Plane part tested for MH370 link

Risingbd Desk: Malaysia has sent a team to the French Indian Ocean island of Reunion to determine whether debris which washed up there is from missing flight MH370.

The Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 travelling from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board vanished without trace in March 2014.

Aviation experts have said the debris looks like a wing component from a 777, known as a flaperon.

Malaysia Airlines said it would be "premature" to speculate on its origin.

There were 227 passengers on the flight, including 153 Chinese and 38 Malaysians.

The two-metre-long (6ft) piece of wreckage washed up on the island, about 600km (370 miles) east of Madagascar, late on Wednesday.

The search efforts for MH370, led by Australia, are focussed on a broad expanse of the southern Indian Ocean - some 6,000km to the east of Reunion, which is a French region.

There have been other plane crashes much closer to Reunion, but flight MH370 is the only Boeing 777 to have disappeared in the area.

Agencies

risingbd/July 30, 2015/Aminul