A Piece of Debris Found in Tanzania Is From Missing MH370, Investigators Confirm

A large piece of debris found off the coast of Tanzania belongs to the ill-fated Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, Australian investigators confirmed Thursday.

The fragment was discovered on the Tanzanian island of Pemba in June. The Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB), who are assisting Malaysian authorities with identifying debris, said that the piece was a section of an outboard flap from the right wing of the Boeing 777 passenger jet.

The flap section will be further examined for evidence of what state it was in when it came apart from the plane’s wing, ATSB said in a report released Thursday. Investigators said the results of the analysis could shed light on the circumstances surrounding the plane’s disappearance. The Malaysia Airlines flight was en route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur when it disappeared in March 2014 with 239 people on board.

A number of pieces of debris have been discovered scattered on coastlines in the Indian Ocean, some confirmed to have come from the missing jetliner. A section of a wing called a flaperon on Réunion Island and two pieces uncovered off the coast of Mozambique were confirmed to be “almost certainly” from MH 370.