MH370: Flaperon definitely from missing plane

The public prosecutor of Paris has just confirmed what everyone had been expecting, more or less, since the 29 July discovery of an aircraft part stranded on a beach at Reunion Island. The flaperon, a small control surface on a wing’s trailing edge, in fact does belong to the Malaysia Airlines MH370 Boeing 777 which disappeared from radar screens 8 March, 2014, between Kuala Lumpur and Beijing with 239 passengers on board.

The public prosecutor’s statement says "the expertise operations initiated on 5 August, 2015 (...), have helped to identify – thanks to the use of an endoscope - three numbers inside the flaperon. It appeared that these three numbers could match the manufacturing reference parts entrusted by Boeing under subcontract to Airbus Defence and Space Company (ADS) in Seville, Spain.

On that day, on international letters rogatory (formal request) to the Spanish judicial authorities, the investigating judge – assisted  by the commissioned aviation expert - travelled to Seville for the purpose of gathering all relevant data. Immediate communication of data relative to orders and manufacture of the parts of the aircraft, made explicit by the hearing of an ADS company technician, allows the formal association of one of the three numbers identified within the flaperon to a serial number of a Boeing 777 flaperon of flight MH 370. "

This information is crucial but the mystery will remain until the Indian Ocean offers up other parts of this aircraft. Meanwhile, the search is continuing.