Share this article Share The plane was supposed to be travelling from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing when it mysteriously turned off course and vanished Malaysian deputy transport minister Abdul Aziz Kaprawi said: 'I believe that we are moving closer to solving the mystery of MH This could be the convincing evidence that MH went down in the Indian Ocean. Erik van Sebille, an oceanographer at Imperial College London, added: 'There's different barnacles in different parts of the ocean, so you might expect some CSI scenario where just by looking at the barnacles, you can pinpoint where it came from.
The Malaysia Airlines flight was one of only three Boeing s to have been involved in major incidents, along with the downing of MH17 over Ukraine last year and the Asiana Airlines crash at San Francisco airport in that left three dead.
The wing component found on the French island of La Reunion bears the part number 'BB', according to photos of the debris, which matches the part for a wing flap in Boeing manufacturer's manual. They have informed me,' the minister told AFP. Experts claim barnacles found on the wreckage could help pinpoint MH's black boxes if indeed it has come from the doomed jet because some species are unique to particular areas of the ocean Martin Dolan, chief commissioner of the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, which is leading the MH search, said greater clarity on the origin of the part should be confirmed 'within the next 24 hours'.
An Australian-led search has spent 16 months combing the southern Indian Ocean for the aircraft, but no confirmed physical evidence has ever been found, sparking wild conspiracy theories about the plane's fate. The fruitless search in January led Malaysian authorities to declare all on board were presumed dead. Speculation on the cause of the plane's disappearance has focused primarily on a possible mechanical or structural failure, a hijacking or terror plot, or rogue pilot action.
The discovery of the piece of plane debris by a cleaning team on Wednesday sparked fevered speculation which was heightened with the discovery on the same rocky beach of a piece of torn luggage, a detergent bottle with Indonesian markings and a Chinese bottle of mineral water. The two-metre-long section of wreckage was discovered on the island of La Reunion, east of Madagascar, more than 3, miles away from where the aircraft was last seen, north of Kuala Lumpur and some 3, miles from the search area west of Australia Australian officials played down the discovery of the luggage saying it 'may just be rubbish'.
