MH370: Reunion debris sent to Toulouse by BEA for verification – expected to take two days

The piece of wreckage found on Reunion island off the coast of Madagascar is being sent to France for examination as Malaysia urges caution against speculation that it could be from the missing airliner MH370.

Malaysia's Deputy Transport Minister Abdul Aziz Kaprawi said the wing part would be sent to Toulouse by the BEA, France's aviation investigative agency, where it will take two days for it be verified. A second Malaysian team is also on its way to where the debris was found on Reunion.

The flaperon, which adjusts the roll or bank of a plane, and a damaged suitcase were discovered by workers at Saint-Andre on the island.

In a statement, Kaprawi said it was too premature to speculate for the sake of the grieving families after admitting there had been "many false alarms before".

He said the location, 3,600 miles from Penang, however, was "consistent with the drift analysis provided to the Malaysian investigation team, which showed a route from the southern Indian Ocean to Africa.

"As soon as we have more information or any verification we will make it public. We have had many false alarms before, but for the sake of the families who have lost loved ones, and suffered such heartbreaking uncertainty, I pray that we will find out the truth so that they may have closure and peace.

"I promise the families of those lost that whatever happens, we will not give up."

A £70m ($110) deep-water search is currently still underway, which is being led by the Australia Transport Safety Bureau. But no resources were yet being diverted to scour the surface for more potential sightings of debris.

Meanwhile relatives played down the finding saying they preferred to wait until it was officially confirmed.

"Let's wait a few more days. I'm a bit lost right now," Xu Jinghong, the daughter of one passenger, told the Changjiang News.

One relative, Zhang Yongli, whose daughter was on the plane, is so convinced the plane was hijacked that he would not accept the debris was from MH370 even if the US claimed it was.

He also told the Chinese newspaper: "Technology is so advanced these days that an iPhone can be located if it is lost. How is it possible that a plane cannot be found?".

The disappearance of the plane on March 8, 2014, is deemed one of the biggest aviation mysteries of all time. All 239 passengers and crew are presumed dead and it was officially declared an accident earlier this year.

It veered off its original flight path from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing for reasons still unknown today and is now believed to have crashed in the Indian Ocean, somewhere along what the experts have named the seventh arc.

But so far no remnants of the aircraft has been found except potentially yesterday's discovery of the wing belonging to a Boeing 777.

Warren Truss, Australia's deputy prime minister, said the finding was being treated as a "major lead".

He said: "This obviously is a very important development and if it is indeed wreckage from MH370, it starts to provide some closure for the families of the people on board.

"The Reunion island is a very long way from the search area, but it is consistent with the work that has been done in identifying the current search area, the satellite interpretations of the route path that the aircraft is expected to have taken. So a discovery of wreckage in that area would not be inconsistent with that advice."

He also said the BB670 code on the flaperon would allow the quick identification of whether it belongs to a Boeing 777 and if indeed comes from MH370.