But many questions still remain unanswered
More than a year after Malaysian Airlines flight MH 370 mysteriously disappeared from the skies with 239 people on board, the airplane seems to have been found, even if only in parts. On Thursday, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak announced that the wing part, known as a flaperon, that had been found in the French Reunion Island located in the far end of the Indian Ocean, did indeed belong to MH 370. Expectations were raised earlier this month when initial analysis revealed that the flaperon belonged to a Boeing 777 aircraft.
Since only one aircraft from that family had gone missing in that general area, there was a fair chance that MH 370 had finally been found. However, given the many false alarms that have gone off in these past 17months, it was important that a more detailed investigation be carried out before a confirmation was issued. These tests are still underway and will continue for a while as more debris washes ashore — on Thursday, parts of airline pillows and window panes were found that are possibly from MH 370. However, with the paint on the recovered flaperon matching the one used on MH 370, based on forensic tests, there is now enough proof to conclude that at least some part of the missing airliner have been found.
Notably though, despite the Malaysian Prime Minister’s statement, French Deputy Prosecutor Serge Mackowiak, who is leading one party of the multi-national, multi-faceted investigation, has been more cautious in this statement. He has said that there are “very strong presumptions” that the debris was from MH 370 and acknowledged that experts had found “common technical characteristics” but stopped short of confirming that the debris was from the Malaysian flight. Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, whose country is leading the underwater search for MH370, also stayed away from establishing a definitive link but only said that the Reunion Island discovery “suggests that for the first time we might be a little bit closer to solving this baffling mystery.”
Mr Abbott is right. Even if the flaperon is confirmed by all parties as part of MH 370, as expected, there will still be many unanswered questions that won’t be resolved unless more evidence or testimony comes up. For example, the flaperon may offer some clues as to how the plane went down (speed, angle of crash etc) but it doesn’t tell us why the aircraft had deviated so far from its Kuala lumpur-Beijing route or where exactly it went down. We still don’t know if the aircraft went down because of a technical malfunction or a human error or even if it was deliberately taken off course. For the investigators to unlock all these details, their best hope is to locate the plane’s cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder, which are possibly sitting at the bottom of the ocean right now. Until then, those who lost their loved ones on MH 370 will only have a partial sense of closure.