New debris found in Reunion not a plane part

Wrapped and loaded as cargo, the fragment was being transported to the military aviation laboratory, east of Toulouse.

Malaysian Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai told Reuters in Kuala Lumpur on Saturday that additional Malaysian officials were headed to Reunion to look for more debris and others would go to France. The official wasn’t authorised to be publicly identified.

It is believed the second object is possibly a plane door, which was discovered just south of the city of St Denis. “French authorities and Malaysian experts will meet Monday in Paris”.

Reunion is the same island in the Indian Ocean where a possible piece of the MH370 was discovered last week.

A source close to the investigation in Paris said “no object or debris likely to come from a plane” had been placed into evidence on Sunday. “The modifications were done by Boeing”, he said.

“There is a sort of “treasure hunt” mentality that is taking hold and people are calling us for everything”, said a local source close to the investigation.

The wing part is the first potential physical evidence to have been found in the more than 500 days since the MH370 accident, which has spawned wild conspiracy theories.

Scientists say it is plausible that ocean currents carried a piece of the wreckage as far as La Reunion.

“There were forensic police and normal police, not very many”, said the woman, who have her name only as Betty.

Flaperons are control surfaces on the wing of an aircraft that help to stabilise the plane during low-speed flying during take-off and landing. “This could be the convincing evidence that MH370 went down in the Indian Ocean“, Malaysia’s deputy transport minister Abdul Aziz Kaprawi told AFP. Flight 370 is the only missing 777 and many are convinced the flap comes from the ill-fated jet. A French aeronautics investigator familiar with the ongoing investigation agreed. They said the piece matches a Boeing 777, the plane model of flight MH370.

If debris is from missing plane, what’s next?

A fragment of luggage that was found on La Reunion was also flown to France with the aircraft debris and will be sent to a unit outside Paris that specialises in DNA tests. “Only after they verify the internal parts of the flaperon can they be sure that it is from MH370″.

Teams in Reunion have continued to search the stretch of coast where the debris was found.

The debris will be analysed at a lab staffed by 600 experts that is operated by the defence ministry near Toulouse.

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

Investigators are expected to begin their inquiry into whether it came from flight MH370 on Wednesday. “We will make an announcement once the verification process has been completed”.

Flight MH370 is the only Boeing 777 to ever be lost at sea.

The U.S. intelligence assessment was largely focused on the multiple course changes the aircraft made after it deviated from its scheduled Kuala Lumpur-to-Beijing route.

There were 239 passengers and crew on board, and a few families of the victims are demanding further compensation from the airline.