A piece of an aircraft wing found on the Indian Ocean
island of Mauritius has been identified as belonging to missing Malaysia
Airlines Flight 370, Malaysian and Australian officials said Friday.
The piece of wing flap was found in May and subsequently
analyzed by experts at the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, which is heading
up the search for the plane in a remote stretch of ocean off Australia's west
coast. Investigators used a part number found on the debris to link it to the
missing Boeing 777, the agency said in a statement. Malaysian Transport
Minister Liow Tiong Lai also confirmed the identification.
Several pieces of wreckage from the plane have washed ashore
on coastlines around the Indian Ocean since the aircraft vanished with 239
people on board during a flight from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing on
March 8, 2014.
So far, none of the debris has helped narrow down the
precise location of the main underwater wreckage. Investigators need to find
that in order to locate the flight data recorders that could help explain why
the plane veered so far off-course.
Search crews are expected to finish their sweep of the
120,000 square kilometer (46,000 square mile) search zone in the Indian Ocean
by December.
Oceanographers have been analyzing wing flaps found in
Tanzania and on the French island of La Reunion to see if they might be able to
identify a potential new search area through drift modeling. But any new search
would require more funding; Malaysia, Australia and China said in July that the
$160 million hunt will be suspended once the current stretch of ocean is
exhausted unless new evidence emerges that would pinpoint a specific location
of the aircraft.
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