According to a US official, newly discovered debris shown in a photograph belongs to the same type of aircraft as missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.

New wreckage, which appears to be the wing flap of a Boeing 777, was found Wednesday morning off the coast of Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean. The island is roughly 380 miles off the coast of Madagascar.

— Breaking News Feed (@PzFeed) July 29, 2015

Crash investigators are hopeful that the piece will contain serial numbers which would link it to flight MH370.

"Every manufacturer puts a data tag, or data plate, on every part that goes on an airplane," former NTSB investigator Greg Feith told Wired.

The debris is currently in the hands of local authorities.

Earlier, experts said that several aspects of the debris appeared consistent with the missing flight, though they also stressed it could be wreckage from from a twin-engine Piper PA-23 which crashed in 2006.

"If it is a part from a triple 7, we can be fairly confident it is from 370 because there just haven't been that many triple 7 crashes and there haven't been any in this area," aviation analyst Mary Schiavo told CNN.

Xavier Tytelman, an airplane security expert based in France, told Wired that after he analyzed the photos, he noticed a series of two letters and three numbers. Reading BB670, he thinks the series could be part of a serial number, but that number would not match that of MH370.

Flight MH370 went missing en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, disappearing from radar screens on March 8, 2014. The plane was carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew members.