Malaysia seeks more help in search of plane

The photographs of the debris shared on social networking sites by the employees appear to be parts of a plane.

The discovery in Reunion had apparently made the resort employees make the connection to their find.

They have been angered by the discrepancies in reports by French and Malaysian officials, and have accused the authorities of hiding the truth.

The Malaysia Airlines jet disappeared on March 8 last year when it inexplicably veered off course en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board, and a colossal multinational hunt for the aircraft proved fruitless.

On July 29, a piece of plane wreckage was found on Reunion Island, a volcanic island near Madagascar, roughly 3,700 kilometres from the broad expanse of the southern Indian Ocean off Australia where search efforts have focused.

“Since the French are the investigating team here, they do not want to take our word for it and they want to do more tests – that is fine with us”, said an official in Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak’s office who spoke on condition of anonymity as he was not authorised to discuss the difference of opinion.

The wing section found on Reunion, known as a flaperon, is being examined in the French city of Toulouse by global aviation experts. Last week, a piece of debris was found that was believed to be from a plane but turned out to be a simple house ladder.

The French government said in a statement that a military Casa aircraft would begin surveying the area around Reunion on Friday morning, along with helicopter and boat patrols and search teams on foot. Many think Malaysia is eager to conclude the aircraft went down in the sea to close the matter.

Relatives of the Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 passengers kneel down in front of the media ahead of a briefing given by the airlines outside a help centre in Beijing.

While there has been hope that examination of the flaperon could yield some insights into how the plane might have entered the water, Dolan said any analysis would not change the debris search. That announcement came an hour ahead of one from French investigators that differed in a significant way: They confirmed the part was from a 777, but did not have proof that it was from Flight 370.

The Australian government, which leads the seabed search for wreckage west of Australia, was also less certain than Malaysia, saying only that “based on high probability, it is MH370”.

Many Chinese relatives of MH370 passengers have consistently questioned official accounts and expressed beliefs that their loved ones are alive, perhaps being held at an unknown location, despite the mounting evidence of a fatal crash.

“We had to work with CSIRO to check the facts and as soon as we had something that was checked, we published it”, Dolan said.

Zhang Jianyi, a 59-year-old Anhui native whose daughter and son-in-law and grandson were on the flight, said he would not believe the finding because many other parts, such as chairs and life jackets, could have been more easily found than the wing part.