Airplane debris that washed up on the Indian Ocean island of La Reunion and may belong to a vanished Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 arrived in France yesterday for investigators to study its origin.
An Air France flight carrying the debris landed at Orly airport near Paris at 6.17am and it was then transferred by road to a military-run laboratory near the southwestern city of Toulouse that specialises in analysing aviation wreckage.
French investigators are not expected to begin examining the wreckage before Wednesday afternoon and their Malaysian counterparts will also be present, the Paris prosecutor’s office said in a statement.
Experts hope the barnacled 2-2.5 metres long wing surface known as a flaperon and a fragment of luggage also found on La Reunion could yield clues as to the fate of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, which vanished without trace in March 2014.
There were 239 passengers and crew on board. Some families of the victims are demanding further compensation from the airline.
We do not want to speculate
Malaysian Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai told Reuters in Kuala Lumpur yesterday that additional Malaysian officials were headed to La Reunion to look for more debris and others would go to France.
“If the flaperon does belongs to MH370, it is actually in accordance with the drift pattern seen in the southern Indian Ocean. But we do not want to speculate. We will wait for verification from the French authorities,” he said.
Discovery of the debris may finally confirm the plane crashed into the sea after veering off course from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, helping to end 16 months of lingering uncertainty for relatives.
Investigators believe someone deliberately switched off MH370’s transponder before diverting it thousands of miles off course.
The debris will be analysed at a lab staffed by 600 experts that is operated by the French Defence Ministry near Toulouse. The luggage fragment will be sent to a police unit outside Paris that specialises in DNA tests.
If the serial number on the flaperon confirms that it is from Flight 370, then the laboratory can use sophisticated tools to try to glean more information about the causes of the crash, such as whether its shape corresponds more to a mid-air explosion or a crash into the ocean.