The piece of plane wreckage found on a tiny Indian Ocean island is almost certain to belong to missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 although there has been no official confirmation yet - just aviation experts and amateurs arguing and speculating on the images shown on the Web.
The large piece that might be an aircraft flaperon - a type of metallic feather attached on the trailing edge or the back side of the wing to provide additional lift or drag - was found the French island of Réunion - far from the current search zone.
Les Abend, a Boeing 777 captain for a major airline with 30 years of flying experience, expressed his skepticism in an article on CNN, saying "the piece looked too bulky to have been attached to a 777 wing".
However, he agrees that "if the piece of airframe debris just discovered is indeed a flaperon unique to a 777, then it simply belongs to MH 370".
"Why? Because there have only been two significant 777 accidents in the airplane's 21-year history, and none of them have been over water. "
Richard Aboulafia, an aviation analyst at Virginia-based Teal Group, was quoted by the Washington Post as “If it is from a Boeing 777, it can’t be from anything except MH370”.
“I mean, no one else just happens to be missing a 777 in that region of the world.”
In fact, investigators believe it may be a piece of wreckage from the missing Boeing 777-200ER — registration number 9M-MRO, the same model as MH370.
According to CNN, investigators from Boeing conducted a photo assessment of the wreckage and were able cofirm an indentification number that corresponds with a Boeing 777 part.
As a result, the investigators have a “high degree of confidence” the part found on the island could be the right “flaperon” from the 777, CNN reported.
Boeing 777 flaperon image from 2008 Maintenance Manual shows similarities with part found at Réunion pic.twitter.com/LFZS88Xamu
— AviationSafety (@AviationSafety) July 30, 2015
But even in that case, the confirmation of the part that it belongs to MH370 doesn’t exactly solve the mystery of MH370 - what happened to it? where? why?
It even doesn't help reduce the search area because it could float from the current search zone to be found in a remote island.
Oceanographers confirmed it was plausible debris from the missing flight could have been swept near Africa by sweeping currents.
The task of finding the missing plane and what happened still remains enormous and as difficult as before this debris.
The underwater search on the Indian Ocean floor, started 6 October 2014, with joint funding from Australia and Malaysia has so far scoured 55,000 square kilometers (21,000 square miles) of remote seafloor.
Australian government said in a statement that while Malaysia is responsible for the investigation, it also involves Boeing, the French and US air safety agencies, and the ATSB.
“In the event that the wreckage is identified as being from MH370 on La Reunion Island, it would be consistent with other analysis and modelling that the resting place of the aircraft is in the southern Indian Ocean,” said the statement.
“Any new evidence will be used to further inform and refine ongoing search efforts”.
The high priority search area in the southern Indian Ocean has been drawn based on “handshakes” between the plane and a communications satellite.
As the plane’s transponders, which transmit the plane’s location to air traffic controllers, were manually switched off from inside the cockpit, hourly satellite pings were the only interaction kept live for hours – after which investigators believe the aircraft ran out of fuel.
Investigators said in the initial report that movements are consistent with the deliberate action of someone on the plane.
