As originally reported, below, although Malaysia’s prime minister declared that the flaperon definitely came from the doomed MH370 aircraft, an official in Paris yesterday stopped short of making such a “definitive” assertion, saying only that there are “very strong presumptions” that the flaperon actually came from the missing Boeing 777, “after experts inspected the object.”
The New York Times in additional coverage this morning:
A person involved in the investigation said, however, that experts from Boeing and the National Transportation Safety Board who had seen the object, a piece of what is known as a flaperon, were not yet fully satisfied, and called for further analysis.
Many have asked, why the doubts: the flaperon is from a Boeing 777, there is only one 777 missing, so the flaperon has to come from that aircraft.
The Times explains the reluctance of experts to say just that:
Their doubts were based on a modification to the flaperon part that did not appear to exactly match what they would expect from airline maintenance records, according to the person, who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly
And, in addition to once again quoting the Malaysian Prime Minister, the Times discusses how “French and Malaysian officials did not share the American hesitation, not least because no other Boeing 777 is unaccounted for.”:
At the [Paris]news conference, Serge Mackowiak, the deputy Paris prosecutor, discussed what officials and experts from France, Malaysia, Australia and the United States had learned from examining the flaperon part in an aviation lab in Toulouse, France.
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He said representatives from Boeing had confirmed that it came from a Boeing 777, based on its size, color, joint structure and other technical characteristics. He also said that “technical documentation” provided by Malaysia Airlines had enabled experts to establish “common technical characteristics” between the debris and Flight 370’s flaperons.
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Boeing said in a statement that its technicians were assisting in the analysis of the part, but declined to comment on the results of the examination.
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The person involved in the investigation said no serial or other unique number had been found, making the job of conclusively identifying the object more complicated. The person also said that so far, no burn marks or other evidence of physical damage had been found that might provide clues to the circumstances in which the plane went down.
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In any case, experts have cautioned that the discovery of the object is unlikely to tell investigators enough to determine exactly what happened to the plane.
Please read more about the deliberations here and about how the missing jet’s debris could have floated to Réunion, in an animated model here.
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Original Post:
In the beginning, more than a year ago, there were numerous reports that a satellite might have spotted pieces of wreckage of the ill-fated Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, or that large oil slicks possibly coming from the missing aircraft were seen from above, or that a suspected life raft was seen “bobbing” and an aircraft tail floating in the Gulf of Thailand — the latter turned out to be “logs tied together” — and so on.
Efforts to locate the aircraft continued unabatedly.
In the meantime many rumors and theories have persisted about the disappearance of Flight MH370.
The theories still abound, but now — 515 days after the disappearance — there is hope that some of them may be disproven and others proven; that we may finally know what happened to the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-200 and to the 239 souls on board who disappeared on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing the night of March 8, 2014; that there may finally be closure for their bereaved loved ones.
ABC News London broadcast a news conference video where Malaysia Prime Minster Najib Razak said:
It is with a very heavy heart that I must tell you, an international team of experts have conclusively confirmed that the aircraft debris found on Réunion is indeed from MH370…We now have physical evidence that … Flight MH370 tragically ended in the Southern Indian Ocean.
The prime minister was referring to the barnacle-crusted “flaperon,” a Boeing 777 wing segment, that washed ashore on a beach on remote Réunion Island last week.
ABC News, however, cautions, “French authorities said only that there were ‘strong presumptions’ the part was from MH370.”
Read more here
Lead photo: www.shutterstock
