Investigators from the NTSB, Boeing, and various governments are converging on a military laboratory in Toulouse, France this week. There they will begin a forensic examination of what's believed to be the first tangible shred of evidence from the long-missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. But even before they get down to work, aviation safety officials say the discovery of the debris removes any doubts that remained about whether the sea search for the jet would continue.
"They will find it," says John Goglia, a consultant and former member of the NTSB.
Before the barnacle-encrusted wing part surfaced on Reunion Island last week, support for the MH370 search in the southern Indian Ocean appeared to be wavering, according to reports from Australia, given the lack of results and the ballooning costs, now exceeding $100 million. The search zone had been concentrated roughly 1,000 miles west of Perth, Australia, where the Boeing 777 is believed to have gone down after deviating from its normal flight path en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
However, because this newfound flotsam washed up nearly 2,000 miles west of the presumed crash site, there's talk of opening of a new front line in the quest for more floating evidence, and expanding it beyond Reunion to neighboring Mauritius, as well as to the Seychelles, Madagascar and the coast of Africa. Volunteer beachcombers are already descending on the region to forage for clues among the sea trash. So far that search has yielded nothing but a few rusting household items.
"They will do a detailed inspection, with an X-ray and a scan of it," he said. "Above all, they need to identify the part and confirm it is from the 777." Of course, the ultimate confirmation would come in the form of the unique serial number of the item, but investigators also can use evidence like the type of paint to support the case for this debris coming from the missing plane. "They'll do everything humanly possible (to confirm it) before they would take it apart and possibly destroy the piece," Goglia says.
In France, hopes are rising that a lab analysis of the discovered plane part could yield critical information on the plane's final moments before impact. "Basically it's going to confirm the airplane is in the water and what attitude the airplane was at when it struck the water," Goglia says. "It does look like it was torn off in flight."
Goglia, who has been part of other similar exercises, said that the actual examination will involve several different technologies. It must proceed slowly, lest the evidence itself gets damaged in the process.
04/08/15 Barbara Peterson/Popular Mechanics
