- On August 5th, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak announced that a piece of wing wreckage found on Réunion Island came from missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370. - Flight MH370 disappeared on March 8th last year with 230 passengers and crew aboard while flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. - The discovery of the wing part provides the first physical evidence of the plane's crash location and confirms that all those onboard are presumed dead.

1. Messages for MH370 at Malaysian bookstore. Insets: missing plane and wreckage found on the island of Réunion
Najib Razak is the prime minister of
Malaysia. On August 5, he announced
that a piece of wreckage found on
an island in the Indian Ocean came
from Flight MH370. This Malaysian
Airlines passenger plane disappeared
17 months ago.
Until now there has been no evidence
of the missing plane. Some describe it
as “the greatest aviation mystery of all
time”. The wreckage is a part of one of
the airliner’s wings. Its discovery seems
to suggest that the airliner did crash in
the Indian Ocean.
On March 8, last year, the Malaysian
Airlines Boeing 777 took off from Kua-
la Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia. It
was just after midnight. On board were
230 passengers and crew. Flight MH370
was going to Beijing, China’s capital
city. Two-thirds of the passengers were
Chinese. Others came from Malaysia,
Indonesia, Australia, India, the U.S., and
nine other countries.
The pilot and copilot were in the cock-
pit. Soon after the plane took off, one pilot
spoke to Malaysian Air Traffic Control
(ATC). He said “good night Malaysian
three seven zero”. The plane was about
to leave the airspace over Malaysia. Its
flight path would then be above Vietnam.
The pilots were supposed to contact Viet-
namese ATC. They never did.
There were no emergency or distress
calls. The weather was fine. The plane
did not seem to have technical problems.
At first, everyone thought Flight MH370
crashed into the South China Sea. As
the pilots did not say anything, people
thought that something must have hap-
pened very suddenly. Some wondered if
a bomb had exploded. Ships from many
countries searched the South China Sea.
They found nothing.
MH370 WRECKAGE FOUND

2. August 6, 2015
A few days later, Malaysian of-
ficials made two announcements.
They surprised everyone. Mili-
tary commanders in Malaysia had
checked their radar recordings.
Just before entering Vietnamese
airspace, Flight MH370 made a
sharp, unexpected turn to the left.
By then, two communication devic-
es on board had been turned off. If
switched on, they could be used to
track the plane.
Later, information recorded by
a satellite, high above the Earth,
showed that the airliner had con-
tinued to fly for seven hours. It had
enough fuel to travel for eight hours.
After studying the satellite informa-
tion, experts worked out that the
airliner flew south. If true, the plane
would have eventually run out of
fuel while still above the ocean. So
it probably crashed into the sea.
Boeing 777 flaperon
The best way to find out what
happened to the plane and the people
on board is to find the two flight re-
corders. (Even though these are col-
ored orange, they are known as black
boxes.) These devices are kept on all
aircraft. One records what the pilots
say. The other stores information
about the plane’s mechanical equip-
ment, engines and computers. If the
plane crashed into the ocean, the two
flight recorders are on the seabed.
Soon after the airliner went miss-
ing, ships and planes from many
countries began to search a large
area in the southern Indian Ocean.
The search is being coordinated
by Australia. Many thousands of
square miles of ocean have already
been covered. Yet, so far, nothing,
not even any floating wreckage, has
been found.
On July 29, several beach clean-
ers were walking along the shore on
Réunion. This island is 310 miles
(500 kilometers) from Madagascar,
on the western side of the Indian
Ocean. The men noticed something
large in the water. They dragged it
onto the land. Realizing that it might
be part of the missing plane, they
contacted the authorities.
News of the discovery quickly
spread around the world. From pho-
tographs it looked like a Boeing 777
“flaperon”. This is a part of the air-
craft’s wing. It is about six feet (1.8
meters) long. No other Boeing 777s
have been lost in the Indian Ocean.
So, many people were confident that
this piece of wreckage was from the
missing plane.
As Réunion is a French territory,
the wreckage was taken back to Tou-
louse,acityinsouthernFrance.Here,
there is a special air accident investi-
gation organization. Officials from
Malaysia, Australia, and the Boeing
Company all traveled to France.
They were present when the air acci-
dentexperts inspectedthewreckage.
Oceanographers, or people who
study ocean currents, were not sur-
prised that the wreckage had reached
Réunion.Oceancurrentsinthesouth-
ern Indian Ocean move in an coun-
terclockwise direction. The distance
from the search area, off the coast of
Australia, to Réunion is about 2,480
miles (4,000 kilometers). Oceanog-
raphers say that it would take about
17 months for a piece of floating
wreckagetocrosstheIndianOcean.
Barnacles on the flaperon will be
studied. These are small saltwater
creatures with hard shells. They at-
tach themselves to parts of floating
objects that are under water. The
barnacles could confirm how long
the wreckage has been in the sea.
Different types of barnacle grow in
different sea temperatures. There-
fore it may be possible to work
out the path the wreckage took, as
it drifted across the ocean. Trac-
ing this backwards might lead to a
rough area of the crash site.
Kuala
Lumpur
INDIAN OCEAN
Search area
CHINA
INDIA
MALAYSIA
INDONESIA
Reunion Island
Perth
AUSTRALIA
MADAGASCAR
BeijingPlanned flightpath
Suspected flightpath
Ocean currents
On its own, the flaperon will not
solve the mystery of Flight MH370.
Manypeoplebelievethatanacciden-
tal decompression is the most likely
explanation.Oxygeninsidetheplane
ran out. The pilots and passengers all
became unconscious. The plane then
flew on autopilot until all the fuel ran
out. However, this does not explain
the sudden turn soon after take off,
or why the communications devices
wereswitchedoff.
Some passengers’ relatives still
believed that the plane had landed in
a remote place. They thought their
family members were being held
as prisoners, but that they were still
alive. Mr. Razak said he made the
announcement about the wreckage
with a heavy heart. This was be-
cause, after 17 months, it indirect-
ly confirmed that everyone on the
missing plane was dead. 