MH370 investigators to meet in France ahead of wing analysis

Malaysian aviation experts were to meet their French counterparts and judges on August 3 to coordinate the investigation into missing flight MH370, days after the discovery of a washed-up plane part offered fresh hopes of solving the mystery.

Technical experts, including from US aerospace giant Boeing, will from August 5 begin examining the wing component that surfaced last week on the French Indian Ocean island of La Reunion.
   
The two-metre long flaperon, already confirmed to be part of a Boeing 777, is virtually certain to have come from the doomed Malaysia Airlines flight, as no other such plane is known to have crashed in the area.
 
In one of the most baffling mysteries in aviation history, MH370 inexplicably veered off course last March and disappeared from radars, sparking a colossal hunt that has until now proved fruitless.
 
In January, Malaysian authorities declared all 239 people on board MH370 presumed dead.
 
The wing part will undergo physical and chemical analysis in the southern French city of Toulouse in a bid to prove beyond doubt that the flaperon once belonged to MH370.
 
It will be examined with an electron microscope "that can magnify up to 10,000 times" to try to understand how it was damaged, said Pierre Bascary, former director of tests at France's General Directorate for Armaments.
 
However, experts have warned grieving families not to expect startling revelations from a single part. "We shouldn't expect miracles from this analysis," said Jean-Paul Troadec, former head of France's BEA civil flight authority.
 
In order to provide clues as to what happened to the aircraft, "the part would need to be at the centre of the accident and the chances are fairly small,"...