malaysia airlines crash US official: Debris in photo belongs to 777

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

Air-safety investigators have a “high degree of confidence” that aircraft debris found in the Indian Ocean is of a wing component unique to the Boeing 777, the same model as the Malaysia Airlines plane that disappeared last year, a U.S. official said Wednesday.

Air-safety investigators – one of them a Boeing investigator – have identified the component as a “flaperon” from the trailing edge of a 777 wing, the U.S. official said.

A French official close to an investigation of the debris confirmed Wednesday that French law enforcement is on site to examine a piece of airplane wing found on the Fren ch island of Reunion, in the western Indian Ocean. A French television network was airing video from its Reunion affiliate of the debris. U.S. investigators are examining a photo of the debris.

The last primary radar contact with Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 placed its position over the Andaman Sea about 230 miles northwest of the Malaysian city of Penang. The French island of Reunion is about 3,500 miles southwest of Penang, according to a Google map.

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

At the United Nations, Malaysian Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai told reporters that he has sent a team to verify the identity of the plane wreckage.

If the debris turns out to be from the missing aircraft, it will be the first confirmation that the plane crashed into the Indian Ocean after it vanished March 8, 2014, with 239 people on board while traveling from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing. A massive multinational search effort of the southern Indian Ocean, the China Sea and the Gulf of Thailand turned up no trace of the plane.

Confirmation that the debris came from Flight 370 would also finally disprove theories that the airliner disappeared somewhere in the Northern Hemisphere, said Australian Transport Safety Bureau Chief Commissioner Martin Dolan, who is heading up the search effort in a remote patch of ocean far off the west coast of Australia.