KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — A piece of a wing found washed up on Reunion Island last week is from Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which vanished last year, Malaysia’s prime minister announced Thursday, saying he hoped the news ends the “unspeakable” uncertainty of the passengers’ families.
But authorities in France, the U.S. and Australia were more cautious, stopping short of full confirmation. Some relatives said the mixed messages were causing them yet more confusion and anxiety.
The disappearance of the Boeing 777 jetliner 515 days ago while on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014, has been one of the biggest mysteries in aviation history. Officials believed it crashed in the southern Indian Ocean, killing all 239 people aboard, but it is unknown why the plane went down.
“It is with a very heavy heart that I must tell you that an international team of experts has conclusively confirmed that the aircraft debris found on Reunion Island is indeed MH370,” Prime Minister Najib Razak told reporters. The French territory is thousands of miles from the area being searched for wreckage from the flight.
U.S. and French officials involved in the investigation said it made sense that the metal piece of the wing, known as the flaperon, came from Flight 370.
The Australian government, which leads the seabed search for wreckage west of Australia, also was less certain than Malaysia, saying in a statement that “based on high probability, it is MH370.”
Australia, which has sent an official to France to help examine the flaperon, has said finding the flaperon will not affect its sonar search of a 46,000-square-mile expanse of seabed more than 2,500 miles east of Reunion Island.
That search, which began in October, has covered almost half that area without finding any clues.
Intact and encrusted with barnacles, the flaperon was found on a beach and sent to France for scrutiny by the French civil aviation investigation department known by its acronym, BEA, and members from its Malaysian and Australian counterparts.
Sara Weeks, the sister of New Zealander Paul Weeks, who was on Flight 370, criticized the mixed messages on whether the flaperon had indeed been confirmed as part of the missing plane.
“It’s somewhat frustrating,” she said from Christchurch, New Zealand, where she lives.
“Why … do you have one confirm and one not? Why not wait and get everybody on the same page so the families don’t need to go through this turmoil?” Weeks said.
