MH370: French investigators confirm wing part is from missing flight

[webfact]

French investigators confirm wing part is from Flight 370
GREG KELLER, Associated Press

PARIS (AP) — French investigators have formally identified a washed-up piece of airplane debris found in July on a remote island in the Indian Ocean as part of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, a Boeing 777 that disappeared more than a year ago with 239 people aboard.

Investigators have been examining the wing part, called a flaperon, since it was flown to a French aeronautical research laboratory near Toulouse last month. Malaysian authorities had already declared that the wing fragment was from the missing jet, but until now French investigators couldn't say with certainty that it was the case.

The Paris prosecutor's office said in a statement Thursday that investigators used maintenance records to match a serial number found on the wing part with the missing Boeing.

"Today it is possible to state with certainty that the flaperon discovered on Reunion July 29, 2015 corresponds to that of Flight MH370," the prosecutor's statement said.

The flight's disappearance on March 8, 2014, has been one of aviation's most confounding mysteries.

Until the wing flap washed ashore July 30 on the French island of Reunion, investigators had not found a single physical clue linked to the missing plane, despite a massive air and sea search. Officials believe it crashed in the southern Indian Ocean, killing everyone aboard, but are unsure of the cause.

The discovery of the wing flap refocused the world's attention on the investigation, which many hope will finally yield clues to the plane's fate.

Australian forces are continuing their search for the plane in a desolate stretch of ocean 4,200 kilometers (2,600 miles) to the east of Reunion, where experts believe the plane from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing crashed.

Investigators examining the wing fragment in France are trying to glean clues into the plane's fate based on its condition, opening up even more questions: How, exactly, did the plane end up in the water? Was it a controlled landing? Was there an explosion?

Officials who scrutinized data exchanged between the plane's engine and a satellite determined that the jetliner took a straight path across the ocean, leading them to believe that the plane flew on autopilot for hours before running out of fuel and crashing into the water.


-- (c) Associated Press 2015-09-04

[peterjackson]

About time.

You would think in today's electronic age of data capture, the Serial number verification would only have taken seconds to complete.

I hope one day they are able to find and retrieve the data recorders.

[Anthony5]

What a bummer for the Thaivisa investigators who kept claiming that it never could be a piece of MH370 because it had Chinese characters on it

Edited September 4, 2015 by Anthony5

[Fore Man]

It is my understanding that Boeing let subcontracts with Chinese aerospace companies to build certain structural parts for its aircraft. Hence, Chinese characters found in the flaperon.

[empireboy]

I'm pleased that families are getting closure.

And, that the lunatic conspiracy theorists of the world are again shown for all to see, to be the fear-mongering liars that they are!

[Kerryd]

There are still whackos out there that think that "somehow" this plane landed on Diego Garcia and it's all a secret conspiracy !

I just finished pointing out to one nut that Diego Garcia is a small island in the middle of a big sea, with one, single airport on it, as well as a few thousand military and civilian personnel from a dozen different countries. There is no way they could sneak a 777 in there, kill/kidnap/dispose of all the passengers and crew and hide the plane without literally everyone there knowing about it. (And there is no way they could keep them all silent without killing all of them and disposing of their bodies as well. But then you'd have to kill the people that killed those people that had earlier killed those other people and so on and so on until Diego Garcia itself disappeared under a mountain of bodies !)

But (as I pointed out in the same article) for most conspiracy theorists, if you give them a choice between cold, hard, indisputable facts and "aliens kidnapped me and probed me and made me have sex with Kim Kardashian" - they'll pick the "aliens" every time, no matter how ludicrous the story is.

Edit - I got wrapped up in the "conspiracy" bit and totally forgot that I was actually going to post about <deleted> took them so long to figure out that this items was actually from that aircraft ! I've worked in aircraft spares before. I've seen the maintenance records used in (some) military and civilian systems. I know how anal they can be when it comes to recording every minute detail about various parts. I know how some of the smallest, seemingly inconsequential items still have part and serial numbers on them, and whenever they go onto (or come off of) an aircraft, it gets recorded in the maintenance logs.

Those logs (and procedures) are supposed to be reviewed on a regular basis as a part of the (airline/company) air worthiness review. I'm guessing it's probably not the same in every country however if airlines don't follow certain guidelines they won't be allowed to fly into other countries. (For example, Ariana Airlines is the "national" carrier of Afghanistan. The only reason they are allowed to fly into Dubai and some other places is because their maintenance is done by qualified people in Dubai. Many years ago Indian Airways donated an (A-310) to Ariana with the condition that it was the ONLY plane India would allow them to fly to/from Delhi with (and I'm guessing it had to be serviced in Delhi as well). Ariana was (maybe still is) flying some of the oldest 727s in the world on their route between Kabul and Dubai.

I can tell you that with the project I was involved with in the 'stan, we could go back into the maintenance records right now and tell you which little gizmo was installed on which UAV on which day back to when we first started flying them in the 'stan over 7 years ago. The maintenance logs for MH370 have probably been inspected in minute detail repeatedly by various experts since the crash and are probably available to whoever needs them at the speed of internet email. They should have known the entire life cycle history of that flaperon within minutes of it arriving in France (actually they should have known the history long before it even left Reunion, and then confirmed it within minutes of it arriving in France).

The only real holdup would be if the piece where the serial number should have been was damaged. However as it has been pointed out previously, there is no doubt that the piece is from a 777, and they haven't lost any others anywhere so there's not much doubt which plane this one came from. (The 777 that oopsied in the States wasn't "lost", merely crashed on the runway.)

Edited September 4, 2015 by Kerryd

[fxe1200]

About time.

You would think in today's electronic age of data capture, the Serial number verification would only have taken seconds to complete.

I hope one day they are able to find and retrieve the data recorders.

Amazing how long it took, to confirm the serial number, more than five weeks. It took two month though to compute(?) and publish the INMARSAT data. And until today the U.S. did not reveal their findings of their satellite supported surveillance system on D.G. They just stay mum about it. This is an utter scandal and could have saved millions spent on the search.

With all the inconsistencies and secrets around the disappearance of the flight, one could (subjunctive!) also speculate, that someone dumped the flaperon to support the these, that the plane crashed. Until today, we do not know what happened to the plane, and those who know are silent.

[sunshine51]

One piece found & ID'd & many more to find & ID.

Best news to date.

[Kerryd]

I also have a hunch that they are searching in the wrong place for the aircraft, but that is just based on what happened with the Air France plane that crashed in the Atlantic in 2009.

When they laid out their search patterns they determined how far MH370 could have flown (based on fuel, airspeed, etc). But I don't know if they took a couple of other things into account. For example, just because the plane is out of fuel doesn't mean it immediately drops like a rock. Those things are designed to gain the maximum amount of lift possible, which means that under the right conditions they could potentially glide for very long distances. Add to that the altitude they may have been at (that and the airspeed could alter the range considerably as well) plus prevailing winds and how far the plane could potentially glide before hitting the water.

Take into account that modern planes are designed to be as "idiot" proof as possible, meaning the plane, on it's own, can't do anything that would potentially throw it into a spin or dive. If it's on autopilot and gliding along at 39,000+ feet and starts losing power (and altitude) it will automatically (from what I've read anyways) do what it can to maintain it's programmed flight path (increase power, adjust flaps, etc). Of course it will be sounding alarms but if the pilots are not able to respond then that is a moot point. (Note: modern planes have a system that produces electrical power even if the engines are out, using the airflow to power generators so that essential systems will still operate in the event of engine and/or battery failure.)

So now you have a plane that is gradually descending, perhaps with full flaps out (increasing the lift). From what's on the net (other people have already asked the question many times it seems) a B-777 at 35,000 feet could potentially glide between 100-120 nautical miles (115-138 land miles) possibly more (assuming there was a skilled pilot manipulating flaps and airspeed which probably wasn't the case here though). If the plane was higher/flying faster the distance could be even greater.

Eventually it would hit the water of course. If it hit at a relatively shallow angle and low speed it is (remotely) possible that the plane would have floated for quite some time before gradually sinking beneath the waves. The engines and most of the wings would have been torn off when it hit the water (hence the flaperon becoming detached) but the main fuselage could have survived relatively intact.

This is important because while the fuselage is not airtight, it would retain a lot of air for a long time especially if it was relatively intact after hitting the water. It would gradually sink and at some point achieve "neutral buoyancy" (you divers know what that is). The currents could conceivably carry that fuselage much further away until eventually it sank to the seabed, possibly hundreds of miles from where they are still searching.

I mentioned the Air France flight that crashed in the Atlantic in June 2009. It is thought that the plane hit the water tail first then the rest of the body slammed into the water. While a lot of debris was found in the area where the plane hit the water, it was almost 2 years later (May 2011) before they found the Black Boxes and a large portion of the main fuselage (with bodies still strapped into their seats), miles to the north of where the rest of the debris had been found. The fuselage had slowly sunk and been carried by the currents until it was well outside of where the initial searching had been done. The team that found the wreckage was (IIRC) the 3rd one contracted since the crash had occurred. That aircraft hit at a fairly high speed and steep angle (due to pilot error) and the main fuselage was heavily damaged but not enough to cause it to immediately sink. A plane that hit at a shallower angle and slower speed might have had an even better chance of being "less" damaged. I don't even want to get into the "what if the wings broke off at the engine mounts and the main fuselage still had large sections attached that would keep it buoyant even longer and let it travel even further on the currents".

The problem with my theory is that, even if I'm right it doesn't really help as all it does is (dramatically) increase the area they'd need to search in. It's not like they could just draw a line on a map between Reunion Island and Malayasia and say "try searching 80-150 miles further down this line". The search area could potentially be increased by hundreds of thousands of square miles.

[RickBradford]

until Diego Garcia itself disappeared under a mountain of bodies !

No, it would tip over and capsize, as Hank Johnson knows .....

[Carmine6]

About time.

You would think in today's electronic age of data capture, the Serial number verification would only have taken seconds to complete.

I hope one day they are able to find and retrieve the data recorders.

I don't think it was the matching of the serial number that took time. The serial number plate for the flaperon didn't look like it was there in the pictures, and would have been easily visible that first day. So whatever serial numbers found (if they were serial numbers and not some batch numbers or production date codes) must have been on the components that were assembled to make the flaperon. Some supplier's serial number. In this case, maybe supplier to the supplier. Which means they were probably painted over and took some time before they carefully stripped away whatever was covering them. Then there probably was no way to tie a component to a specific flaperon in assembly. The supplier probably knew, we got a case of 10 parts with a certain number, and made 20 flaperons, so it was these 20 shipped on these days.

Press releases in 2009 said Hinduistan Aeornautical in India was the 777 flaperon supplier.

HAL To Build Boeing-777 Flaperons

http://www.livefistdefence.com/2009/10/hal-to-build-boeing-777-flaperons.html

But then it might have been switched to a Spanish supplier, or the Spanish supplier supplied the part with the found number. Note this doesn't say serial number, but "number."

Definitive answers are scarce in MH370 probe

http://edition.cnn.com/2015/08/31/world/mh370-investigation/

The Spanish company manufactured part of the flaperon. Investigators had hoped to match a number found on the debris from Reunion Island with records from the Spanish company -- to confirm that the debris did, in fact, come from MH370 -- but that proved impossible.

So either they finally did find a serial number that they did match to that specific flaperon, or they did some deduction. Like it can be tied to these xx flaperons, and we can account for all but one, and that one is MH370's flaperon.