A piece of plane debris from missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 has been found 17 months after the plane disappeared. Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak confirmed the news on Wednesday, Aug. 5.
"The international team of experts have conclusively confirmed that the aircraft debris found on Reunion Island is indeed from MH370," Najib said in a televised statement. A wing from the plane washed ashore Reunion Island last week.
The aircraft mysteriously went missing in March 2014 after taking off from Kuala Lumpur en route to Beijing with 239 passengers and crew on board.
Despite confirming the wing, investigators are still trying to solve the cause of the plane crash. "A wing's moving surfaces give you far fewer clues than bigger structures like the rudder, for example,” one investigator told CNBC. “As a single piece of evidence, it is likely to reveal quite little other than it comes from MH370.”
The plane is believed to have crashed in the southern Indian Ocean, about 2,300 miles from Reunion Island. On March 8, 2014, the plane disappeared from radars minutes after takeoff, leading some investigators to believe that someone deliberately switched off the plane’s transponder, diverted it off course, and crashed it into the ocean.
