Debris found in the Indian Ocean appears to be part of Flight MH370, officials said today even as Malaysia sent a team to verify whether the wing part belonged to the plane that vanished mysteriously over a year ago with 239 people, including five Indians, on board.
The two-metre long flaperon, a wing component, was found yesterday on Reunion Island off the east coast of Africa.
Malaysia's Deputy Transport Minister Abdul Aziz Kaprawi said it was "almost certain" that the wreckage was from a Boeing 777 aircraft.
France's air crash investigation agency is studying the piece of plane debris.
Boeing officials conducted an initial assessment of the debris using photographs.
According to a source close to the investigation, there is a unique element to the Boeing 777's flaperon that experts believe they are seeing in photos.
A flaperon is a part of the wing used to manage the lift and control the roll of an aircraft.
The source stressed the observations are preliminary.
Australia's Transport and Infrastructure Minister Warren Truss said the discovery was "a very important development" in the hunt for Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, and it was feasible debris could have floated to the French island of La Reunion.
"The Reunion islands are a very long way from the search area but it is consistent with the work that has been done in identifying the current search area, the satellite interpretations of the route path that the aircraft is expected to have taken," Truss said.
"So a discovery of wreckage in that area would not be inconsistent with that advice," he said.
Malaysia's Minister of Transport Liow Tiong Lai told reporters yesterday that he had received information from his colleagues in Malaysia about the wreckage that has been spotted in La Reunion.
"I have sent a team to verify the wreckage. Anyway we need to verify," Liow said following a UN Security Council meeting on another Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, which crashed in July 2014 in Donetsk, Ukraine.
The Boeing 777-200 plane went missing on March 8, 2014, an hour after taking off from Kuala Lumpur for Beijing.
Indians on board the plane were Chetna Kolekar, Swanand Kolekar, Suresh Kolekar, Chandrika Sharma and Prahlad Shirsatha.
