First plane debris, then a volcano eruption
Wreckage suspected to be from Maylasian flight sent to French aviation laboratory
BEIJING— Residents of Réunion Island are having a busy week.
On Wednesday, beachcombers on the island — a French territory in the Indian Ocean east of Madagascar — stumbled across a washed-up piece of plane debris that likely belonged to missing Malaysian Airlines Flight 370, yielding a possible key to one of the greatest mysteries in aviation history. And then on Friday, a volcano erupted.
The 2,590-metre-high Piton de la Fournaise volcano, located in an uninhabited area south of the beach where the debris was found, erupted at 9 a.m., according to local media.
The volcano erupts once every nine months, according to Réunion Island’s tourism website.
Meanwhile on Friday, the wing fragment that washed up on the beach of this volcanic island was headed to a French aviation laboratory, where analysts can glean details from metal stress to see what caused the flap to break off, spot explosive or other chemical traces, and study the sea life that made its home on the wing to pinpoint where it came from.
French authorities have imposed extraordinary secrecy over the twometre-long piece of wing, putting it under police protection in the hours before it left Reunion Island. If the fragment is indeed part of the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, it means the wreckage may have drifted thousands of kilometres across the Indian Ocean to this French is- land off the east coast of Africa.
Wrapped and loaded as cargo, it was headed to a military aviation laboratory near the city of Toulouse, Europe’s aviation hub.
“With a microscope, that can learn details from the torn metal,” said Xavier Tytelman, a French aviation safety expert. “You can tell whether a crash was more horizontal or vertical . . . You can extrapolate a lot.”
John Cox, president and CEO of Safety Operating Systems and a former accident investigator, said minute characteristics of the metal could indicate attitude and vertical speed of the aircraft when it impacted.
“It won’t tell you how the plane crashed, but it will be a step in that direction,” Cox said.
Barnacles encrusting the wing’s edges would be studied for clues to plot the wing’s journey through the Indian Ocean, but Tytelman said there could be other microscopic life clinging to the metal or bottled up inside that could further indicate where the wing travelled.
“It’s been 16 months from the crash and everything fits together,” said oceanographer Arnold Gordon of Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. “So I think the probability that it’s from 370 is pretty high.”
The currents from the Indian Ocean flow in a counter-clockwise way that would take a crash from west of Australia to Réunion Island, Gordon said. The amount of barnacles on the debris is consistent with other debris that he’s seen in the ocean for more than a year. And it’s the right type of plane.
Officials hope to have at least some answers soon, keenly aware that families of those on board Flight 370 are desperately awaiting word on the fate of their loved ones.
Even if the piece is confirmed to be the first confirmed wreckage from Flight 370, there’s no guarantee that investigators can find the plane’s vital black box recorders or other debris. With files from The Associated Press