A part number on a piece of aircraft wreckage found in the Indian Ocean confirms the object is from a Boeing 777, a Malaysian transport official has said.
"From the part number, it is confirmed that it is from a Boeing 777 aircraft. This information is from MAS (Malaysia Airlines). They have informed me," deputy transport minister Abdul Aziz Kaprawi said.
The wing component found on the small French island of La Reunion, east of Madagascar, bears the part number 657 BB, according to photos of the debris.
The two-metre-long piece of wreckage, known as a flaperon, was found by people cleaning up a beach on La Reunion on Wednesday.
A Boeing 777 is the same model aircraft as Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, which vanished 16 months ago with 239 people aboard.
Mr Abdul said the piece of wreckage moved investigators "close to solving the mystery of MH370".
"This could be the convincing evidence that MH370 went down in the Indian Ocean," he said.
Models of sea currents by oceanographers suggest it is plausible debris from the missing plane could wash up in the tropics.
The recovered object will be flown to a testing site in France near the city of Toulouse for analysis by aviation authorities and could reach there by Saturday, French sources told AFP.
La Reunion is 4,000 kilometres from the oceanic region where MH370 was thought to have gone down on March 8 last year.
Australian officials 'increasingly confident' debris from MH370
Australian search authorities earlier said they were "increasingly confident" the debris was from missing flight MH370.
"We are increasingly confident that this debris is from MH370," Martin Dolan, chief commissioner of the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB), said.
Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss said he was confident the search for the missing aircraft was being conducted in the right area.
Mr Truss said the discovery of wreckage on La Reunion was consistent with currents from the area search teams were scouring.
"We remain confident that we're searching in the right place. And, if in fact the plane parts found on Reunion island are linked to MH370, that would rather strengthen the case that we are in the right area," he said.
"It's not positive proof, but the fact that this wreckage was sighted on the northern part of the Reunion island is consistent with the current movements — it's consistent with what we might expect to happen in these circumstances."
Australia has led the hunt for MH370 since it vanished.
Satellite and other data has allowed investigators to narrow their search to an arc of the remote southern Indian Ocean west of Australia, with ships scouring more than 50,000 square kilometres of deep ocean floor without success.
Mr Truss said if the wreckage was confirmed to be from MH370, it would eliminate some of the "rather fanciful theories" about what happened to the plane.
"It [if proven] establishes really beyond any doubt that the aircraft is resting in the Indian Ocean and not secretly parked in some hidden place on the land in another part of the world," he said.
"We are confident, on the basis of continuing refinement, continuing assessment of the satellite data, that the search area is correct."
AFP
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