Australia 'increasingly confident' wreckage is from MH370

Authorities hunting for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 said on July 31 they were "increasingly confident" that wreckage found on an Indian Ocean island was from the ill-fated jet, raising hopes of solving one of aviation's great mysteries.

The two-metre (six-foot) long piece of wreckage is to be sent to France for analysis, with hopes high that it could turn out to be the first tangible proof the plane went down in the Indian Ocean.
 
Investigators are hoping they will be able to move closer to solving the perplexing mystery swirling around the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777, which vanished without a trace 16 months ago with 239 people aboard.
 
"We are increasingly confident that this debris is from MH370," Martin Dolan, chief commissioner of the Australian Transport Safety Bureau which is leading the MH370 search, told AFP.
 
"The shape of the object looks very much like a very specific part associated only with 777 aircraft."  

Dolan, however, echoed comments on July 30 by Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, who said the object was "very likely" from a Boeing 777 but cautioned that it remained to be confirmed, in a case notorious for disappointing false leads.    

Dolan said he was hoping for greater clarity "within the next 24 hours".
 
Several experts believe the debris is a Boeing 777 flaperon, a wing part, and that if it is confirmed it almost certainly belonged to the Malaysia Airlines plane, whose disappearance became one of aviation's greatest mysteries.
 
The debris washed up on the French island of La Reunion, some 4,000 kilometres (2,500 miles) from the oceanic region where MH370 was thought to have gone down in March last year.
 
The recovered object is expected to...