Investigators in Toulouse are hoping to unlock the mystery of the disappeared Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 as the piece of plane wreckage found washed up on a beach on the Indian Ocean island of Réunion arrived in France for official identification.
The two-metre, barnacle-encrusted chunk of metal debris which emerged from the sea this week has raised hopes of discovering what happened to the Kuala Lumpur-Beijing flight which mysteriously disappeared from radars last March, vanishing without trace with 239 people on board.
The piece of debris – known as a flaperon – arrived at Orly airport in Paris at 6.17 am local time (0417 GMT) on Saturday on an Air France flight from the French island of La Reunion.
A police escort will accompany the two-metre (6.5 foot) part on its journey by road to a defence ministry laboratory near the southwestern city of Toulouse.
There, investigators are expected to start work on Wednesday to determine whether it was from the missing Boeing 777 that has confounded an international search mission for more than a year.
The Malaysian government said on Friday that Malaysia Airlines had confirmed that the debris was from a Boeing 777 and that investigators were now “moving close to solving the mystery of MH370”.
Abdul Aziz Kaprawi, the deputy transport minister, said the debris could be “the convincing evidence that MH370 went down in the Indian Ocean”.
Earlier, Martin Dolan, chief commissioner of the Australian transport safety bureau, had said that if the wing piece did prove to be from a 777, MH370 was the only known possible source. He said authorities were “increasingly confident” the debris came from MH370.
“We are still working with our French and Malaysian colleagues to analyse all the information so we don’t have certainty yet, but we hope that within the next little while we’ll be able to get to that level of confidence. We’re hoping within the next 24 hours,” he said.
The wing component bears the part number 657 BB, according to photographs of the debris, which Abdul Aziz said identified it as coming from a 777. “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,” he said.
Definitive confirmation of its origin could, however, only come from Boeing, he said. The aircraft manufacturer performed modifications to the flaperon that would make it easy to identify. Boeing said on Friday it will dispatch a team to assist in analyzing plane debris found on Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean.
Before the flaperon was discovered by beach cleaners on the island of Réunion on Wednesday, the search for the missing passenger plane had gone cold. Planes and ships from more than 20 countries had scoured the Indian Ocean for the aircraft, which had been carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew, in vain.
An Australian taskforce spent more than a year combing the submarine depths of the ocean for wreckage. But the first tangible evidence may have washed up thousands of miles west.
Warren Truss, the deputy prime minister of Australia, which has led the ocean search, said the discovery of the flaperon was “being treated as a major lead”.
But he warned it would not solve the mystery of where the plane crashed or point to where other debris might be.
“After 16 months, the vagaries of the currents, reverse modelling is almost impossible,” Truss told reporters in Sydney. “And so I don’t think it contributes a great deal in as far as our knowledge of where the aircraft is located at the present time.”
For the families of the missing, the grey metal object has brought fresh grief but also the prospect of closure.
“Sometimes I hope that this is it and at times, I hope that this isn’t the plane,” Elaine Chew, wife of steward Tan Size Hiang, told the Straits Times. “I would fall asleep, then wake up again. I just kept thinking of the plane and Size Hiang,” she said.
“It’s starting all over again.”
Relatives of many of the 153 Chinese passengers of MH370 said they wanted authorities to be completely certain the part was from the missing plane. A statement said: “We want [the information] to be 100% positive. We care more about where our families are rather than where the plane’s wreckage is.”
A church service was held at Cambuston church in Saint-André on Saturday in memory of the 239 people on board the flight.
More than 400 people attended the service at the church, which is located just minutes away from the beach where the first piece of debris was discovered.
Nadia Tipaka, representative of the mayor of Saint-André, said that the Pope called the Gilbert Aubrey, the island’s bishop, asking for a service to be held.
“The ceremony was a fitting tribute for the families affected. We will do all we can to help them commemorate their families,” Tipaka said.
Parishioner Christine Robert-Kirbidy said: “Since the debris was found close by, we thought it appropriate to pay homage to the victims and the families.”
The service concluded with each member of the congregation lighting a candle for the victims of MH370.
French police on Réunion carried out a further search of the island’s coastline by helicopter in an effort to spot more debris but found nothing more.
Islanders had discovered part of a suitcase not far from the plane wreckage but Australian search chiefs were cautious about any link when they spoke on Friday. “From what we understand so far there’s much less reason to be positive about the suitcase,” Dolan told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
“There’s no obvious indication it’s been in the water a long time and so on.”
James Record, a professor of aviation at Dowling College in the US, and former commercial airline pilot, said the long wait to find a part of the plane was not surprising.
“It is a big ocean and we always knew that eventually debris from the crash would either be found by passing ships or be washed ashore somewhere,” he told the Guardian in an email.
“Every piece of equipment on a plane has inventory markings of some sort. Authorities will be able to cross-reference the numbers on the piece of debris and if it belonged to 370, as we expect it did, have the evidence needed to confirm that.”
