More plane debris found near Reunion Island: Malaysian official

Most of those on board were Chinese.

Datuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai (right) says aircraft seats and windows are recovered on Reunion Island which could be linked to flight MH370.

Jean-Paul Troadec, the former head of France’s BEA agency, the authority responsible for airline safety investigations, said the investigation of the flap focused on the way it was ripped from the wing.

A relative of a passenger on missing Malaysia Airlines MH370, is consoled by a journalist outside the Malaysia Airlines’ office in Beijing on August 6, 2015.

Now that the two-meter flaperon – a control surface flap on the wing that can be lowered – was found washed up and confirmed, investigators are hoping to pinpoint a more precise search grid for the plane’s wreckage.

At a news conference in Paris, deputy prosecutor Serge Mackowiak didn’t outright confirm that the debris belonged to Flight 370.

“We owe it to the hundreds of millions of people who use out skies to ensure their travel is as safe as it possibly can be, to try to get to the bottom of this bad mystery”, he added.

“It also proves that the search area as identified by the Australian experts…is appropriate”, he said.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who is in Malaysia for meetings with Southeast Asian counterparts, issued comments on the latest information about the mysterious plane disappearance as well. Reunion is about 3,700km to the west from where the plane is believed to have crashed.

“Now that some debris has been located, once the French team has confirmed that, then there will be further analysis on currents and drift…and the like”.

“We hope that President Xi can quickly help us rescue our people”, said Zhang Yongli, a 64-year-old whose daughter was on the plane. “As new evidence and clues emerge, God willing, we will find #MH370”, he wrote. “We suspect that the airplane wreckage could be faked”, Liu Kun, whose younger brother was on board, told Reuters by telephone.

An aircraft would survey the area from Friday morning, the statement said. We respect the view that they believe they have sufficient evidence to make a categorical statement of that nature. “The French inquiry, of course, has not been quite so conclusive”.

Mr Liow said he understood why the French team had been less categorical.

Family members say they are not in denial, but that they owe it to their loved ones to not just declare them lost without 100 percent certainty about what happened to the flight.