Has MH370 Been Found?

A piece of plane debris has washed up on the Indian Ocean island of La Reunion, but officials are saying that it’s too early to say whether or not it has come from Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.

French air transport officials are investigating the two-meter object thought to be part of a large aircraft’s wing flap.

Rather than MH370, the debris could be from the 2006 crash of an aircraft near La Reunion or from an A310 which crashed off the Comoros in 2009.

La Reunion is over 6,000km (3,700 miles) further west of the plane’s last known position before it vanished.

One commentator has stated that the location of the debris is consistent with where the anticlockwise current of the Indian Ocean would carry parts of the plane.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau and Boeing are now involved in the attempt to identify the debris. The investigators are looking for serial numbers that could confirm its source. 

The plight of MH370 is one of the biggest mysteries in aviation history. The plane vanished from radar screens shortly after taking off from Kuala Lumpur on March 8, 2014, bound for Beijing. Investigators believe the plane was flown thousands of miles off course before eventually crashing somewhere off Australia.

The search area was expanded in April beyond an original 60,000 square kilometer search area to enable up to 120,000 square kilometers to be searched if required.  More than 50,000 square kilometers of the seafloor have been searched so far.