Hopes were raised once again, only to be shattered, when a second piece of debris, believed to be part of a door from the missing Malaysian Airline flight MH370 washed ashore on the Indian Ocean island of Reunion. The Malaysia Airlines flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing had disappeared in March 2014 with 239 people on board.
The latest find, a 70cm metal sheet featuring Chinese symbols was believed to be from a door. It was discovered by a passerby in Saint Denis, 15 miles (25km) from Saint-André.
The new piece of debris turned out to be a "domestic ladder," and doesn't belong to a plane, Malaysian Director General of Civil Aviation Azharuddin Abdul Rahman said. "I'm the one leading the investigation in France for the analysis of the (wing flap) piece brought back. I read all over media it (the new debris) was part of a door. But I checked with the Civil Aviation Authority, and people on the ground in Reunion, and it was just a domestic ladder," he told the AP by phone from France.
The Malaysian government said on Sunday that it wanted international assistance to search for more debris. Malaysian transport minister, Liow Tiong Lai, said the department of civil aviation was asking the authorities to let experts "conduct more substantive analysis should there be more debris coming on to land, providing us more clues to the missing aircraft," reports The Guardian.
Abdul Aziz Kaprawi, Malaysia's deputy transport minister, feels that the debris could be "the convincing evidence that MH370 went down in the Indian Ocean," according to The Guardian.
Raising hopes that the missing airplane may finally be found Malaysia's transport minister has confirmed that the object found on a beach at St Andre earlier this week is a Boeing 777 wing flap - the same type of aircraft as the one that vanished. "This has been verified by French authorities together with aircraft manufacturer Boeing," Tiong Lai said on Sunday, according to the BBC.
You can read our earlier report on the MH370 at HNGN here.
