KUALA LUMPUR: An expert on a CNN video said that if Boeing confirms that the plane part found off the Reunion Island in the western Indian Ocean is from a Boeing-777, then it can only be missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 which disappeared on a routine flight on March 8 last year from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
“There have only been five 777 crashes so far, four are known including MH17 over the eastern Ukraine.”
Boeing officials think debris looks like part from 777
The debris was found Wednesday off the coast of Reunion Island, a French department in the western Indian Ocean. It is being examined to see if it is connected to flight MH370 a member of the French air force in Reunion said Wednesday.
Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, with 239 people aboard, disappeared after a late-night take off from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on March 8, 2014, bound for Beijing.
The Malaysian government eventually declared the loss of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 an accident and all of its passengers and crew presumed dead.
Malaysian team en route
Earlier, Retournat said the debris appeared to be a wing flap and had been taken to the island, about 380 nautical miles off the coast of Madagascar.
The Malaysian government has dispatched a team to Reunion Island to investigate the debris, Malaysian Minister of Transportation Liow Tiong Lai said in New York.
"We need to verify. We have wreckage found that needs to be further verified before we can further confirm if it belongs to MH370. So we have dispatched a team to investigate on these issues and we hope that we can identify it as soon as possible," the minister said.
Malaysia Airlines said it was working with authorities to determine where the part came from.
"At the moment, it would be too premature for the airline to speculate on the origin of the flaperon," the carrier said.
CNN analysts said there are indications the airplane part could be from a Boeing 777, and if that's the case, it's likely from MH370.
Making the determination should be "very simple" because the serial numbers riveted to numerous parts of the plane can be linked to not only the plane's model, but also the exact aircraft, said CNN aviation analyst Les Abend, who flew 777s during his 30 years as a pilot.
This means crash investigators may be able to figure it out from photographs of the part, which could be an aileron, a flap or a flaperon, even before arriving on the island, he said.
Airplane debris is being examined to see if it's connected to MH370.
There are at least three elements of the discovery that are consistent with MH370, said CNN safety analyst David Soucie. The first is that the part appears to have been torn off the aircraft.
"This is from a sudden impact, it looks like to me," Soucie said.
There also is a seal on the top of the part that "is consistent with what I would see on an inside flap on a triple 7," he said, and the barnacles on the part are consistent with the "parasitic activity" that would take place from being underwater so long.
However, the part appears to be coated in white paint, which would run counter to Soucie's other observations in that the 777's parts would be coated in zinc chromate, not paint. Soucie acknowledged, however, that the part could be coated in something from the ocean.
"If it is a part from a triple 7, we can be fairly confident it is from 370 because there just haven't been that many triple 7 crashes and there haven't been any in this area," said CNN aviation analyst Mary Schiavo.
Antoine Forestier, a journalist on the island where the debris was found, said people who were on shore gardening saw the plane part drifting in the ocean.
Reporters from Antenne Reunion looked at the debris, which Forestier said was about 2 meters by 1 meter (6.5 feet by 3 feet).
There was a marking "BB670" on the part.
Soucie said he believes the number is a part number, though it might be from a subcontractor.
Drift possibilities
The head of the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, the agency tasked by Malaysia with leading the search for MH370, said the piece of debris is "not inconsistent" with drift modeling done by Australian authorities.
"If there was something from MH370 it could have reached Reunion Island from the area we're covering," said ATSB Chief Commissioner Martin Dolan. "It's not inconsistent with the drift modeling we've done. It's not inconsistent with the search area we're covering."
Dolan would not say how likely it was that any debris would move in a westerly direction.
"There's a range of possibilities," he said. "It's not an exact science." Dolan said surface currents, wind direction and how high an object was floating in the water might all play a role.
Post a Comment