First official confirmation that part of wreckage of Malaysia Airlines flight, which disappeared in March 2014 with 239 people on board, has been found

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

A piece of debris found washed ashore on a beach in the Indian Ocean came from missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370, the Malaysian prime minister has announced, confirming the first trace of the plane since it vanished last year with 239 people on board.

MH370 debris found: will it solve the mystery of how the flight vanished? Read more

“Today, 515 days since the plane disappeared, it is with a very heavy heart that I must tell you that an international team of experts has conclusively confirmed that the aircraft debris ... is indeed MH370,” Najib Razak said on Wednesday.



Razak said he hoped the positive identification of the two-metre fragment, which was found last week on the French island of Réunion, would “lift the fog of uncertainty” for grieving relatives.

The announcement appeared to confirm what aviation experts had suspected – that the aircraft had crashed into the sea some time after it dropped off the radar screens one hour into its journey from Kuala Lumpur to the Chinese capital Beijing.

But the cause of the crash remains unknown, and the fate of MH370 remains one of aviation’s greatest mysteries.

“It’s not the end,” said Jacquita Gonzales, whose flight attendant husband Patrick Gomes, was on the flight.

“Although they found something, you know, it’s not the end. They still need to find the whole plane and our spouses as well. We still want them back,” she told Reuters.

Malaysia Airlines described the discovery as “a major breakthrough”.

“We expect and hope that there would be more objects to be found which would be able to help resolve this mystery,” the compan said in a statement.

But Serge Mackowiak, the French deputy public prosecutor, was considerably more cautious, saying it was “highly probable” that the wing flap came from the doomed flight.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Paris deputy public prosecutor Serge Mackowiak says debris found on the island of Réunion matches the technical specifications of missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370

Mackowiak told a packed press conference: “This afternoon at 15.00 the expert examination (of the flaperon) began under the control and presence of one of the three judges carrying out the inquiry.”



He added that there were two reasons for believing the wing flap came from the Boeing 777 of flight MH370.



“Boeing has confirmed that the flaperon comes from a Boeing 777 because of the colour, structure, joints,” he said.



“The second reason is that Malaysian Airlines representatives have communicated details of the aircraft and on this basis we can link the piece examined by the expert with the Boeing 777 of flight MH370 because of technical similarities.”



“In view of the experts’ report, we can say today there exists very strong presumption that the flaperon found on the beach on Réunion comes from the Boeing 777 of Malaysian Airlines flight MH370,” he said.



He added that further tests to be carried out on Thursday would hopefully confirm this.



“These tests will be carried out as rapidly as possible for the families of the victims who we are thinking of this evening,” Mackowiak concluded.



Mackowiak had begun by outlining the circumstances of the investigation, which he said was examining the possibility that the plane was hijacked by terrorists.



Aviation experts said they were deeply disappointed by the deputy public prosecutor’s statement, which they said would only add to the suffering of the passengers’ families.



Jean Serrat, an aviation consultant, told BFMTV: “The Malaysian prime minister was categoric, he said this piece came from flight MH370 … Let’s put ourselves in the place of the families. This is a form of torture for them.

Despite a massive international search, the fate of the Boeing 777 aircraft remained unknown and until a week ago whenthe flaperon – encrusted with barnacles – was washed up on Réunion.

The debris was flown to Paris where French investigators at the Bureau d’Enquêtes et d’Analyses took charge of the two-meter long piece of wing, identified by a part number as coming from a Boeing 777, which was despatched to a ministry of defence laboratory near the southern French city of Toulouse at the weekend.



A dozen air accident investigators examined the flaperon on Wednesday in the presence of legal and transport representatives from Malaysia, China and France and representatives from the US aircraft constructor Boeing.



A piece of suitcase washed up at the same time is being analysed by experts in Paris.



The ocean bed search for the aircraft is being led by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB), but France has taken over the legal investigation after the debris discovered on its overseas department Réunion and because four of the passengers were French.



The test centre in Balma, a suburb of Toulouse, specialises in metal analysis and is equipped with a scanning electron microscope capable of 100,000 times magnification. It was used to store and analyse debris from an Air France jet which crashed in the Atlantic in 2009.



Ships have been scouring more than 50,000 square kilometres (19,000 square miles) of deep ocean floor for evidence of the missing aircraft. Authorities plan to search a total of 120,000 square metres.



