Suspected Flight 370 Wing Flap Arrives at French Facility

The wing fragment found on the island of Reunion is wrapped and ready to be loaded on a cargo flight for France, where experts are hoping to learn whether it comes from the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.

A piece of an airplane wing found earlier this week in the Indian Ocean could be transferred to France for analysis on Friday.

Representatives of the world’s media have gathered outside a French defense site in Balma, southwestern France, awaiting the arrival of a piece of plane wing that could be from the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.

French air accident investigators are due to meet with their Malaysian counterparts on Monday, along with French and Malaysian judicial authorities, to discuss the examination of the debris, the Paris prosecutor’s office said.

Boeing has confirmed that the serial number found on the wing belongs to a Boeing 777 aircraft, CBS News correspondent Seth Doane reported.

The French and U.S. officials spoke on condition that they not be named because they aren’t authorized to speak publicly.

French aviation experts will try to establish whether the wreckage was part of the Boeing 777 that disappeared March 8, 2014, with 239 people on board.

The debris, which measures about 10 feet by 5 feet, washed ashore the west Indian Ocean island near Madagascar on Wednesday.

Even if the piece is confirmed to be wreckage from Flight 370, there’s no guarantee that investigators can find the plane’s vital black box recorders or other debris.

A massive multinational search effort of the southern Indian Ocean, the China Sea and the Gulf of Thailand has turned up no trace of the plane.

Stay on topic – This helps keep the thread focused on the discussion at hand.

The part has been moved to the local airport on Reunion, located off Africa’s east coast, and will next head to Toulouse, the hub of Europe’s aerospace industry.

Pictures of the flaperon showed it was missing its drive arm, which directed up-down movement, but the area where the drive arm tore away appeared to be just mildly damaged, said William Waldock, a professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Arizona who taught aircraft8 search and rescue. REUTERS/Stringer General view of the beach where a large piece of plane debris was found on Wednesday in Saint-Andre, on the French Indian Ocean island of La Reunion, July 30, 2015. Truss, the transport minister, famous that there didn’t look like any marine life hooked up to the suitcase, indicating it in all probability hadn’t been within the water for lengthy. But it’s unclear whether there is any link between that and the plane part.

Martin Dolan, the head of the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, on Friday said the plane part was “very likely” from a Boeing 777, echoing the views of other safety experts and engineers familiar with the long-range jet’s design.

Ocean modeling predicted that currents would ultimately carry any floating wreckage to the African coast from its suspected crash website.