France Can "Confirm With Certainty" That Plane Debris Belonged to MH370
The piece of debris found in July on Reunion Island definitely belonged to missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, French prosecutors confirmed Thursday. Their announcement comes three weeks after Malaysia’s prime minister publicly “confirmed” the same thing, though France at the time—citing, in part, inexplicable barnacles and a missing ID plate—said further tests were needed to determine the debris’s origin.
Now, however, the mysteries of the barnacles and missing ID plate have apparently been solved. From Reuters:
The French prosecutor, who had until Thursday’s statement been more cautious on its provenance, said a technician from Airbus Defense and Space (ADS-SAU) in Spain, which had made the part for Boeing, had formally identified one of three numbers found on the flaperon as being the serial number of the MH370 Boeing 777.
“It is therefore possible to confirm with certainty that the flaperon found on Reunion island on July 29, 2015 corresponds to the one from flight MH370,” the prosecutor said in a statement.
MH370 vanished off the coast of Malaysia with 239 people on-board in March 2014. Nearly a year later, in January, the incident was officially declared an accident. The debris on Reunion Island, discovered on July 29, is the first confirmed piece of the missing plane.
