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MH370: Reunion Is flaperon discovery - Latest update 11 Aug '15

Over the last 2 days there has been several MSM regurgitated versions of the following:

MH370: Malaysia to send team to Maldives


New debris will be examined, origin determined
 UPDATED 3:04 AM CDT Aug 11, 2015  




LAC Oliver Carter/Australian Defense Force


 (CNN) —Malaysia has said it will send a team to the Maldives to inspect debris found on the Indian Ocean archipelago to determine whether it might be related to missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.

The team will carry out an initial verification to establish if any of the debris is from an aircraft, Malaysian Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai said in a statement Monday.
"At this stage, it is highly premature to speculate on whether this debris is in any way connected to MH370," he cautioned.

The discovery late last month of part of an aircraft wing on the French island of Reunion in the Indian Ocean has intensified interest in the hunt for remains of Flight 370, which disappeared in March 2014 with 239 people on board.

Malaysia says the wing part, known as a flaperon, has been conclusively confirmed to be from the missing Boeing 777. But French authorities overseeing the analysis of the object say that although there is strong evidence to support that belief, they need to do more tests to be absolutely sure.

Searches continuing around Reunion

France has stepped up its efforts on and around Reunion, which lies off the east coast of Madagascar in the western Indian Ocean, to look for more potential debris.
And authorities on the island of Mauritius, about 175 kilometers (110 miles) east-northeast of Reunion, have also been searching.

A lot of debris has been turned in to authorities on Reunion for verification. But so far, no leads as strong as the flaperon have been reported.

The remnants of a suitcase discovered the day after the flaperon have been sent to a French lab for testing.

Maldives far outside Australian models for debris drift

According to models calculated by Australia, which is in charge of the underwater search for the wreckage of MH370, debris from the plane wouldn't have made it as far north as the Maldives.

Australian officials say Reunion is within the range of where debris from the missing plane could have drifted over the months from the remote area of the southeastern Indian Ocean where the aircraft is believed to have gone down.

But the Maldives, situated off the southern tip of India, are in a different part of the ocean. The archipelago is thousands of kilometers northwest of the area of ocean that Australia is searching.

The Australian drift models suggest the winds and ocean currents would have pushed the aircraft debris in a predominantly westerly direction, toward southern Africa.

Maldivian authorities say they have been sending photos of debris found on the islands to Malaysia's Department of Civil Aviation. Police have retrieved and placed items reported to them in a storage space in Male, the capital, said Mohammed Shareef, an official in the Maldivian President's office.

Report: Debris could be from capsized barge

Further doubt was cast on the possibility that the debris is from MH370 by the captain of a barge that capsized off one of the atolls in the Maldives earlier this year, according to local media.

The barge captain, Abdulla Rasheed, told the Maldivian news site Haveeru he believes the debris people are finding comes from the wall panels that accounted for most of the vessel's cargo when it overturned.

"From the pictures of the debris found on most of the islands, I can almost certainly say that they are from the cargo we were carrying," Rasheed said.

Source: Investigators still not ready to confirm flaperon

In France, meanwhile, analysis of the flaperon found on Reunion is continuing.
Investigators from France, Australia, the United States and Boeing are still not ready to say that the part is definitely from MH370, according to a source close to the investigation.

Representatives from Boeing and the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board have now left France where they were assisting the initial inspection of debris and are back in the United States, the source said.

French officials haven't said when they plan to announce the final results of the analysis of the flaperon.

Next is from the WSJ, & although a couple of days old is very interesting because it looks at the interesting dynamic of having a French Prosecutor conducting a Judicial (criminal/terrorist) investigation into the bizarre disappearance of MH370:

French Deepen Role in MH370 Probe

Investigating judge plans travel to Malaysia as questions persist over wing section found on Réunion Island
 
Officers on Réunion Island last month carried a flaperon from an aircraft, which the Malaysian prime minister this week said was part of the missing Malaysia Airlines plane. Photo: raymond wae tion/European Pressphoto Agency
By
Matthew Dalton in Paris and Andy Pasztor in Los Angeles
Aug. 7, 2015 6:47 p.m. ET

A French investigating judge plans to travel to Malaysia as part of his probe into the fate of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, deepening France’s involvement in the search for answers to the jet’s mysterious disappearance.

The move is likely to heighten scrutiny of Malaysia’s handling of its criminal investigation into the plane, which didn’t implicate anyone on board. France on Friday also joined the hunt for plane debris, starting patrols in the waters around Réunion Island, a French territory in the western Indian Ocean.

Questions still surround the recent discovery of a section of an airplane wing found roughly a week ago on the island. Malaysia Airlines officials are convinced the recovered wing section, called a flaperon, came from the missing Boeing 777. But a team of investigators led by Alain Gaudino, a French counterterrorism judge examining the flaperon at a military laboratory near Toulouse, isn’t yet certain.

French investigators have said the flaperon very likely came from the missing jet. But French authorities “want more undeniable evidence before they are willing to say the flaperon broke off Flight 370,” a person familiar with the investigation said.

On Thursday Mr. Gaudino briefed Ghyslain Wattrelos, whose wife, son and daughter were on the plane. The investigating judge told him an examination of the wing section didn’t yield confirmation it came from Flight 370, Mr. Wattrelos said.
 
Ghyslain Wattrelos, second from right, who lost his wife and two children on Flight MH370, took part in a March protest in Paris over the continuing mystery of its fate. Photo: thomas samson/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

“They know it’s a Boeing 777,” Mr. Wattrelos said. “But today they have no proof at all that it’s coming from MH370.”

French investigators drilled into the recovered wing section, searching for signs of a maintenance seal that Malaysian authorities documented when the missing jet previously underwent repairs, according to Mr. Wattrelos and people familiar with the matter. The findings of the French investigators didn’t match the Malaysian records, Mr. Gaudino said, according to Mr. Wattrelos.

Malaysian officials, however, believe the discrepancies aren’t significant enough to challenge their conclusion, according to two people familiar with the investigation.

Malaysia’s transport minister said this week that paint on the wing section helped identify it as coming from the missing jet. But Mr. Gaudino told victims Thursday that the paint on the component appeared to come from its manufacturer, Boeing, not Malaysia Airlines, according to Mr. Wattrelos.

“To my knowledge, there isn’t paint specific to Malaysia Airlines,” said a spokeswoman for Paris prosecutors who are working with Mr. Gaudino. In addition, the wing section’s placard—containing a serial number—appears to have fallen off, the spokeswoman said.
Mr. Gaudino couldn’t be reached to comment.

To confirm the piece is from Flight 370, the experts will now have to examine parts in the interior of the flaperon, find their serial numbers, and match them if possible to parts known to have been inside the Flight 370 flaperon. Investigators are also trying to match records with an identifying mark on a portion of the internal structure that would establish the flaperon’s origin, according to one of the people familiar with the investigation.

On Friday, France began a search for additional plane debris in the waters around Réunion that will last for a week. Réunion officials said Friday they couldn’t yet identify new debris found on the island as coming from an airplane, contradicting statements from Malaysian officials that the objects are from an airplane.

Several U.S. and foreign safety experts said Malaysian authorities seem to be repeating some of their earlier missteps in prematurely announcing that debris has been found, only to have to later walk it back. Malaysian officials promised to coordinate more closely with foreign counterparts after coming under widespread criticism for repeated miscommunication at the outset of the probe.

“They seem to have moved backward,” said John Cox, an industry consultant and former pilot union safety official. “They are making many of the same mistakes again.”
France will be looking for smaller debris, not the main pieces of Flight 370 such as the fuselage. The jet, which disappeared on March 8, 2014, on the way from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, is presumed to have crashed in the eastern Indian Ocean, hundreds of miles off the coast of Australia. Authorities say it is possible that ocean currents could have transported the debris found last week across the Indian Ocean to Réunion.

Australian officials are leading an extensive underwater search some 2,000 miles away from Réunion for the main wreckage of Flight 370, which likely contains the black boxes that record the plane’s flight data, as well as conversations and sounds in the cockpit. Investigators and outside safety experts are convinced such information is essential to solve the mystery of what happened to the plane.

Malaysian authorities investigated the passengers and crew of the jet last year, announcing in April 2014 that the passengers had been “cleared.” Malaysian police seized a computer, which had been rigged as an aircraft simulator, from Capt. Zaharie Ahmad Shah’s home in the days following the disappearance of the flight. Some data had been deleted from the computer, and police tried to retrieve it. Later, the police and the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation concluded they found nothing suspicious on the device.
Neither Capt. Zaharie, 52, nor his co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid, 26, was ever accused of wrongdoing.

French authorities opened a separate criminal investigation months ago, because four French nationals were on the plane. Since then, Mr. Gaudino has been waiting for Malaysian authorities to turn over information, including files from Malaysia’s own criminal investigation and satellite data used to identify where the jet may have crashed, French officials said.

“We have no reason to think the information won’t be transmitted,” said a spokeswoman for Paris prosecutors, adding that Mr. Gaudino hadn’t set a schedule for his visit to Malaysia.

Write to Matthew Dalton at Matthew.Dalton@wsj.com and Andy Pasztor at andy.pasztor@wsj.com

 
Q/ I have a question in regards to the flaperon (see pic):

Supposition is that if the flaperon is from MH370, then it was ripped from the wing either in flight or on hitting the water. Okay if that is the case then where is the ripped & torn structural damage? And why is the hole that presumably holds the connecting hydraulic actuating rod, not flogged out and ripped through?- just asking..
MTF..P2

“Okay if that is the case then where is the ripped & torn structural damage?”

It’s more a matter of what you don’t see, with regard to damage in attempting to answer the question.  What is notably absent in the photo (& similar photos), is the flaperon support structure where the hinge attachment points, & the PCU attachment point, are located.  The observation applies equally to the outboard end of the flaperon.


It appears from the photo that the aft portion of the PCU attachment point can still be seen in the foreground, proximate to the “hole” in the nose rib (see: **).  Unfortunately the poor photo quality prevents meaningful analysis relating to possible failure loads.


“And why is the hole that presumably holds the connecting hydraulic actuating rod, not flogged out and ripped through?”


I believe the large round **“hole” being referred to, is a structural component commonly known as a ‘nose rib.’ In this instance, no mounting or actuating hardware is associated with the “hole.”

The upper & lower inboard leading edge panels appear to contain crush damage consistent with impact loading. There also appears to be ‘witness’ marks associated with the damage.

Significant impact damage is also visible on the outboard end of the flaperon.  In addition to the missing support hardware, impact damage is visible on both upper & lower leading edge panels.  It also appears that the upper leading edge panel has completely failed aft of the forward lap joint.  Crush damage can also be seen on the adjacent nose rib.  The upper & lower leading edge panel aft lap joints show signs of separation.

Any close-ups I’ve seen of the trailing edge damage, fail to provide enough detail to offer an opinion regarding failure loads.
Out on a limb