Reunion Island Wing Part Confirmed to Be from MH370 Plane Type, Suitcase Found

The search for more possible debris from the missing Malaysia Airlines MH370 has increased on and around Reunion Island, as a three-meter section of aircraft wing has been identified as being from a Boeing 777 – the same type of aircraft as MH370, and the only instance of that model missing over water.

Investigators stopped short of declaring the wing part – a flaperon or "flap," used during take-off and landing – as definitely being from MH370, searchers on the western Indian Ocean island of Reunion and other nearby areas of were increasing their efforts to find debris that might be positively identified as coming from the missing plane.

A discovery over the weekend of what was thought might be part of an aircraft door turned out to be a common ladder. A suitcase found on a Reunion Island beach was also being examined.

Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 disappeared on March 8, 2014 en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Over 16 months after the plane vanished with 239 people on board, searchers have not found a single piece of wreckage, a single drop of oil, or a solitary life jacket.

One hundred fifty-two of the passengers were Chinese, most of them local. A number of Beijing-based expatriates were also aboard, including most members of a French family, a couple traveling without their children, and a businessman on his final flight to Beijing before completing a move Kuala Lumpur.

Malaysian and Australian officials have been searching for wreckage in the southern Indian Ocean, about 1,800 kilometers west of Perth, Australia. Satellite pings indicate the plane may have taken this course and continued until it ran out of fuel or was forced down.

The plane's disappearance has become the greatest aviation mystery of the 21st century, and will remain so until its wreckage is discovered and its deviation from the flight plan explained.

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Photo: WILX