PARIS (KRON/CNN) — French officials on Thursday confirmed airplane debris that washed-up on a remote island in the Indian Ocean in July is indeed from Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which disappeared more than a year ago with 239 people aboard.
Investigators at a French aeronautical research laboratory near Toulouse received the wing part last month and have been examining the piece. Their announcement Thursday backs up a statement from authorities in Malaysia weeks ago, declared that the wing fragment was from the missing jet.
But it wasn’t until now that French investigators could say with certitude that the part was from the vanished aircraft.
In a statement, the Paris prosecutor’s office said that investigators used maintenance records to match a serial number found on the recovered wing part with the missing Boeing 777.
Following analysis of the debris, it is “possible to say with certainty that the flaperon discovered on the Reunion Island on July 29 2015 corresponds to the one on MH370,” the prosecutor’s office said.
Flight 370 took off in the early hours of March 8, 2014, from Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Malaysia en route to Beijing, with 239 passengers and crew on board.
At 1:19 a.m., as the Boeing 777-200ER was flying over the South China Sea, Malaysian air traffic controllers radioed the crew to contact controllers in Ho Chi Minh City for the onward flight through Vietnamese airspace.
The crew’s acknowledgment of the request was the last thing ever heard from MH370: “Good night Malaysian three-seven-zero.”
Shortly afterward, air traffic controllers in Malaysia lost contact with the plane somewhere over the waters between Malaysia and Vietnam.
The aircraft’s transponder, which identifies the plane and relays details like altitude and speed to controllers, stopped transmitting. MH370 seemingly disappeared without a trace.
Malaysian authorities later revealed that military radar had tracked the plane as it turned back to the west and flew across the Malaysian Peninsula, up the Strait of Malacca, before flying out of radar range at 2:14 a.m. and vanishing once again.