underwater search area, covering 120,000 square kilometers, in the southern Indian Ocean.” That area is equivalent to about 46,000 square miles.
By Wednesday afternoon, the Transport Safety Bureau said that about half the area — 23,000 square miles — had been searched so far, and that there would be a short break in the effort while the two search vessels returned to port for supplies.
In a separate report, also released on Wednesday, the science agency said its updated modeling showed that most of any debris from a crash in the search area would probably have drifted north and then west from the accident site.
David Griffin, who is in charge of the modeling work, said the appearance of a flaperon on Réunion would be consistent with that analysis and would not cast doubt on the validity of the underwater search area.
The velocity of the aircraft when it hit the water, the structural strength of the jet, and the size, shape and density of debris are factors that affect how much flotsam might be found.
Martin Dolan, head of the Transport Safety Bureau, said experts in Toulouse would probably gain some indication of how the flaperon had separated from the plane. He said that once the jet’s fuel was exhausted and it had no power, it would have been almost impossible for pilots to ditch the plane into the sea with any control.
“We have worked with Boeing to model what happens to a 777 aircraft when it runs out of fuel,” Mr. Dolan said in a telephone interview late last week. “It goes into an increasingly tight spiral, into or toward the surface, or in this case toward the ocean. That’s something we have a considerable level of confidence in.”
