Air crash investigators have 'a high degree of confidence' that a piece of wreckage found on the Indian Ocean island of La Reunion is from a Boeing 777 - the same model as the doomed MH370 which disappeared in March 2014.
Since the Boeing 777 was introduced in 1994, there have been five incidents - including MH370 - which have led to the destruction of the aircraft. MH370 is the only aircraft of its type which has vanished over the sea.
The first 777 hull loss was a BA jet approaching Heathrow on January 17, 2008 which landed 1,000 feet short of the runway after a problem with its engines. The second hull loss was in July 2011 when an Egypt Air aircraft caught fire at Cairo international Airport. The third was in July 2013 when a 777 operated by Asiana Airways crashed at San Francisco International Airport, killing three passengers. MH370 was the fourth hull loss, while MH17, which was shot down over the Russian Ukrainian border in July 2014, was the final hull loss.
Experts have a 'high degree of confidence' that a piece of wreckage found washed up in the Indian Ocean belongs to a Boeing 777 - the same model as the doomed Malaysian Airlines plane which vanished without a trace last year. Investigators will need to examine closely the wreckage to link it to MH370, but it was the only aircraft of its type lost over water.
The debris appears to be part of a wing and was taken onto the island of La Reunion, where it will be thoroughly inspected Air safety investigators have identified the two-metre long piece of debris as a 'flaperon' from the edge of a 777 wing, a US official has said.
The Chief Commissioner of the Australian Transport Safety Bureau Martin Dolan said his organisation was liaising with Boeing over the piece of wreckage. He said: 'We know about it and we are trying to work with our French colleagues to try and figure out if this is from MH370. It could take some time.
'It could take today or longer than that for us to ascertain that.'
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.
He said: 'Whatever wreckage found needs to be further verified before we can ever confirm that it is belonged to MH370.'
If the debris turns out to be from Malaysia Airlines flight 370, it will be the first major break in the effort to discover what happened to the plane after it vanished on March 8, 2014, with 239 people on board while traveling from Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia to Beijing.
The component was discovered by people cleaning up a beach in La Reunion, east of Madagascar - more than 3,800 miles away from the last known location of MH370. It is also more than 3,000 miles from where the main underwater search for wreckage is taking place, off the coast of Australia.
One witness said: 'It was covered in shells, so one would say it had been in the water a long time.'
French air transport officials have already opened a probe to investigate where the wreckage could have come from.
The two-metre-long section was found more than 3,800 miles away from where the missing Boeing 777 was last seen. It is also more than 3,000 miles from where the main underwater search for wreckage is taking place, off the coast of Australia.
France TV said the object was recovered by a group of workers cleaning a beach on La Reunion, who reported the discovery to authorities who alerted air crash investigators.
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