A whole 515 days after Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappeared from the skies en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak confirmed early Thursday that a barnacle-encrusted fragment of wing that had washed up last week on the remote Indian Ocean island of Réunion, a French territory, was indeed from the doomed flight. “It is with a very heavy heart,” Najib told a press conference organized around midnight in Malaysia, “that I must tell you that an international team of experts has conclusively confirmed that the aircraft debris…is indeed MH370.”
In France, where aeronautical experts near Toulouse were examining the flaperon, as the chunk of the wing spotted on the pebble beach is called, prosecutor Serge Mackowiak used less definitive language, instead saying that there were “very strong indications” that the Boeing 777 chunk was from MH370. (No other Boeing 777s have been reported missing in the Indian Ocean area.)
Najib, whose government has been criticized for fumbling the investigation into the jetliner’s disappearance, said the confirmation of the flaperon’s origins “will at least bring certainty to the families and loved ones of the 239 people onboard MH370,” most of whom were Chinese. The Malaysian leader spoke of the “unspeakable” nature and “torment” of their loss.
But several families of Chinese passengers felt no certainty in Thursday’s announcement — and even less a sense of closure. “I don’t care if they found the wreckage, and I don’t care where the plane is,” says Li Huiyun, whose husband was on the jet. “If they cannot find the bodies and know what happened to our relatives, it’s meaningless.”
06/08/15 Time
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In France, where aeronautical experts near Toulouse were examining the flaperon, as the chunk of the wing spotted on the pebble beach is called, prosecutor Serge Mackowiak used less definitive language, instead saying that there were “very strong indications” that the Boeing 777 chunk was from MH370. (No other Boeing 777s have been reported missing in the Indian Ocean area.)
Najib, whose government has been criticized for fumbling the investigation into the jetliner’s disappearance, said the confirmation of the flaperon’s origins “will at least bring certainty to the families and loved ones of the 239 people onboard MH370,” most of whom were Chinese. The Malaysian leader spoke of the “unspeakable” nature and “torment” of their loss.
But several families of Chinese passengers felt no certainty in Thursday’s announcement — and even less a sense of closure. “I don’t care if they found the wreckage, and I don’t care where the plane is,” says Li Huiyun, whose husband was on the jet. “If they cannot find the bodies and know what happened to our relatives, it’s meaningless.”
06/08/15 Time
